Page 114 of Synodic

“I’m home,” I said dreamily before sleep blanketed over me again and swaddled me in the calmest rest I’d ever known.

41

I woke to Rowen stretched out beside me on his bed, wearing nothing but the pants from last night.

“Good morning,” he smiled at me through my wild curtain of hair. “You hungry?”

Next to him was a large rattan tray containing a colorful spread of ripe berries, leafy greens, grains, and sweet nectars. I was so out of it, I hadn’t even noticed him leave my side, much less return with a mound of glorious smelling food. Not having eaten a proper meal in days, I immediately dug in, gorging my stomach well past its shrunken limits.

“Slow down,” he murmured gently. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“It’s too delicious. And I’ve never had breakfast in bed,” I said, scooping yet another forest berry through the sticky-sweet honey before sucking it into my mouth. I savored the dripping juices. Licking my fingers, I eyed Rowen watching me intently with a grin, one hand relaxed behind his head. “What?” I asked skeptically, matching his wry smile.

“Do you know how many mornings I wished I could wake up next to you like this? Never imagining how much I would enjoy watching you. You know, you are quite adorable when you drool on my sheets.”

“I don’t drool,” I said, chucking a berry at his face which he promptly caught between his sparkling teeth. He smiled as he chewed and swallowed, but his mirth slowly paled, sinking into a humorless sigh, and his body shifted into a serious upright position.

In all the nights I slept alone, his bed had felt too big, too empty without him, but now it was overcrowded and not by his commanding body, or the large tray of food between us, but by the story left untold upon his lips. “If you’re feeling up to it, I’d like to explain everything now.”

I nodded. Last night I had been too tired to care. My weighted and exhausted body had only wanted release, but now I wanted answers.

“I never wanted you to find out about Aliphoura and me in the way you did. I hate that you heard it from her lips, on her terms. That is something I will never be able to take back, never be able to forgive myself for.” Rowen’s eyes held the burden of immeasurable guilt. “I wanted to tell you the night of Celenova, to find someway around her curse, but we got separated before the fire broke out.”

He had wanted to tell me something as the auroral lights danced around us in a celestial serenade, but Demil had snatched me away, taking the moment along with him.

“The memory I told you about in Weir Falls.” He looked to me inquisitively and I nodded in recollection, encouraging him to continue. “It’s the memory of the day Fou plunged her dagger into my heart,” he said, running his fingers over the scar that marred the skin just to the left of his sternum.

“Fou and I grew up together, in what used to be Viltarran. The entire landhold was her birthright, to be inherited upon the passing of her father, Lord Leones. My mother was one of the many maids who lived within the massive walls of Leones’ palase, a meagre citydom where all labored for everything they had.

“Becoming with child, my mother feared for her position and the life of her unborn babe should she be discovered. She concealed her swollen belly and gave birth to me in the cellars. She hid me for as long as she could, sometimes in cupboards from sunup to sundown, until I was big enough to start earning my keep, earning my right to breathe and eat scraps of food just as everyone else. My mother made the best of every moment and I was happy. It was more than most had.”

My mouth went dry, and my heart pained for how Rowen had been raised in the earliest years of his life. But I knew this was just the tip of the iceberg of the pain he’d experienced throughout his life.

“I started as an errand boy in the kitchens and scullery, working there for years before I ever saw Fou. Not much older than I, she was so clean and beautiful, wearing the finest clothing I’d ever seen. She reminded me of the sky sprites from the stories my mother whispered to me as she put me to bed. Stories of tricky skylings transforming themselves into beautiful maidens to bewitch and beguile anyone in their path. And this captivating little sky sprite was using her magic to convince an entire galley of adults to give her the freshly-baked sweet breads per the demands of her father.

“Walking out with a wicked smile on her face and a basket full of sugared cakes, I moved in front of her. I blocked her path, unsure whether I wanted to follow her to the heavens from which she came, or call her out for her lies. As if she knew my contemplations, she offered me one of her stolen cakes—either for my silence or solidarity, I never knew which, but from that moment on we became inseparable.

“I was always drawn to how she could command a crowd of fools, use her sky magic to convince anyone of anything if it helped her get what she wanted. I thought I was above all the rest, that I could see through her. Little did I know I was just a fool as anyone.

“After my mother passed unexpectedly, I was no longer allowed in the kitchens. Alone and in mourning, I took whatever work I could find, sleeping anywhere I could. I began earning my keep in the fields and stables, longing for the life of a Viltarran soldier. Bearing no birthing papers, all I could do was watch and learn from the sidelines, practicing their movements over and over again in the shadows, then improving upon them.

“Over the years, Fou always supported and believed in me, even helped me build my own personal training field up in the mountains. It grew to be our sanctuary, where we’d spend most of our days together, but word began to spread that Lord Leones’ prized daughter was spending time with the likes of a young man no better than a mutt. Infuriated, he sent his guards to follow us, catch us red-handed and bring us back to him for questioning.

“His soldiers bombarded us in our safe haven. One of them laid a hand on Fou as she scrambled to dress, and I lost my mind, taking out a handful of Viltarran’s best men. I was sure I would be put to death or banished, but Leones was impressed with my talent for combat, and my skills weren’t to be wasted in his citydom. He put me straight to work training a small battalion of his army, a position that kept me close by his side.

“I never knew my father, could scarcely imagine what having one would feel like, but I looked up to Leones in the way I imagined having a father would be. He was a young ruler, not even to his half-life with a long rule still before him. He gave all that he could to his people, trying his best as the land began to die and wither all around us. But for as long as I could remember, Fou only spoke of what a fool he was, how the citydom suffered from his soft old ways. She always spoke of the future, a future she would command when her father was gone.

“When her father died, it shocked us all. Having left this world so suddenly, Leones never wrote his final rights and all was bequeathed to Aliphoura. As the new ruler of Viltarran she slowly began ordering the most drastic and ridiculous of changes. Raising the courtier’s taxes, demoting and banishing those most loyal to her late father, putting unnecessary burdens on local markets and traders. It was absolute madness but I chalked it up to the loss of her father, even when she declared herself Queen over her inherited title of Lady.

“I was loyal and stayed by her side through it all, trusting her vision of our future together. She said we would have it all, but I didn’t want it all. I just wanted her.

“When I would voice my opinion or disagree with a new decree, she would placate me in the moment yet still carry out her wishes in a more clandestine manner. We fought more and more, especially when she began to dig and tear up the ground, depleting what precious natural resources we had left, needing to preserve them rather than burn through them faster.

“With no end to her madness in sight, her ideas became more radical and frightening by the second. She began building massive chambers beneath the ground, claiming it was in preparation for the sky that would eventually foul as well. And as slow as a boiling pot of water, she integrated the whole citydom and its people into the crypts just below the ruins of Viltarran. There was nothing left of the home I had loved and lived in with my mother. It had been buried. All of it. Even the people. Except those who went missing. Subjects who objected too loudly mysteriously disappeared, even those who objected quietly were never seen again. She had eyes and ears everywhere, heard every whisper and saw every transgression against her. She was always ten steps ahead of us all.

“The Crystal Crypts became the new world I could never accept. My heart ached for all that was lost, and I would often sneak to the surface by way of my hidden door. By that point, all we did was fight and disagree. I wanted to leave, but how could I? How could I ever leave her? She was my future. My everything. I thought if I stayed, I could change her, help her see the flaw in her ways.

“It was hard to admit for how long I had been deceived, how long I thought I could convince her to change her ways. How wholly love blinded me. I questioned how she was sustaining all her subjects for so long, and it wasn’t until I walked to the lower cells and saw all the missing souls lined in the skulls of the dead that I knew just how far Fou had fallen.

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