Mercurial by Naomi Hughes (ebook reader with built in dictionary .txt) 📕

Idly, he wondered now what would have happened if he had. Would that brittleness in her have cracked? Would he have caught a glimpse of what was underneath? If he had realized earlier, when he was still hopeful and idealistic, that she could be a person like Elodie—would he have been able to sway her?

He realized suddenly that he missed her. She had left him because he had given her no other option, and he found that he regretted it. He examined the feeling with distant curiosity, because what did it matter now either way? She had by now already returned to her sister. She might or might not be convinced to restore her magic, and the poison it brought with it. His realization that he loved her would make no difference to any of that, because he would die down here in the dungeons of the one place he would give anything to be away from, and she wouldn’t even know until it was too late.

He buried his head in his hands. He loved her, he thought again. What a fool he was. Just when he thought he’d left behind that naïve boy of two years ago, he went and fell for the one person he should despise above all else. And he did despise her, but he loved her too—the brittle girl who had been afraid to ask aloud if he wanted to dance with her because she knew he’d refuse, the fiercely innocent girl who’d offered him a headless rabbit like it was a trophy, and the girl who’d wept because she didn’t know how to start a fire. What he felt was impossible, but it was also true, and he could no longer maintain the mental distance it took to deny it.

He sighed. Very well, he said to his god with the resignation and relief of someone who has exhausted absolutely every possibility, including death, and must now finally be honest with himself. What do you want me to do?

It had been Saasha who had trapped him here—he didn’t know why she would do such a thing, but somewhere in the space of the last few days, he had utterly lost the ability to be surprised—but he knew that his god had been behind it. She might have shut the door on him, but it was the Unforged God who had led him to this spot. Not because he was sadistic. Because, Tal thought now, he wanted to offer Tal a choice, and this was the only way Tal would listen to it. He had refused to be honest with himself about his feelings for Elodie until he’d been literally locked in a jail cell with no other option, and now a vision was hovering on the horizon of his mind, waiting for him to decide whether to open himself to it and whatever possibilities it might offer, or stay here in this cell and die. Of sheer stubbornness, Elodie would probably say if she were here. He smiled a little and then shook his head with another sigh.

Show me, he prayed.

The dreaming place pulled him in.

He spent only a moment in the dark space surrounded by a weighty presence before the vision opened around him. It was Elodie—no, it was the Destroyer, silver eyes bright with brittle cruelty. She sat on the empress’s throne. It was a cold and unyielding thing, much more suited to her sister than to her, as was the Iron Crown on her brow. She opened her mouth. “I pronounce the sentence of—” she began, and then something slender and wooden flew toward her. Some sort of small crossbow bolt.

Tal saw himself in the vision then. He was on his knees before her, hands in manacles, his back to her as he looked out over a crowd. The crossbow bolt arced toward the Destroyer.

And then he stood up. He whirled around, face-to-face with those bright, and now surprised, silver eyes. The crossbow bolt burrowed into his own back. He watched his eyes close, his face twist. He dropped back to his knees, then, lifelessly, fell forward on his stomach.

The vision faded. His god remained. Tal was back in the cell and no longer in the dreaming place, but the weight and presence of the Unforged God still enfolded him. It was asking him a question. And, he realized suddenly, the visions had always been a question.

His god had never coerced him. He had never forced Tal to swear himself to the Destroyer. He had shown him a vision and asked him to have faith in its message, and Tal had always, unfailingly, answered with a yes. Most of his visions had led only to trouble and pain…but then, the Unforged God had never promised safety, had he? Nor a long life, nor even a happy ending. What he had promised—not in words, but in a deeply-planted and unshakeable knowledge buried somewhere inside Tal—was that if he said yes, he would save the Destroyer, and save the empire through her.

Tal had felt bitter for so long that the sudden absence of the feeling made him dizzy with its loss. He accepted at last that he had not been betrayed, or at least, he had not been betrayed by his god. He had perhaps been betrayed by his own certainty that being a believer meant a life without anguish. He thought now, though, that sometimes being a believer—that saying yes—meant inviting pain. The Unforged God himself had sacrificed when he built the world from the broken pieces of himself. How could Tal rightfully expect his own life to entail less sacrifice than his god’s?

The promises he’d made Tal had not yet been fulfilled. Tal sensed a finality to this vision, though, a true ending. If he did this, if he trusted in it and followed it, he would at last save the Destroyer and the empire. He would also die. But hadn’t he already accepted his own death?