Page 34 of Antiletum
“And if I say no? That I want no part in raisingdeos? Where will thisSuredeisfind more necromancers?”
Boldly, I lean over. Plant my lips softly on her temple. She doesn’t push me away. “It doesn’t matter, Delaney. This isn’t your burden to bear. You aren’t required or expected to do anything more that you don’t want to. There’s no one higher to answer to withinNoctuaorSuredeisthan me. If you want to forget about the Heartstones and everything I’ve just told you then that’s the end.”
But it will never be the end for us.
8
You should meet my husband
Delaney
Everything is still warm and fuzzy by the time Val sees me back to my room, leaving me with a chaste kiss on my cheek and an unending stream of internal incoherent questions.
Thanks to the alcohol, my feet have been transformed into useless feathers who want nothing more than to see me fall on my face. I’m shuffling all around, tripping over my own toes and failing spectacularly to walk a normal distance without nudging my hip into everything in my chamber.
I think my furniture is moving, throwing itself into my path.
Finally, I make it to my open window. Useless, that paneless hole in the wall. It’s a thick summer evening—air is the abhorrent consistency of a nice bisque. But at least the thing swings wide at all, unlike the sanctuary.
It’s hotter in the city than it was at the manor.
The architecture throughout Omnitas is similar to Greystone. But old. Ancient. Porous stone has been smoothed and blanketed in moss outside. Statues have lost their detail to the unforgiving weather of time. The Citadel is large but holds a more muted grandeur to thecountry estate. Window and door trimmings lack the expensive ebony wood finishing found at Greystone.
Heat aside, this is still nice, nothing between me and night air outside. A flying buttress is visible from my window, attached to another portion of The Citadel. I wonder if I could traipse across it. What I might find on the otherside. The bay window with a comfortable bench reminds me of my tower at Greystone. But my room at The Citadel is decorated in hues of dove gray and white, rather than the rich reds at the estate.
The most obvious difference, I’m now lording over a city rather than a forest.
Or Ladying, I suppose.
What a strange notion. Especially for someone who, until recently, essentially didn’t exist. The bubbly wine that kept me afloat during the party is attempting to turn on me, becoming nefarious as a foe now that I’m alone. What only just blanketed all of my nerves and swirling misgivings is now amplifying them.
Sheets of black silk cling to my sticky legs, damp with sweat and the humid air as I plop onto the cushioned seat at my window, undignified.
“Misery. Suffocating misery,” I muse to myself.
I should probably free myself from the dress. Fumbling fingers reach behind me, to the spidersilk ribbon holding the corset together.
After a laughable struggle with my own garments, I huff, flopping back in defeat. Cheek pressed against the stone wall, it’s gloriously cool, giving some relief to my fevered skin, hot and red from all the spirits and sauna like evening.
I could fall asleep right here. With my face anchored to this building, holding up this city like a puppeteer. Holding me up as well.
Only once in my life have I ventured into Omnitas, many years ago. And only for a single, perfect day. There hasn’t been a chance to walk the streets since we arrived yet. But I remember, far more vividly than I wish I did, the poverty and sickness and filth that runs rampant in the streets. Dangerous.
From here, the dirtiness, the starvation, the depravity that reigns is hidden beneath the veneer of ancient stone structures; statues and gargoyles fuzzed in lichen and moss; under the pops of green and color from the flora, tossed about like a flower girl sharing her petals at a wedding.
A normal wedding.
Notmywedding. The only thing decorating the ground then was the blood of self-sacrificing priestesses. For a worthy cause. A greater good. Such a villainous sounding notion. The few for the many. Like it or not, I may just be one of the few. Like those priestesses. Like my husband who told me himself he believes we’ve been plunked down right in the middle of destiny.
Val’s openness tonight rolls through my muddy mind, making my head hurt. The choices he laid out for me, bringing awareness but not demanding that I make a decision now.
An embarrassing snort crackles from my throat, absorbing the irony of Val’s feelings towards Parliament. An insurgent risen right up to the tip top of the highest stations. Did those priestesses know what they were giving their lives for? Did they believe all the things he’s telling me?
DoI?
Deos. I think I might cry. Alcohol does tend to make me weepy. Even when I’m not weighed by grief, change, the stares of strangers in an open, packed room. Or a painfully desirable, mysterious husband upending everything I know about history, his simple appearancetrying to pick the lock to my coping mechanisms. The indulgence in alcohol was necessary to keep me grounded, to help me lay a new anchor in a new life. Even making an effort to converse with others when Val was pulled away.
I did always want to be free.
