Azure studied the king, who seemed to deflate into melancholy even a bit more from the subject. “What happened? What deception? A betrayal from someone close to you?”

  The king did not meet her eyes. “Must we broach this? Can terrible things not be left to die?”

  “I’ll answer that if you answer me this: do you know for certain why I feel attuned or connected to all of this?” Though she left a pause, he didn’t answer, which might’ve been information enough. “I have to know. I will, one way or another, whether you help or not.”

  The king finally looked up at her, though still he avoided her eyes, not quite rising all the way. His face twitched involuntarily. He used his staff to pull himself up, so anyone near was craning their neck to look up at the giant. “Then you’ll know less, I wager.”

  Orswyth suddenly spoke up. “Will you deny the sharpness of the truth to another, when you were excised of falsehoods so effectively? Will you be so foolish?”

  The king’s head whipped over to Orswyth. He seemed about to retort from his expression. Two old wizards stared one another down. But the fire of the king diminished and died against the other. “You cut deep again, Wiseman. Would that you lived when I did. What colleagues we’d have been, what brothers.”

  “We are brothers now, King of Before. Time enough, to have such privilege, hmm? You are as alive as anyone this season.”

  “Half as, I will grant, only — and no more.” A rare smile faintly crossed his features, but his expression became much more sober as he turned back to Azure. “Very well. The truth that cuts delivered, as I was cut for the better. The war was not the true catalyst of my withdrawal. Though wracked with grief, the sudden suicide of my queen, before the war touched our shores, wasn’t either. I planned to preserve and defend in her honor…”

  He hobbled further away leaning on his staff, turning to cast his eyes at the throne above. By now, the guardsmen were all done with their swearing, so Samantha was paying attention with growing curiosity.

  Most of the wraith guardsmen who had not recovered their faculties were scattered to the periphery. One sat on the floor, watching and listening like a child at ‘storytime.’ But it seemed that a few more were standing tall in front of Samantha than before. Most seemed downright happy, in truth. Azure knew that her goddess had given them new names after the swearing. It was clearly the right call, as most looked as if they’d been handed the moon out of the sky.

  Surprisingly, the orb-staff wielder, diced up and torn all to hell, was among them. His face half ripped off, he was smiling the biggest of all… but perhaps that was because he’d lost his upper lip.

  The giant king seemed lost in memory. Finally, he continued, “I read things I couldn’t believe in the stars. So did the Stargazers in corroboration, though my mind twisted in time to think them failures. Not so. We did precise augury on my wife and the nature of her death, encountering disturbing spellcraft resisting us, and terrible implications therein I yet denied. But there was one thing I could blaspheme to do. So troubled and wroth that I was, in the very middle of the war, I broke open a staunchly protected tomb to retrieve the body, committing a grave sin against my own law and principle, making myself a hypocrite to know the truth — to utilize the body for spellcraft that could not be denied. To speak to the dead in necromancy, crafting a false spirit of mimicry.”

  He sighed grandly, eyes cast down to the floor, sadness and weariness saturating his stance. “Truth prevailed, heinous that it was, heinous that its means were. The spell failed, and the information was only more damning upon analysis of the body. Fake. The spell failed because she was not dead at all. She had faked her death and fled. She had betrayed and abandoned me.”

  Samantha and Gabriel gasped in tandem, hands going to their hearts in tandem, quite absorbed by the tale.

  Azure felt her brows draw down. Her fist clenched involuntarily. She hated this story for some reason. She felt as if she’d swallowed a large rock… a heaviness and discomfort was in her gut she couldn’t be rid of.

  The king’s face twisted darkly in emotion, but it soon faded back into melancholy. “My wife… was a capricious, elusive soul. Adventurous. We’d spent more than a human lifespan roaming, progressing, learning. And then leading and teaching, which led to the towers here — led to a fellowship of sorcery. My inclination more than hers, but she had a love of battle magic and a few favorites she’d taught. She’d never fully settled within herself as I did. As I ultimately had to, through Ascension to godhood.

  “Part giant, long-lived, I nonetheless grew older even when she remained as spotless as a goddess. Life extension was a nascent technology and tied to forbidden necromancies. Ascension was my only option and begged for by many already worshiping me. But godhood irrevocably changed me, I’m sad to say. I could not see the danger there in our relationship, blinded by love. But I see now that her own love had gone foul.”

  He sighed. “She had campaigned for conquest to avoid the war that occurred much as she predicted. Another mistake of mine. I cherished peace and had faith in humanity, attempting to preserve those things through trade and diplomacy. Unfounded faith it seems. When I denied her, she withdrew and grew more distant from me. Signs began to show of melancholy. Deception, likely, to support the eventual false death she was orchestrating. Her death was crushing, but the war and our preservation were my prevailing duty, and in her note of death, she bid me to win it as her final wish. If I had never discovered the truth… if I had held to my own laws and let it go… perhaps I would have.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  The king held a helpless hand up. “But alas, I did not. My rage, my grief at many things compounded together between betrayal, loss, war, and futility, broke something within me, and was the beginning of my madness. I could bear it no longer so I buried all that I knew deep and spoiled what was mine to all the world. In my warped view, I saw the ruin as judgment… judgment and defiance against the last wish of a traitorous witch.”

  Azure was hot. Fuming. Her breathing was ragged and heavy, and the last statement had her fists clenched so hard her nails triggered her skin hardening. It was all uncanny to her, even as she felt something bubbling up within her wanting to speak, to yell, to scream at him. But what? Her brain couldn’t parse it. She almost just told him to shut up instead, to cut his words short.

  Things only worsened, though. The king turned to Azure, studying her and meeting her eyes again finally. Sadness saturated them. “Her skin was blue, her eyes purple, her ears pointed. Fae-touched, unique, mysterious, more beautiful and terrible than any other. I gave her anything she asked and her smile was the sweetest fruit. I called her my Blueberry.”

  Fury overloaded her. Azure snarled and thrust her finger out at the king, as a warble of reality like a sudden wave flowed through the realm and spite-laced, power-infused words spilled from her. “Don’t you dare utter that word in my presence! It is not yours! I’ll turn you inside out, I’ll crack your mind like an egg, you… you…”

  Briefly, Azure noticed everyone in the throne room other than the king was braced as if they’d just been pushed. They had — she’d pushed them. The king had fully stumbled and fell to a knee, but his eyes did look away from her.

  Soon thereafter, though, Azure simply blacked out.

  ??············???···········??

  She was rising up out of the water. It never truly touched her through the journey from Itha Ranon. It slid around her, unbefitting to sully her perfection. Much as living through the war her husband had brought on himself would sully it. So she’d instigated, sabotaged peace, accelerated the process a little, and been a little more successful than planned, so what? Any fool could see war was inevitable for the jewel of a place they’d forged together. She’d practically begged that he bring the war to them. Conquer. But it was too much to ask, apparently. Begging in words, begging with actions, all for naught.

  I will never beg a man for anything again.

  It had shown her the true dynamic that had developed when they were supposed to be equals. She’d assumed for a long time that she even had the upper hand, if from the shadows. But he’d become something else entirely with godhood. She was no longer first — the belief that sustained him was by necessity. Magic and religion entwined was his new, true love.

  To a certain extent, it was an unforeseen imbalance. How could they know her strange, accursed nature did not allow her Ascension along with him? So much power she’d dreamed of, and even a pantheon one day — immortal children — all crushed to exhaustion by a barrier she could not break through. He’d have helped her, supported her, and even likely deferred to her entirely, in time. But that didn’t happen, and her pride never recovered. Love turned a little more to hate with every new imbalance reflected.

  The envy of the north is my envy coming for you, my dear, but you’ll never know it. I’ve wounded you, at least. An impressive feat for a mere mortal, hmm?

  Not that she exactly was. She didn’t age at all. She’d been studied for that quality by the sages — as much as she tolerated, at least. No real understanding was gained, and the leading expert abandoned them for his own glories. She hardly blamed him. She was an enigma. Not a mortal yet not a god, denied both and caught between. It was what it was.

  Regardless, she had all the time in the world to rebuild in her own way. Forge a new empire. The lands south were rich though untamed. Only one, small, mysterious power held sway from the coast, feared and avoided…

  She made her way from the beach up a rocky incline, walking on slippers, in a white dress, in apparent tan human skin, all cultivated to appear as if she was from the northwest islands. Her walk was a bit more unsteady than she wanted to admit. Her transformation — a spellcraft over a decade in the making — took getting used to. And this was only the first, simplistic form.

  “There it is,” she whispered as she caught sight of her target, peeking over the rocks — a tower rising and gleaming above, colored like a resplendent multicolored pearl, shaped like some bizarre giant seashell. Below it would be walls made similarly. Its radiance was more immense in mana than the natural. The Temple of the Changers, possessing wisdom from the Deep.

  Holes in my knowledge, forbidden to know by the laws of my very husband in Itha Ranon. Eldritch transmutation, necromancy. Why some left him. Not enough for me to, but now I can rectify his error all the same. Three decades since my protege left. You’re here, aren’t you? Denied so long. Poor, brilliant boy. Perhaps I’ll finally give you the taste of your forbidden fruit now, different though it may be. If you’ve achieved, then you deserve it. I was wrong about my love… he is not the one to be mine forever…

  She walked up the rocky, windy path, dreaming of what wonders she’d conquer within that beautiful beacon of sorcery; dreaming of new loves to forge.

  And then she lived happily ever after. The End.

  Next Chapter...

  A firmer understanding of the curse's nature.

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