“Ah …” I managed, suddenly overwhelmed.
Calder was a foreign part of me, something that had latched onto my insides and now twisted them around with every utterance of my name. He had sacrificed everything for me, for our purpose, for this dying world … but he looked at me like I was a foreign part of him. Something that had latched onto his insides and now twisted them around with every utterance of his name.
We belonged together, and we didn’t. He was supposed to be the brother of my soul, but our souls had been butchered and sewn so closely together that we could only feel guilty for how much we had stolen of each other. Neither of us were a product of fate; we were both a consequence of failure. Those who came before us had been defeated. They had knotted together the loose strings of fate that trailed behind us, shaping them into nooses, held out like lifelines—and we had taken them up like reins. We had accepted this horrible version of fate, and there was no turning back now. We were the evidence of a world turned upside down, of nature turning on itself.
It was complicated.
Me and Calder were complicated.
“Shit,” he cursed, reaching me in a second and scooping me off the ground.
I was wrapping myself around him without properly realising it. My hands clutched at his neck; my legs hitched along his torso. He smelled of violence and the aftershocks of power.
My friend.
That much, I could admit.
I buried my nose in his neck and felt him trace his nose across my temple at the same time, breathing me in. He started to walk away—me still wrapped around him—when the man he had been fighting stepped forward in indignation.
“Seriously, Captain? You were desperate to get past us a second ago.”
Calder ignored him, shifting me in his arms so he could walk with ease. It was strange, being carried like I weighed nothing at all, but I voiced no objection.
“Where have you been?” He asked the words on a grimace, sounding unhappy to see me despite the way he refused to let go of me. My heart flopped with something like fondness, or familiarity. His stoic demeanour soothed me.
“They had me locked in the Obelisk. I didn’t wake up until this morning.”
“Just in time for the celebration,” he grunted, almost sarcastically.
“Calder,” I whispered, as a small group of Sentinels came running up the road towards us, probably hoping to catch the fight that had broken out at the gates. Calder’s eyes closed, and he stopped walking, turning his head to me.
“You can put me down,” I told him.
His breath blew out against the top of my head, and his grip tightened on my leg. I realised he was holding me up with one arm, his forearm beneath my butt and his hand beneath my thigh. He glanced down, raising a brow.
“You’re lighter than a leaf.” It was almost an accusation as his gaze travelled all over my face, and then skipped down across the white silk that still wrapped my body.
He was taking stock. Looking for injuries. Perhaps wondering, as I had wondered, why my skin bore no evidence of our battle. I found myself doing the same to him, drinking in the fire of his left eye before dousing myself in the ice of his right eye.
There was still a thick white scar running down the right side of his face, mirroring the golden line of colour that dripped down the left side. There was still that same little scar through his left eyebrow, the same tick at the edge of his mouth, the same hook across his right earlobe … but there were new marks now too. They rose red and angry all across his arms and chest. Some had lightened to white or light pink, but the fact remained … he hadn’t healed like I had.
He raised a brow, his eyes finding mine again, and that thread between us shivered in understanding, though neither of us said anything about it. The space between us was usually full of silent, unspoken observations and assumptions. It was how we worked. He kept walking, right past the Sentinels further down the road, who had slowed and were now whispering amongst themselves. It seemed they had recognised us.
“Where are we going?” I asked, peering back over his shoulder.
I tracked the road all the way up the edge of a cliff, where the Sky Keep rose monstrously into the air, its multihued glass domes bubbling from towers, separating the sloping stone and glass ceilings of the larger halls. I couldn’t help but smile a little. Calder had tried to storm the King’s keep all on his own.
“I don’t know,” Calder admitted, slowing. “I just … I thought they had done something to you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” He let out a frustrated breath and then seemed to make a decision, setting me on my feet. “Have you felt anything different? Anything strange?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Maybe it’s different this time. With the Darkness. You’re already different.”
He was right about that.
The three promised Fjorn had already come and gone. I wasn’t like them. I didn’t even have a Blodsjel of my own—Calder belonged to the last Fjorn. Maybe the rules were different with me.
Maybe I wouldn’t die on my birthday as the others had.
“Tempest!” A shout on the road had us both spinning around to face the Keep again.
My hands were fisted, my heart pounding. Calder showed no reaction at all, other than the turn of his head. The man running towards us was a steward—I could tell from as far away as we were. There was no adornment on his plain clothing, but for the badge sewn into the breast of his brown linen shirt. The King’s emblem.
I started toward him, realising that he was labouring for breath, and Calder followed. When he stopped before us, doubled over, his hands on his knees, I had to curb the urge to shake him.
“What happened?” I asked quickly, my heartbeat tripling.
“The King … asks … your attendance—”
I cut him off with a frustrated growl that had him stumbling back a step.
“I’m sorry, Tempest—ah—Legionnaire—Kongeling,” he stumbled over what to call me, wincing on the last, as though the term of respect given to all adult sectorians might be an insult to me. I quickly schooled my expression, tamping down my anger.
“The King summoned us?” I asked as gently as I could.
It wasn’t this man’s fault.
“J-Just you,” he returned, his eyes widening even more as they flicked between me and Calder.
“So us then.” Calder’s tone was hard—he had no pity for the man, as I did.
“The festival is to begin tonight,” the man rushed out, taking a step back, out of Calder’s reach. “The King has offered for you to stay at the Keep for the duration.”
“How long is this festival supposed to go for?” I asked, wondering why the masters had even bothered. It must have been a game of some kind, because despite my fragile hope, there was still every chance I was going to face the full brunt of the Darkness at some point before the next day broke, and crumple under the pressure of it as every other Fjorn had before me.
“Seven days,” the man said. “P-Please. The King awaits you.”
With that, he turned on his heel and rushed back in the other direction. Probably to throw himself into the Sea of Storms. I wondered if Vidrol was the sort of man to punish him for my refusal. There weren’t enough stories of him to know for certain. Most of the tales about the King were of the relentless cruelty he showed his enemies—our enemies. He was loved for it as equally as he was feared for it. It almost seemed that he couldn’t be bothered with the people on this side of the Sea of Storms.