“What… what?” He spoke, opening his eyes. Rakel’s hair and face were wet.
“We’ve created an alliance! Between Ebria and King Loran!”
He was soaked too. Rain was falling. Rakel’s hands trembled as they tried to undo the knots around Emere’s ropes before she finally sighed in exasperation and began sawing at them with her knife. Once his hands were freed, Emere took her knife and cut the ropes that bound his feet.
A battle raged. Shouts of “Ayula!” came from all over the burning fort—that most versatile of Ebrian exclamations.
“How did you know to come here…?”
“Septima barged into our congregation and told us you’d been taken, that the Office of Truth was about to mobilize the Zero Legion for Ludvik. King Loran sprang from her seat right there and then. We gathered as many people as possible and came here.” Rakel pointed toward erupting columns of blue fire. “There’s Loran.”
Loran was keeping Powered elite legionaries at bay. Nearby was the wreckage of a Powered chariot, sending up a plume of violet smoke into the night. The Powered legionaries stood together like posed toy soldiers, unmoving. Emere remembered Loran doing this in Dehan Forest as well. The Powered armor might look just a little singed, but he knew the soldiers inside were burned to death.
Everywhere, Ebrians fought the rest of the Zero Legion. The people who had been so careful, hiding out underground, had risen up to attack an Imperial fortress. All of them ready for this to be the final night of their lives, as they must know they could not win against an Imperial legion. He couldn’t understand why they had decided to come here.
But hedidunderstand. He had understood for a long time. It was the same reason that had dragged him from the underground palace, that had drawn Ledonite and Kamori warriors to Arland of their own accord. The reason was Loran. She could do that. Unlike Emere himself…
He looked around for Ludvik and saw a man limping away, his golden tassels shaking on his shoulders. Emere stood, and the world seemed to spin. His knees buckled, but Rakel helped him to his feet.
“I think you are bleeding inside. You need treatment,” said Rakel with dead seriousness.
Emere resisted Rakel pulling him away from the battle. “I can still fight.”
“No, you can’t! The excitement is the only thing that’s keeping you standing. We have to take you to my—”
In all the years he’d known her, she had never sounded this desperate. He could sense his own doom in her heart-wrenching voice. But there was still something he had to do.
“No,” Emere interrupted gently. “This is not over. Rakel, you take care of the Ebrians… they will all die this way. I have to go.” He took a soft step away from Rakel, trying his best to stay on his two feet.
“What are you talking about? Go where? Never mind, I’m coming with you regardless!”
Emere tried a smile. His side screamed with pain.
“No, if we go together, it’ll be more dangerous.”
Rakel grabbed him by his shoulders, but he knew she would let him go. At Finvera Pass, she could have stopped him with one more word. But she wouldn’t, even when she knew perfectly well she could. He loved her for it.
Emere took her face in his hands, his knees somehow managing not to buckle. “I’ve always loved you. And I will as long as I live. But you were right. I am but a moth to a flame. I am so sorry.”
Rakel’s hands fell away from him. Her lips moved but no sound came out. He kissed them for the first time in ten years, and for the last time.
As he took his lips off hers, Rakel spoke. “You are going afterLudvik. Even if it means dying.” Her voice had regained her usual calm of a surgeon.
Emere nodded. “This is something I have to do. No one else can, and there is no time.”
The “vision” Ludvik had received—just as the Circuit of Destiny had appeared as Loran in his dreams, it must have appeared as Lysandros in Ludvik’s. Which meant it was the Circuit that had taught Ludvik how to set off the Star of Mersia, showing him the end Loran would bring. Emere couldn’t afford to doubt Ludvik’s visions, when the fate of Arland was at stake.
Rakel took a step back and said, in a choked voice, “King Loran is sure to ask me about you.”
Loran. Emere pondered for a moment. What if Ludvik was right? What if Loran was destined to end the world? What if he, by stopping Ludvik, was making the Circuit’s prophecy come true?
His head felt like it was somewhere else. Every other part of his body screamed in pain. He tried his hardest not to let that be the last thing Rakel remembered of him.
“Tell her that I believe,” Emere said, as he turned away.
Like the Ebrians and their faith in the Nameless God, Emere just wanted to believe in Loran.
38
