EPILOGUE: The Figure
On the rooftop, Alora’s lips compressed as they watched her niece follow Kasim’s heir into the tavern. It was obvious she was not pleased.
She was angry—and blaming herself more than anyone else, he knew, for sending him away the night of the solstice. He’d been assigned to investigate a petty brawl in the Bazaar, involving one of her Boreali merchants. All the while, her niece had charged into the torrent to face an unknown evil, alone and unprotected.
Upon the figure’s return to the proper, she’d tasked him to root out where the monster was laid to rest, so she might inspect the remains. He reported there was nothing left to examine but ash and mire, but nevertheless, his mistress insisted she be escorted into the busiest district of Marketown. Disguised in the heights, they waited for the filthy alleyway to clear.
Apparently, her niece had shared the same intent that evening.
Amaranth’s claws anchored onto his shoulder. He felt the hawk shift her weight as she settled onto her favored perch, situated between her two masters. On the opposite side, Alora’s spine straightened as the door, stories below, closed behind her niece.
“He’s beginning to look like his father,” she remarked tersely.
The figure considered the young man’s lineage, but disagreed. “I still see Cyra in their son, Mistress. Others see her, too.”
Pensive, Alora angled her smooth neck. The darkness disguised the pearlescent hue of her skin, unique to her and her kinsmen. His blistered tongue swelled with need. Squeezing his eyes shut, he ignored the faithful beat of her veins. After his recent encounter on butcher’s row—after he’d given way to the hunger—it would take months to unhear the rhythm of her blood, calling out a promise it would never fulfill.
“Let us pray that is who their son sees in himself.” Alora tucked her chin determinedly. “Orynthia cannot afford to have Cyra’s son aspiring after his father’s control of the realm. The effects would be catastrophic.”
The figure adjusted his leather gloves, grating his scored flesh. Surveying her through the corner of his bloodshot eye, his lungs stilled. Freezing in place, he admired the way she tucked a wisp of fair hair behind an ear. It was the single blessing to his curse—the ability to see her beauty even when the light let it go. After their decades together, encompassing a host of secrets, his affection remained their most devasting secret of all.
He looked away with difficulty. “It was her captaen who assured you, Mistress.” The figure fixed his attention on the alley below. “The nobleman’s corpse indeed turned to dust.”
When she said nothing, he peered past the rim of his hood. Almost imperceptibly, her jaw quivered, and she spun her face aside. He thought he heard her sniffle, an uncharacteristic release of emotion.
“You are not permitted to turn to dust.”
The figure dropped his gaze. Stepping back from the busted ledge of the abandoned terrace, he lowered his head in retreat, adding to their separation.
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“You know this was not the product of war-taint,” he whispered, embracing the agony of his sores. “This happened because of the offenses I committed in another life. Dust,” the figure rasped gravely, “would be a mercy.”
Alora stilled several paces away. Stubbornness tensed her limbs as she entwined her arms, something she’d done in their youth when he came close to winning an argument. Sighing, she breathed his name into the night.
“I will say it again, and again, and again, until I can speak no more,” she declared to the emptiness. “There is still hope for redemption.”
He recoiled beneath the fabric of his cloak, away from the emerging sheen of the moon. As she refused his shame, the figure could not bear for her to behold his ugliness instead.
“I’ll never know redemption if history repeats my mistakes,” he murmured, hiding within the hood. “Coveting what was not meant to be mine. Taking what should never be stolen.”
Her hand glided into a concealed pocket in her skirts. Retrieving a pouch, she cradled it carefully as she replied, “You couldn’t have been the first to stumble upon your revelations about my kind, and I doubt you will be the last, as evidenced by the cross-caste slayings.” Her face tilted to the side, though he no longer stood there. “Why target the children? Why the unascended, instead of the full-blooded parent?”
Her inquiry rescued him from recounting his transgressions; from recalling the moment he’d become new and unnatural, more beast than man. The figure paused, pushing past the stain on his soul. In answering, he leveraged his disgraceful studies from so long ago against his firsthand experience of the hunger.
“I’m unsure, Mistress,” he offered plainly. “Possibly a mutation in the young, or some prematurity, even…”
The veining across the backs of her hands became more pronounced as she gripped the pouch tightly. “Who else would know to seek such an irregularity?”
The figure’s serrated teeth raked the interior of his mouth as he ground them together, cataloging his list of contacts from his previous life. Outdated and subject to the limitations of his former station, there was no way to be certain.
“Very few parties,” the figure admitted. “Least of all a rich yancy from Agoston.”
Without comment, she rested the pouch on the ledge. Vials chimed inside the knotted sack when it hit the rock. Begrudgingly, the figure came forward to take them. The glasses jangled as he slipped the pouch under his cloak.
“The rules are changing, Mistress,” he reminded her, redirecting her thoughts toward the future. “With Korbin’s death, Boreal could be at even greater risk within the Ethnicam. Things will be different now that you are operating as the succeeded sil’haidren.”
“The rules haven’t changed—the board has.” Alora laced her elegant fingers. “Overnight, the political landscape has evolved in ways we could never have foreseen. Where Luscia walks as haidren, I cannot go before her.”
“Has she become aware of her condition?”
“Niit.” Alora shook her head firmly. The strands escaping her braid swept past her cheek. “Nor will she. The fate of the realm rests on Luscia’s shoulders. She can never learn how fragile they really are.”
He noted the minor tremors in her expression as she rubbed at her wrist. The years had done little to suppress his instinct to reach out and comfort her. Denying the impulse, the figure instead lifted his gloved hand and stroked the slick feathers down Amaranth’s back.
“I will not lead you away from your conscience this time,” he assured Alora. “Not again.”
Alora twisted toward the figure. Her eyes, alight with desperation, sought the man he used to be. “One day the High One will forgive us both.” She smiled weakly. “But until that day, we are still here, given the chance to redeem our mistakes. So that is what we will do.” Alora stepped closer and joined him, caressing the hawk. “That is what we will do, my dearest.”
Though she said it to Amaranth, Alora called her the same words once reserved for him. And for a fleeting second, she glanced past the bird.
“Se’lah Aurynth.”
Within the expanse of a stolen moment, the figure forgot his name, for his name had only ever held meaning when it passed her lips. Finishing her proverb, he felt a spark beneath his tongue.
“Rul’Aniell.”
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