Chapter Text
“I don’t understand, my mistress,” Castorice said again, blinking back the tears that threatened to burn a trail down her face. “Why is it a celebration?”
Ever since she was a child, she had been Aidonia’s hand of death. Mercy, they called her. Mercy to escape misery. They brought her to the sick, the lame, the elderly, and they compelled her to lay hands on them so that their life and body faded away. It was better this way, they told her. Death was the destination all journeyed towards, and she was to be honored and welcomed as their gatekeeper.
But Castorice had always hated it, had always been consumed by the belief that what she did was wrong. How could it be right when her power had stolen her chance to ever know the touch of another? How could it be right when her cold hands could never give, they could only take, take, take—
Her duty had grown worse with the start of the war. Maiden of War they now called her, though they did not take her to the battlefield. No, instead, they bought back prisoners for her to execute. Still, at least these executions had always held a note of solemnity, whether in private or ceremonial ritual.
But this time, there was a fevered excitement coursing through the halls in preparation for the assembly tonight. An undeniable, savage glee.
Elder Amunet surveyed Castorice’s attire, always hovering as if she would lend a hand but never actually touching. She huffed in impatience. “It is the Crown Prince,” she stated, even as she had stated before. But as that was not explanation enough, she continued, “With his death, the Kremnoan spirit will be broken.”
“But he is Undying,” Castorice murmured, more to herself than anything. She was not sure if she could believe those stories brought back from the battlefield of a beastly warrior who shunned the spear and the sword and who returned from every mortal blow. They said that once even his head had been hewn from his shoulders and yet he had stood again only a little later, once more perfectly whole.
“Exactly,” Amunet hissed. “He is an abhorrence to Thanantos. You will lay your hands on him and you will overcome his defiance. And this war will be over.”
Ah. Castorice did so desperately wish for the war to be over. And this Crown Prince, this Mydeimos, had taken the lives of so many of her people. Why he had come here to this isolated land, she did not know, but it was to his own folly.
One last sacrifice. She breathed in and she breathed out. One last sacrifice. She would not celebrate as the others did, she would mourn this death as she mourned all deaths, but it would be the last to mark the end of this terrible war.
The gathering hall was filled with a throng of people, their hatred and murmuring voices a thick undertow beneath an ocean’s surface. Castorice could not bear to look out over them for she dreaded to see the reverence clouding their judgment when they looked upon her. They never saw her, small, lonely, and afraid. They only saw what they worshiped, that dreadful hand of shadow.
Although the hall was lit with candlelight, it all still felt despondently dark. She let herself be guided to the center of the dais where the captive was chained to the floor. When the guardsmen around her stood still, she at last raised her head and looked at the prisoner.
He was fire itself, bound into human flesh.
Fire always drew Castorice like a moth to flame. She knew in her heart that the hand of another was warm, but as she could never experience this, she would instead hold her frigid fingers as close to a flame as she would be able.
This man was the same color, golden skinned, golden haired, and golden eyed. He had been bereft of all armor and clothes save for a dark pair of trousers, but his body was painted in red with the curling marks of flame like some protective ward against the cold. The ragged edges of his hair were warmed with an orange hue, and the starburst pattern in his eyes was the very sun itself. Those eyes were radiant with untamed life.
He knelt there, upright and proud, his wrists bound in short chains looped through rings embedded into the hard stone beneath his knees. Even brought low to such a position, Castorice could see he was a man of great stature, and his presence alone seemed to make everyone around him seem small even as they stood above him. His chin was held high, his gaze meeting hers without fear.
She did not know what to think. All prisoners before this had behaved in two ways. They would rage and curse her name or they would howl and beg for mercy, possibly one right after the other.
He kept his dignity, not giving any indication of hearing the growing chants for his death other than in the hard force with which he held his jaw.
How did they even capture him? The question flickered across Castorice’s mind, but although she was desperate for an answer, there was no time to resolve it. It would do her no good to ask later, surely that would only worsen the guilt she knew would follow this ceremony. But she could guess. Guess that they had overtaken him in one of his temporary deaths. Still, it was strange that it was just he, and that no soldiers had been taken with him. And if he had died and returned, he had been injured since then, because his body was also marked with bruises and cuts crusted with golden blood.
Golden blood.
Oh.
When Castorice accidentally pricked her finger on a sewing needle, she’d found that her blood was a golden color, and she had been told that this was but one of the many things that set her apart from humanity. She’d been told she was blessed by their god, marked to have the power of divinity.
Naturally, she should have expected him to also be touched by his god with his astonishing power, but still, she had not expected to see him share that same bright blood. It was discomforting.
We should not be enemies, some rebellious part of her heart whispered, and she stuffed it back down as quickly as she was able.
He was looking at her. As the hearld’s droning voice listed his many sins, the crown prince of Kremnos looked at her. It was not the gaze of someone beholding his executioner nor his idol. He looked at with a sense of curiosity and—could it be—perhaps even a color of compassion?
As the heard drew to a close and beckoned her forward, Castorice found her breath escaping in desperate, terrified pants. He should be the one afraid, and yet it was she who was trembling. As she stretched out her hands, a cautious dread at last shadowed his expression. But as her hand descended with damning authority upon his brow, he looked beyond it to again meet her eyes, and the…sympathy she found there was impossibly tender.
If only you had never come here, her heart lamented. If only you had stayed home, you might have lived forever.
The warmth of his skin receded under the cold of her touch and she waited to watch the body crumble away into ashes.
But nothing happened. Although she felt his pulse slow and stop, his eyes remained open even as the light left them, and his body remained hale and whole.
He cannot come back, Castorice assured herself. Not while I am still touching him. But will happen when I draw my hand away?
Yet even as her hand held in place, she felt something thrum against her power, like fingers striking the strings of a harp. And then pressure, a growing resistance against the cold, growing hotter and hotter. It was unlike anything she had ever felt, and yet…yet how could it feel familiar?
She snatched her hand back with a gasp even as the spark in his eyes flared open in triumph and his chest heaved with new breath.
He grinned at her. Oh, what could she do, he grinned at her. And she could not even say he did it in mockery, but almost as if in pride to prove himself before her.
“You have my thanks, Maiden of Death,” he said, ringing loud and clear. “The hyenas here wounded me even after I was chained, and I was in need of a good heal.”
Heal. She gaped. Her hands did not bring healing. It was his body that had regenerated anew, cuts closed and bruises fading. So what if it had happened at her touch; that did not mean she had healed him, she had just tried to kill him. No, she had killed him and yet here he was—
Even as gasps and shouts of protests broke out across the assembly one of the guards standing nearby lifted his sword and dashed it across the man’s back. “Dog!” the guard cried out, this time stabbing the sword through one of the prisoner’s shoulders. “How dare you disrespect our Maiden!”
Castorice knew it pierced his lung from the awful sound that broke from his throat, and she flung out her hands. “Stop!”
The sheer reach of her hands sent the guard leaping backwards to safety. She looked down in terror at Mydeimos as he recovered from this second, more violent death.
“The only thing you are proving here,” Mydeimos snarled, his words wet with his own blood as he spat it from his mouth. “Is that Death is not so powerful as you supposed.” He raised his voice so that it carried through the whole hall. “Are you all so eager to die? Are you all so convinced that it is a paradise on the other side? Or do you hope for a nothingness to consume your fruitless lives? It is neither! It is a river clogged with the weight of thousands of souls, all mourning the lives they have lost! Do not go gently into its dark. It is better to live! It is better to fight with the fury of the sun! So, what if the sun must descend— you will see it rise again!”
The crowd was roaring, clamoring for his death. Amunet’s arms were raised, but Castorice could not hear what she was saying. Any moment now, the pretense of order would be broken and that mob would descend on the prisoner like a pack of dogs. Even if he his power could overcome that, she could not bear to watch, could not bear to even imagine—
“I will kill him!” she screamed and her voice pierced even over the din. The tumult subsided, and all eyes turned to her, hopeful and questioning. Amunet was staring at her with intrigued appraisal. “I…” Castorice swallowed, scrambling to find some way to make them believe her when her power had not stayed permanent the first time. “I…felt something when our powers clashed. Something familiar. The power of Nikador, perhaps. They do say Nikador and Thanatos were…once friends long ago before…” The stares had grown hard at this, and she hurried to keep ahead of the lust for violence. “Thanatos turned against Nikador. And I most certainly shall overcome him as well. I just need time. Time to study and test it…but I need. I need privacy.”
The hall was quiet, drinking in her declaration with growing confidence.
She folded her hands, hoping that could hide how they trembled. “Yes. Privacy. Take him away, to my rooms, and I will continue this there. No one shall disturb me till I have prevailed.” When no one had yet stepped forward, she lifted her chin and declared, “Thanatos has spoken.”
And then the whole assembly raised their voice in a dreadful cheer.