The Half King

26

After that, the flood swallowed them, and there was only blackness and pressure and the all-consuming need to breathe. She soon lost her connection to Nero. The current twisted her body until she didn’t know which way was up. Her mouth opened and filled with water. She felt the sensation of falling, and the next thing she knew, sunlight pierced her eyelids, and she hit the ground hard, knocking the last dregs of wind from her lungs.

She sucked in a breath and rolled onto all fours to cough up water. She didn’t realize where she was until she smelled sulfur and opened her eyes to the sight of cracked dirt turning to mud beneath her wet hands. Nero lay to her right, hacking up the contents of his own lungs. On her left, Blue licked her face while Kian dropped to his knees and smoothed back her dripping hair. He peppered her with questions that flew to the edges of her senses. Once the shock wore off and the oxygen returned to her brain, she felt something hard against her knee, and she shifted aside to find a length of gleaming steel.

The Petros Blade.

She lifted it by the hilt and shared a glance with Nero, who seemed just as confused as she was. How had they both survived and emerged with the blade if she had failed the final test? She hadn’t proved herself deserving at all.

Unless …

Unless the sacrifice had been a different kind of test—the type of challenge that a person had to fail in order to pass. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. What better way to measure a person’s integrity than to require a blood sacrifice in exchange for the blade? Those who sought the weapon for the wrong reasons, for power or for greed, wouldn’t hesitate to kill an innocent man to get it. Those with purer motives would resist.

Her lips spread in a smile. “My foolishness won the day!”

Nero flopped onto his back, slinging one arm over his eyes. “I never thought I would thank you for that.”

“You still haven’t,” she pointed out.

“Thank you.”

Kian glanced back and forth between them. “Want to share this thrilling story with the rest of us?”

“Yes,” Daerick agreed. “I want to hear about your foolishness.”

“Me, too,” General Petros added.

“I suggest we return to the lower trail first,” Father Padron said in an absent voice, his eyes wide with disbelief and fixed on the blade. “I can’t protect us here.”

“Very well,” Kian told him. He cupped Cerise’s cheek and asked her, “Are you able to walk?”

She nodded and let him help her to standing. Her knees trembled a bit, but more from the thrill of escaping death than from physical exhaustion. She examined the blade in the sunlight, turning its polished steel to and fro and admiring its gleaming surface. The weapon didn’t look so evil in the light of day, but she knew better than to underestimate the damage it could do. She would need to fashion a sheath for the blade and keep it secured to her at all times, just like she had promised Nero at the beginning of their journey.

As if sharing her thoughts, Nero said, “Remember the vow you made.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she told him.

Nero turned his attention to the king. “My job was to guide you to the blade. Now that you have it, you can’t say I haven’t earned my pay.”

“You’ve done well,” Kian agreed.

“Then this is where we part ways.” Nero gestured toward the thicket where the horses were tethered. “The path down the mountain is the same that we took to get here. Our tracks are easy to follow.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Cerise asked.

“You can find the way,” Nero said. “You don’t need me to guide you anymore. But if you ever need me in the future, you know where to mention my name.”

She nodded.

“Goodbye…for now ,” he told her, as though they were destined to meet again.

“Goodbye for now,” she echoed, because she believed him.

“My lady of the temple,” Kian called to her after they returned to their horses and began the slow, careful descent back down the mountain. They rode in a single file with General Petros leading the group, followed by Father Padron, Daerick, Cerise and Blue, and Kian riding at the rear of the caravan. “It’s time for you to explain how you walked into a pool of acid and then fell out of the sky.”

“Yes, do tell,” Daerick added over his shoulder. “That was most impressive, and I’m not easily impressed.”

Cerise released a breathy laugh when she remembered how clumsily she had faced each of her challenges. She doubted anyone would’ve been impressed if they’d watched her being tossed back and forth by a rotting corpse with her arm lodged inside its chest. But she told the group what had happened, focusing mainly on the second trial. She wanted them to know that Nero had offered to sacrifice his life for hers. Not that it made much of an impact. When she finished telling her story, Father Padron stared at the trail ahead of him, seemingly as bored as ever. Daerick chewed a thumbnail and gazed off into the distance. A trace of concern lined Kian’s forehead, and General Petros turned around and frowned at her so hard that a dimple appeared in his chin.

“I would have killed the boy,” the general grumbled. “And I like him.”

“You don’t know that,” Cerise said. “No one knows what they would do in any situation until it happens. If you had been there and seen the look on his face—”

“He would be dead,” the general interrupted.

“Actually, you both would be,” she told him. “Compassion was the test.”

The general pointed at his own face, flushed so hot by the sun that his skin nearly matched the color of the tattooed flames on his head. “Does this look like the face of compassion, my girl?”

Cerise didn’t want to lie to him, so she answered with a shrug.

“Clarify something for me,” Kian said from behind. “Did you know that you could’ve preserved your life by taking Nero’s?”

She turned to face him. She understood what he was really asking. He wanted to know how she had been able to disobey his direct command to survive by any means necessary. “Enchantments were stripped away, remember?” she quietly reminded him. “The rules of magic were different.”

“So you were simply going to die down there?” he asked, his eyebrows knitting together. “You were going to leave the rest of us behind to grieve your loss? Did you give us no consideration when you decided to surrender your life and drown in that wretched place?”

“But I didn’t drown,” she reminded him. “I’m safe and whole…and the first person in a thousand years to hold the Petros Blade.”

“That we know of,” Daerick interjected.

“That we know of,” she agreed. “But if I had done anything differently—if I had killed Nero to try to save myself—I would have ruined all of our lives. I’d be dead, Nero would be dead, and we wouldn’t have the Petros Blade. I made the right choice—the choice that brought me back to you.”

“But you didn’t know that at the time,” Kian argued. “When the water was rising up to your neck, you had no idea that you’d made the one decision that would save you. Quite the opposite. You had every reason to believe you would drown.” There was a dark note of pain in his voice, as though his trust in her had been betrayed. “You seem far too eager to leave this world. That worries me.”

Conflicting emotions stirred within her. She hated to see Kian hurting. His pain was her pain. But even though she understood the reason for his hurt, a small part of her resented him for letting his fear of losing her overshadow her triumph. She had accomplished something more remarkable in one day than most people accomplished in a lifetime. And she had done it by trusting her instincts. She had listened to her heart, not to the orders of men. The orders of men would have gotten her killed. She had herself to thank for her survival, and maybe it was petty of her to want credit for that, but she did.

“You asked me to have faith in myself,” she reminded him. “So I did, and that’s what saved me. I’m not eager to leave this world. I want to live. But it’s not fair for you to praise me for having an uncommonly pure soul and then criticize me for refusing to commit murder.”

Kian grumbled under his breath.

“Don’t you agree?” she prompted. She wanted to hear him say it.

“All right, yes,” he told her. “You’re right. Your empathy is my favorite thing about you. I shouldn’t have faulted you for being exactly who you are. You did well, Cerise.”

“Spectacularly well,” Daerick added. “We’re proud of you.”

“Thank you.” She sat a bit taller in her saddle and then turned again to face Kian. “Please try not to worry about me,” she said, for what little good it would do. It seemed a lover’s primary job was to worry. To lighten his mood, she teased, “I have every intention of outliving you.”

He laughed without humor. “To outlive a firstborn Mortara is no accomplishment. None of us have lasted beyond our twenty-first birthday. But I do see your point.” He lowered his voice so that only she could hear him. “I still command you to preserve your life, but I’m willing to remove murder from the list of necessary means. As long as you don’t have to kill an innocent person with your own hands, I order you to do whatever is required to protect yourself.”

Cerise heaved a sigh. She hoped he wasn’t expecting her to thank him. She had wanted him to remove the compulsion altogether.

“I’m glad that’s settled,” Daerick said, sliding her a teasing grin. “I do loathe to see Mommy and Daddy fight. Now let’s talk about what to do with the Petros Blade.”

At the mention of the blade, Cerise felt its weight strapped to her back, held in place by a makeshift sheath that General Petros had constructed out of strips of old rucksack leather. The weapon itself was as light as a dream. What weighed heavily on her shoulders was the urgency to use it before time ran out. With Daerick’s Claiming Day and Kian’s twenty-first birthday fast approaching, she had to hold herself back from galloping at full speed down the mountain. She wished she didn’t need Cole Solon’s blood to complete the ritual. The palace had never seemed so far away.

“I think we should have a ceremony,” she said. “A proper one. Something lavish to honor the goddess when we ask her forgiveness for the Great Betrayal.”

Daerick furrowed his brow. “Do we have to? We’re already short on time. I was hoping we could get started as soon as we stable the horses.”

“In a barn ?” she asked.

“Well, maybe not in a barn,” he said. “But we shouldn’t wait to plan a ceremony. What if it doesn’t work? We need to give ourselves plenty of time to keep trying.”

Something about his suggestion felt wrong. Almost shameful. “Think about it,” she told him. “All of our tests so far have been to prove that we’re faithful and brave and worthy. So what message would it send if we rushed the most important part of the process? The goddess would think we’re afraid.”

“Aren’t we?” Daerick asked.

“Of course, but we can’t act on it,” she said. “The goddess doesn’t respect weakness. We have to be strong, and my instincts are telling me we need a ceremony.”

Kian told Daerick, “Her instincts have served us well so far.”

“Listen to the girl,” General Petros added.

Daerick muttered a swear. “All right. We’ll have a ceremony, and not in a barn.”

“Not in a barn,” she agreed. “It should be someplace sacred. Maybe in the palace sanctuary,” she called ahead to Father Padron, “if Your Grace will allow it.”

Father Padron nodded, wordlessly giving his permission. His silence unsettled her now more than ever. He had all but withdrawn from her life.

“Thank you,” she told him, still watching him closely. “We should begin with a prayer, and then it would make sense to give a description of each dynasty’s role in the Great Betrayal. That way, the four of you can ask the goddess to forgive the sins of your ancestors.”

“‘The four of you’?” Father Padron glanced over his shoulder at her. “Are you not participating in the ritual?”

She couldn’t tell him the truth. Luckily, she’d prepared an excuse for why Cole should represent house Solon. “I’m not a firstborn like His Majesty, Lord Calatris, and General Petros. I think Cole would make a more fitting representative for our house. As for me, I’d hoped to lead the ceremony, since the goddess entrusted me with the runes and the blade.” She forced herself to add, “What do you think, Your Grace?”

Father Padron lifted a shoulder and faced the path ahead of him. “I think that sounds as rational as anything else. Do as you wish, Cerise.”

Dread settled in her stomach. His silence was one thing, but for him to carelessly give up control was another. He was the Order’s high priest. He enjoyed the attention that came with the role. And more than that, whoever led the ceremony could potentially steer the outcome. If he really did covet the throne or if he wanted the nobles to atone through endless suffering—if it was in his best interests for the ceremony to fail—he should insist on participating in some way, if only to sabotage it.

His complete lack of concern settled like an itch between her shoulder blades. What if he knew something that she didn’t?