Page 56 of The Cruel Dawn
Jamart’s crooked mouth opens wide, and his eyes burn with pain, so much pain that he can’t even cry out.
So I cry out for him. “Stop! What do you want?”
“We can heal this realm,” Danar says.
I squint at him.“We?”
“Yes.Wecan heal Vallendor and save ourselves.”
My eyes dart to Jamart—his face has relaxed some. Danar’s grip on him has eased.
“Ambitious realms need ambitious minds,” Danar continues. “Verdant realms need verdant minds. I won’t surrender in my quest for Vallendor. You refuse to give her up as well. But what if…? What if,together, we force the Eserime to heal this place? We make them bring back clean, sweet waters and banks of crystal-white sand. What if we made them give us a sky as blue as the restored sea and rich soil that nurtures those blue flowers you love but can no longer grow here? You want all of this, Blood of All. So do I.” The picture he paints is tempting, beautiful, but the prisoners in Danar’s hold tell a different story.
Lively clasps her clenched hands at her lips. “I turn to only you, Lady, because you love me most of all.”Praying.
“Imagine the orders working together,” Danar Rrivae says. “Those loyal to you, those loyal to me. Imagine, just for a moment. Close your eyes and picture…”
I close my eyes against my will, and I see myself standing on the banks of a river with soft sand—No.I force my eyes open again.
The land must be made anew. Forcing Eserime to use their gifts won’t be enough. Only Mera can bring enough fire and winds to cleanse a realm. Only after that can the Eserime heal the soil, singing over the smallest dewdrops to coax life to return. Those dewdrops grow to become lakes and oceans that nourish plants that then nourish animals of the land and sea, and then mortals… That’s the order of things.
But Vallendor isn’t so far gone that it needs cleansing fire. In this, Danar Rrivae sounds like Zephar. And yes, there was a time I, too, thought about burning Vallendor down to its roots and starting again, but I have learned from that mistake. Good still exists here. Beauty still thrives here.
“That’s what I want, Kaivara,” Danar Rrivae says. “That’s why I’m here. To complete all that you’d aimed to do for this realm. They didn’t want you to succeed. You were too young to be allowed that much success and control. Others aimed to outshine you, and they needed to stop you, the genius Mera-Eserime girl who could command and swing a blade better than any pure Mera.
“You know…I wasn’t the first to be labeled as a ‘usurper.’ There were others who fought and died—and failed—to set realms on the right path. You and I, though… Our causes were different. We didn’t want to destroy realms for the sake of destruction. We loved the beings of those worlds, and we wanted better—”
“What do you want?” I ask, sounding like Uncle Agon. “Right now. At this moment.”
He doesn’t speak.
Lively’s lips move, but she makes no sound as she prays.
“What were their names?” I ask, more softly.
Danar Rrivae raises his eyebrows as more mist rolls off of him. Behind me, shadows move and glowing coral light starts to pulse faintly in the fog.
“Indis, my beloved,” Danar Rrivae whispers at last. “My sons, Uriel, Kaleb, Golewn, and Aniya, my daughter. They were unjustly taken from me when you destroyed Birius.”
“Jamart and Lively,” I say, “they don’t have anything to do with—”
“They haveeverythingto do with you and me, and our struggle.”
My hand squeezes the dagger I still hold, and my throat closes around the lump forming in my neck.
Danar Rrivae, Jamart, and his daughter drift closer to me, and their approach makes the hair on my neck stand.
“You were abandoned by your father,” the traitor says, “because you were unlovable, because you were unteachable and prone to violence. He left you with Lyra and the Eserime in hopes that they could salvage something good from you. But then…” His lip curls viciously even as his eyes soften. “There’s nothing worse than killing your own mother. The sad thing is everyone knew you would, but no one could stop you.”
I shake my head. “That isn’t true—”
“But then what were you supposed to do?” he asks, with innocent eyes. “It was in your nature to kill. Your parents had created a being who shouldn’t have been, and the Aetherium was worse off for it. And the Council was so shocked that you destroyed realms without approval, that you thought that you were Supreme—”
“I’ve never claimed to be Supreme—”
“How it must eat you up inside to be called ‘Diminished,’” he continues. “And then to see, firsthand, the death and the killing, the sickness of the land and sea, the animals and mortals…all of life here suffering. But to do something about it, you had to first fill out forms so some bureaucrat who hasn’t been a Grand Defender in ages upon ages can tell you that Yorra or Ithlon or Melki weren’t that bad?”
He squints at me. “When was the last time your father held a dying child in his arms? When was the last time Izariel witnessed the last of a beautiful species perish? Does he even know what a ‘daxinea’ is and what will be lost to Vallendor once she finally succumbs to the filthy air she breathes each day? Yet he callsyou‘Diminished’?”
