Page 36
Chapter 35
A Choice
A burning, singed smell assaulted my senses as the restraining pressure on my wings released just as Aeron dropped his hold of the chain and stepped aside. I stumbled forward, my scream still echoing in my ears and my body feeling off balance, until I stood alone, shaking and bleeding on the rocky forecourt.
I turned and the terrifying drop behind me dragged at my senses—an abyss I’d never thought to fear until this moment.
My once pristine white wings lay blood-splattered on the dusty, cracked cobblestones at my feet, as twin slices of searing agony radiated from my upper back. Shock overtook my senses, freezing my remaining limbs and forcing my erratic breaths out through my tightening chest. My mind tried to shy away from the sight of my wings no longer attached to my body, unable to process the horrific implications.
Trying to take a deeper breath to clear my head only made bile rise in my throat, choking me further. Tears welled as I dragged my eyes up to the elder now standing in front of me, an arrogant fire burning in his gaze. I flinched as he flicked an errant white feather from the front of his vest and disgust twisted his features.
It was one of the small fluffy feathers from near the base of my wings. My mind oddly fixated on that one tiny detail.
He wiped the still glowing blade clean on my wings, then handed the sword to his son—the same sword he’d just used to shear those wings from my body in one incomprehensible stroke.
“Alula Fenix,” Elder Welkin intoned. “Do you have any last words before we enact your banishment?”
Blinking at him, I struggled to follow his words through the haze of pain and shock fogging my mind. His lip curled into a sneer as he looked me up and down.
This wasn’t a banishment. It was a death sentence. I’d never survive the fall to the ground without my wings, and every Neven here knew it. A strangled gasp escaped the iron grip of my chest, and his eyes flared with delight at the horror I could no longer conceal.
I swung my gaze to the crowd behind him, in disbelief nobody had intervened. Never, in the history of our people, had wings been severed as a punishment.
A sea of horrified faces beyond the gates stared back at me, many of them familiar. Elders, nobles, and townsfolk, all pressed together in a silent horror that mirrored my own..
Mara openly wept, with her hands covering her mouth, as she slumped against Haniel, who stood stoic and uncompromising. Her muffled sobs were the only sound I could hear as a hush swept the packed promenade. Adrita’s face was a mask of impotent rage as her silent tears flowed freely. As I watched with a concerning detachment, one ran down her chin and dropped to the ground.
Fionn had stepped between Kiran’s friends, a hand on each of their shoulders as if he’d had to physically hold them in place. Now the three stood like angry statues, stiff and unyielding, holding onto barely leashed anger while they were forced to witness my desecration.
Even the birds had quietened.
At that moment, I knew with absolute clarity what I had to do. Adrita and Fionn could no longer help me; none of them could. Not without losing their own lives alongside mine, and I didn’t want that. Someone had to stay and fight from the inside. To help end this madness for the sake of the realm and our people. My path led elsewhere, for now, at least.
A line had been crossed in this moment, and there was no coming back from it. Not for me, my allies, the elders or even any of the Neven watching. After decades of covert machinations, Elder Welkin had played his hand and stepped into the light. A new power had risen unopposed.
Idly, I wondered how long it would be before a throne appeared within the Aedis and a new high lord was crowned.
As my shock started to fade, dizziness rose in its place. I locked my knees to keep me upright, refusing to let anyone see me crumble. If my fate had been determined long ago, I’d face it standing.
A persistent vibration at my chest cut through the haze of pain, I reached up as my hand sought Nier’s shadow. It was a ball of pulsing anger and frustration under my tattered robe. I didn’t know where he was, but it told me he’d survived his departure from the citadel. The thought brought a calm certainty to my fractured mind and strength to my shattered heart.
At that moment, Elder Welkin stepped toward me, not liking my attention straying from him, or my silence. We were beyond that now, he and I.
“Nothing at all to say? Now that everyone can see how weak you are,” he mocked in a low voice, dropping the ceremonious tone he’d used for the crowds, trying to goad me into confronting him again. Needing one last submission from me before he dealt his final blow, the one he’d been leading toward my whole life.
Wincing as pain shot through my back with every movement, I stepped back on shaky legs, stepping carefully until I could feel the buzzing of the halo. The barrier that had kept me from the world my entire life. Our shining, gilded cage.
Energy thrummed through it, calling me, comforting me. Baring its secrets.
Elder Welkin raised an imperious eyebrow at me, condescension dripping from him, believing he had me cornered. Aeron and the other two guardians had re-joined their flight while I retreated, to stand in solidarity with the elder they were sworn to protect. They wore grim faces, yet they had all sheathed their swords. Weapons were no longer needed. I couldn’t fly away or fight back with my hands still restrained, I had no discernible power, and no one was rushing to my defense. I was at their mercy. The only spectacle left was my death at the hands of Elder Welkin.
Or so they thought.
A wave of light washed over me as the wielding lit up in a shimmering wave that had sparks zapping up my spine, and an answering pulse within the signet ring on my finger. The one my mother had given me, and I’d never taken off. A comforting presence emanated from the shimmer as my pain and dizziness faded. The last of my fear dissipated with it. Love speared through me as my mother beckoned.
In my heart, I knew what it meant. They had drained the last vestiges of her to strengthen the wielding. She was truly dead, or at least, her body was. She lived within me now, and within the light. She was in Nur’s embrace.
As I soon would be.
I looked at the crowd and the familiar faces within it, sending them a sad smile and a silent goodbye.
Adrita nodded and grabbed Mara’s shaking hand, holding on tightly. She’d know it was no accident I’d sent Mara to her. Haniel’s eyes were fixed on me, and his stoic facade cracked, finally letting fear and remorse bleed through. The youth of my memories peeked out from eyes grown too jaded. Even if he’d genuinely believed he was doing the right thing, he’d turned from more than me in his own quest for power. He’d turned from the light too.
I only wished I’d gotten to hug my brother one last time. If I’d realized his earlier hug might be our last, I would have held him tighter. Breathed him in before I let him go.
Instead of my thoughts lingering on him, I dragged my eyes back to Elder Welkin, the male charged with both my training and my protection. My distorted father figure. My tormentor. He’d dominated my life for so long, but in this moment, he seemed small. He’d played his hand, and it had cost me, but it also meant he had nothing left with which to hurt me.
Death wasn’t a punishment; it was a choice if you faced it standing and on your own terms. My mother and Nico had taught me that far too recently for me to forget their lesson. So, if I was to be banished, I would go standing tall for the first time in my life. Wearing my mother’s borrowed crown, if I must.
It struck me as ironic that, with everything stripped from me, it was in this moment I could finally hold my tormentor’s gaze.
“It’s your time now, my child.” The words echoed around and through me in a reassuring whisper that nobody else seemed to hear.
And all I could think was…finally.
Mara’s words as she’d rekindled our friendship on the day we’d become potentiates, came back to me now. When she’d told me power wasn’t always about what you held in your hands; it was about what people believed—that it was time to own my power.
I’d never believed in my own power before. I saw it now, with the way every eye in the citadel held their breath and watched me. Even though the wings they had all revered were lying bloodied and broken on the ground between us.
Ever the showman, Elder Welkin stood still and silent before me, willing to drag this moment of judgement out until I answered him. When I did, I pushed past the creeping numbness and knocked down every wall I’d ever built to keep myself small and spoke from a deeply buried place.
“You’ve tried to break me, time and again, but you don’t have that power – no matter what you take from me. You don’t see me, but I see you. My eyes have been opened to the truth. I’d rather die on my terms than live in the cage you built for us. The one that has slowly poisoned this citadel.”
“The truth can be dangerous, people can’t be trusted with it,” he snarled, seeming to forget the crowd behind him, the thought of my imminent demise making him careless.
“No. I am dangerous.” I understood that now, finally.
Refusing to give him any more of my attention, I looked at the crowd beyond him. The people who had been trapped in this citadel, this web of lies, alongside me for far too long. My final words were for them. “The truth is something you already know deep in your hearts—if only you’re brave enough to reach for it.”
Our voices carried far, a gift of the orb still hovering above him and the enduring silence. I hoped my message would be understood. Even a single seed planted in a wasteland could grow if it was nourished. That seed was now in Fionn’s hands. The male who had hidden and safeguarded the knowledge of our people. His subtle nod told me he, at least, understood.
“Is that it?” Elder Welkin snarled, before he let out a derisive laugh. “You wasted your last words. This is my citadel and mine is the only truth—.”
Done with his lies and his all-consuming ambition, I shut him out and focused on the pulse still beating within the ring on my finger. Taking a deep breath and holding it, I reached my senses into the chain wrapped around my wrists and the lumis within it—wielded with my light. Calling it home, I released the sigil and drew the light back inside me until there was nothing left but a pretty gold chain and my hands were my own again.
Releasing a shaky breath when it worked, I sobered as the light flowed within me seeking its home, only to find ashes. A lone, warm flicker unable to combat the numbness spreading through me—serving only to remind me of all I had lost. Working quickly, I redirected the light into the signet ring, twining it with her lumis and the intention she had woven within it.
As I shook off the golden chain Aeron’s eyes widened, but his father’s narrowed as his outburst ground to a halt.
Keeping my eyes on them both, I turned the signet ring around so that the flat surface was in line with my palm, I held my head high, then braced myself as I reached out my hand and placed it directly on the wielding. The ring flared brightly, and gasps sounded around me as more Neven took to the air for a better vantage while others craned their necks to see.
The wielding felt vast and intimidating, even stronger than when I’d last touched it. It didn’t shock me as it had before. Instead, it throbbed angrily against my skin, yet there was also an underlying warmth that fought back the numbness threatening to overwhelm me. Underneath it all was the taint that I’d felt days ago. Still there, buried like a cancerous wound under the surface. Only temporarily held at bay.
For this had been why my mother made her sacrifice. To be here for me, at this moment. Within the halo.
“Mother, let me pass,” I whispered as I stroked my thumb gently against the translucent lumis, soothing it with a silent promise.
Our joined light within the ring pulsed again, matched by a wave of shimmer within the halo. The wielding parted under my hand like a golden curtain revealing the deep blue of the sky behind it. Her true gift to me. A fitting stage for my swan song.
The halo let loose a sharp echo of sound that washed up the promenade before me. Centuries of women’s trapped, bitter screams burst outward in a passionate, haunting fury, all given voice for a prolonged pulse of light before they faded back into an inaudible whisper.
The rushing, icy wind that battered me almost drowned out the surprised cries of the crowd. The wind reverberated along the citadel wall, buffeting the guardians and other Neven in the air. Instinctively, I flexed my wings to steady myself but stumbled when they didn’t respond. My legs felt like those of a lamb trying to figure out how to stand for the first time.
My skin chilled in a way I’d never felt before. I’d only ever known the gentle, balmy breeze that kept the citadel warm every day.
Elder Welkin stared at the halo, rage now mottling his features with an angry flush. “That’s not possible,” he snarled. “What trick is this?”
“No trick. The goddess may have forsaken you and the other elders because of the way you’ve tainted her light, but she never gave up on me—or the Neven.”
“Alula, wait,” Aeron demanded, reaching a hand toward me as he took a single step forward. “Don’t do this. Take my hand.”
“ Your hand, Aeron?” I stared pointedly at the ruby signet ring on his finger, the very same one I’d wielded with Mara in our final test without knowing the intention. I could feel it now; it held the same taint that had seeped beneath the door to the Sanctorum. It was nowhere near as powerful, but it was an abomination all the same, one I’d wielded far too easily.
Aeron’s arrogance was unfathomable if he truly thought I would take his hand while he wore that ring and invoked my mother. He cocked his head as I stood teetering on the crumbling edge of the citadel, unable to conceive that I would make any choice but the one he demanded. He was as deranged as his father.
The father who turned and slapped him—hard. Slicing his flesh with one of his rings and leaving a line of blood. “I decide her fate, not you.”
Aeron’s eye twitched, but he showed no other reaction to his father’s attack, perhaps as used to his violence as I had become. His focus remained on me, even as his cheek dripped blood. I stared them both down as I made my stand, letting them truly see me.
“Hand over that ring, and I’ll make your death quick,” Elder Welkin demanded, as he raised his hand to halt the guardians who had all taken defensive positions behind him. Still believing he held the upper hand.
“No.” The one word was a release. One I had so rarely used.
My death was my own. Nobody could take that from me if I refused to let them. No part of me wished to die today, but I no longer had any wish to live the only life this citadel would allow me to either.
Neither of them understood, so I had to make them. Make everyone in the citadel. Light a path for them, even if it ended my own.
“My choice, my light, my life,” I said out loud for the first time.
The words seemed to echo through the trees and along the promenade, pushed by the wind whipping past me instead of drowning them out. As if the very air breathed life into them.
Waiting for a heartbeat—perhaps one of my last—I mourned my wings. The ones I’d never gotten the chance to stretch into the wind as I owned the sky. That would have turned this next step into an adventure rather than a plummet. The wings that would have let me save myself.
Placing my hand to my chest once again, I called my shadow, and it slipped out to twine around my fingers. My heart chose Nier and the unknown, along with my loyalty to Nur, my mother, and maybe even myself too.
Elder Welkins eyes flashed with impotent fury as he finally understood I planned to snatch my own death from him, and his victory over me along with it. “Kill her, and get that ring,” he screamed.
The two closest guardians at the edge of the courtyard took flight, but I was beyond their reach now. They’d underestimated me, content to see only what they’d wanted to for too many years. Keeping my eyes on Elder Welkin, I watched his growing realization that his guardians wouldn’t reach me in time.
Haniel’s cried “No!” was the last sound I heard before the world I’d longed for seemed to rush at me, urging me into its icy embrace.
Letting slip a final, sad smile, I stepped backward, knowing this was the first real step I’d ever taken for myself.
And then…
I fell.
Table of Contents
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- Page 36 (Reading here)
- Page 37