Page 67 of The Sun God's Prize
I know it’s cruel, but I slap Sheelan across the face.Not hard, and I hate to use force on her, but she’s hysterical, barely able to catch her breath.She staggers back from me, but doesn’t flee, hand to her cheek.When she meets my eyes again, she blinks.
“He’s going to kill me,” she whispers.
“Not if we kill him first.”I grind my teeth together in frustration, hands fisted at my sides.I could have, chose not to.I hope I don’t learn to regret it.Where is the order woman who protects Sheelan?Is she dead?Or will we face her and be forced to fight her, too?“Later,” I say.“We have to go, first.”
She nods, wiping harshly at her tears.“This way,” she says in a voice as grim as I’m feeling and turns away from me, heading back through the garden.
Trust her, the dragon sighs.Hurry, Flame.They’re organizing a search, and the order assassins are among them now.
Brem’s sisters will kill me without thought, I’m sure of it, and seal Sheelan’s fate in the process.
I’m surprised when she takes us into the corridor, already preparing to fight our way out of the temple.But I’m instead stopping in my tracks as Sheelan pauses at a gold-carving etched into a wall and presses hard on one of the rays of the sun.It slides back, a small passage revealed, and she hurries through into the dark beyond without waiting to see if I follow.
I do, of course, the way closing behind me, engulfing us in blackness.I hear a soft sound like stone on stone and catch a spark’s light twice before she appears in the glow of a flame she’s lit, blowing on the wick of a lantern that glows when she shutters it inside the frosted glass.She holds it aloft between us, grief an embedded thing she’s closed off just as efficiently.
“This way,” she whispers, turning and hurrying off, silent on her soft slippers.
I keep the staff held back and ready, trusting that Sheelan knows where she’s going, sparing looks behind us into the darkness.But she turns abruptly at the end of the passage, my kinspark and the light disappearing abruptly, and I have to hurry to follow so I don’t lose her.
“Here,” she whispers, stopping at last, pausing with her ear pressed to the wall.When she frowns and shakes her head at me, we’re moving again, further down the narrow, dark way, before taking another turn.She stops again, grimaces, carries on, repeating that three more times until she finally seems satisfied.
“Stay close,” she says, blowing out the flame inside the lantern, the soft sound of her setting it aside a tinkle of glass on metal.When the exit parts in a thin line that widens slowly, it’s barely brighter on the other side, just enough to make out the difference.Sheelan peeks out before pushing it wider.I want to go ahead of her, protect her, but she’s already through, gesturing for me to follow, as if she has to suggest it.I’m not leaving her now.
Not ever, if I can help it.Even if that means staying here if she decides to stay?
I recognize the scent of animals and their feces the moment we step out into the open, the faint glow of a distant lantern, blocked partially by a large pair of cattle.The stables, then, but where are we, what part of the temple?Sheelan knows, that much is certain, because she’s still moving, without hesitation now, and when she does stop again, we’re crouching behind a low wall and I’m looking out over the river and a small dock beneath us.
“This is where they barge across to the other side,” she whispers to me.“That way is Mino.”One of the territories on the far bank.“And that way leads to the mountains,” she points downriver on the same side as the city.“You’re safe now,” she says, turning to meet my eyes.And bursts into tears, covering her face in her hands.
She’s quiet in her weeping, at least, almost silent in her sobs.I hold her as she shakes, cradle her while she fights to breathe.Sheelan fights it at first, trying to push me away, but when the grief overwhelms her, she falls into me and clings, the kinspark soft as it simmers between us.
Does it have knowledge, senses, some intuition?I’ve always thought it just a reaction, a kind of magical response.But it feels like it’s adapted to her state of hurt and is doing what it can to help, so now I wonder.
There’s so much I don’t know and will never learn if I don’t get out of here before it’s too late.
“Sheelan,” I say as gently as I can when her tears are done and she’s sniffling against my chest, “we have to go.”
“Ican’tgo with you,” she says, pushing back at last and wiping her face with the back of one wrist.“I have to confront my brother.This cannot stand, Remi.”Whatever decision she’s made, she’s determined to see it through.
I can’t let her.“He’ll kill you,” I say, also with kindness and care, but I have to get through to her.
She nods.“Then he will,” she says.“But I won’t allow him to get away with murdering our father for the sake of power.”
“You know he’s not a god,” I say.
Sheelan snorts, nods.“Of course, he’s not,” she says.“Neither was my father, or his before him, or any of the Suns who claimed that falsehood.It doesn’t matter, though.Theille’s done the unthinkable, and I couldn’t protect Father from his madness.”She lets herself crumble one more time.“What happened to my brother?”
Did you do this?I demand that of the dragon.Only to realize she’s gone again.
And answer for her.Of course not.I blame Hallick, if I have anyone to assign that to.I can only hope that Theille has already cut the Chancellor down.I find it hard to muster any sort of regret for his passing, or for the princesses who remain, either, though perhaps time will soften that attitude.I do worry suddenly for the Overkingdom and the pending threat that Theille presents.No doubt an army marches on Gyster in short order, and he has no warning at all.
Well, he’s made his mess, he and Hallick and the long-dead who orchestrated the fall of Neem.Including my mother.Let Gyster deal with Theille until I finish what was started for me.
For now, I need to focus on Sheelan.And the task that brought me here in the first place.
I’m coming, I send to the dragon.Hold on, I’m almost there.
But where is there, exactly?
