Page 37 of A Frozen Pyre
“Why are you talking like that? What are you saying?”
Caris tilted her head, golden curls tumbling softly over her shoulder. Ophir realized that Caris was in the same lovely pink dress that she’d worn on the night of the party. She scanned Ophir, then the ghost of a smile danced on her eyes as she said, “A marriage to Ceneth will have been your only path forward. Only one sister could wed Raascot’s king. It will be the sister who needs it more. He was so beautiful. He is so kind. He will make a splendid husband to his bride.”
Ophir could scarcely see Caris’s blurry shape through the wall of tears that refused to clear from her vision. “He will never love me,” she said. “We will never be good spouses to one another.”
“No, no,” Caris responded airily, “not to you—to his wife. Move forward, Firi. Take each step forward until you reach the woods. He is happy. Almost. I would miss him, if I could.”
Her smile faltered. A sharp intake of air broke Ophir’s sadness.
“The woods,” Caris repeated. “You’re alone. He’s not there. The monsters. The demons—”
Caris’s tug was sharp and sudden as if trying to break the connection.
Ophir clamped onto her sister’s hands, unwilling to let go.
“I didn’t mean to make them!” Ophir argued. Her voice hitched into begging as she said, “It was an accident, Caris. It’s why they murdered you. The men at that party. They wanted your heart. It’s about creation, Caris. It’s about manifestation. The things I can do—the things you might have been able to do. These monsters—”
“Killed me?” Caris tasted the words.
Ophir struggled at the pain of seeing her once-brilliantsister utter nonsensical phrases, repeating back questions with words out of order. Memory had been Caris’s beautiful, perfect power. She’d retained everything she’d learned with an ironclad mind. Caris, who never forgot a detail, now spoke with the calm, distant confusion of someone who had caught the edge of a conversation from across the room, half interested, half listening.
“You already know who killed me, don’t you? She told you, didn’t she? She said it—will say it?—confessed to you. And… You feel nothing. How strange. Yes, I see it. I see the bed. You lay there at sunrise in the Kingdom of Sand, the morning of the man’s execution—the one you blamed. You will remain with her as she strokes your hair. You were relaxed, you are, you will be calm. You know she’s responsible for my death. Yet, by some power, by some curse, she had you feel nothing. She steals your rage. She tells you what you feel, and so you shall. Is that her gift? Can you see her? The one with the hair as black as night, from a far-off land. She’s so pretty, Ophir. This woman… She will be your fiercest lover, your greatest enemy. She… Is it love she feels? Yes, I think so. I felt your pain, yet… It is, and it isn’t. It radiates, and yet the void… How curious…how peculiar…how logical. How frustrating.”
The tumultuous storm within Ophir cooled. She was nearly expressionless as she said, “It was Berinth’s hands that killed you. It’s his dagger that cut into you, Caris. And I know he wasn’t fully responsible. Yes, I know who killed you. And Berinth was to blame.”
“So calm,” Caris repeated. “The palace, the heat. Yet you feel nothing? You cared only for who killed me, and suddenly, you won’t care at all.”
“Because I know,” Ophir said.
“Because you know,” Caris repeated. “It will be so hot. It was lavender, wasn’t it? The morning is warm. The beasts were so large, the wings are enormous, the fear, the blood, the death…and yet… You never meant to create death, Firi.I understand that. I see you. You felt death. Please, you must hear me: When you create, you will not birth life. The death you feel, the unmaking, it soaks through you, even now. You must know it as I do.”
“Caris.” Ophir repeated her sister’s name uselessly. “I went to Tarkhany to avenge you.”
“To Sulgrave,” Caris responded.
“No.” Ophir struggled against the futility of her conversation with the dead. “I went to Midnah. I went south. It’s where Berinth was hiding. Everything went to hell, Caris. I fucked everything up. The dragon I created, it was so innocent. I made it for travel, simply to get across the desert. I made its rider to tame and control it. I tried my best. You have to believe me. I can’t make anything good. You were meant to unite the kingdom, and here I am, destroying it.”
Caris squeezed her fingers intensely. “Sulgrave,” she repeated.
“I don’t understand.” Ophir’s frustration bubbled over. “The way you talk, I can’t tell if you’re telling me of my past or my future. Do you mean Dwyn? Tyr? They’re from Sulgrave. What about them?”
“You do understand. You understood.”
Ophir pounded a fist against the table. “Speak plainly!”
Caris relaxed, if only a little. “You will be so calm when you were told. The pain will be taken, the sting was removed, the information from Sulgrave. What an oddity. So interesting. I would like to see Sulgrave, but you didn’t. You aren’t. Yet, you see them now? I’m…” Caris’s voice drifted off as she looked to the wall. “Will Ceneth be here?”
Ophir’s lashes fluttered. “No, Ceneth doesn’t know I’m talking to you. Does Ceneth visit you? Is that why he appointed a medium?”
“His pain intoxicated him. He will be drunk on it. He is addicted to the wound. He hasn’t stopped, and I…I see something now. He never stopped. Then his kingdom blossomed into wings and dreams, black flowers made offeathers and generations and sorrow. He becomes what he was. Who he is. I love him, you see?”
“Yes, I see. I understand,” she said.
“I will always love you, Firi. You must remember what love is, and what it isn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Please,” Caris said quietly. “There are some things love isn’t, even when it insists it’s so—what it will never be.”
