Page 80 of Rhapsody of Ruin
And perhaps that is what it was meant to be.
The ripples shifted. The steam thickened. Another presence stirred the air.
I forced my head to turn, though my body ached in protest. My vision blurred, but through the haze I saw a tall figure step into the chamber, his movements deliberate, his mask catching the violet glow. My heart stuttered against my ribs.
“Caelthor,” I whispered. His name left my lips like a prayer I had sworn never to say aloud again.
He knelt at the edge of the pool, head bowed, silver hair catching the light. His voice, when it came, was deep, resonant, achingly familiar. “My queen.”
For a moment, only a moment, I let myself believe. That my consort, lost in his pursuit of wards, had returned. That his disappearance had not been folly or failure, but merely delay. That he would place his hand upon mine, steady as ever, and together we would weave Lunareth whole again.
But shadows know the taste of lies.
My gaze lingered on the line of his jaw, the cut of his shoulders, the flawless illusion. The glamour was nearly perfect. Nearly. It carried no weight of years. My Caelthor had carried grief into every smile, and this one’s mouth was too smooth.
Still, I let the lie live a breath longer. I was too tired to kill it yet.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I said softly. “If you step too close, the Shroud will devour you as it devoured me.”
He raised his head then. His eyes were not Caelthor’s. They were steel, cold, sharp, hungry. Iriel. My son.
“You are dying,” he said, and the glamour cracked faintly around his mouth. “I wanted you to see the face you loved most, before you left me.”
His cruelty was a blade, but it was one I had tempered myself. I closed my eyes. “Then keep it, if it pleases you.”
He leaned closer, voice lowered. “Tell me what Father discovered before he vanished. His last research. You know where he went. You know what he found.”
So this was why. Not to mourn me. Not to comfort me. To plunder me.
The steam curled tighter around my face. I inhaled its bitter sweetness, coughed once, and tasted blood. “Even now, you cannot hide your ambition behind tenderness.”
“Ambition keeps Lunareth alive,” he answered. “You taught me that.”
I opened my eyes. His glamour still wore Caelthor’s face, though it flickered faintly at the edges. It was cruel, yes, but clever. In my final hours, I could almost believe I had my consort beside me. Almost. And yet the knife of his absence twisted sharper for it.
“You want his work?” I asked, my voice little more than a rasp. “The Dusk Rites?”
He nodded, eyes bright.
My chest ached with memory. Caelthor had buried himself in forbidden texts, whispering of cracks in the Shroud and the need for older answers. I had scorned him, feared what he courted, feared how much of him I was already losing. And then he was gone.
“I hid what he left,” I murmured. “Because if the wrong hands touched it, Lunareth would not survive its own salvation.”
“And are my hands wrong?” Iriel asked.
I studied him. The glamour, the sharp hunger in his gaze, the way he knelt yet made the whole chamber feel like his conquest. He was my son. He was my heir. He was everything I had made him.
“Yes,” I whispered. “But I have no choice.”
I lifted a trembling hand and pointed toward the far wall. Veined marble rose there, flawless to the eye. But if you knew where to press, if you bled on the stone, the lock would listen.
“The vault lies behind the seventh panel,” I said. “Mark it with blood and whisper my consort’s name. It will open. Inside you will find the tome he calledThe Rite of Dusk.”
His eyes gleamed. His glamour faltered fully now, slipping away like smoke, leaving only Iriel, my son, my betrayer, kneeling at the water’s edge.
He did not thank me.
He never has.
