And in its place… something I have been denying for so long…
The vengeance, that was always just underneath my consciousness, which I’ve always seen as this odd, foreign part of me, but which was, in reality, my true nature.
I am my father’s daughter.
And in the aftermath of this intractable realization, I discover a weakness within my heart that’s of cataclysmic implication if I’m not careful: Of all the brutal truths that have taken me down, it’s the one about Merc that I find the hardest to bear.
It should be the revelation of who my father is or the sense that my mother, in hiding me, also took things from me… things that I now recognize as skillsI once had, experiences I enjoyed, places I lived. Things I did… of which some are intimate—because Merc was right. My first time having sex with him was not that of a virgin, and what does that mean? Did I have a lover, sometime long ago? A man I had deep feelings for… a husband? A family? Those headaches I always got if I looked too deeply into a shadowy feeling or passing inclination I now recognize were some kind of mental patch, obscuring whatever is beneath.
My father is evil, but my mother is the thief of me.
Plus I’ve just learned I am dead, which would explain why I’ve never had a cycle as women do.
And all of this informs my current destiny: I am going to face the Dark King this very eve. I am going to the altar on my own, before Julion arrives with his men, and I am going there with no weapons, no army, and no defenses, for a greeting which I may very well not survive.
So surelythat, on top of all of my truths, should count most toward my internal devastation.
But no, none of that is the worst.
Merc’s betrayal, and all I did not see when it came to him, is themostpainful part of this. And as if my mind is determined to punish me for the soppy emotions that helped with the eclipsing, I revisit snippets of him: His first arrival in the pub, the copper he tried to give me downstairs and then in the guest room he was given… him yelling at me in the tunnel and then riding thebalastriumphantly out of the moat… I remember his thunderous ride to me when I was down on the bed of the Lake of Lost Souls, having tangled with the skystalker… and now he’s in that window seat at the Outpost, sketching in his journal, and glaring at Thale when he walked in on that man and me.
I revisit Merc slumped in that cell in the warrior queen’s dungeon and him washing my hair and making love to me in that luxurious suite…
There’s such a temptation to believe what he said just now, about his feelings being true. But what was it that he said about the Dark King?
The evil gets in you and knows your deepest fears and desires.
Merc is, after all, a demon, and I need to believe the reality of what’s in front of me, not the persuasive words that were just spoken by him. I must face whatever awaits me with my father on my own, and without the blurring of my feelings.
On that note, I focus once more on my reflection in the water. The gloaming has arrived, and so my eyes are barely visible, yet I see them clearly, the pale outer rim and the dark center hole.
That’s as black as my dead soul.
As I rise up from the water, I hear the dripping from my clothing and mybody, and feel the cold even more deeply. Staring across the pond, I picture what is not so far away, just a little more north and a little more west than my current position.
The altar. Where the Dark King was supposedly sacrificed.
I thought the compass was sending me to the Sooths. But no, their temple just happens to be between where I am and the ancient seat of the Fulcrum.
That is where I must go.
When I turn to Lavante, his head is up and his alert eyes are on me. I expect him to balk as I walk over. He does not, but perhaps evil is the kind of thing you can become familiar with.
Yes, I know what I must do and where I must go now. And this I must do alone.
No more hiding. Ever.
The stallion’s quiet nicker of welcome, so plaintive and lovely, would have brought tears to my eyes earlier. No more. There will be no tears for me now or in the future.
I take off the saddle, take off the bridle, and dump the tack on the shoreline. “You are a beautiful horse.”
As I pass my palm down his muscular neck, his golden coat gleams in the last rays of the setting sun. I think of Lalah and Emma, and remember the moment he was given to me, a great asset in return for a bad deed done for all the right reasons. I recall riding him through so many trials, surging over grass, over decayed marble, through mist. He is more than beautiful. He is fierce, courageous, loyal, and smart.
“I will miss you,” I say in a low voice.
More than that, I will miss what I knew of the world when he was mine. And I mourn the version of reality I thought I was in.
And then I go still.
