Chapter Twenty-four
~
Succession
Dacian was a shell of a man when he returned to the main hold.
Cira was crumpled on the ground, reeling and raging, not just from the pan, but from the loss of her grip over Orphenn. “Dacian…” she said, quaking, herbal tea forgotten. “You…” Her voice wavered, vacillating. “You killed her…My sister is dead…” She looked to be in genuine pain at the loss of her own sister, but then Ardara came pouring back into her face.
“My sister is dead!” She stood, arms in the air, glowing with enthusiasm. “The Enma are without a Supreme Commander!”
Dacian was a severe opposite to her. Eyes rimmed in red, peeked, gaze downcast. She paid him no attention.
“Now…I only have to be rid of my remaining siblings…And…Aleida will be mine!” Then she changed slightly. “Wait…” She reconsidered, recalling the two instances that Cinder had escaped death. Once by her own hands. “She can’t die, can she?” After a moment of wicked contemplation, she called, “Dacian!”
“What do you wish, my liege?” He replied robotically.
“Nyx will keep a trail on the White Herons. We follow them until the time is right. Then I have a mission for you.”
Orphenn found himself unable to do anything. He couldn’t move, couldn’t feel, couldn’t think.
Most of all, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
He stood there frozen. He was still in a state of shock from his painful liberation from Ardara’s illusion, still denying the real world around him.
And he returned to this.
He couldn’t even notice the astounded regard he received when he numbly approached his squadron, dripping wet, shivering.
All he could see was Celina.
All he could do was stare at her, limp in Cinder’s arms. Dread overwhelmed him. No. Was the only thought he could manage. Not her. Not her.
“He’s back.” She had whispered, though he never heard her.
The River took her.
It took her, like it had taken Oriana.
The gleaming, twinkling water enveloped her.
She became the River.
And then she was gone.
Orphenn felt a part of himself fall away with her. With no sign that she ever existed, but for the tears on all their faces, the voids dug into their chests.
As if a load about his shoulders had been lightened, he did the only thing he believed himself able to do.
He ran.
Eynochia fell shakily to her knees, staring after him. So crippled she felt, after only seeing his face. Now after witnessing him turn and run away after weeks of fearing for his life, she felt utterly barren.
The others couldn’t so much as twitch.
Cinder was the only one with the strength to run after him, though she couldn’t think of where it had come from. She could hardly think at all, her head like a numb block of ice. When she saw him, the ice seemed to melt, and came dripping down in the form of tears.
He’d already reached the edge of the forest by the time Cinder caught sight of him, a white phantom against the tree line, stumbling aimlessly through the brush. His sobs echoed.
“Orphenn!” she called. Now that she could see him, she knew where to go. In a swathe of black, she ported, reappearing to block his path.
He’d been running too fast, and could not avoid her. His speed sent him straight into her grasp.
“Orphenn!” She scolded, angered by her own tears.
“Let me go!” He struggled. “Let me go or I swear, Cinder! Get off!” Several times his voice cracked, his objections continually interrupted by staccato sobs and cries.
“Orphenn!” She demanded harshly. Something in her voice made him stop dead. He went still in her hands. The look that masked his face tugged Cinder’s heart. Lost, like he didn’t know what to do next, couldn’t see any future.
“What would you have done?” She whispered.
He felt weak, and his head lolled. He quietly said in a voice dripping with sorrow, “I-I could have helped….I could have healed her!”
“It wasn’t your fault, Orphenn, it was mine!” She shook him, his eyes growing confused. “It was my darkness that took you.” She explained. “I was careless.”
“How does that have anything to do with Celina?” He snapped sourly.
“Orphenn, just listen! If I hadn’t thoughtlessly ported you, we never would have lost you, we never-”
Amazed, Orphenn stopped her. “Cinder, I’d be dead if not for you. You know that.”
Cinder could not speak for the lump in her throat. She let her head lean lightly on his shoulder. The only word that escaped her was a hushed “…Sorry…” Followed by a long sob.
Now Orphenn finally saw his sister’s position in all this, how confused she must be. Then he felt incredibly selfish-he had been so absorbed in his own grief-and now he felt horribly guilty.
Soon they were bawling for the tenth time in less than an hour, and Cinder released her brother, relenting.
“Go ahead and run if you want.” She sniffed bitterly. “Doesn’t matter.”
Orphenn shook his head fervently. “I don’t want to run anymore.” His voice wavered with emotion. Being a few inches taller, he bent slightly to press his forehead to Cinder’s, as she had when she found him as a drunken hobo. They stayed that way for several minutes, letting the tears come silently.
“Let’s go.”
They walked back to camp together, and the squadron remained in mourning for the rest of daylight and on into the next night. From there they traveled to the Denoras refuge camp, the new home for citizens whose capital had been reduced to dust. Once there, a service was held for their beloved Commander.
All seven squadrons had come to attend, their airships at rest at points outside the camp. A great bonfire was erected in the center of the camp, and thousands of Denorasians gathered as Sven came to stand in its light. In his scarred hands, he delicately held a grand paper lantern. A pair of angelic wings folded from parchment decorated the sides.
Silence filled the air, but for the crackling of the massive fire.
Sven spoke in a voice that boomed across the plain. “Lady Celina…Was this world’s finest ruler. Many of us recall the days before the First War, the times of the Verlassen Empire. Generations of Emperors and Empresses have come and gone, and not one of them compare to our Supreme Commander. I can still hardly believe she ain’t here…”
He looked down. Sobs escaped the crowd.
“What will happen now, Marshall?” A voice called out. Sven was aghast to see that it was the young Nero, standing in front, as always. “Who will take Lady Celina’s place?”
Sven looked off to where Cinder was trudging away on her own toward an abandoned tent. He knew she hated it when strangers saw her cry. He forgave her.
“There are…Complications by way of succession. A highly trusted delegate shall stand in for her until the capital is rebuilt. But for right now…Let’s honor the woman who brought this world to peace in its darkest hour.”
He lit a long wooden match with a lick of flame from the bonfire. As he did so, he raised the lantern, and his voice.
As he lit the wick inside the lantern, a song waved from his chest softly at first, and rose in crescendo as the lantern began to lift from his hand. As he shook the flame from the match, others had started to join in, and when he discarded it into the bonfire, the entire plain had illuminated in song.
The lantern floated higher and higher, the light inside it turning the folded paper into a set of golden, shining wings.
The song seemed to lift it higher, to usher it across the sky, a hymn to comfort an angel.
Soon, it was so small that it mingled with the stars against the sky, and no one could tell the difference.
Orphenn sat, head drooped in his place around the small fire which popped in front of the tent the White Herons shared. All others had retired to their own tents, only a few other fires burning, scattered apart, the colossal bonfire extinguished.
Sven gave him a look of deepest empathy. It was as if he knew the boy’s every thought.
“Orphenn.” He said, his rumbling voice kind. “Let me tell you something.” He stood and moved to take a seat beside him, resting a scarred hand on his shoulder. “I’ve been shot in the head so many times I can’t even count. And yet here I am. Speaking to you.”
Orphenn looked up at him expectantly, still blood-shot from fresh tears, not yet understanding the other’s meaning.
Sven went on. “How many injuries did Celina sustain? Next to none. And my wife? She never had more than a bad scrape.
“Oriana taught me a long while ago, that there is nothing more unpredictable than who will die in a war and who will survive. Get it?”
The boy nodded.
Cinder’s head rested on the fold-out table, inside the lonely candle-lit tent. The song had stopped long ago, and now she could hear the voices of her squadron outside the tent. She could hear Sven’s voice mingled with the popping of flaming firewood, in his typical storytelling tone. That was the thing-people like him always had lots of stories to tell. Sven was probably Aleida’s finest re-enactor, apart from Celina of course who only needed to touch someone to show them her history-
Cinder let out a sigh and lifted her head. No matter how she tried to resist, her thoughts always led back to Celina. Reaching into her jacket, she pulled out Celina’s coronet, the silver-white circlet with a single modest gem at the crest.
“You left too soon…Celina…” She whispered. “I need you now…More than ever.” She felt again the heat behind her eyes that melted the ice of her numbness, threatening tears.
Desperate to hold them back, she grabbed for the photo book that Sven had left in the corner of the table and flipped it open; anything to distract her from the grief.
It worked well, scanning through faded pictures of Sven’s family, most of them deceased. She paused on a picture of Xeila and Jeremiah, teenagers. She laughed at how little they’d changed.
It was the next picture that stunned her into silence.
Her eyes darted up and down it, disbelieving, attempting to right her vision, had it somehow malfunctioned.
It was a photo of Sven, but there were two others on either side of him that Cinder recognized all too well from her time in prison.
Wynne and Music Man.
“What…?” She could not make sense of it, until she saw scrawled along the margin:
Left to Right—Wynne, Sven, Ira.
“No way…” She breathed. “Music Man is…” Her astonishment broke her sentence. “Wynne is his…”
The photo book fell from her tingling fingers.
She turned to dash outside. She needed, needed, to tell Sven, to scream it into the night. Finally, a discovery that may lead to something of happiness! Ira is alive.
A shame, she never made it out of her own will. Before she could take the first step toward the flapping tent exit, a pair of eyes froze her in her tracks, red-rimmed and bloodshot. They were confused, hurt, desperate-uncharacteristic to the face they belonged to. Dacian had never looked so frail.
“You…” Cinder exhaled. She stared at him, making no move, and realizing she didn’t want to. She knew he was different somehow.
“Cinder…Please understand.” He was no longer smug and arrogant, but genuine, and solemn.
“I do understand!” She realized suddenly, eyes widening. “It was you…You-”
“Please, I beg you!” He winced, interrupting her. He did not want to hear the words. “I know, and….I know….I…” He seemed to crumble before her.
Cinder softened. For the first time since the beginning of the First War, she saw clearly the man that was Dacian, and not Ardara’s creation. He looked like a man that was burning at the stake. His words hissed with his own pain.
“I’ve made the greatest mistake…” He said, body lurching in anguish.
Cinder couldn’t help but sympathize. Tears dripped freely from her lashes, as she waited for him to act. Like Celina had when she stood with this same man in the sky, Cinder knew what Dacian had been ordered to do.
“Dacian.” She said, a low murmur. Her eyes met his with compassion, each of their irises like colored fireflies in the candlelight. “I forgive you.” He was only able to look at her, puzzlement plain on his features. “For what you’ve done. For what you’re about to do.”
At length, with a deep, wounded breath, he straightened.
So did Cinder.
In the next moment, poison vapor leapt from his mouth to hers. Gagging, she fell into his chokehold, though it was mercifully gentle, and he dragged her outside.
Sven was quick to act, summoning on the spot a high caliber shotgun, but Cinder shook her head at him violently. Please, her eyes said. Trust me.
The Field Marshall lowered his weapon, his hurt, worried, betrayed expression backlit by the campfire.
At the sight of him she’d longed to shout at the top of her lungs, Your brother is alive! Ira is alive! Sadly, the lance head at her throat and the sedating effects of the poison had made that impossible.
Dacian held his façade admirably.
“Nobody move.” He demanded.
The look in Cinder’s green and blue eyes told them to listen.
Orphenn had shot upright when Sven had, and now objected, “Cinder, no!”
“Listen to him, Orphenn.” Cinder slurred with great effort. “All of you, just…Stay…Just trust me.” Dacian’s tranquilizer began to kick start, her eyes rolling back, lids fluttering.
Dacian held her tighter. “Take us to the ship.” He said softly, and soon there was nothing left of the two of them, Cinder teleporting as she was ordered.
The darkness left swiftly, too fast for Orphenn, who had tried to jump for her, and landed prone in the grass with an oof.
The drone of an airship could be heard as it readied and soared away.
Orphenn writhed and let out a frightening cry, emitting a low, eerie harmony, and his squadron was reminded of the tainted serum in his veins. All at once they feared it would take him again, as it had when Ardara first injected it.
Fortunately, he managed to overcome it, the brief outbreak silenced.
He stood, lopsided and weak.
Sven saw the determination there, despite the weakness of the boy’s stance. The words he couldn’t say were opening up on his face. I’m not running.
Without another word, Orphenn took a deep shaky breath, and took flight.
Sven turned to his family, the remainder of the squadron. “To the Day Star. Now. There’s no time to wait anymore.”
He looked to the sky.
“We’re right behind ‘ya, Little Bird.”