Rina lifted her head, the ground swaying, and saw Fin had collapsed. She had the sense of ice-cold water draining through her.

Fin groaned. His hands came to his sides, and he pushed up.

"Where is she?" he asked, his words slow. Uncertain.

Rina shook her head. "I—I don't know," she said, even as she knew the answer.

He did too. It was clear in the way he clambered to his feet with unsteadied movements and peered over. In the ashen face he turned on her—the hate in his eyes.

"What the hell did you do?!"

"No..." Rina said to herself. "No, she can't have." She began to rise and move to him, but he shoved past her.

"I swear," he hissed. "I swear if she's dead and you're still here when I come back..." He let the words trail off. His expression said it all. The pupils big and black, with only a thin line of purple. The feral twist of his lips.

He sprinted along the cliff face, disappearing down the track to the beach.

Rina stared after him. She squeezed her eyes and shook her head, one hand coming up to reach her throat. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. She repeated the words again and again in her mind, even as she remembered that thrill at the thought of Martha paying. The sound of a scream from down below broke her trance.

"Martha," she whispered. A cold seed bloomed in her stomach.

On unsteady legs, Rina approached the cliff edge. All she saw was a foot and a stray purple slipper in the sand.

Fin appeared moving backwards on his knees, dragging the body of his lover. Martha's head emerged, then her shoulders, her neck as loose as the broken neck of a bird. Her eyes closed, and her face peaceful. Fin halted to press his forehead against Martha's, and his body heaved.

A tear rolled down Rina's cheek, to her chin, and fell to the sand.

Fin went still. His head jerked up to look at her, his hate-filled eyes full of promise.

The cold within Rina's core spread until she was nothing but ice and death. Acid stung her mouth, and she bent over and vomited. When she was done, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Fin lay across Martha now, body shaking. She should go to him. Perhaps there was a small spark of life left—she might be able to—

No, go. It's not safe here! a voice in her mind said.

She shook the voice away. Fin and Mai had both called her a bringer of life—surely she could bring Martha back.

No! the voice said again as she turned to the path down the cliff. The edge of fear within it cut at her nape and made her pause, then twist behind her to the land skirting the edge of Nebia.

Run, the voice said. So she did.

Her feet kicked up dust, red in the sunset like blood.

Run.

She moved past cypress trees and date palms, through low shrubland, their thorns clawing at her. They knew what she'd done. They wouldn't let her forget.

So she ran. From the world, from Martha, from him—from herself.

The world darkened, lit by flashes of yellow that zipped through the air, and the dregs of the sun's rays wrung from dense clouds.

Sweat coated her skin when she slowed, the ground sloping downhill until it reached a depression below the western walls of the city. The sandstone walls barred her entry, and the wind picked up. She tasted dust. Blades of grass flickered light and dark below storm-churned clouds. They slithered in the evening wind, hissing as they brushed against each other. Murderer, they seemed to say.

The silhouette of an ancient olive tree on a rise materialised from the shadows, its wind-warped branches and leaves spun from silver. Fallen olives crushed beneath her shoes, sweet-smelling in the twilight air. Nearby, the trickle of a stream.

As the first drop of rain fell, she detected the dark-on-dark outline of a hollow at the base of the trunk and settled there, out of the wind and rain.

She cried.

The cool skin of a hand cupping her face woke her. She flinched.

Shh, it's me, my dear. I'm here. The voice began in the crystal under her skin, reverberating through her veins.

Letting her eyes unfocus, Rina found that shimmering golden thread and spoke down it. Hold me, she said.

Mai cradled her, wrapping her in the scent of roses.

Eventually, he lifted her and carried her through the starless night. Droplets fell on her face until she felt the weight of the city walls above her as he took a hidden tunnel beneath them, and then they were in the night air again, rain soaking through her clothes.

A door creaked open, and she was laid on a carriage seat, her head resting on his lap, the smell of polished leather and oil about them. The door slammed shut, and Mai banged twice on the roof. He stroked her hair as the carriage wheels clacked over cobblestones, circling up, up, up through the city streets.

25.2

The pink light of sunrise slanted from the east, glowing through Rina's eyelids. Her hand reached for Fin's crystal, instead touching raised flesh. She squeezed her eyelids tighter as if by doing so, she might seal shut the crack in her heart and block out the world.

The world said no. The world was a predator, and it pushed its spindly black legs into that crack in her chest, wrenching it wider, and wider until it crawled out into the dawn and forced her to look at it—at her.

Whoever said all that was light was good had lied. The light was cruel. The light of day laid bare reality. Forced one to face their demons, when all they wanted to do was throw the covers over their head and hide from the world. At this moment, Rina hated the light, but she couldn't escape the rise of the sun any more than she could control the moon-pulled tide.

She rolled to her side. A tall, slender form slept in a chair beside her, his cheek pillowed in his hand, head propped by his elbow. Black ringlets of hair hung across his face, the fanned lashes peaking out like ravens tails.

Olav, she realised.

He wore civilian clothes. Black suede trousers that hugged the long legs stretched out before him, and a loose white shirt tucked in. On his feet, toeless slippers revealed the dark tufts of hair on his toes. He mumbled in his sleep and shuffled lower into the seat.

Despite herself, Rina smiled, reached out and touched his knee.

Bright-blue eyes opened and locked on her.

She inhaled, breathing in the scent of roses, and drew back her hand, but Mai caught it and held fast. He sat up with a slow, crooked smile, revealing one elongated canine.

Don't fear me, my dear.

His hand was cold, and she frowned. As if reading her mind, he lowered his eyes, and a warm spark grew between their palms. It zapped across her skin and fizzed through her veins, moving to that hole in her heart, and stopped there where it pressed against it like a healing hand.

He cared. He barely knew her, but he cared.

A tear pricked Rina's eye. Then another, and another, and she was crying, her body heaving as she grieved for the friend she had killed and the lover she had lost.

Mai let her weep. He didn't say a word—just sent compassion down the bond between them—until the tears crusted on her cheeks and the sheet dried.

"What happened?" he asked.

Rina began to reply down the line, then realised he had spoken the words aloud. She sniffed and told him, finishing with, "When I got his note, I thought he wanted me to come to him."

Mai shook his head, and Rina frowned. "No, I sent the note when I learned he had arrived." He looked down and bit his lip, then met her gaze again. "I thought you'd want to welcome him home."

"You—how'd you know?"

"I'm the emperor."

Swallowing, Rina nodded. "Of course. Thank you. It was kind."

He smiled a rueful smile. "Not completely. I— Perhaps I should have known better."

"How?"

"Let me tell you the truth. I didn't trust Magister Ro to treat my Chosen well, and you were so reluctant to go, so I asked Fin to look after you for the voyage. To be your friend."

"You didn't trust Magister Ro—but you still sent her?"

Mai shrugged. "Politics is a fragile game."

"But you're the emperor. Couldn't you just tell her to—"

The shake of his head halted her words. "If I learned anything from Arkis and Elia, it was power is a fickle thing. Wielding it with brute force risks snapping it or smashing the things you care about in the process. In the end, Magister Ro forced my hand, and I made an example of her, but I would rather have her at my side than at my back.

"The supervision of the Chosen is an honoured role. It communicated my trust of her to others, and I hoped it would give me her allegiance."

Rina drew the sheet up to her chin. "I don't understand why Fin."

A solemn expression settled on Mai's face. "He has an appreciation of Denese women, though he assured the Magisterium any relations in the past were over, and he was—well..." Mai tilted his head.

Rina grit her teeth. A light flashed across her vision. "Charming?" she finished for him.

His answer was the inclination of his head.

"So you had him seduce me?"

Mai's face sobered. He leaned forward in his seat and cupped her face. "No, not that. I thought he'd help you grow used to the men in Nebia, and protect you."

"I thought it was just a flirtation." That was what Martha said.

She could still hear Martha's voice, clear, like she stood before her. This would fade. Be lost to time. Another memory wriggled to the surface of her mind, from after the dinner when Mai announced his plan. Martha had told her a handsome Euran shadowed her before she was chosen.

"Before Fin, too..." she whispered. "You—you've been playing a game with us." The logical part of Rina's mind reminded her she spoke to a godlike-emperor. A long-lived ruler. Yet she'd drank of his blood, felt him move through her veins. Her lips could not hold back her thoughts, not to him.

He didn't deny it, nor did he look away. Those bright-blue eyes were unflinching, unapologetic.

"I won't insult your intelligence by lying, but I can tell you the manipulation was necessary."

Rina scrambled from the covers and sat up, noting the way his face fell when their touch broke, and put her back to the headboard, only then realising her dress had been removed and she wore only a thin shift. She grabbed at the covers and bunched them around her.

"I don't understand." She spoke the words weakly and hated herself for it. She wanted to be furious, to wield her words like daggers.

Mai stood from the chair. Despite his pallor, his form was athletic, the sun outlining his torso through the white cotton. Not just a man to sit on his throne. Not him—and not just a man.

He settled on the bed beside her, stretching out his legs, ankles crossed. Rina didn't dare stop him from retaking her hand, or from pulling her head to rest against his cool chest, against the thud, thud, thud of his heart.

He sighed. "I waited an age for you, Rina."

She turned her head to him, but his hand squeezed hers, and something down that thread between them told her to be still. To listen.

"I did what I did, in the beginning, to keep Eurora safe and ensure the people of my homeland lived on. Yet I found myself responsible for the Denese ancestors with the most powerful bloodlines, and I was terrified. Were your people to learn how to wield their power, they might rip this world apart."

Rina swallowed.

"When I visited the temple of Elia after The Devastation and found the gifted children, I also found a prophesy, hidden away from the royal family by the mages. It warned of the greed of keeping the Carnelian Way hidden, and of the devastation that might come if the mages continued to do this. I wonder if this fate was written in the stars, as it also said were the worst to happen, hope was possible. A yellow-eyed ancestor of those responsible for the destruction would forge an alliance with those who had been wronged, and balance would come."

A calloused thumb stroked behind Rina's ear, and she shivered. He sent more warmth into her core.

"So, I waited."

He twisted her head and pinned her with his aquamarine gaze. "I think I waited for you."

She sensed the thread between them, from his chest to hers. It tugged, pulling her closer. His hand came to her breastbone and rested over the crystal there.

Do you feel it? he asked down the line.

In answer, Rina let herself fall into that other spectrum with him, the room suddenly made of light and energy, and she saw the strand that joined them, like a diamond rope shining in the midday sun. She reached out and touched it, and he shivered.

Why wait?

In the physical plain, Mai wrapped his arms about her, moving her, so she sat between his legs, her back against his chest. I didn't know. Not until you tasted my blood, and I yours, and I knew then—in my marrow.

And yet you let me go to him. You sent me the note.

He kissed the crown of her head. The first infatuations of our youth should never be taken from us if it can be helped. They're as beautiful and fleeting as the sunrise over the sea. I wanted you to work out for yourself that he wasn't right for you. I knew your passion would fade. His body tensed as he said the words in her mind, his fists curling.

His next words came aloud. "He lied to me. To you. I wanted you to know it wasn't meant to be—but not like that."

Rina frowned. Was he jealous?

"But—you were always my first love." She almost added, "My god," but held her tongue. He was still a man. His flesh against hers. His heart beating beneath his skin. He bled, as did other men, even if his blood had her binding threads of magic. Creating incredible things.

Rina thought of all the arranged matches in Amadore. How did this fit with his appreciation of youthful infatuations? Her stomach tensed as she took the thought a step further and said down that line, You've loved before?

Mai chuckled. I'm a man, not a saint, and a long-lived one at that. Would you have me keep an empty bed all these centuries when I've not even shared yours?

The last part of the sentence made Rina's toes curl. The energy pulsed around their phantom forms, merging them. In this place, the worries of the world faded away, seeming little more than the far-off warnings of prophets.

A ghost of a kiss brushed her throat. Teeth scraped the sensitive skin. Mai cradled her as Fin had Martha.

Martha.

She couldn't do this. Not now. She should be crying, mourning, berating herself for what she'd done. She let herself return to the physical world, passing through a veil of red that was Martha's blood. Blinking in the morning light, Rina still found herself in Mai's arms, aware of that diamond strand between them.

"Tell me what happened—with him."

Behind her, Mai stilled. His breath came warm against her nape.

"Fin was more than a captain. He comes from a prominent family in the Baní islands."

Rina nodded, remembering the story he'd told her.

"Did he tell you of his Magister heritage?" At her second nod, Mai continued. "The ability to wield the Carnelian Way doesn't always pass down the generations. Most magisters accept this. Yet for many, this is viewed as a failure. A stain on the family honour. Some send their family away—to the barracks, or far off lands if they maintain abilities in strategy or influence—others make alliances, hoping to re-strengthen the bloodline."

"What does this have to do with Martha?"

Mai paused a moment before he spoke. "For you to see the picture, I need to give you enough pieces of the puzzle. When I returned to Eurora after the Devastation,  I didn't discover gifted Eurans. The first magisters were mixed-blood, like me."

"What?" Rina gasped. That couldn't be. The Denese had kept the secret of the Carnelian Way from the Eurans, but the idea that they alone had held it in their blood. That seemed like sacrilege. Worse, it was dangerous. Should someone like her uncle learn... She hissed.

A finger trailed down her cheek, a crackle of energy tickling her skin. Stay with me, it whispered.

She breathed deep, pressing her lips together, and listened.

"All of this is a poorly kept secret among the senior Magisters, and Fin's family trade in secrets. He has high aspirations. I told him if he protected you, kept you safe, I would consider letting him court a Denese woman."

It began to make sense. Mai had wanted her to consider the prospect that a Euran-born man might care for her. A necessary step were she to comprehend that a magister could. Let alone a god-like emperor. Was that what Mai wanted? To court her. Or just some fun? Like Fin had, as he climbed up the social ladder of Euran society, bringing Martha, not her, with him.

"He had already courted someone." The crack in her heart began to ache again.

"Shh, I know. I didn't realise it had gone so far." The warmth slipped down the line again, soothing her. "Then, he met you."

Rina's chin fell to her chest. "I saw his face," she said, voice flat. "He loved her."

"Perhaps he did, but there is a final piece, Rina. You see, that prophesy I told you about—it went missing."

Rina couldn't breathe. "When?"

"It was found missing after Ro and Fin sailed to Amador."

She swallowed. If what he said was true then... Fin had wanted more than what Martha could offer him.

They sat in a silence punctuated by the faint shuffling of palace servants and the distant sounds of a city waking. Eventually, with a cracked voice, Rina said, "She loved him. And he did her, but not enough."

His arms gripped her.

"He killed her, not me."

The tip of Mai's nose brushed back and forth across the back of her head in affirmation, and he said, "His greed killed her, not you," as he caressed her soul with invisible fingers, stitch-by-stitch patching that wound.

"Tell me about the first magisters—how they came to be."

Mai grew still. His chest rose and fell. "After they came of age, a handful of the refugees volunteered to unite our people in blood to start a new order of mages that would make Eurora great again—a recompense. All seemed well—our children showed gifts and learned to use them—until the Denese tried to tear apart my government from within. To take control. They came close to succeeding—this palace was built on the burnt bones of my uncle's palace, something my inner-council has never let me forget. I had no choice but to execute some of them. After that, I sent the Dense north to the settlements and put in place the rules that hold our society together. Small uprisings have continued, again and again over the centuries, and I forced to stamp them out."

A bird chirped outside, somewhere beyond the breeze-blown curtains. After a night of rain, Rina could taste the dampness of the air, the rich loam of the terrace garden beds. Beyond, the ocean was an opal.

"Like my parents."

"Yes. Like your parents. Because, if too many people listened, and they rebelled, I'd have no choice. The Denese tried to destroy Eurora twice, and if it happens a third time..."

"My uncle. You let him live. Why?"

She felt him grimace, the small puff of air as he tsked.

"As I said, the manipulation was necessary."

Her throat tightened. She reached out and picked up a leaf, blown through the open patio doors, wet and waxy beneath her fingers, and slowly tore it apart, vein by vein.

"Couldn't you have come? Told me?"

"And if I was wrong? Your family, Arkis' heirs, wanted me dead remember. I'm not a god, despite what people say. The Taint could take me."

"I thought you plucked it from our..." She trailed off, recalling Sara's theory. That there was no Taint. That it represented nothing more than the Carnelian Way twisted for ill intent. Her hand returned to the crystal beneath the skin of her chest, and she remembered that girl with the blood across her shift, just above her diaphragm. The way Pietro had scratched his chest again and again. How he ceased to tire at the forsaking. Something tightened in her chest.

"There is no Taint, is there?"

Mai stiffened. She heard the grind of his jaw as his teeth clenched together. She gulped.

"What did you do to us?" 

★☾●☽★

A/N: Hello—again. What a load of revelations. Did they make sense? And if so, what were your thoughts? I find the balance between dropping breadcrumbs and full-blown exposition. I hope the fact that Mai was telling this information to Rina made it digestible. If not—please let me know.

As for Mai's manner toward Rina. Any thoughts? I want to highlight, though they share a common ancestor, this ancestor died 571 years ago on the Day of Devastation (whose name I am soon to change to Day of Devastation).

Thank you again for reading!