The Immortal Prince (46 page)

The child of my heart, if not the child of my loins.

And then I looked down at Amaleta. Her eyes were fixed on me, full of hope. Full of trust.

In return for that trust I did nothing.

I knelt there in that cold, cobbled street of Port Gallow and let Amaleta die.

Arkady was silent for a long time after Cayal finished speaking. The tea had long cooled; the fire had almost died out.

“Did Jaxyn never question you about Fliss's fate?” she asked, eventually.

He took a long time to answer, so long Arkady wondered if he'd heard the question.

“Given the dramatic nature of Amaleta's demise,” he said, after a while, “and that he could no longer sense Fliss's presence on the Tide, he accepted I'd done it, I suppose, and moved on to more interesting entertainment.”

“What did you do? Did you follow Arryl to Glaeba?”

He shook his head. “Not right away. Everyone had to believe I'd killed Fliss without remorse and the only way to do that was to resume my life seeding the Crasii farms and pretending I didn't have a care in the world.”

Arkady stared at him, more than a little disturbed by his casual dismissal of the lives he'd ruined. “And when you were done?” she asked. “Seeding the Crasii farms and pretending you didn't have a care in the world?”

“I left,” he replied, smiling thinly at her tone. “It was nearly a year before I could get away, though, and even then, I had to do it the old-fashioned way.”

“The
old-fashioned
way?”

“I couldn't use the Tide because someone would have felt it and wondered what business I had there.” He smiled wryly. “Ironic, don't you think, that the only way we great magicians can hide from each other is to
not
be great magicians?”

The irony wasn't lost on Arkady, but she was more interested in hearing the rest of the tale. “What happened when you got to the temple?”

“Arryl was there, but Diala was off on some business of her own, so for a time it was a very pleasant visit, indeed. Fliss was beside herself when she saw me, but I was shocked by her appearance. She was haggard. Black circles framed her eyes and she was thin to the point of emaciation. I couldn't believe the change in her.”

“Was she ill?”

“Proximity to the Eternal Flame didn't seem to have made the slightest difference. The Tide was still killing her a little bit more each day. Even Arryl was starting to wonder if it might not have been kinder to let her die.”

“Why doesn't the Tide affect you like that? Is it just because you're immortal?”

“It would almost have to be,” Cayal agreed. “Maybe that's the true nature of the Tide. It ravages us the same way, but we heal up before we feel its effects.”

“But Fliss didn't have your ability to heal,” Arkady concluded. “Do you think she was the only one?”

Cayal shook his head. “The only mortal to wield Tide magic? Probably not. But any other child born as she is would have no notion of what was happening to them. I only know what happened to Fliss because there were others around with her ability to identify it for what it was. Any other mortal child with her talent would just wither and die and have it put down to bad blood or some mystery illness that miraculously nobody else in the village caught.”

“Were you able to save her?”

“Far from it. I couldn't see any possible way to save her. Diala could, however. And when she returned to the temple a few weeks later, she was the one who suggested the solution.”

“Which was?” Arkady asked, wondering at Cayal's reluctance. He'd been entirely forthcoming up until this point. Now she was having to drag the rest of the story out of him, one sentence at a time.

“She suggested we let the Eternal Flame decide.”

“Surely not! Fliss was only…what…by then? Seven years old? That would doom her to eternity as a small child. That's a punishment cruel beyond description.”

“I did point that out to Diala, you know. But I suppose Fliss must have known she was dying. I'd told her as much in Port Gallow and there was no way she could have been unaware of the effect the Tide was having on her. But I still wonder what was going through her mind that day. Did she stand there in the shadows, eavesdropping on a conversation between Arryl and Diala that she didn't really understand? Did she think if she was immortal she would still grow up? I don't know. I've wondered about it for thousands of years and I still can't fathom it. Whatever her reasons, Fliss sneaked into the temple after everyone had retired later that night and in an attempt to become immortal like us, she took the Eternal Flame down from the altar and set herself alight.”

Arkady studied him across the table in the dusty sunlight coming through the shutters behind her, not sure what to say.

“Did she…”

“No. She died screaming and calling my name.”

Arkady winced at the very thought of such a terrible thing. And while the memory obviously pained Cayal, she suspected the worst was yet to come.

“This is the part I'm not going to like, isn't it?”

He nodded grimly. “I felt as if I'd been ripped in two. If you've heard the expression
blind rage,
let me tell you, it's real. Everything I despised about the immortals, every moment of eternity I had suffered because of that wretched fire seemed to well up inside me with her screams. And it was High Tide.” He hesitated, meeting Arkady's eye, his gaze an open challenge, as if he was daring her to despise him for what he'd done next. “I had only one thought, I swear, and it was to put an end to the Eternal Flame. I wanted it gone. So I reached for water, for all the water I could find. It began to rain. Then it deluged. And it didn't let up for a month or more.”

“Didn't Arryl and Diala try to stop you?”

“They had no hope. I command more power than the two of them combined. But even if someone strong enough had been nearby, I doubt they would have been able to do anything to stop me. I was powered by rage; driven by unconscionable anger.”

“Did you spare a thought for the people?”

He shook his head. “I didn't care what I was doing, Arkady, don't you understand that? My only thought was to smother that damned flame—with an ocean, if I had to. And that's what it took, in the end, before it finally sputtered and died. I'd dumped an ocean on it—or a sea, to be more accurate. The Great Inland Sea from Torlenia, actually, although I didn't realise it at the time. I was too angry to care where the water came from. I suppose I thought I was drawing it from the oceans, but freshwater is lighter than salt water, you see, and the largest body of fresh water nearby was in Torlenia. Of course, you have the Great Lakes to thank me for now, which weren't there until I happened along. I suppose that's how the legend of the Immortal Prince's tears creating your lakes got its start.” He smiled, which chilled Arkady to the core. “Funny, when you think about it, there's actually a grain of truth in
that
legend.”

“And how many innocent people died as a consequence of your wrath?”

Cayal shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. Was his lack of remorse because this had happened so long ago, or because he really was a monster? Arkady wished she knew the answer. It would have made her own emotions so much easier to deal with if the former was the case.

“Millions, I reckon,” Cayal told her with a shrug. “Either in the flood or the years of drought and famine that followed afterwards while the world suffered the backlash of my storm. You can't mess with the weather on that scale without it having serious ramifications the world over for centuries after. This was worse than Magreth. With that one act I knocked human life on Amyrantha back to stone axes and face paint.”

“You sound like you're proud of what you did.”

“I am,” Cayal told her without remorse. “I extinguished the Eternal Flame. For that reason alone, it was worth every life I destroyed to do it.”

A part of her was horrified by the remorseless arrogance of this man responsible for the deaths of millions of people, while her heart bled for the father forced to witness the child he loved, screaming in agony as she burned alive.

“Did it ease your pain,” she asked, “killing all those people?”

“Nothing ever eases the pain, Arkady. Not even the tincture of time, and the Tides know I've put
that
theory to the test.”

For no reason she could name, she reached across the table, placing her hand over his. This man didn't deserve her pity. If she had any brains, she'd run screaming from him. He was arrogant, cruel and remorseless. Logically, Arkady knew that. But there was little logic here and what she was feeling had nothing to do with rational thought. “And this is why you want to die, or find oblivion? Because the pain never goes away?”

He stared at her hand for a moment and then slowly raised it to his lips.

For some reason, the temperature in the room rose sharply, so much that Arkady half-expected the fire to reignite and flare up behind Cayal. It didn't, of course. The heat she felt didn't come from any external source.

“I think,” he whispered against her fingers, “that I've finally convinced you I am who I claim.”

“Don't gloat,” she warned, knowing she should take her hand away.

He closed his eyes and turned her palm to his cheek, kissing the inside of her wrist. Her pulse hammered against his lips and she wanted to squirm in her seat with longing, but didn't dare move in case he took it as an invitation to go on.

Or worse, that he might stop.

“Please, Cayal…,” she whispered, trying to kid herself she was asking him to let her go.

He opened his eyes and stared at her. The naked ache in them made her want to cry.

“Please,
what,
Arkady?”

She was caught between fear and desire, trapped in the middle of her natural caution and the heat in her loins. No man had ever made Arkady feel like this. Desire was something to be feared; something that would cause her pain. She'd never felt so vulnerable, so fearful, so reckless.

Everything around her seemed frozen in time. The dust motes riding the beams of weak sunlight onto the table, the shadows darkening the walls of the tiny cabin, her heart halted between beats, even her breathing…

“I don't know,” she told him softly, honestly.

“You can't make my pain go away, Arkady.”

“You can do something about mine,” someone Arkady didn't know replied.

They were alone, she knew that, but the woman who reached for Cayal wasn't anybody she recognised. He leant forward and kissed her, his lips soft and enticing, more gentle than she could have hoped, more dangerous than she dared acknowledge. He smelt of wood smoke and leather and tasted of ambrosia. Arkady was certain she might die from the tenderness of his caress. Carefully, achingly, he teased open her mouth with the tip of his tongue, his hands sliding through her tousled hair to draw her nearer.

Arkady couldn't breathe. The edge of the table pressed into her ribs, cutting off her air. It didn't matter, she didn't want to breathe.

“You know,” he whispered through the kiss, “this would be a lot easier if there wasn't a table between us.”

He couldn't have said anything worse if he'd asked her how much she charged.

She pulled away from him, jumping to her feet.

What a fool!
she told herself angrily.
What a damned fool you are, woman!

Cayal looked up at her, disappointed certainly, but perhaps not surprised.

“Arkady…,” he began apologetically, but he never got to finish what he was planning to say because at that moment the door opened and Maralyce stomped into the cabin, oblivious to the tension, complaining about the appalling quality of mining equipment these days.

 

There was no place to escape in Maralyce's tiny cabin. Arkady thought she might scream with the strain of saying nothing. Doing nothing. Sitting across the table listening to Maralyce curse and mutter about her equipment while trying to avoid Cayal's eye. He went out to chop wood for a while after lunch, which gave her some respite, but it was only temporary. Eventually he would come back inside. Eventually Maralyce would return to her underground tunnels.

Eventually they would be alone again.

Arkady was at war with herself. To have a man want her was nothing new, to feel his desire radiating from across the room was something she could recognise in her sleep. What made this different was her reaction to it. There was no snide remark at the ready, no deprecating smile, no patronising put-down she could think of. Just the desire, the
need
almost, to give in.

Tilly's stupid suggestion about having an affair was starting to seem not just acceptable, but actually attractive. And how many times had Stellan said outright that he wouldn't mind if she took a lover?

But this wasn't about taking a lover or keeping marriage vows that had always been a sham. This was about letting go. This was about closing the doors on Fillion Rybank's rooms at the university, once and for all.

It shocked Arkady to realise how hard she was clinging to the pain of her growing years.
Is that why I so readily married Stellan?
she wondered.
Was it really about freeing my father or was it simply a convenient way of never having to confront my own fears?

She couldn't find an answer and that disturbed her almost as much as the effect Cayal was having on her.

“He ain't worth it, you know.”

Maralyce looked up from the pulley she was repairing on the table and frowned. Arkady had been staring out the window, watching Cayal chop wood. He'd discarded his shirt for the task and she was entranced by the dappled sunlight playing across the muscles of his perfectly formed back. Spellbound by the rise and fall of the axe, the strong arms that wielded it, rippling with the effort until the tendons stood out beneath the skin….

She caught herself and turned to face Maralyce, certain she must be blushing crimson. “I beg your pardon?”

“Cayal,” the old woman replied. “He ain't worth gettin' all worked up over. He's just a man, in the end. Pretty enough to look at, I'll grant, but in the end, just a man.”