Page 22 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

“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-brilliant sister 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 of feathers 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.”

In one moment, Ophir was clenching her sister’s hands. In the next, Farehold’s firstborn, the hope of the continent, was gone once more.

The scent of fresh earth after a spring rain lingered in the room after Caris departed. Ophir choked on the sight of the medium in their iridescent snakeskin scarf where only moments prior, her lovely, perfect sister had been.

“What the fuck was that?” Ophir asked breathlessly.

She blinked in disbelief at the androgynous face that stared back at her, handsome and beautiful all at once.

Their large hands held hers just as Caris’s soft fingers had slipped into her palms. There was no evidence that springtime had ever wafted through this room.

The medium’s eyes were kind. “Is this your first time speaking with the dead?”

Ophir dipped her chin. The tears flowed in relentless rivers, no matter how many times she wiped her face.

“They don’t see time as we do. Past, present, future, it’s all interwoven to those who live in every moment but now. You either get the hang of it or you don’t.”

“So, what she said about—”

“Don’t ask me of your visit,” the medium interjected, “as I was not present. I am a conduit. I hear and see nothing of the conversations that occur between the living and the dead.”

“She wasn’t herself,” Ophir said, barely more than a whisper.

The medium shrugged, but the gesture was not sympathetic. “She wasn’t the version of her that you remember. Her speech patterns might have changed, as has her existence on our timeline, but Caris is still Caris. She will continue to exist in the then and the next , but never the now.”

Ophir searched the medium’s eyes, asking, “How can that be? She spoke of my wedding to Ceneth. She saw it at sunset. She saw his kingdom, his future. The things she said… I can’t make sense of any of it.”

“Like I said,” they responded, “the dead do not live in our time. Past, present, and future are a landscape with winding valleys and rolling hills. The dead appear to stand on one and jump to the next with each word. She exists still. She lives in our world. Caris and the ancestors before her belong to every moment but the one you and I share.”

“But they live?”

The medium softened at last. “They live. In every moment but the present.”

Ophir opened her mouth, but the medium shook their head to cut her inquiry short.

“You’ll want answers, but I don’t have them. I know only what I’ve said, and even that is merely from discussing conversations with clients, visitors, patrons, and yes, your king. He sees your sister often.” The medium sighed. “Too often.”

Ophir’s prodding frown implored them to go on.

“It’s not my place to defy my king, and never will I try.

However, he is your betrothed. His attachment to his departed fiancé is bringing him to ruin.

From what he’s said, I believe he has the possibility for a bright and happy future.

I believe his fate becomes clearer with each passing visit, for better or for worse.

It stands to reason that there is no good future while he clings to her. ”

“She misses him?” Ophir asked.

“No.” They shook their head. “She has blessed your wedding, from what I understand. She has blessed his future marriages in her conversations with him, and with you, it appears. She has begged him to let her go. Yet, she has no agency through the conduit. She comes when he calls to her. Whether because she wants to or because she must remains unknown. I do hope that His Majesty will heal. I will allow him access to his beloved every day, as it is my ability, and he is my king. However, I can say with confidence that our kingdom will not flourish if he holds on to her ghost. He loves her more than life. But death is not the present. The phantom of her memory will not fill the void left in her absence.”

“He won’t listen to me,” Ophir said, voice low.

“Perhaps not,” they responded. “But he may listen to Caris. And you spoke with her.”

She continued to search the medium’s eyes, asking, “What is it you want me to do?”

“I want you to save our king from himself.”