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“Dead, and I didn’t tell Calamity because she might not be a dragon. Not entirely. The king was never able to get her to fully shift, despite how hard he tried. She’s endured so much…” Asmo’s voice breaks, his head dropping a moment before looking at me again. “She has my blood in her veins. Who knows which side she pulled more from. My hope was that being around shifters, especially dragons, would help coax her creature out. Maybe without the king suppressing her she’d learn how to shift. If she could do that, she could leave this realm behind and never look back. I even gave her the crystal. Meg saidit helped her dragon side channel energy, and that it made them stronger. Did it work?”
“Not like you think it did. She shifted and her dragon took possession, but she didn’t transform completely. It’s a step in the right direction, though… The queen’s dead, isn’t she?” My voice barely projects enough to reach him, but I don’t know if I have the strength to make it any louder. Not when I’ve witnessed the way Calamity threw herself into Megara’s arms.
“Yes…” He tucks his lips between his teeth. “The day Calamity’s powers manifested, the king killed Meg, trying to learn how her immortality and magic worked. He didn’t need her anymore…”
I don’t think anyone moves. I don’t think any of us breathe as we take that in. Our beloved queen, the woman who saved me and Jesper from that dungeon died on that fucking altar…just as she likely endured the same torture the king inflicted on the other dragons in his care.
“Where’s her body?” Faelor doesn’t look at Asmodeus as he speaks, his eyes pinned to the dark grass at his feet. “Is it on the bridge?”
“Her body was in the crypt until you took Calamity.” His jaw saws at the hinge.
My heart plummets into my stomach, all too aware of what he’s about to say. He needed to fake Calamity’s death, and even with his gift of reanimating the dead, he needed a body, someone who looked like Calamity, to make it convincing.
Asmodeus continues and my heart breaks a little more with every word, “I’d promised Calamity I wouldn’t kill anyone… I used Meg to fake her death. She was all I could find that looked close enough to ensure the king didn’t question it.” He looks up at the moons, blinking as if he’s holding back tears. “She’s in the riff.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, the muscle in my jaw feathering. “It’s the king’s. You did what you had to do.”
I’m not sure what I would’ve done in his position, but I know one thing. Megara is dead while Calamity’s heart still beats. Even though I barely know Calamity, I probably would’ve done the same.
“Says you,” Faelor snaps. “He defiled the body of our queen.” The hate that drips from his tone sends a wave of nerves clawing up my throat.
“She was dead, Faelor. The queen sacrificed herself to free the dragons she reigned over. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say she would’ve easily given up anything, her soul, her body, her legacy, whatever for her own flesh and blood.” Jesper lifts his chin, daring Faelor to continue. The air seems to electrify at the very sound of his voice, his power emanating in the air.
“He’s right.” I chew my lip, looking at Asmodeus, my thoughts narrowing in on his white eye. The one stuck in the ether. He’d tried to scry the future, but without the knowledge of how to do so safely, he lost focus and his eye became lost in the spell. He gets premonitions from the past and future at random, and always will unless he can figure out a way to stabilize it. It’s possible he’s seen Calamity’s future, that he knows where she goes, the dragon kingdom or one of the other seven realms.
“You’re just trying to make up for the fact that your dragon wants to mate his daughter,” Faelor scoffs, a snarl pulling on his lip.
Asmodeus’s eyes narrow in on me. “Is that true?”
“No.” I school my features, praying to the gods he can’t sense the lie. My throat goes bone dry. I swallow, desperate to wet it, to form words, thoughts, anything. His eyebrows arch, but he doesn’t comment. “You wouldn’t happen to know where we take her, do you?” I ask, hoping to take the heat off myself.
His lips curve into his signature smirk. “I can’t choose who’s future or past I see. It’s always either mine or my brother’s, or the woman who kills the king. The three of us are linked in some way.”
“I know, but it was worth a shot. I thought it might’ve changed with her being your daughter.”
“There’s only been one vision, and I think it’s because I was there. I had it a couple days before I gave her to you, but it wouldn’t help you. It’s best if you don’t know.” His smile is weak, but he inches closer to me. “I don’t have anything else I can tell you.”
“That’s not true. You could tell me why you didn’t come back to let me erase your memories.” I arch a brow, my feet cemented in place.
“The king never questioned it. He was too busy getting ready for his gauntlet to care about the specifics. He saw Calamity go over the edge and that was enough.”
“He’s hosting a gauntlet?” I tilt my head, wondering if that might be enough of a distraction to fly out of the barrier from the mainland. Calamity will be too clumsy to shift on the deck of a ship, and there’s no point in trudging all the way to the outer realm if we don’t have to.
“Yeah, his daughter, Scarlet, is being given away.” His voice is void of emotion, numb to the absolute shit show he’s been living in. I’ve lost track of how many daughters the king’s given away since Asmo became the dungeon master, but for him, it’s nothing new.
“You mean led to slaughter,” I correct. Heat burns through my veins at the thought of it. The king gives most of his daughters away as prizes to whoever wins the blood bath, and it turns my gut inside out, especially knowing it could’ve been Calamity. No one deserves to be offered up like a sacrificial lamb to the deadliest monster in the realm.
“I don’t like it any more than you do. I tried to change it for years, but I can’t. It’s why I stopped getting close to the princesses. Every time the king hosted one, it felt like losing my own child, and I just couldn’t go through it anymore.” A single tear runs down his face as he stands tall. “I should’ve come back so you could finish. There are definitely some memories you missed.”
“I didn’t miss anything…” I admit, twisting my lips. “I found a way to make you forget her, while still keeping your memories intact. I changed what she looks like. You can’t conjure her if you don’t remember her face.”
The tears begin to run, dripping off his cheeks before he can wipe them away. “So, I can keep them?”
“Yes. Though, I still have to make you forget today and what I told you on the mountain top… along with Meg taking Calamity’s place in the riff. Therein lies the problem. If you know she’s alive, eventually you’ll come looking and you’ll have the face of someone who no longer exists in your memory…”
“And if I try to go to her, I could become trapped in the soul well. I’ll die.” His eyes are vacant, here but not as he stares into space. “I either have to think she’s dead to keep my memories, or have no memories at all.”
I nod, hating that there’s no good choice to this, but to me, one is the lesser of the two evils. One allows him to remember how much he loved her, the way she made him feel. And if it were me, I’d suffer through the loss than forget she ever existed.
