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“I do. I know you. And I know that this is you, Gwyn. Not Melany. This mess around us, this destruction...it is you.” His voice dropped, low and reassuring. “And this is me and I can help you. I promise. Just let her go.”
Something bloomed in my chest. Pain. Overwhelming pain. Guilt. Nearly fatal was that feeling. I did want to do this. And was that the worst thing? So much had happened, so many things ruined because of the powers that scoured the air around us. In my grief, they expounded and now not one, but two of the people I had loved most were dead because of it.
What of a few more?
Ione sputtered, getting enough air from the loose of my grip to grunt out to me. “Gwynore...look at...yourself.”
I growled back at her, but the sound stopped short as a waft of my hair fell from my shoulders and into my eyeline. Black. Jet black with a purple sheen underneath the lights. Dropping my Shadows momentarily, I turned toward the broken window that sat to our left, my hand still clasped around Ione’s neck. In the shattered reflection, I saw myself. I saw the truth.
Horrifying. That would be the only word for what I had become. People would whisper it in the streets when they talked of their god returned. Everything about me was now a harmonious contradiction. Like an amalgam of my sister and me, an exposition of just how much we were and had always been, exactly the same. My hair hung static around my body, the white ebb of locks that were now streaked with black. Thick veins crawled up my arms and throbbed with unreleased power. And my eyes; an inky blot of solid black.
I had only seen Melany with these eyes once in my life when she was so angry and hurt as a child that she’d almost razed an entire continent with one whispered breath.
I blinked, trying to clear the Shadow from my vision, relief flooding me when the darkness faded and only my Light remained flickering through my iris. With the veil around us dropped, I found Kalen. He stood at the far side of the room, his hands at shoulder height reaching out. He was testing me, with every step he took forward, slumped into a crouch, his muscles straining in alarm. His eyes were still golden but muted against my Light. He jolted when my gaze met his. The look on his face was a mixture of fear and awe. I read it so plainly on him. It was the look he gave me when he was mortal and I was his god.
This was the moment. The moment when I knew that the choice between being bad and being good—was mine. It didn’t matter that Kalen stood there, still loving me though I was a living curse. Or that Ione’s screams rang in my ears, her thoughts pleading with me every second I held her life in myhands. Good or Evil? I was both even without the Shadow and now that I knew that with my whole heart to be the truth, all I had to do was choose.
I released my hand from Ione’s throat and she fell to the stone, gasping. Beside us, I heard Kalen take a breath. My sister curled into a ball, her hands folded in at her waist as she began to sob. I waited because I understood how it felt to find yourself stepping back into a life that hung in the balance. I waited until her head rose from her chest and her bloodied face lifted to mine.
As our eyes met, Ione moved quickly to her knees, placing her forehead against the ground near my feet. She was bowing to me. I shook my head pitifully, one long black tendril spouting from my fingers. Ione trembled as I wrapped it around her, gently pulling her from the floor. When the Shadow that gripped her dissipated, she nearly wept again.
“By my hand, Ione,” I said. She stood and wiped the blood off of her face with her skirts before nodding. She understood, and from the calm that spread through Kalen’s mind, I could tell he did, too. By my hand. It was a promise; that there was nothing more to misunderstand about the power that took hold of this room, and that there was not enough hatred for either of us to hold onto.
I didn’t use my power again. Not there, in that place where it had broken and mended so many pieces of my life again and again. And the two that were left standing in the hall, I did not look at them. Not as I ascended the steps of my sister’s dais, looked out at the glass and the blood and the body that lay upon the crest that was not mine.
No. I did not look at them as I sat down on the Shadow throne.
The Binding was amortal heaven far beyond what I deserved. I’d seen it in my mind, right before I projected. I had not been placed there, as Kalen once told me. I’d created this World in the same fashion as my mother once had. It shocked me, at first. How quickly I’d accustomed myself to the power of birthing a universe. I had expected to feel labored, exhausted, and downright drained. But I did not. Looking towards the crescent moon, there was a dreaminess in my chest that I had not felt in millennia.
I’d made a beautiful punishment for myself. Every nuance of this place was an exact signature of the world I had left in the moments just before I destroyed it. My father’s death was etched into the stars.
In my heart, I felt no guilt for it. Not yet. However, I was sure the day would come when the pain I brought down on those I loved would creep back up on me. In a day, in a decade—who knew? I certainly would not. I wondered how long it might take me to forget Time itself. He had always been my favorite after all. I took a deep breath and smelled the sweet brine of the Sea.Now she...she will most definitely torment me, I thought.
I began to walk down the Mountain, taking my time canvasing the Land, trying not to fill my ego with admiration for what I’d managed to accomplish.
Not only had I made a place, but I had filled it with things, things that I loved. Birds and fish and flowers, and even a small grove that reminded me of the meadow. I hadn’t had much time—my World had been swiftly made, but it was beautiful and alive. Could a god feel remorse for creating when it came at such a high cost?
If a god could, this god did not. I laughed to myself, the sound carrying away on a breeze and fluttering through the tall grass of the Mountain. My breath escaped my chest with an ache. There was only one thing left for me to do. I felt for that heavy thing that still sat in the palm of my hand, turning it with my fingers, as if I could memorize it from touch alone. It seemed impossible that I should forget this. But I would. I could already feel my mind slipping from me.
Walking along the shore, I felt the rush of the Sea as its tides called back to itself. A warm hum breathed through my ears and down my neck. My chest pounded with the last drums of regret and self-pity. My legs slowed, following my heart’s order to turn back and face the things I had done. I pushed through that suffocating feeling, the way I drowned on dry land. I slung my arm back, heavy with purpose, and let go. Let go of everything.
As my toes reached the dying froth of the waves, I screamed.
I was thankful thedream had not stirred me so physically. Though my hair stuck to my neck with sweat, and my muscles trembled between my skin and bones, I had not woken Kalen. It would be a long enough day.
At least one of us should get some sleep.
The combination of my slicked skin and the silk of a thousand counts of thread made for an easy escape from our bed. Our bed, I thought, and the pain I felt all over eased slightly. We were home, and had been home for almost a week now. My return to Leoth was what I dreaded the most, or my reception, rather.
This faction had long lived without its Queen, grown used to the ebb and flow of life as it moved freely in the absence of that oppressive thumb. Though he had ruled faithfully, evenKalen was aware his position had been that of a figurehead. The denizens of Leoth and the Guards that fell in line did so for the sole purpose of keeping faith. I doubted any of them expected the Light to return at all, let alone with dark power rippling through the vessels of her body and fusing with her very soul.
It was that power that I conjured as I shut myself in the tearoom down the hall. I let its searing cold sluice down from my heart through the underside of my wrists. Its black flame caught with the small twitch of my fingers.
“Hello, sister,” I sighed, keeping my eyes open as the Shadow filled the room and enveloped me in darkness.
Ever since I’d come to my senses in Sythe, awoken from that bad dream of murderous intent, I hadn’t heard my sister’s voice. I’d thought she would stay with me. At the time, that thought had frightened me beyond measure, but in some twisted way, I was okay with it. Sure, I might be cursed to share this body with the girl I’d spent my whole life fighting, but I had killed her, so it seemed rather poetically justified. Of course, Melany hadn’t stayed.
Death allows so few comforts.
