Dreams of Gods & Monsters(126)
Author: Laini Taylor

Except in dreams.

Some mornings when the hammer woke her with its first ringing strike, she felt herself drop back into her life from some sweet golden sphere that lost all definition with the flood of consciousness—like vision blurred by tears. She was left with a feeling only; it seemed to her the impression of a soul, as she got when she opened a thurible, or went gleaning over the dead. And though she had never felt his soul—as, blessedly, he had never died—it left her awash with a sense of grace, like standing in the sun. Warmth and light, and a feeling of Akiva’s presence so strong she could almost feel his hand to her heart, and hers to his.

This morning it had been especially powerful. She lay still, a phantom heat lingering on her chest and palm. She didn’t want to open her eyes, but only rise back into the golden sphere and find him there, and stay.

Sighing, she remembered a silly song from Earth about how if you want to remember your dreams, as soon as you wake you should call to them as if they were little kittens. Pretty much the entire song went, “Here kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty… and it had always made her smile. Now, though, the smile was more of a twist, because she so wanted it to work, and it just didn’t.

And then, at the flap door of the tent: a softly cleared throat. “Karou?” The voice was pitched low enough not to wake her if she still slept, and when she saw the figure framed in the opening, the dawn sun painting itself along the line of one strong arm as bright as gold leaf on an altarpiece, she was upright like a snapped spring.

Cover thrown aside, to her knees and rising before she realized her mistake.

It was Carnassial.

She couldn’t disguise her anguish. She had to cover her face with her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, pushing it all down deep, as she did every morning, in order to get on with her day. She took her hands away and smiled at the Stelian magus. “It really isn’t horrible to see you,” she told him.

“It’s all right.” He stepped inside. She saw that he’d brought tea and her morning ration of bread, so that they might start out directly for the site. “It’s good to know what it’s supposed to look like when someone is happy to see you. Though I don’t imagine most people ever get a reaction like that. I never have, but now I’ll hold out for it all my life.”

“Maybe it’s a curse, anyway,” said Karou, taking the tea from him. She understood that Carnassial had shared something with the queen, and that it was over now; she suspected it was why he had volunteered to come to Loramendi, instead of returning to the Far Isles with the others. “Or maybe it’s like skohl,” she said. That was the high-mountain plant whose stinking resin they burned on their torches at the caves. “And only grows in the worst conditions.” You’d never find skohl in some sun-dappled meadow, but only on a cliff face, crusted with hoarfrost. Maybe heart-crushing love was the same, and could only grow in hostile environments.

Carnassial shook his head. He didn’t really look that much like Akiva, but was mistaken for him constantly here, since Akiva was the only Stelian known to this part of the world.

“He did the same thing, you know,” he told her. “The first time we saw him. We’d come to kill him. It would have happened then and there, if he hadn’t turned out to be who he is. Scarab made a sound and he turned and fixed on where she was glamoured. And he smiled as though joy itself had just cornered him in the dark.” He paused. “Because he thought it was you.”

Karou’s hand trembled, holding her tea, and she steadied it with the other, to little effect. “When did you get back?” she asked him, changing the subject. He had been to Astrae in his capacity as representative of the Stelian court. Liraz and Ziri had gone, too, to meet with Elyon and Balieros and discuss plans for the coming winter.

“Last night,” Carnassial told her. “Some of yours came back with us. Ixander is furious to have missed the chance, in his words, to become a god.”

A god. A godstar.

There had been plenty of discussion of what this meant since the night of Eliza’s sending, and for the most part, they agreed that by no feasible interpretation were they going to become “gods.” There was an extraordinary unity and solemnity among them, though, in accepting their fate. They would play a part in the realization of myth. It might have been a seraph myth before, but now it belonged to all of them. Mortal or immortal was beside the point. A war loomed, of such epic scope as made knees buckle and minds go dim, and they were the bright warriors who would banish the darkness.

“I’m going to just go ahead and consider myself a god,” Zuzana had said. “You guys believe what you want.”

Karou enjoyed the idea that you could “believe what you want,” as though reality were a buffet line. If only.

Triple helpings of cake, please.

Carnassial went on about Ixander. “He says by right he should be one of the godstars, since he wanted to return to the Kirin caves with you, but was ordered to Astrae instead. I was afraid he was going to challenge me for my place.” He smiled.

Karou found her own smile, imagining the big ursine soldier arguing loopholes with fate. “Who knows,” she said. “It’s not like we could freeze Eliza’s sending and make a list of names.” They couldn’t see the sending again, either, because Eliza had gone to the Far Isles with the Stelians and Akiva. “Maybe we all saw what we wanted to see.”

“Maybe,” Carnassial agreed. “I saw you, though.”

Karou couldn’t reply in kind. She hadn’t seen him. She had seen herself in the radiance of that vision, and she had seen Akiva at her side. The sight had been like a buoy to one drowning, and she clung to it still.

She did believe that the time would come when their duties would free them to be together—or at least a time when they could twist and bend and wrestle their duties into alignment. If they were bound to be dutiful fate-slaves forever, then mightn’t they at least be dutiful fate-slaves on the same continent, perhaps even under the same roof?

Someday.

And hopefully before Scarab’s war called them all to meet the nithilam.

And when would it? Not soon. This wasn’t a confrontation to rush into. The very idea of it had met with violent opposition when the Stelians returned home, according to Carnassial, who received sendings from his people.

The opposition wasn’t universal, though. Apparently, many stood with their queen in hoping for a future free of their duty to the veil.