Page 45 of The Cruel Dawn
“Skovv’rs ka klo graett kaax dikle kaiueso,” he says.Stepping to the glass took much courage.
I thumb my ear, and I say, “Yes.”
“I’d vorr aevaevo ag vaiu vuob’kaedok,” he says. “I aesuoob v’kl klo quobik.”I’m well aware of your predicament, and I agreed with the verdict.
A verdict handed down to me by the Council members still seated at the round table. A verdict that said I would spend the rest of my life on Vallendor Realm with muted power, supervised by Sybel Fynal and Elyn Fynal. Travel privileges would be revoked. Convocation invitations revoked. I’d be stripped of my titles of the Aetherium even though Vallendorians would still see me as “Celestial” and “Lady of the Verdant Realm” and all other honorifics. Vallendor’s status lessened, too, with advisories to travelers that she was not the safest of realms to visit. Zephar and our Mera contingent were similarly punished and their powers also stripped. Labeled as “Diminished,” we became the security guards of the realm, consigned to preventing further infection. Only my status as Lord Megidrail’s only child had kept me—us—from being sentenced to Anathema. Anyone else who’d done what I’d done…
But part of my special sentencing was also this: Izariel Megidrail would have no further contact with me. But then it wasn’t as though we had been close before the chaos I’d caused. He’d treated me like a child’s used-to-be beloved toy crushed by new dolls and new balls and misplaced shoes. Which is why he can now be this unaffected, this…aloof.
I’m well aware of your predicament?He’s holding me at arm’s length like a parent holding a baby’s soiled diaper. To my father, I stink.
My rage causes me to stand. “How can you cast judgment on me?” I snap. “On a daughter you never taught? You never told me what I should and shouldn’t do. And then you label me as ‘Diminished’? I was already weakened because you weren’t there. You allowed one side of me to thrive as the other side grew reckless and wild.”
He stares at me with those golden eyes.
“You say that you’reawareof my predicament?” I spit. “But where wereyou? You know so much, but you know nothing about me or how I’ve felt, what I’ve feared and what I’ve loved and how many times I wished for you to be like Saerahil Fynal, who taught me how to reason and ask questions and…”
His nostrils flare, and the breeze around us warms—he doesn’t like being compared to another man, especially to an Eserime man.
I close my eyes now filled with tears that are hot as fire. But I force myself to look at the high lord of the Mera order—
Huh?
My amulet now dangles in my father’s hand, the stone in the moth’s thorax still dead. I touch my bare neck, and my knees weaken again because of the pendant’s absence.
“Now that you’ve taken that,” I say, “are you about to make me sand? How is this just? How is this—?”
“No,” Father interrupts, looking more pained than I thought he was capable of showing, “I wasn’t there for you, but there are reasons for that, Kaivara. Know that I’ve never forgotten you, child. I think about you every time I take a breath, and now, as you stand before me, so beautiful and so strong and so smart, I’m…”
He takes a deep breath and holds it, then turns away from me. He stoops, releases that breath, and dips my pendant into the crystal waters. “I’ve been told that you recently experienced some memory loss.”
“Yes,” I say, “but I’m better now, and I remember everything, including how you’ve treated me.” A sob gathers in my throat, but I tamp it down.Big girls don’t cry…
Father lifts my amulet, but it doesn’t drip water. No, the metal shines brighter than it ever has before. He dips it into the stream again, and this time, little fish nibble at the moth’s wings.
He holds up the amulet again, and it shines even brighter. He smiles, then moves away from the water and over to a small maze of flowered hedges.
“You aren’t the first to fail in the Aetherium,” he says.
“How did it all go wrong?” I ask, chewing my bottom lip. I want to believe him, this suddenly warm stranger.
“‘Wrong’ is the incorrect word.” Father plucks petals from the pink blooms growing around the maze.
“Why didn’t Supreme end the disorder before it spread?” I ask.
“Free will,” Father says, smiling at the blue flower before taking a petal. “Which, to some thinkers, is not trulyfreewill. There is only one way, which means that eventually, free will expires. One can’t choose wrong and live forever, and the consequences of choosing wrong serve as lessons for all.”
“Danar Rrivae?” I ask.
“Chose wrong.”
“If there can be dissension and transgressors among the orders,” I say, “what does that mean for mortals? How are they expected to accomplish what we, the gods, can’t? Why didn’t the Council accept that I made mistakes but that I shouldn’t die for those mistakes? Supreme obviously has patience—we’re still all here. If one must die, then all must die. Upright, low-life, ignorant, and enlightened. Mistakes and pride flourish across all the realms, and as far as I can tell, people will misbehave forever. Perfection can’t exist—that concept is finite.”
He looks over at me, eyebrows raised. “Good points, all.”
“How do you punish someone for a transgression that could, over the span of time, be thought of as that person finally coming to understand?” I ask. “For you and the Council, it doesn’t matter that I’m young, that I don’t know everything, that sometimes I make decisions without thinking them through. Aren’t I supposed to make mistakes? Isn’t that how we all learn?”
Father continues to clench my amulet and those flower petals. “How long should the traitor be allowed to figure it all out? To realize that he’s made a mistake? Do we wait until he’s destroyed thirty realms? Fifty? Eighty?”
