Cain’s voice. There he sat, in a simple wooden chair. Emere turned to him.
“Do you know who attacked Rakel’s house just now?”
Cain turned his gaze toward the distance for a moment before meeting Emere’s eyes again. “A detachment of the Zero Legion of the Office of Truth. I don’t know how they discovered your whereabouts. Septima seems to have escaped somehow.”
Someone must’ve spotted him coming back from the congregation.
“I’ll be dead soon,” he said. If he wasn’t dead already.
Cain shook his head. “They’ve taken you alive. Ludvik must have unfinished business with you.”
Emere scoffed. “Business? I’m a nothing, a dreamer who spenthis life chasing after foolish hopes, barely more than a title. And not even a title anymore, now that I am a wanted man.”
“That isn’t so. You have the destiny of a king.”
This came from a different voice—Loran’s voice, though he could now hear the difference from the real one he had just recently heard in the underground congregation.
“Enough with the riddles!” Emere strode up to the vision of Loran, who had appeared before him as he spat out his words.
The Circuit masked as Loran looked back at him, unperturbed.
“It is a king who decides destiny. Your time is drawing near.”
Emere glared at Loran, this avatar of the Circuit of Destiny. His body was being held by the Office of Truth, and his destiny was to be decided by Ludvik, a man who had already tried to kill him and who could now do it at his leisure. ButEmeredecided destiny?
“I refuse to listen to you anymore,” Emere scoffed. “The real Loran is already here in the Capital. I’m not the one who will defeat Ludvik. It will be Loran, King of Arland, and the Ebrians in the Capital who do it.Theyare the ones who shall decide destiny.”
As the words left his mouth, he felt an emptiness in his chest, which quickly filled with a feeling of powerlessness. Of course he would never be king; of course such a destiny was never in his future.
A hint of sorrow passed over Loran’s—the Circuit of Destiny’s—face. But Emere found the feelings of something that wasn’t even human anymore impossible to understand.
Cain said, “We don’t know what Ludvik wants, Councillor. I will try to help you any way I can from here. But you must never give Ludvik what he wants.”
Loran turned to Cain. “Cain, you must not interfere with what these two will do.”
Cain stood. “My dear dead sorcerers, I think I have come to a decent understanding of how things work in here.” He smirked. “If you wish to stop me, try.”
On the red earth, against the violet sky, Cain and Loran stared at each other. Emere felt a pressure in his chest, as if a clawed hand were gripping his heart.
Something cold hit his face. Emere screwed his eyes shut and opened them. The wasteland was gone, and Emere was tied to a wooden pole. Before him stood a burly woman holding a dripping bucket, and next to him stood Ludvik, wearing armor over the dress uniform of the Office of Truth with the tassels of golden thread to represent his native Tythonia.
“Your Royal Highness, how tragic our reunion is under such unfortunate circumstances. But you already understand why we must meet this way.”
A full moon hung in the sky. Orders were being barked somewhere, with answering choruses of affirmation. Clanking armor, turning wheels, marching feet… The sounds came with the occasional flash or glimmer of Powered pale blue light. Emere saw a group of soldiers in white armor pass by some paces beyond him. Then another, this time in Powered white armor. It must be the day the Office of Truth had planned for so long.
Ludvik stared up at the sky and said, “Now, this very moment, is our destiny.”
Emere found himself, of late, getting quite sick of destiny.
35
ARIENNE
The illumination of her glass orb barely reached a step beyond her. In this place, darkness felt not like the absence of light but like substance that filled the air. She walked through it on and on, until she felt exhausted and hungry, but the black rock steps going down continued endlessly.
The stickiness of the air was getting worse. As she touched the orb, a stinging pain made her look down at her hand. It was now covered in countless little pustules.
Noam shivered in his room inside the wooden tower in her mind. He was clearly overwhelmed by the smell of the Grim King, but never once did he suggest they turn back.
