Page 36 of The Tenth Muse

It’d beendecades since I was last here.

I stared at the frail man in the bed, his rasped breaths sliced with coughs that shook his entire body.

Strolling over to his bedside I waited, realizing that he could not even turn his gaze up to look upon me. Kneeling on the marble floor, I looked into his olive eyes, his pallid skin covered in speckles of sweat.

“I-I called to you for so long,” he croaked.

I’d given him forever, and it’d only taken eight turnings for him to begin to call on me. Once he’d fallen ill again, he continued to deteriorate until he could no longer leave his bed, leaving the Empress ruling in his stead.

She’d taken lovers to produce heirs that had ruled ever since.

Forty-seven turnings later, here I was. Not because I wanted to be.

“You coward. You promised me immortality,” he spat, his saliva tinged with black blood. “This is not immortality. It’s torture.”

“I gave you what you asked for. You did not specify a condition of your terms.”

“Then if you will not restore me, end this. I beseech you!”

“We made a bargain. You gained immortality and you gave me her.”

I glance over at the figure cast in shadows in the corner. My songbird insisted on coming with me today. I would have just as easily never come. “I only returned because she asked. Becausetheyrequested to look upon you one last time.”

Dozens of splendors filed out from behind Lyric, encircling the Emperor’s bed. He sputtered out a cough in surprise. “You’re all here.”

“We are,” Sylka said, splaying her wings wide. The other splendors followed suit, until the only one who hadn’t was Lyric.

No, she waited until the Emperor’s gaze drew to her before she lifted her wings high. Lush feathers spanned strong bones that reached across the room, larger than any of the others, for she had saved them all, and in return, they had nurtured her until she’d grown with a wingspan to reflect her worth to them.

To all of us.

Every time I saw them I was in awe.

“Will you, will you sing for me?” he asked. “I know you owe me nothing, but I beg of your generosity, of the wonders you were, that you would see it in your hearts to do this small favor for a dying man. It has been so long since I’ve heard a splendor’s song.”

“No,” Lyric said, glancing around the circle. “I don’t think we will… You took our voice. You do not get to reap the rewards now that we’ve reclaimed it.”

“However,” I said, placing a hand on the Emperor’s shoulder. “I never realized how lonely it must be for you. Unable to rule with your affliction, ignored by the Empresses who now rule in your stead. Who’ve truly brought the empire to greatness.”

The Emperor’s face morphed into a sneer. “I should have been the greatest Emperor that ever lived. I once was! I evaded death, outlived all my enemies, richer than any of them.”

I shook my head. “Yet here you lay, a pauper in every way that matters.”

Lyric stepped out of the circle a moment before coming back and setting something on the Emperor’s bedside table. “Figured you might need a companion. Of course you’ll need some assistance cranking it after we leave.”

Turning the wooden bar a few times, she moved next to me, and wrapped her arms around my waist, tail curling around the base of my throat.

A stilted melody crooned from the dusty woodeneternaland the splendors began to leave one by one, returning to Occasus. Lyric and I watched the once-Emperor wince and groan as he reached for the broken trinket. Gnarled fingers clutched the bird, dappled in age spots, a crooked smile pulling at his lips. Nudging it closer to himself, he moved for the crank, tipping the eternal. It clattered across the floor, landing where our feet once stood.

The greatest folly of man was elevating himself by smothering out the oppressed. Eventually, all he was left with was silence.

Landing in the display room, Lyric still wrapped around me, I craned my neck and kissed the plumes at her temples. “Do you feel better?”

“I do,” she said, coming around and feathering kisses across my cheeks, where the edge of my mask hid my full face from view. From everyone but her.My compara.The tail wrapped around my throat tightened, and I gasped out a chuckle.

Lyric pulled her wings back, walking toward it until she stepped up, her lithe form framed in the waning sky as it peeled from deep orange into midnight.

A fucking goddess I’d worship daily at the altar of.

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