CHAPTER 6: THE WEIGHT OF THE CROWN
683 Words
The silence following the King’s vanishing was a physical weight, pressing marble dust into Liora’s marrow. The air, once thick with the tang of black sap, now tasted of a vacuum.
Liora stood amidst the ruin, the Crown of Thorns fused to her brow. Its roots dived deep into her skull, drinking from her thoughts. The roses bloomed a red so deep it was almost black—the color of oxygen-starved blood.
"Liora?" Kael’s voice was a ragged shadow. He swayed, his face a mosaic of dried blood. He reached out, then recoiled, looking at her as if she were a ghost he had finally stopped believing in.
Liora didn’t turn. If she moved, she feared the oily sea of stolen names swirling in her gut would drown them all. "The memories," she whispered, her voice vibrating with a metallic resonance. "The courtyard. The djinn. They weren't illusions, Kael. They were the truth."
Kael’s silence was a heavy, guilty thing.
"You traded us," she said, finally facing him. Her eyes shimmered with a silver-white frost that matched the streak in her hair. "To keep me breathing, you made me a stranger to my own heart. You let him carve me out of you."
"I did it to save you!" Kael roared, stumbling against a shattered sarcophagus. "He was going to stop your heart while I watched. I took the bargain because a life without the memory of your kiss was better than a world where you didn't exist."
"And the djinn?" she countered. "How many pieces of 'us' did you sell? Am I just a collection of debts you've paid to monsters?"
The Codex, lying in the rubble, began to vibrate. Its leather groaned as pages flipped in a ghost-wind. “A crown is not a kingdom,” the book sighed, words appearing like fresh bruises on the parchment. “The Hollow King is gone, but the Void is hungry. It demands a feast.”
Rasha scrambled over the masonry, eyes wide. "The shadows, Liora. They’re seeking a center."
Liora looked down. Her shadow was a towering, jagged thing with clawed hands. The entire room seemed to be tilting into her. "I hear them," Liora gasped, clutching her stomach. "Every person the King robbed. Their names are screaming."
Kael. Marcus. Elara. Thorne. Thousands of names, stripped over centuries, were now housed within her. The "Hollow" was a vacuum in her chest.
"Ground it," Rasha commanded, grabbing Liora’s shoulders. "You’re a cup trying to hold an ocean. If you don't vent the pressure, you’ll explode. You’ll be the Queen of Nothing."
"Give something back," Kael said softly, limping to the edge of her reach. "The King took. If you are to be different, you must give."
Liora looked at the man who had betrayed her to save her. She reached up, touching a velvet, ice-cold rose. She thought of the courtyard rose—a promise of a tomorrow that never came.
"I won't be a Queen of Thieves," she whispered.
She reached into the vortex and found the name that smelled of home and woodsmoke: Kael. She couldn't restore the kiss—the djinn had eaten that—but she took the agony of his loss and transformed it into a tether. She pressed her thumb to his forehead.
A shockwave of silver light erupted. Kael’s pupils vanished as the silver flooded his vision. "I remember," he gasped, falling to his knees. "The night we ran... the smell of the pines. I remember why I fought."
The ground groaned. The mountain was purging the old blood.
"Move!" Rasha hissed, shoving the Codex into her pack.
As they turned to flee, a purple mist seeped from the floor, smelling of jasmine and old parchment. From the fog, a spindly figure with galaxy-eyes purred, "The King is dead? How droll. I believe his estate owes me an interest payment on a certain... sentimental debt."
The Djinn had come to collect.
Liora stood her ground, the crown glowing fierce. "The debt is canceled."
The Djinn smiled with opal teeth. "My dear, debts aren't canceled. They are inherited."
- Writer
