Maven

Because you are mine, and I cannot keep you. I can't even let you go.

Chapter Music: We Bleed the Same

I would turn this cell to ash if I could, but the silent stone is a poison. It consumes every bone in my body, spreading and contaminating everything within me like black rot. The aches are new however, failing underneath the suffocating weight of the stone. My flame has died long ago as the very nature of my being lays dead, extinguished.

This is what I did to her, so it's only fair she returns the favor. Cut for cut. Even with the cursed stone around me, I find comfort in it. Mare is here. Her and I face the same hell, the same punishment she once endured. I almost smile at the connection between the two of us. I told her that many times. That what we are, what we have become, was always inevitable. She refused it then, but I do wonder what she thinks of it now. We're both stained. The blood on our hands will never run dry, and no one will ever bleed enough to fulfil our visions of justice. But these things will stain me forever, irreversible and impossible to wipe clean. It makes it easier in the end. Easier to kill, to hurt. To do whatever I have to do without another thought or hesitation. To make everything I have lost, worth it in the end.

The one lavish thing in my cell, a chair that Mare had the kindness to send down to me, has become my throne. Although I rule over nothing down here, not even the rats. I press hard onto the fabric of the chair, focussing on every weave of thread as I breathe. It's better than thinking of the dull quake of silence, and I don't have many other distractions.

Above, I hear the hollow echoes of explosions. The great battle Jon spoke of all those months ago has finally begun. I nearly laugh outright. I had expected to be up there, plotting away at what moves our armies are to make to hurt everyone the most. Make them bleed, Mother's voice whispers in my mind. Words she spoke years ago. She trained me for this, to battle not on the field as Cal had been taught, but on the throne. Sword replaced with words, but just as equally lethal. Make them hurt. Now, I'm on the other end of it. In a cell, locked away in the shadows. Jon has an eloquent way with words, speaking the truth but lying all the same. If I hadn't received the blunt of them, I would have applauded him.

But I suppose I did clap for him once. When he came to me and told me how I could capture her in one single moment. That wasn't the only thing he ensured me with. He lifted his corpse-like fingers to my brow and showed me everything. A crown on Mare's head, blood and foam spilling out of Samson's lips as she smiled, and most importantly her and my brother. Both sharing blows of lightning and fire. I saw everything she would become, and showed her the door. One small promise was shared between Jon and I. That I would have her again, forever this time.

I close my eyes against the darkness of the cell, entering an even darker abyss. I wish I could fall asleep, but it wouldn't take me anywhere I could want to go. When I was a boy I suffered from nightmares, and when Father saw that as a fault compared to his darling Cal, Mother snipped them away. I never had another nightmare, but I also never had another dream. I am a product of her additions and subtractions since. If I showed one inkling of weakness, she made sure it was gone with one whisper of her mind. Sometimes it made things better. It also could make things worse. There's a chance I don't recall what love is. When Mare left she tried to take my love for her away, she mutated it into something else. Something darker. A good chance I suppose. Mare and I are destined to ruin each other. Cut for cut.

My eyes are still close as I hear the sounds of sluggish footfalls coming towards me through the halls of the dungeons. They aren't Mare's, Mare doesn't walk like that. There is an edge to her pace, like a serpent stalking the undergrowth. These are slow and tired, and the owner of them wheezes out breath. Like someone I have met before.

"I did wonder if you would come." Out from the shadows, a pit of black enters my vision. A single flame from a candle wick, lighting their face. It turns his eyes into scarlet rubies, and his skin into nothing but the color of knotted bone.

"I said we would meet again. I always keep my promises," Jon says, his voice cracking with age.

"I gave her the warning of Julian Jacos. Although why you needed him gone is lost to me"

"Lord Jacos would have convinced Mare to surrender to the Guard, and if she had done that it would have ended with war and blood between the Lakelander nation. The Marandus family would have killed Mare on route to the Guard and Norta as we know it would have fallen to the wasteland of our memories." I chuckle at the implication. Will Mare ever know what I have saved her from?

"A Red Girl born to save the world. My Mother saw what she was capable of, even tried recruiting her after she and Cal fled with the rebels. But before that, Mother groomed her. Turned wheels in her head that were never supposed to be touched. And then of course there's you. Tell me, what did you say to her to make her steal the crown from me?" Jon's eyes of blood stare back at me. The wonders that he has seen in them. He knows my fate, knows Mares. I wonder if he can see everyone's strings of destiny.

"She wanted to save her friends from you. I showed her how."

"And so she became the Red Queen," I murmur, "All to save the ones she now faces in battle. How is that saving?"

"You'll find out soon enough when another damaged soul roams down this hall to find you." I let my eyes close partly as I inhale a sharp breath. It will be good to see Mare again. It's been days. The silence is my disease, and her voice is the only remedy to it.

"It's just occurred to me you're the only person alive who knows what could have been. What each of us could have become. I wonder how you cope with seeing all the failure between the rest of us."

"You have the most failure of all. Of course, It wasn't your fault. If your mother hadn't tampered with your brain...you were supposed to be the best of us once. After an accident on the war front, your brother would have died. Leaving Mare's heart open to you. She would have ruled fairly by your side for five short years. Until the poison from a foe hit her veins one lonely night. Then she would have been dead, an heir with her. You would have never recovered from the loss, but you would have gone on to fight for your wife's blood. Compared to what Mare has begun now, all of your success would have amounted to nothing compared to hers. So I changed it." I feel the heat of anger rising in my chest. Five years of light. Maybe it was better Jon changed this fate. Losing Mare and a child along with her would be too big of a sacrifice for me to bear alone. But still. To be shown all that you could have been, and denied it all the same is a fate worse than any amount of grief or sorrow.

"Do you ever regret twisting fate to your will, Jon? So many things could have remained a thousand years more if you hadn't touched it with your lethal mind."

"Maybe," he says, "But we all create what we dread." He doesn't say anything more. He lets the dead weight of the silence grow between us. The candle licks at his face, masking his veined face with a warm glow. His face is expressionless against the light. The rest of his body has been swallowed whole underneath a black cloak that stretches across his front. He reaches into the cloak, pulling out something in his hand. "For when you're ready." He reaches through the bars, holding out small blue petals. I take them from him in wonder. Maybe the Seer is mad to be giving me flowers, but I keep them all the same.

"Why have you come to me?" I look up from my hand, "You never do without reason."

"To say farewell."

"I'm not sure I believe that is the only reason."

"I know." He smiles, skin stretching across his jaw bones and revealing rotted teeth. Jon teeters forward, falling into the metal of the cell and sliding down to the ground. He breathes heavily as the flame lands next to him, the candle breaking into two on impact. I watch him with careful eyes as he looks up at me. "I would like to tell you something I haven't told anyone in a long while."

"What is it, Jon?" I whisper.

"The truth. It will be torture for you, as it will be for me. But you will bleed as I bleed."

He tells me all that could have been, all that he changed, and all that was about to be. I scream hoarsely as he tips his head back in laughter. I pound my fists at the bars of the unbreakable cell. I want to consume him in flame. I want him to burn.

Out of the cloak, he takes a jagged dagger and with his laughter still ringing through the darkness the seer slits his own throat.