Chapter Nine
Trigger warning, mentions of SA. One line of suicidal ideation.
Dawn graced the island with a clear sky, an oddity in the days preceding the storm. It was as though the tempest had skirted our sanctuary, perhaps diverted by the island's potent conductors or by some divine intercession. The possibility lingered faintly—a benevolent goddess extending her protection. But doubt anchored itself firmly within me; I was a sinner, living a life of lies. The goddess would let the lighting rain on me.
He was pacing the island, fully armored. He liked logic, charting, math. This probably incensed him, scared him. He didn’t like to be wrong. I watched as I performed my tasks diligently, still gathering food supplies for us in case the storm took over, but we appeared perfectly safe. By late afternoon, the clouds seemed all but gone. Distant mists on the horizon crackling with energy.
"Irina," his voice pierced through my concentration. I was prying open an oyster, my hair drawn back with an improvised bandana. "Come to my place later. I am wary of the sky.
I was in a particularly bad mood. A surge of irritation coursed through me, fueled by my dreams—the memory of him, of the waterfall. How could I conceal an infatuation when he was resolute in not leaving me be?
“The sky is fine,” I retorted, an edge to my words. I wanted lemon juice for the oysters, lemonade, stolen white wine. My four-poster bed back on Astraeus, the gowns and luxuries I had swatted away all my life. I longed to flee from his enigma, his mercurial moods. A desperate desire to escape this place and its secrets. "We ought to return to the ship, ascend into the atmosphere and gauge the storm's progression. We must do something."
He repeated himself, he hated repeating himself. “I do not trust the sky.”
"Then let's depart, monitor the storm's course," I persisted, my voice strained. I sounded exacerbated, whiny, and young. But for some reason I didn’t care. Inexplicably, my emotions had erupted, spiraling beyond control.
"The decision is not yours to make."
I exaggerated my groan like a teenager. Like Irina when she did not get what she wanted. “I don’t care,” I all but wailed, I sounded hysterical at this point. "I just need to leave this place," I choked on a sob, the desperation clawing at my throat. “I need to leave h-here and get away from you.”
I could have cried. I could have cried because he softened. Cried because he understood exactly what I meant. The taboo, the immorality and the impossibility of it all. It probably was the worst love confession ever recorded in history. The future was probably laughing at me, too.
A tenseness overcame him, his demeanor shifting, midnight blue returning. He was attempting to help me salvage some dignity, remain professional, formal. Yet, I knew myself unworthy of such restraint. I wasn't a princess, not regal in any sense. I wanted nothing more than for him to discipline me, chastise me for whining and tell me the ten thousand reasons why I could not like him. Why I was too young for him, and why we could never, ever be together in any form. But he and I both already knew those reasons by heart, we both listed them as we fell asleep in our separate parts.
“Come to the cave, tonight,” he repeated. The words held the weight of everything and nothing. I wanted to go to a different cave and shoot myself in the head.
I never made it to the cave. Instead, I let the tears carry me into the embrace of sleep. In that slumber, I returned to Astraeus, my opulent home world. The gentle light of dawn spilled through the grand windows of my Sun Court bedroom, painting everything in ethereal hues. Rising from the silken covers, I smiled, ready to face another day in the embrace of luxury.
But as I stretched, the illusion shattered. This wasn't my room; it was Irina's. I had forgotten that I was taking her place this morning. Meetings with the senate or council, the responsibilities of royalty. The grand gilded doors swung open, and I seated myself at the vanity, anticipating the arrival of handmaidens to tend to me. There was always something empowering about being pampered by them, as if I truly were the Queen's daughter, while Irina was reduced to nothing, and I finally had a real family.
Reclining on the sumptuous bed adorned with intricate embroidery, I awaited the caress of gentle hands. But when the double doors creaked open, it wasn't the familiar presence of handmaidens that entered. No, it was the Empire, draped in gray uniforms that starkly contrasted the opulence of the room. Fear gripped me, the air thickening with an ominous tension.
My heart raced as they approached, their eyes gleaming with a mix of power and malevolence. I tried to maintain my facade of composure, but my words hinted at hidden desperation. "What brings you to my chamber?" I inquired, my voice trembling ever so slightly.
Their smiles were unsettling, veiling their intentions beneath a veneer of politeness. They drew closer, hands outstretched, and a shiver ran down my spine. "Don't touch me!" I cried out, the words a futile attempt to ward them off. "Don't touch me!"
I jolted awake, my body drenched in a cold sweat, my shirt clinging to my skin. Tremors racked my frame as the remnants of my nightmare refused to fade. Something was terribly wrong. Something was terribly wrong with me.
Then, I felt it—a sticky warmth, a stain on the white skirt I wore. My gaze dropped, and my heart plummeted. Blood. Pooling on the sand beneath me. The Empire had invaded even this sanctuary. Violated me in a place I deemed safe. My island, my refuge, had been desecrated.
The world spun, and my gaze locked onto the storm that raged before me. The ocean, once serene, now churned with darkness and fury. Above, the sky was a chaotic canvas of competing grays and purples. The electric storm.
I was on my feet but did not remember standing. Running but not aware of my movements. My movements were a blur as I stumbled forward, propelled by a desperate urgency. It was as if I could outrun the past, the invaders, the storm that mirrored my inner chaos. Lightning cracked the sky, and I screamed, the sound lost in the fury of the tempest.
I called out for salvation—from a mother who would never come, for the goddess Metztli who watched over the moon. The chaos within me mirrored the chaos outside, and my very being resonated with fear and desperation. I fell, a sharp pain in my arm barely registering, my mind consumed by the Empire's pursuit and the fire of the lightning that threatened to consume me.
Running, running, running. Rain plastered my clothes to my skin, but I was beyond feeling. I was a woman possessed, driven by an instinct to survive. Lightning split the sky, illuminating my path, but he was there, too—a figure in the distance, a distant memory, or perhaps another delusion.
“Irina!” he was shouting. I was not Irina, they were hunting Irina. I ran from him as if he were a pack of wolves. I ran toward the shore, the waves crashing against the sand, a dance of purple death. But then lightning, as if Zeus himself had come to punish me for my sins, broke our twin palm trees before me.
“IRINA!”
"Don't call me that!" My voice sounded foreign to my ears, the words a chaotic symphony of despair and hysteria. The long golden-brown hair around me was rising. I was floating, Zeus and Metztli had worked something out, some cosmic force. I was worthy of salvation.
With a force beyond comprehension, I crashed into him, the impact shattering me further. Blood immediately poured from my nose, I had broken it against his armor. The white-silver ghost. I broke into his arms, shattered into a million pieces across the floor, every emotion flowing out of me. “The Empire, they’re here. The b-blood, in between my legs. It’s the same as before.”
His gaze traveled from the blood on my nose to the blood between my legs. "They found me," I sobbed, the confession torn from my lips. “They r-raped me while I s-slept.”
"Irina, listen to me." His voice was an anchor, his grip fierce as he shook me. "LISTEN TO ME!" When my hysteria resisted his command, he shook me harder, desperate. "We have to get back to the cave, we have to—fuck!"
The symphony of the storm intertwined with the cacophony of my cries, and the world spiraled into a vortex of terror and chaos. It was in that heartbeat that he seized control, pinning me beneath his unyielding strength, holding me with a ferocity that knew no bounds. My hair, an extension of my turmoil, reached toward the heavens, enshrouding his helmet in a strange, ethereal embrace.
Time, in that moment, seemed to slow. My heart pounded in synchrony with the imminent danger, the amethyst lightning racing toward the earth, directly aiming for the armor that shielded me. Panic gripped me, and my screams of protest became a desperate plea. "No! No!"
He held me captive, his grip on my arms unyielding, grounding me as the world around us trembled. The warrior, the conduct, absorbed the full impact on his back. Lightning surged, and the world split in two, the impact sent shockwaves through the earth. A blinding eruption of light consumed us. He may have screamed, I wouldn’t have heard him. The world as we knew exploded.
The very fabric of reality seemed to shatter, a cataclysmic explosion that reshaped the world. When the chaos abated, my head spun, and I struggled to find my footing. Two figures materialized before me, two saviors, both as real and otherworldly as the storm itself. My hair settled, no longer defying gravity, yet a sense of weightlessness enveloped me as if I had lost all connection to the earth.
I attempted to move, but my limbs betrayed me, and I tumbled to the ground. My futile efforts to run were met with his arms, a sanctuary in this bewildering tempest. He cradled me, running through the rain-drenched forest with desperate urgency. His iridium armor, once a symbol of strength, was now discarded in frantic curses, scattered on the forest floor like insignificant remnants.
A shriek erupted from me as lightning struck his discarded shoulder plate. But it was a calculated sacrifice, a diversion from the disaster that could have been. The lightning danced, the storm raged, and piece by piece, his armor fell, like an offering to the gods of chaos. Chestplate, arm cuffs—all surrendered to the wrath of the tempest.
Finally, the cave loomed ahead, a sanctuary against the fury of the storm. We stumbled within just moments before another strike of lightning, the force of nature itself threatening to consume us. As we collapsed onto the cave's floor, I struggled to breathe, my chest heaving with the weight of my terror. He must have felt that way too because he collapsed to the floor on the other side of the cave and vomited.
The world around us seemed distorted, a reality too surreal to comprehend. I yearned to weep, to pour out the fear and confusion that consumed me, but I remained adrift in this altered dimension. It was impossible, inconceivable, that such an event had transpired.