Page 17

T here was a saying that one should never meet one’s heroes. Perhaps they should also say that one should never meet infamous historical figures. Especially the tragic ones.

King Theron of Aureum. For millennia, very little had been known about the first calamity, until a cache of documents had been uncovered in the parched desert of Altanus. Documents that, though badly fragmented, detailed the tragic fate of the last king of Aureum, and the first monarch to die during the first calamity. Cursed by Justice for harming the first hero of the holy sword, his story was often retold in fiction as a morality play on the perils of hubris.

Aurora had been able to shove that to a dark corner of her mind for most of the day, instead delighting in properly seeing and experiencing the ancient city of Boreas. Of experiencing it with the Theron himself. If she ever returned home, she would have such stories to tell. So many misconceptions about the past that she would be able to resolve. And when the myths of the basement treasure hoard of the temple of Knowledge had been confirmed, her heart had soared.

The basement existed in her time, but it had long been used as storage. The treasure had been a marvellous find, made even more so by the number and variety of Pre-Sundering artefacts. Marvellous, and heartbreaking, because all those treasures would be lost in the intervening millennia. She fervently wished she could take them with her, protect them in some way, preserve them from what was to come.

It was a sentiment she was feeling towards her companion as both she and Theron left the basement to find that the sun was about to disappear beneath the horizon. She’d found something that would protect her, an ancient shield made of pure energy in the guise of a pendant. But how was she supposed to protect the man beside her? As he took her hand in his, shared a conspiratorial smile, and led the way back to the palace, she couldn’t escape the dawning horror that he was no longer just a story to her. Theron was here, a real flesh and blood man.

One whose fate was as grim as her own.

One who was ultimately meant for another. And a princess no less.

Aurora had not missed his subtle flirting, nor the unmistakable closeness of his person. She had not been immune to the pleasing scent of his perfume, nor his lingering glances. Neither was she immune to the rugged appeal of his face, nor his overwhelming size and the gentleness of his touch. The only things about him that were not overly pleasing were his barely-pointed ears, small and mostly-rounded that they were. A pity that they were so ugly, given the rest of him. But despite her fascination with his physical appeal, she was no fool. Today had been a test.

Could Theron be trusted as her new ally? If she provided him with secrets and useful information, would he reciprocate with assistance when she needed it in slaying Drakon? Would he betray her to win favour within Viridis? Or would he attempt to seduce her for more information, and then discard her when he assumed she had no more use? Aurora had met and spurned enough of those types as Phaedra’s only true friend to be wary of all flattery and temptations sent her way.

As he pulled her close, out of the way of a pool of standing water, she wondered if she had what it took to play along with such a seduction while keeping her heart locked away. It had been easy to turn down the advances of those who’d hoped to reach Phaedra through her. She’d had an imperial princess to shield her from any and all consequences, and no true incentive to keep around such noxious parasites. But could she afford to turn her nose up at these games when she had no other allies, no protection, and Phaedra’s future hanging in the balance?

Aurora needed someone with power and influence to reach Drakon before he became the calamity. If Orithyia wouldn’t or couldn’t be that person, then maybe this doomed king, whose fate she might be able to change, would be more interested in her knowledge. He would leave the vivarium soon enough, and when he met her outside the queendom of Viridis, she hoped he would be inclined to assist her.

But could she live with the person she would become by stepping into the fetid swamp of court intrigues and calculated seductions?

Could she afford not to?

“We should have left earlier,” Theron grumbled.

“You were the one who wouldn’t leave until you’d found the perfect weapons.”

Indeed, he’d found a spear and shield that miniaturized at will, his eyes lighting up like a child’s as he’d excitedly theorized about using such technology to benefit long-distance trade. That his mind had turned immediately to matters of scholarship and discovery only made him all the more attractive.

“You took just as long to find a treasure of your own,” he accused her playfully before that smile vanished. “But this is a dangerous time to be about. The spirits are most active at dusk and dawn. And if this is the state in which Flora keeps her shining jewel of a capital, then I doubt she has been at pains to placate the spirits of this land.”

“What do you believe these spirits will actually do?”

He frowned down at her.

“You speak as though you don’t believe they exist. Perhaps they don’t, in your homeland, but in Trisia, they are very real. When they’re angered or abused, they bring plague, blight, drought, and more besides. Entire mountain ranges and forests become bloodthirsty and impassible.” Theron looked like there was more he wished to say but swallowed his tongue. “In any case, the city gates will be closed now. You’ll have to wait to enact your daring escape.”

“Will you miss me?” she teased.

“The only civilised company in the entire queendom? Desperately.”

“Civilised? I punched you.”

“And I richly deserved it.”

Aurora smiled sadly, recalling the first time she’d punched a member of a royal family.

“What has stolen your joy, madam fairy?”

“Old memories.”

“Good or bad?”

“Good. Treasured, but painful now.”

“The love you lost to that beast of yours?”

“Yes, my dearest friend. A princess, loyal and loving…and the most infuriating person you could ever meet.”

“Am I to believe I’m not the first royal you’ve punched?”

“Are you offended you’re not my first?”

“I may never recover. I thought our meeting was singular—unique.”

“I have every hope that you’ll survive this terrible blow to your ego.”

As she flirted shamelessly, her heart hurting the whole while, a little girl darted around the corner of the alleyway, colliding with her. Theron saved her from falling onto her backside. Before she could ascertain the child’s state, the little girl dashed off, nearly losing her balance for a few steps before she turned another corner, gone without so much as a backward glance. A pickpocket? Runaway? Or simply trying to get home before curfew?

“Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Aurora answered, touching the treasure in her satchel with a sigh of relief.

They managed to get back to the hole in the wall without incident, and onto the palace grounds without getting caught. For now, her escape route was a safely guarded secret. But if this one was found, Aurora had others. After all, in the future, this place would be Phaedra’s palace—and they had managed to sneak out countless times together. Aurora replaced the rocks in front of her hole in the wall and readjusted her gown as Theron kept a watch.

“I hope you’ll keep my secrets, Your Majesty.”

“You have my vow. Will you be leaving this place soon?”

“Yes, at first light.”

The only thing more alluring than a willing woman was a woman who knew when to leave a man wanting more. Or so she’d been told. He wanted more of her secrets and he seemed intent on seduction as his method. How could he not? Aurora had seen the look in his eyes when she’d exposed her modern fashions. She’d also led him to breathtaking treasure today. Any sane man would be wondering what more she might reveal to him tomorrow.

“Must you go so soon?”

“I must find Drakon, Your Majesty.”

“Your beast.”

“Yes.”

Aurora stepped from the undergrowth and onto the main path, hoping he would take her bait. Theron followed.

“And what if I offered to help?”

“What can you do, locked in the guest palace?”

“I’m not without my resources. And I won’t be here forever. Flora and Orithyia will take their pound of flesh, but they can’t keep me here for long.”

“Then I will accept your help… once you’re freed.”

“But how will I know where to find you? Where will you go? And will you get there safely?”

“Oh my, it sounds as if you really will miss me,” she chided him as they entered the palace proper.

“Keep me company until I leave, and I will take you with me to Aureum in safety and comfort. I will also ensure you get an audience with Myrina.”

“And is my company all you would ask for in return? Surely you would want something more.”

“You underestimate your charms.”

They stood in the atrium of the palace, the sun now fully set, and the halls lit only with lamps. This man was loved by both the sun and the flickering flames of firelight. His dark crimson hair, tied back from his handsome face, complimented his ochre brown skin and fierce gold eyes. The ancient robes he wore did nothing to detract from his burly physique. She was the moth and he the flame. If she were anyone else, maybe she could enjoy his seduction without reserve. But she was a woman whose fate was tied with Drakon, and ending the beast mattered more than anything else.

“I’ll think on it, Your Majesty. Tomorrow, you’ll know my answer.”

“Theron. Call me Theron, Aurora.”

“Goodnight, Theron.”

She left him there, his gaze a palpable heat on her back that chased her all the way to her room. It wasn’t until she closed the door that she dared to groan miserably. Had she played her part well enough? Though she’d watched the nobles at court dance around each other, even been subjected to it on occasion, she’d never properly played this game before.

Now she needed to decide if Theron’s help was worth risking another run-in with Orithyia. The monstrosities had appeared at the Colonnades if Theron’s comments were to be believed, but the high priestess wasn’t yet interested in anything else Aurora had to say, if the lack of an audience was anything to go by. And what if her scant remaining knowledge of this age was inaccurate? Aurora shivered. She recalled the threat of Orithyia’s switch, and had no desire to find out what would happen if the high priestess remembered where she’d left Aurora to rot. She couldn’t risk Orithyia’s wrath with everything at stake.

Aurora changed out of her gown and into a slip more appropriate for sleeping. She pulled the new artefact from her satchel, a pretty bauble that could easily be strung as a necklace, and examined it in the moonlight. With this, she could get to Aureum on her own. She didn’t need to play these games. With luck, she could get everything she needed by convincing the other high priestesses to aid her. And this time, she would approach the high priestess with her wits instead of her desperation.

Then again, Aurora knew just how valuable the help of a monarch could be in getting things done. Phaedra had smoothed every path Aurora had tread on.

She also knew how impossible it could be when one was against you, as all of Phaedra’s enemies had discovered.

Aurora collapsed on her bed and threw her arm over her eyes, sighing deeply. Tomorrow. She could decide this at first light tomorrow.

She didn’t remember falling asleep. Only waking up to a roaring heat, her joints aching and her head throbbing. Aurora got to her feet to find the world was spinning.

Something was wrong.

Aurora lurched to her door and into the hallway, the flickering light of oil lamps blending into the walls, giving them all the impression of melting. She stumbled onwards. Usually, there was at least a single guard patrolling the halls at night, but would they help her? Or would they leave her to be consumed by this unnatural heat? She passed no one on their rounds. Her only hope before she collapsed was the dreadful guard by the palace entrance. Sweat dripping down her neck and back, her knees aching, she made it to the front atrium of the palace.

“Trouble sleeping, madam fairy?”

Theron was there in the atrium, seated on her bench, soaking in the moonlight and surrounded by lush foliage.

“Something’s…wrong,” Aurora slurred as darkness swallowed her vision.

Theron squeezed through the window of his childhood bedroom in the early hours of the morning. A night of carousing with the local sons of the nobility had kept him out late. It would probably be the last time he would ever manage to get through such a tight space. At sixteen, he was finally about to experience his second growth spurt. After he’d shot up half a head over the last few months, the nobles had decided to take him out for a taste of adulthood. He’d drunk more than was perhaps advisable and had been introduced to the most beautiful woman in Trisia, to whom he had given his first kiss. Riding high, he tumbled into his room, smashing a vase full of flowers on his way to his bed.

Who put vases in front of beds?

“Your Highness!”

One of the servants ripped open his door, their face pale and drawn.

“How insolent. Where are your manners? This is my room.”

“Your Highness, please, you must come. Your brother is ill!”

Tisander, his older brother the crown prince, was always ill. He’d been sick Theron’s whole life. Ever since he’d awakened healing magic, Theron had been working tirelessly to keep his brother’s chronic illnesses at bay. A man fully grown with the dark red hair and deep brown skin of the royal family, he was lithe where everyone else was solid, never able to put on muscle due to his frailty. But his brother was never one to fuss, nor trouble others unduly. No, Tisander was a stoic man a decade his senior full of wisdom and compassion. Someone Theron looked up to and admired. Convinced this was just his mother being especially cautious, Theron sighed and followed the servant to Tisander’s room.

Only to be met with a scene from a nightmare.

Servants wept. His mother, a statuesque beauty with black hair, was crumpled on the bed wailing, her arms around Tisander. His father, a true giant who was as stocky and fierce as a bull, who’d never so much as smiled as long as Theron had been alive, was slumped at Tisander’s bedside, devastation written plain as day across his face.

Theron stumbled to his brother’s bedside and reached out a shaking hand. Tisander was still, his face unnaturally pale, his neck and jaw slack, dark red hair limp and slick with sweat, an angry red rash climbing up from his chest. Numb, Theron reached out with his magic, only to feel it recoil in the face of death.

Tisander’s death.

“Where were you?!” his mother screamed, her amber eyes filled with hatred. “Where were you when your brother needed you?! He died of fever! You killed your brother! He would be alive if you’d been here!” she raged, her face crumpling as her heartbroken sobs echoed in the room. She buried her face in Tisander’s bony chest. “Where were you?”

“Worthless,” his father hissed, his face transforming from devastation to wrath in an instant. “You’re no son of mine!”

Overcome, Theron ran. He ran until he was swallowed by an endless abyss. He ran across a plain of utter darkness until he couldn’t run, until he was drowned by unending nothing. As he was swallowed whole, he opened his eyes to carnage, his brother wearing Viridian armour and staring up at him in terror, Theron’s spear lodged in his heart.

“Save me,” Tisander whispered, blood pooling at the corners of his mouth.

Theron woke with a gasp, sweating and disoriented. His magic seethed inside him, responding to the horrors of memories blended with nightmares. Closing his eyes, he focused on his breathing, willing his magic and heartbeat to settle, but there was nothing for it. Theron was awake. If experience were anything to go by, he would not sleep again tonight. Frustrated, he ripped the covers off and dressed in the first tunic he found.

There was precious little to do in the guest palace at night, but the view of the sky from the atrium was nice enough. He sat on the bench and watched the stars wink in the night sky.

As a cloud passed over the moon above, Aurora entered the atrium. Had she come to see him at this hour? It was a welcome distraction. And if she’d come to him at this hour, there could be no mistaking her intentions. His blood heated.

Yet as his greeting left his lips, he could tell that something was deeply wrong. Theron rushed to Aurora’s side, his magic wrapping around her, seeking the cause of her collapse. But the moment he touched her burning hot skin and turned her over to see an angry red rash climbing up her neck, he knew. Dread galvanised him to action. He cradled her in arms, marched to the entrance and kicked open the door to the palace, startling the guard on duty.

“Get me a tub full of cold water and ice! And bring me more ice every hour. Now!”

“What? I’m not your damn servant,” the guard growled. “Get back inside the palace!”

“What’s the problem here?” another guard asked, this one with a red scarf around his neck. Good, one of the Aurean spies planted in Boreas.

“This woman has torchlight fever. Get me what I need to save her and tell your queen she has an outbreak in her capital.”

“I’ll get what he needs. You tell the palace guard,” his inside man said, racing off to do Theron’s bidding, the other guard following shortly after.

Shit. Shit. Shit .

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

It would take everything he had to save her. Normally, he healed people by using his magic to guide their body’s natural healing process whenever possible. But this was torchlight fever. He would need to flood her with his magic, using his own energy to prevent her fever from cooking her internal organs. The worst of the fever came and went in the time it took for a torch to burn to ashes, often carrying its victims with it in that short span of time. If he could keep her alive during the worst of the fever, she had better odds of surviving.

Theron took her to his room and flooded her with his magic, healing her organs as her body fought to boil them. He kept a hand on her forehead, using the better portion of his magic to prevent the destruction of her mind.

But he was going to lose the battle if someone didn’t arrive with the tub full of cold water. There was only so much he could do to heal her body if he didn’t have some way to cool it down. He was about to take her to the baths and contaminate every drop inside when a group of servants came hauling a large copper tub and pails of water.

“Place it there! Fill it halfway and put in as much ice as it’ll hold.”

The servants rushed to obey. That done, he placed Aurora inside, his hand cupping the back of her head, submerging all but her face. She gasped, her eyes fluttering open. Her gaze was unfocused, drifting across the room until she lit on him. Tears welled in her eyes, and whatever she said next, it was in a language he’d never heard.

“You won’t die, Aurora.”

Her frantic, unintelligible pleading hurt a part of him he rarely allowed anyone entry to. Had Tisander’s final moments been like this? His mind ripped apart by fever, reducing him to animalistic fear? Damn it. She was not Tisander. And he was no longer that sixteen-year-old child. He was the fucking king of Aureum, whose wild magic was as powerful as they came!

“You will not die. I won’t allow it, you understand?”

He recognised one of the next words she spoke. Drakon. Her beast. Her eyes glazed over with terror.

“You’re safe here, Aurora,” he assured her, speaking like he would to a frightened animal. If she was too far gone to understand his words, hopefully he could convey the meaning with his tone.

She gasped again, her eyes going wide, her hand to her chest. Between one blink and the next, her fever was an inferno. His magic flared inside him. A death knell. The ice had almost completely melted and his hand burned as if it had been submerged in frigid water for a full hour. Aurora was limp in his grasp, her eyes shut, her breathing barely perceptible. He panicked, flooding her with his magic again. The fever had wreaked havoc with her body, taking her to the very brink, but how? He’d been by her side the whole time, keeping her safe.

Had he gone into that dark abyss again without realising it? Was Justice punishing him anew? The diamond-like mark still lingered on the back of his hand—proof of Her wrath.

Theron shook his head. He couldn’t afford to divide his attention.

“Get me more ice!” he commanded, switching the hand that held her head above water.

As more ice arrived, he healed organ after organ on the brink of collapse.

“Goddesses help me, if I have to force your heart to keep beating, I will!” he threatened her.

For the next hour, he was forced to do just that.

But as the night wore on, the worst of her fever abated. And he would thank the Triad for it once he had the strength. Theron had never drained himself like this before, pouring every drop of his magic into her and then finding reserves he’d never known existed. He pulled her from the tub, confident that what lay ahead was a simple illness. She was still feverish, but her life and her health were no longer in jeopardy. If people could catch this wretched plague more than once in their lives, he’d have thought himself in the throes of it, for he was delirious with fatigue.

“Dry her off, change her clothes and bring her back here,” he told the attendant at his door.

The attendant took her gingerly from his arms. Theron watched them take her to her room and then collapsed on his bed. He woke to the attendant entering with Aurora in their arms.

“Where would you like me to put her?”

“On the bed, at my side.”

He wanted to keep an eye on her as best he could. How the fever affected the average Trisian was well known, but not how it would affect a foreigner like her. If she neared death, his magic would alert him, even in sleep. Hopefully, it would be enough to keep her alive.

As he adjusted himself to her presence at his side, she opened her eyes once more.

“Theron?”

“Sleep, Aurora. I’ll keep you safe.”

Aurora was asleep again in moments.

She trusted him.

It should have been gratifying, but it only unsettled him. She shouldn’t have trusted him so easily. He hadn’t lied to Hyllus when he’d said he was not a good man. Good men were ruled by the best parts of their hearts, after all. Theron had every intention of discovering her secrets. Of using every scrap of knowledge she possessed for his benefit. And if seduction proved the quickest path, as he suspected it did, he would pluck her heartstrings without remorse, use her body for his pleasure and discard her the moment she had nothing left to give. Anything and everything she had of value he would shamelessly take from her, so long as it benefitted Aureum or his throne. It was nothing less than the duty he’d been given the moment his brother had died. A good king ruled with his head and abandoned his heart.

That had never bothered him before.

So why did it trouble him now?