Chapter 54

“He knows. He saw us. He saw you. We must destroy him. We need to send our Inquisitors after him. We have to sic our Forgotten on him. He’s too dangerous to keep close!” Evrain whispered to the air as he retired to his private chambers and stripped off his rings and fineries.

He paced around the room, not bothering to look at the fine golden gilded furniture that decorated the lavish apartments. His housing stood in stark contrast to the spartan stylings of his keep.

He hated the sparseness of his throne room. It didn’t befit one of such rank as he. It was an embarrassment. But it was a useful annoyance. Though most of their noblemen lived lavishly, the commoners, the low-folk, looked up the most to those whom, while immeasurably wealthy, chose to live humbly. It was a backward foolish mindset kept by idiotic yokels, but he was no fool. He wouldn’t lose their loyalty with frippery. Rather he would wield their pathetic assumptions like a tool. He knew that keeping his throne-room, his keep, simplistic, eased his ruling.

It may not be much, but only a fool would make their governance harder than it needed to be. Yes, he planned to destroy them. He always did and always would destroy those he ruled. It was his nature. They always were unfortunate, but necessary sacrifices. Still, why make the destruction of the nation harder than it needed to be? Yes, they were going to crumble and tear each-other apart, but why not rule well and let them pleasantly plump up until the day he tore it all away from them?

They were his chosen sacrifice, and he would treat them well, feed them well, until it was time to lead them to the slaughter.

He just hadn’t expected the slaughter to come so soon. This vessel should have lasted longer. He should have had at least another decade before the tremors started. But they had come earlier than he ever could have expected.

He should have had more time. He still needed time.

Why had they come so early?

“He knows!” Evrain shouted again, rage at his weakness and at Aris boiling in his veins. It was all he could do to restrain himself from trashing his rooms in a fury at his helplessness.

“Does it matter?” that old familiar voice asked him.

“Of course it matters!” he insisted.

“Really? Why? Others have found our secret before. Ones much closer to us than he is. He’s no threat,” the voice spoke in its raspy, but sugary tone. “Trust me. When have I led you wrong. This Aris is no threat. He may be exactly what we need. Remember what we talked about?”

Evrain’s panic slowly started to subside and he threw himself into his gigantic bed, burrowing into the cotton covers.

He was right. He had faced others who had gained knowledge of his mastery of Memory Magic before. He had even dealt with a few who had known of the voice guiding him. Even those who knew his deepest secret weren’t able to take anything from him.

They had all been dealt with.

He could use General Ravenscroft. He was still an invaluable tool if wielded correctly. His uprightness had always been a source of friction. It had kept the other cabinet members in balance. His righteousness acted as an equilibrium. He was a dividing line. An upright post that others measured their morality by. That sense of morality was a useful. One that, when properly manipulated, could advance a cause and change the world.

Aris wasn’t the first, nor would he be the last, paragon that he used and manipulated, but his unyielding nature might make him one of the most effective that had been set against him on the board of life.

No, he wouldn’t kill Aris, The Emperor reassured himself. The General was too valuable of a resource to discard so callously.

He just needed to find out how to use him, and the more he thought about it, the more an idea formed in his mind. Yes, this would work perfectly. The frustration, the chaos that it would cause on the already unstable populace would be the perfect fuel for his upcoming transfiguration.

He WOULD use Aris.

He would take his virtue and wield it as a weapon against him.

*****

“Welcome home darling,” Corrine, who’d seen Aris approaching the gate of their estate, his visage a storm-cloud of emotions, greeted him with a kiss. Best to calm the raging sea before it boiled over.

Aris responded with a quick peck on the cheek and the slightest of grins.

His mood was even worse than it had been for the last two weeks, and she hadn’t seen his brows so darkened for years. The last time she remembered seeing the anger and concern knitting his features so much was when they had first met immediately after the death of his brother Van.

Van.

Why did that name tug at her heartstrings so much?

Ever since she’d grasped Wallace, it felt as if something had loosened inside her. Still, no matter how she tried, she wasn’t able to retrieve the memory, but still, she felt SOMETHING.

What was it? Why did it feel like there was a gaping hole?

“How was your day my heart?” Corrine asked, not deterred by his darkened mood.

She would break through that shell of his.

‘My heart.’ Those two words stung Aris.

He wasn’t her heart.

He was a thief.

He’d stolen her love from the one that had been stolen from her. She had been his brother’s beloved. She was Sephira’s true mother. He held no claim to her heart. He was just an imposter. He was nothing more than a place-holder for a long dead brother that he had never be able to live up to.

Even now in death, Van overshadowed him and was better than he could ever dream to be.

How could he look at Corrine the same, how could he love her like she needed when he was nothing more than a fake? When he had all but stolen her love from her? The very sight of her caused him pain and she had caught onto that.

He’d heard her crying at night, thinking he was asleep. He knew how much he was hurting her, but what could he do?

She deserved better than him. She deserved better than a pale replacement of a man who had been willing to give everything to fight for what he’d believed in. He could never live up to his brother Van’s legacy. Every day that he had worked under Emperor Evrain, he betrayed the memory of his brother.

He had known it since the day that the they had taken his brothers life, but still he had remained in Evrain’s service..

If he wasn’t a coward, he would have broken free from the emperor’s control years ago and he too would have sacrificed himself, but he was a coward. He could never be Corrine’s ‘heart’ and it ate at him.

It was all he ever wished for, but Evrain had stolen him from her.

Yes she was by his side, but she wasn’t his.

Not really.

“What’s wrong?” Corrine asked, she could practically feel the tension radiating from his tight form. It hadn’t escaped her that his posture had seized when he caught sight of her, and it filled her with pain.

She hated that the sight of her caused that reaction in her husband and it was worse that he refused to tell her why. She wanted to scream and beat the reason out of him! What could possibly have happened to warp him so? Was it Wallace? Everything changed when he had arrived back in Aris’ life.

First the young man Kestrel had appeared and he had captured Sephira’s attention and, Corrine wasn’t sure niece recognized it yet, but she had fallen in love with the scrappy young recruit.

Corrine wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It was true that he had transformed himself from the porcupine demeanor of a street orphan into a respectable young man —even the twins loved his company, and he treated them as if he were an older brother— but was that the life for Sephira?

Kestrel, while well intentioned, would bring her pain. Would their love outweigh the misery?

Something deep inside her, something nearly lost and forgotten, told her that it would be.

Along with Kestrel, Wallace had seemed to open a door to her husband Aris. It was one that she shouldn’t have been opened. She didn’t know what he’d done, but ever since her husband had started meeting with the grizzled old soldier nearly every morning, something had changed in him.

He had both become warmer and more distant. How was she supposed to reconcile the opposing personalities that her husband’s old commander brought out in him?

Wallace too, had changed Sephira. She knew of her nieces meetings with him. Sephira never spoke of them, but also made little effort to hide them from her either.

It seemed that no matter how she looked at it, Wallace kept finding his way into the middle of every problem that her family was currently facing. He was a fork in a river, dividing the flow of the world around him into two separate streams. He was a rock in the rut of fate, changing the course of the lives of all he touched.

Everything came back to Wallace.

“What’s wrong?” Corrine asked again, dismayed by the silence of her husband. She desperately wanted to break him out of the morose shell he’d descended into over the last week and a half.

“It’s the Emperor,” came Aris’ quiet answer, surprising her. She hadn’t expected a response. “It’s almost as if he wants to destroy Vealand.”

“It’s almost as if he wants to destroy Vealand.” Those words tugged at something deep in her mind. Something long forgotten.

Something stolen.

Wallace again.

Ever since she’d confronted the old soldier, she’d been in disarray. Millions of tiny things would tug at her heart, would pull at her mind. It was as if she had lived an entire different life, like she had been someone else, but her identity had been stolen from her and replaced with a void.

“Why do you say that?” Corrine asked, following him inside and up to their room, feeling an odd sense of dread at her husband’s words.

They echoed in her mind. “It’s almost as if he wants to destroy Vealand.”

“Edrian Wolls, that snake,” Aris growled in distaste. He hated the man. “Suggested to Evrain that I was failing in my job of keeping peace in the city. He said that the burden was too hard on our city guards. That they couldn’t handle all the violence breaking out across the city. That I was failing at my job and that we needed to bring in his military forces.”

Corrine frowned. That would be a terrible idea. What would possess The Minister of Defense to put that forth as an option? Even she could see the problems it would cause. “And the Emperor was okay with this?”

Why wasn’t she surprised? It was as if she had almost expected it. Why?

“Yes,” Aris nodded, affirming her fears. “He endorsed the idea and got everyone else on the cabinet to endorse it too. He even used my time spent in the service as an example for why they should be brought in. He used my reputation as a weapon against me.”

Corrine, shaking her head at the sheer foolishness of what the Emperor had done wrapped her arms around her husband and melted into him. He hesitated a half second before sighing and returning her embrace. She almost pulled away in that second, but instead held him tighter. When he returned her embrace, it was filled with resolve.

As if he’d made up his mind about something.

“I’m going to fight this,” he whispered under his breath, barely audible.

“Fight what?” she asked.

“I’m going to try to appeal their decision. I want to let them know the destruction that they could unleash on Fiell if they handle this poorly,” he said.

“It isn’t going to work. That monster craves this. He will tear Fiell down. He’s the Pretender. It’s what he does. He’s a plague!” Something screamed in Corrine’s mind.

Where had THAT come from?

Who’s voice had that been?

Corrine strained to remember. Her head pounded as she tried to find whatever it had been that had triggered that thought.

What was that!?

Aris looked at her. There was fear and pain in those eyes. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out and he shut it just as quickly. She could see the mental struggle playing out on his features.

He was so close to saying something, but he couldn’t.

Still he held himself back. What could be so terrible to cause him to do so? Everything within her strained and shouted at her to just open her mouth and ask him, but she couldn’t.

She was frozen.

Wby?

Was she afraid of what she might hear? Did she not want to hear what he might say?

Though desperate to know what it was that was holding her husband back, keeping him away from her, she was terrified of what she might learn. She wanted nothing more than to know whatever secret he’d been keeping from her, but she was afraid.

No, not afraid. Terrified.

Was it another woman?

No.

She knew that he would never break their bond. He would sooner die than to go back on his word. She had seen the pain that he carried from his father’s drunken, then broken, promises. He had sworn to be better than his father. He would never be the drunk, abusive, manipulative monster that his late father had been.

He had seen the women his father had sought comfort in after losing his wife. He had seen how each successive drunken fling had left his father more and more empty. He wasn’t going to empty himself into other women after he’d seen how it had just further hollowed out the pathetic shell of a man that his father had become.

It had to be something else that was eating away at her husband Aris, but what could it be?

Something political? The change in him had been happening slowly over the last couple of months.

She had seen that even before Wallace had appeared, something had shifted in Aris after he awoke from his coma. It was as if his return had brought a different person.

Not a worse person, rather it felt as if his eyes had been forced open larger than they had ever been.

What could it have been that had happened to him?

More importantly why did it feel so familiar?

That was the part that bothered her most. She KNEW what it was that she saw in her husband’s eyes. Knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what was happening to him.

She KNEW but she didn’t. Not really.

Whatever the knowledge was was gone.

Stolen.

It was stolen. She knew SOMETHING had been there, but it had been stolen from her. It had to have been.

Why did her sudden recollection of Aris’ change after his coma again trigger that vague terror inside of her?

Was it this change from then that had placed this cursed distance between them? Was it fear of whatever had changed him during those days he’d been incapacitated that had grown the distance between them? Or was it something different? More recent?

She had seen that change beginning in him then, but he had still been by her side. He had been more reserved, but it had only been recently that he had withdrawn into the shell that had slowly hardened around him.

She needed to figure out what had caused him to withdraw. She needed to piece together the mystery that surrounded not only her husband, but had engulfed Sephira and Kestrel too.

She knew she needed to find the answers that had so long evaded her, but she was terrified of what she might find. Something in her gut told her that the knowledge would come with cataclysmic consequences.

Was she ready to face that?