James West - Crown of the Setting Sun

“You speak as though it is wickedness if my kind were ever given the chance to seek justice against their torturers. Is that where you stand, Zera? With the demon-spawn who ravished our women in order to create abominations that would be used to further oppress men and women and children, whose only crime was trying to survive in a world laid to waste after the Upheaval?”

Zera stared at him. “I do love you, if you would only see it. Please come away with me. I have no other purpose, Leitos,” Zera said, her chin trembling. “Not anymore.”

Those words caught like a hook in his mind. “You used me to lead you back to the Brothers of the Crimson Shield, but in the Sanctuary, you said you wanted me. Why?”

“Because I love-”

“Stop saying that!” Leitos shouted. “It was not for love, could not have been! You wanted me because your master set you on this path, the same way he set you on the path to betray the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. Why me, Zera,” he said through gritted teeth, “why am I needed?”

In the silence that held between them, Leitos thought he heard a sound just below the whispering wind, a rhythmic drumming.

“You are the last direct descendant of the Valara line,” Zera whispered.

“You said the same in the Sanctuary. That name means nothing to me.”

Her puzzled expression faded as quickly as it appeared. “In order to protect you, for fear of the slavemasters learning your secret, of course your father would not have spoken of your shared heritage.”

“I never knew my father,” Leitos said bitterly, “or my mother, or anyone from my family except my grandfather. Alon’mahk’lar took us when I was an infant. We were brought to Geldain to dig and scratch away our lives away as punishment for resisting the will of the Faceless One. That is who you serve … that is who you are .”

“No, Leitos. No longer. Please, I beg you, believe me. Trust the quiet voice in your heart. Come away with me, and I will tell you all I know.”

“Tell me now,” he demanded, but she held quiet.

Leitos stood mere feet from her, but a chasm seemed to gape before them. From all directions, death stalked the desert, wearing the terrible faces of his lifelong oppressors, the slavemasters, the Sons of the Fallen. Facing that, the darkness grew wider. On the other side waited Zera, made all too human in her sorrow and professed love. Could such a creature know love, could she take it from him and return it in kind?

“Why can you not tell me now?” he whispered, voice cracking.

Zera spread empty hands and shook her head. The wind tugged her dark hair, and a few strands caught in the wetness on her cheeks.

Frustration wracked him, broke something deep in his soul.

The breeze shifted, bringing with it the drumming he had heard before. It thudded loudly now. He looked around, but saw only the face of the night. He turned back, thinking it his imagination, until he heard Ba’Sel shout a wild cry of warning.

“No!” Zera said in an anguished voice.

Leitos flinched when she rushed forward. Throat closing tight, he danced back, but not nearly fast enough. She slammed against him, her empty hands pressed to his shoulders, squeezing. Her gaze widened in dismay. A pained, breathless gasp drifted past her parted lips.

“Zera?” he muttered. Then cried out, “Zera!”

The scent of leather was strong on her, and that of faded flowers. Her green eyes flared inches from his own, brighter and more innocent than he had ever seen them. One of his hands rested against her hip, the other was lodged between them. He felt the suppleness of her flesh, the warmth of it against his own. He felt something else, a sensation he did not immediately recognize in his distress.

Zera fought for breath that would not come. A tremor rippled her flesh. “I … I … love you. Please … believe me. Tell me … Leitos….”

With each breath, her heart fluttered against the edge of his fist. That once unrecognizable sensation, a terrible damp heat, washed over his hand.

“Zera?” he murmured. He abandoned all his fear and loathing for what she was and, the dark chasm finally crossed, he saw only the woman in his arms.

Her eyes dimmed, and another tremor convulsed her limbs. A slow line, black in the night, sketched its way from the corner of her mouth and over the delicate curve of her chin. It grew fat, heavy with a portent he refused to admit. He had envisioned that drop before, had feared it when dreaming in that forsaken city of the dead, even as he feared it now. The drop swelled, became a single tear that could not endure its impossible weight.

“I do love you,” Leitos sobbed, willing her to hear.

The bloody drop fell. Another drop formed, its course altered by Zera’s faint smile, but it fell unnoticed against the blood pouring from her pierced heart over his knuckled fist-the same fist that held the dagger given him by Adham, which he had tucked into his belt and forgotten.

The shouts of the approaching warriors grew louder. It was a sound so far away, buried under a roaring inside his skull akin to the flooded river that had nearly drowned him. That raging tumult grew until there was no other sound in the world. It filled him, then flooded out in a single, tortured cry.

His breath spent, Leitos dropped to his knees, cradling Zera to his chest. Her smile melted away and her eyes drifted shut, as if she were dropping off into a much needed slumber. Tears scorched his cheeks as he looked upon her. A memory that might have been someone else’s swam through his consciousness. He could not remember where they had been, or what they had been doing, only that Zera had smiled at him. He had feared then that smile would bring him to his death. And so it had.

After the black of night, the rising sun set the sea afire. Turquoise waters lapped the sides of a handful of long, slender boats, each propelled by sweeping oars toward the hazy mass of the Singing Islands. Leitos huddled in the bow of one, alone with a shrouded Zera. Her face remained uncovered. Leitos traced her cool cheek with a finger still covered in her dried blood, a haunted light smoldering in his eyes.

The others had wanted to leave her, but he refused. Had it not been for Ba’Sel and Adham, the remaining Brothers of the Crimson Shield, with Ulmek the most vocal among them, would have left him and her to the desert and the hunting Alon’mahk’lar . Had they abandoned him, he would have died or been taken captive. Either end would have suited him. Yet he lived, where she had died by his hand. A void had opened within his soul, a void now filling with unspeakable darkness. Instead of shying from that invasive blight, he immersed himself in it, used it as armor and shield against the remorse he could not fully face.

“We must speak,” Adham said quietly, so that only Leitos heard. Swells rocking the small vessel had masked his grandfather’s movements to the bow. Holding to the side of the boat, Adham positioned himself between Leitos and the others, just at Zera’s feet.

Leitos turned, his features blank. Right now he did not want to talk with anyone. What could there possibly be to say?

He relented only because his grandfather looked worried. While an emptiness had taken hold of him, he wanted it to stay there, his secret from the world, even from Adham. “I suppose we must,” Leitos said, failing to hide the wooden quality of his voice.

“It pains me to see you grieve, but.…” Adham trailed off with a probing look.

“But she was a creature born of Alon’mahk’lar ,” Leitos finished for him. “I know this, but all I see is her as she is now. I can still hear her laughter, see the light of her eyes. I smell the scent of flowers on her hair. That is how I will remember her,” he finished, knowing even then that he spoke a lie. He could no more separate Zera from what she was than he could wish a stone to become bread. And that was the crux of his dilemma: he had not fallen in love with a mere enemy, but a foe to all humankind, a murdering device in the employ of the Faceless One. Trying to reconcile those two sides of Zera, and his feelings for her, left him troubled, confused. Despite it all, he had loved her.