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Chapter 28
After all these days with so little sleep, seeing the things I’ve seen, failing at every challenge put to me, letting every last friend I’ve made slip through my fingers, losing my very last hope of getting Pa out of this place—after all that, I can’t think of anything better than dreamless sleep.
But that’s not what I get. The Great Queen thunders into my dreams, guiding them, showing me what she wants me to see.
I dream of Izamal.
He slumbers within the Storm, in a clearing of pale trees. He looks just like he did when I first met him—no claws, no fangs. Flowers like jewels grow around him, and others fall like stars from the sky and settle in his hair. My heart aches to see him claimed by the Storm, adorned like a precious treasure to keep till the end of time.
The dream shifts to a dark sandstorm. A saber-toothed creature pads across inky dunes as tall as mountains. Miles of footprints are slowly erased by the wind. The only color in the sea of black comes from its golden eyes and silver coat.
This too is Izamal.
The dream shows me that there are a thousand miles to go and hundreds of nameless terrors to face. If he can face them all, perhapsone day the creature will find his way to the sleeping boy. That is his quest: to unite himself.
But the Storm tells me that the Izamal I knew is gone. Even if he succeeds, I won’t ever see that boy again. Within the womb of the Great Queen, a new Izamal will be forged. If he gets that far.
I whisper a plea to any and all beings who might be listening.
Help him.
The dream unravels into threads of time and space; as if guided by an invisible hand, they knit themselves into visions of the past.
A simple image: a man and a woman sit on a rug by a cozy fire while a child plays between them.
I recognize Pa first. He seems incredibly young, without a single gray hair to his name, though his eyes already have crinkles around the corners. He wears an older design of Casvian’s ikonomancer uniform, and his fingers are stained with ink.
The woman looks like me. The same shape eyes, the same nose, the same long limbs. She looks stronger than me, and I don’t just mean the muscles. Something glows from her, something fierce and determined. Unyielding, as if she were carved from marble. The face the Storm showed me wasn’t Ma; it was only the soft parts of her, the parts of her that she gave up. This is her whole. Soft and hard, capable both of love and violence.
The child must be me, but I don’t recognize myself in her giddy happiness. I’m a baby, probably not even a year old. Dribbling all over myself, without a care in the world. Smiling a gross little gummy smile. How did I come from that tiny thing? It’s so innocent, so harmless. Words that don’t fit me so well anymore.
Pa tucks a piece of Ma’s hair behind her ear. She snatches his hand away, rolling her eyes, but then she presses a kiss to his palm. I lookaway, partly because they’re my parents and it’s embarrassing. Partly because watching them like this breaks my heart.
This is happiness, what they have. Ma gave this up to be Regia? Did she ever think of fighting to keep this?
It’s cruel to show me what once was, when I know it’ll never be again.
The color drains from the dream, the background falling away to white, leaving the three of us drawn in gray like statues made of charcoal. The winds of time huff and puff, and the three of us crumble, first Pa’s fingers, then Ma’s smile, till we all disintegrate into a flurry of ash.
The ash lifts up in a mighty gale, whirling this way and that, toward the future and the past, catching on an eddy and spiraling into a pale rain that falls down, down, into the present, into the waking world I’ve left behind.
This isn’t a dream, is it?
The Queen shows me the present, from the perspective of the Storm.
Several dozen ikonomancers—maybe all the ikonomancers there are—work a shielding ikon to keep the strange rain off the people of the city, thousands of whom have gathered in the open spaces, in the markets and on the bridges, some standing on rooftops and others perched on private verandas, all who have come to bear witness to a massive heap of wood that stands outside the palace, on which lies a pale shroud covering the body of a woman.
The doors of the outer palace swing open. Out walks a boy in a ceremonial outfit of gold, a pale cloak of a thousand and one white feathers flung over his shoulders.
Dalca.
A great and terrible anger awakens within me at the sight of him.Whatever pity I felt for him, all that nonsense about us being the same, whatever I once felt when I looked in his eyes—I want to stomp on it all and let myself sink into a pure, cleansing hatred.
I tell myself that I barely knew him, that I never liked him, that I only got close to use him. That I’m strong, self-reliant, fearless. That he didn’t hurt me.
But in the darkness of my dreams, I can admit this:
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it was happening, and yet I let him worm his way deep, deep into the dark places of my soul. He was never any good for me. I have to let this dream of him go. But what does that mean? Forgetting his rare smiles? Should I forget the way the sun caught on the blue-silver rings in his eyes? I’ll let go of the feel of his lips against mine. I’ll let go of the one time he admitted his fear, the wordsyou frighten me.I’ll let go of the way his face tightened but his voice grew proud when he spoke of the Regias of old. I’ll let go of the way he looked at me once, as if I were brave and strong and capable. As if I were someone special. Someone profoundly right, made to fit into all the ridges on the edge of his soul, so where he ended I would begin.
