Chapter 23: Devastation
To my kin
You are a force.
An unbridled storm awaiting release.
If you desire it, yours it will become.
But remember those whose love you keep.
— Aeluin, Shade of the Shroud
The Trap
As we approached the cathedral that served as palace, people moved out of our way without challenge. Each step forward another person stepped to the side, giving us a clear path toward the centre of the city. When at last we stood before the cathedral, guards in brilliant armour blocked our path.
"We've a message for the queen," I said with a deep bow and a smile. "Word from deep marward. The contingent she assigned to Amber Sands sends word." A gambit we'd worked out from Eliana's notes. And to avoid concern, we'd reverted our weapons to flowers. There was no reason they would —
"None allowed in the palace," one of the guards said with a grunt. "Not on this sun. A palace resident is receiving punishment for high crimes against her majesty."
"And tell me, good soul," Micah stepped forward and offered as sweetly as they could muster, "how would her majesty respond to a guard preventing an urgent message from reaching her ear?"
I watched a shiver take the guard's whole figure as they frantically looked from Micah to me and back.
"How about this," Micah continued, "you let us through, knowing you're doing right by your liege. If it causes you trouble, we tell her majesty we entered through the servants' quarters. The front door would just make our sun easier and our task simpler."
The guard made several different faces before their shoulders slumped, and they moved out of the way. "Do not tarry. The throne room is on the far side of the grand hall. You'll know the place by the portraits and the great doors."
"You are too kind, friend," Micah said with a bow before we entered the Fiend's den, greeted not by a chill, but by a sudden heat that made my burn scars tingle.
The corridors were tight, oppressive things. All brick and mortar, no life to the space. Every so often, we met resistance in the form of guards. Each time, Micah's quick talking was enough to get us through the block. I genuinely hoped at several points it wouldn't, but we kept being given deeper and deeper access to the space until at last we'd arrived.
Calling the grand hall 'grand' was apt. It was enormous. On one wall was an impressive array of portraits. The Liatris matriarchy. Twenty strong women, twenty terrible tyrants. At the start was Lillian, the woman who vanished at the start of the Fiend's rage.
"Hideous, aren't they?" Micah's voice was sour. "Let's not belabour this."
They walked over to what must have been the great door. It was a golden monument to opulence, likely weighing a tonne. Their hands pressed against it weakly for a few seconds before they stopped their effort.
"Heavy. Kind of pointless, don't you think," they laughed at something. "So. How showy am I allowed to be here, dear heart?"
"Em, sweetie, this is your moment," I replied with a flourish. "Please, make it count."
They took the snowpetal they had pinned to their collar and forced it to shift. Spinning the warhammer about for a second, they reeled back a bit before pushing their cold-flame through the haft and slamming the hammer's head into the seam between the two parts of the door, sending it flying open and revealing the throne room on the other side.
Naturally, that got the attention of everyone in the room, and Micah put on their best swagger as they stepped through the immense door and began moving to the throne. There were a hundred guards stationed in the throne room, some near the door, some in a gallery above us, and a few positioned around a raised dais where the throne sat.
It was impossible not to recognise the queen sitting atop the thing, especially given her portrait in the grand hall.
"You are here later than I expected," her voice was a shrill sort of scrape, tearing past overused vocal chords. "I was worried the fun would be concluded before you arrived."
Micah stopped in their tracks. Just in front of the throne was an odd wooden structure. Strapped to it was a young woman, probably around twenty years old. Her black hair was was a wild mane that framed an almost too angular face. Lips a bit too thin set in a line of fatigue or pain. It was difficult to say.
As she turned her head toward us, I noticed her eyes. Round and intense. Deep emerald with an interior ring of amber. I knew those eyes. I'd seen them before. Somewhere. Minus the hair she looked just like
"Jasmin," both Micah and I said in unison, which drew a look from them.
I couldn't place the name. It forced itself out of some deep pit I'd only ever imagined existed, beyond the bounds of reality itself. Her face was a vision I'd never seen, a puzzle without solution, a riddle that was only answered through those impossible eyes. Her name burned with the passion of a love that had not yet been, and my heart ached with the possibility of something I couldn't name.
"My daughter," Micah whispered to me. That answered one question and raised even more, as always. Their fingers tensed around the haft of their weapon as we both stood taking in the scene.
Jasmin was strapped to whatever the thing was. Blood was dripping from somewhere on her body. A monstrous apparatus was positioned above her chest with seven sharp wooden posts stained in crimson pointed at her and one pressed against her.
"As you can see," the queen's screeching voice pierced the air, "my insolent daughter is being punished for her recent indiscretions. It is common knowledge that she has always been somewhat of a troubled girl, but this sun she is finally being given her due."
Micah didn't hold back their cold-flame at the queen's words. All the warmth in my body seemed pulled toward my friend. They were still okay, but this would be a tense thing.
"Now now, dear friends," the queen's voice was honey and venom, "you know it is against the law to use cold-flames within the cathedral. I will thank you for putting that away." When Micah didn't comply, three guards began moving toward us but were stayed by a wave of the queen's hand. "How shameful. Why not let's get on with this. Guards, release the princess.
"I know everything that happens within this city, friends," the queen spoke as several guards started to work disengaging the thing Jasmin was strapped to, "so of course I knew the moment you arrived. I remember you, I think, from the Black Lakes, several years ago. And that little hamlet in the phobward lands. What was its name. Indigo?"
Jasmin was assisted out of the machine and stood on her feet. She was wearing a white dress nearly fit for a court gathering if not for the wide neckline revealing seven wide red bloody circles just below her collarbone and one smaller spot where the wooden spike had been pressed against her.
"Mother," Jasmin looked to the queen as she spoke, "do you know these people?"
Micah's cold-flame turned hot for a moment as they gasped. Their control in that moment left my mouth dry.
"I do indeed, my lovely daughter," the queen began descending from the throne's platform. "They are rebels from Amber Sands here to assassinate you. I have allowed them grace by letting them have audience with me, but the way they are behaving," she clicked her tongue as she moved to stand next to Jasmin, "I think that may have been a mistake."
"Shall I handle them?" Jasmin's voice was steady for a woman who was strapped to some manner of torture device only moments before. "Since they are so bold as to show their hand, they cannot be too terrible a danger."
"Oh my sweet girl," the queen smiled broadly to see Micah's pain, "we shall allow our guardian to handle this. It is what she's here for."
I felt the chill of the shadow before its darkness fell upon the space around me. I heard its vile breath oozing from nowhere before the smells of death and sadness invaded my senses. Before I could process the danger, I was surrounded at once by the creature I'd feared for so long. The Fiend was too fast to fight.
My spirit fell instantly. My death would come swiftly. There was nothing to be done about it save wait for the end. It would be painful, I knew, but what was a little pain after so long. The only joy I drew from the truth was that Micah would not have to die with the pain of their daughter's disappearance.
Only the pain of her erasure.
That should have hurt more, I realised without feeling. Not simply a cold death, not only a taking, but an entire re-write of who she was meant to be.