Chapter 52 Drove the dagger to my heart
The silver forest was too quiet. In the Wastes, there had been the constant roar of wind and the crackle of emerald fire, but here, the air felt like silk against my skin.
The trees didn't have leaves; they had crystalline needles that hummed a low, musical chord as the violet breeze moved through them.
But I wasn't looking at the scenery. I was looking at the man holding a sword to my throat.
He had Kael’s face. The same sharp, aristocratic jawline, the same broad shoulders that felt like they were built to carry the world.
But his eyes weren't the warm, molten gold I had fallen for. They were a cold, blinding silver, swirling with a power that felt ancient and untouchable. He wasn't wearing a tattered sweater or a tactical jacket; he was draped in armor that looked like it had been forged from captured starlight.
"I asked you a question, outlander," he said, his voice a lethal vibration. It was Kael’s voice, but stripped of the weariness, the love, and the humanity. "How did you breach the Veil? The House of Malakor has not had a visitor in three hundred years."
"Kael, it’s me," I gasped, my voice sounding small and fragile in this impossible place. I tried to take a step toward him, but the tip of the glowing blade nipped the skin of my neck. I felt a drop of blood, my blood—trickle down.
The moment the blood touched the blade, the sword let out a high-pitched, harmonic ring. The silver in his eyes flared, and his brow furrowed in a flicker of confusion.
"You smell of the Deep," he murmured, his gaze dropping to the violet lines on my arms. "But your blood... it sings of the Sovereign line. Who gave you the right to carry the Draven essence?"
"You did!" I snapped, my fear finally giving way to a jagged, desperate anger.
"You gave it to me in a cabin on the coast! You gave it to me to keep me from burning up in the Spires! We were just in the Wastes, Kael. There was a girl, an emerald child, and my father—"
"I have no father," he interrupted, his voice dropping into a terrifying chill. "And I have never seen the sea. I am the High Sovereign of the Eternal City. I am the anchor of the World-Tree. I do not have 'cabins,' and I certainly do not share my blood with mortals."
I looked around, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm. This wasn't a dream, and it wasn't a hallucination. The weight of the obsidian shards in my bag was real.
The ache in my palm where I’d cut myself was real.
"The Mirror," I whispered, reaching slowly into my satchel.
"Do not move," he commanded, the silver fire in his eyes brightening.
"It’s the key!" I yelled, ignoring his threat. I pulled out the velvet bundle and let the shards spill into my palm.
The moment the black glass hit the air of the Eternal City, the silver trees began to weep. A dark, oily smoke began to rise from the shards, reacting to the purity of the forest. The "Kael" in front of me recoiled, his sword flickering as if the light were being sucked out of it
"Abomination," he hissed, his face contorting in a mask of pure, kingly disgust. "You bring the rot of the Shattered World into the Garden?"
He raised his hand to strike, but before the blow could land, a woman stepped out from behind a massive silver oak.
She was tall, her hair a cascade of white silk, and her eyes were the exact shade of violet that pulsed in my own veins.
"Lower your blade, My Sovereign," she said. Her voice was like the chime of a bell. "She is not an enemy. She is the consequence."
The silver-eyed Kael didn't lower his sword, but he didn't strike. "Selene? You were supposed to be guarding the Iron Gate."
My breath caught. It was Selene, but not the ghost-child I had seen in the Wastes or the frost-wraith who had dragged the Priestess down.
This was Selene in her prime—a High Witch of the Malakor line, radiating a power that made the High Priestess look like a parlor magician.
"The Iron Gate has fallen, Kael," Selene said, walking toward me. She didn't look at me with malice; she looked at me with a profound, aching sadness.
"It fell the moment the girl in the Wastes turned the key. What you see before you is not a mortal. She is the anchor for the world we lost."
Selene stopped in front of me, her hand reaching out to touch the violet lines on my arm. Her touch was warm—the first warm thing I’d felt since the world turned gold.
"Aria Marlowe," she whispered. "You think you’ve traveled to another place. But you haven't moved at all."
"I don't understand," I said, my eyes darting between her and the cold, regal version of Kael.
"The Eternal City is the world as it was meant to be," Selene explained, her gaze drifting to the violet sky.
"Three hundred years ago, the Draven line was supposed to win the war against the Circle. Kael was supposed to take the crown, stabilize the ley lines, and lead us into an age of starlight. But in your world... something went wrong.
A choice was made. A sacrifice was refused."
She looked at the Kael with silver eyes.
"He is the Kael who never lost. The Kael who never had to hide in the shadows of Seattle.
The Kael who never met a writer named Aria because the world he lives in didn't need to be rewritten."
"Then where is my Kael?" I asked, my voice breaking.
"He is exactly where you left him," a new voice boomed.
The obsidian ship from the Wastes descended through the silver canopy, its hull shimmering with a dark, oily light. The figure in the starlight armor leaped down, landing between us.
They pulled off their helmet, and I nearly fell over.
It was me. But older. Much older. Her face was scarred, her hair cropped short, and her eyes were a swirling vortex of gold and violet.
"He's fighting a war on a dead planet, kid," the Older Aria said, her voice gravelly and hard. "And if we don't get this Kael to remember a life he never lived, your version is going to be the last thing the Emerald Child eats."
The Silver Kael stepped forward, his sword humming. "I do not know who you are, shades, but you will leave this Garden. Your presence is a sickness."
"Is it?" the Older Aria challenged, stepping right into his space. She didn't care about his sword.
She reached out and grabbed his armored collar, pulling him down to her level. "Look at her, you golden idiot! Look at the marks on her neck! You didn't give those to her because of a 'Sovereign duty.' You gave them to her because you couldn't help yourself!"
She shoved him back, pointing at me.
"She has your blood, Kael. Not the blood of a High Sovereign, but the blood of a man who was hungry, tired, and deeply in love.
If you don't help us bridge the gap, the Emerald Child is going to rewrite the Eternal City, too. And she’ll start by burning these silver trees to ash."
The Silver Kael looked at me. For the first time, the icy silver in his eyes flickered. He looked at the blood on his blade—my blood—and his hand began to tremble.
"I... I remember a dream," he whispered, his voice losing its regal edge. "A cabin. The smell of cedar. A woman who told me she was a writer."
"That wasn't a dream," I said, stepping toward him, my hands open and shaking. "That was us. That was the only thing that was real."
The silver forest suddenly let out a piercing, discordant shriek. The violet sky began to bleed green.
The Emerald Child hadn't just stayed in the Wastes. She had followed the tether.
A massive, necrotic green root erupted from the center of the silver glade, shattering the World-Tree at the heart of the city.
Standing atop the root was the little girl in the yellow sundress, her emerald eyes fixed on the two versions of the man she wanted to destroy.
"One King of Light, one King of Shadow," the child giggled, her voice echoing through the silver leaves.
"But only one of you gets to stay in the new world."
She raised her hand, and the Silver Kael let out a scream of agony as his starlight armor began to turn into emerald chains.
"Aria!" the Older Aria yelled, tossing me a jagged, crystalline dagger. "The Mirror isn't enough! You have to bleed for both of them! Fuse the timelines or lose them both!"
I looked at the dagger, then at the Kael who didn't know me, and thought of the Kael who was dying in the ash. I didn't hesitate.
I drove the dagger into my own heart.
The world didn't go dark. It went white.
And in that white, I felt two cold, familiar hands catch me. One felt like starlight; the other felt like home.
"Which one do you want, Aria?" a voice whispered—a voice that sounded like my own, but from a thousand years in the future. "Which King will you keep?"