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wavesmp3 · 11 months ago

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the world is ours to remake

[a part of of the world of gifts and sins; a prequel to the sea is yours to take]

Avi’s been told what it means to wear a crown. His teachers had said it to be a symbol. One of grace and elegance. One that he should uphold as the only son of Queen Raffa. His mother’s council members had told him, with lingering eyes and outstretched arms, that it meant power. Power that Avi understood was the root of the envy in their eyes whenever they looked at Avi, the crown prince and sole heir to the throne. But his mother, the Queen of Leraak herself, had always told Avi, with a voice as gentle and smooth as silk and with hands combing through his hair, that the crown was a burden. At the time, he didn't understand what she meant.

It’s when he’s 11 that he feels it for the first time.

It’s when he’s been called to the throne room, a servant placing his crown perfectly in position and pushing him towards his much too big throne next to his mother’s. It’s when the six Gifts of the Spirit enter the room with a young girl, no older than 7, trailing behind anxious and unsure, bowing before Queen Raffa a second too late, awkward and unnatural. As if bowing is not something her body was ever meant to do. It’s when the Gift of Wisdom announces to the room that Avna, the young girl, is the Gift of Fortitude, that Avi knows the meaning of the small ceremonial crown atop of his head.

And a month later, when the Sins arrive and announce Kamir as the Sin of Pride, he again feels the weight of each jewel, each pearl of responsibility that manifests itself in the shape of a golden crown. He understands the symbol he must uphold. The power he possesses. And the burden he must bear.

And in that moment, if his mother hadn’t covered his hand with hers and squeezed until the blood stopped, Avi’s sure he would have been crushed under the weight of his own crown. Crushed straight to a pulp.

(but when she dies, a year later on the eve of his 12th birthday, nothing is there to stop Avi from crushing into a powder and blowing away like dust)

Avi learns quickly, once the Seven Sins and the Seven Gifts of the Spirit have settled into the Golden Palace, that there’s an unspoken tenseness between the two groups, both of which have been blessed by the Gods with unmatched fighting skills. The Gifts and Sins rarely leave from their opposite wings in the palace unless called upon by the Queen. Avi doesn’t see any of them after their first presence in the throne room.

So when Avi’s running from his servant one night, wandering a familiar part of the Golden Palace alone, and turns a corner to find the young boy he recognizes as Kamir, the Sin of Pride, he’s shocked to say the least.

It’s only when Avi hears someone calling Kamir’s name, does he realize Kamir is sneaking around as much as he is. And maybe that’s what makes Avi take the younger boy’s hand and bolt. Eventually while panting through the corridors, making quick turns and chasing each other up the service stairs, Kamir starts leading the way, and Avi follows him around another corner, now on the top floor of the palace. Kamir knocks on the walls until he finds a slab of stone that sounds hollow even to Avi. Avi knew the Golden Palace was filled with secret passageways, halls that connected rooms and stairs that led to hidden quarters. The only one he knew of was the passageway that linked his room to his mother’s. So when Kamir pushes on the hollow slab of stone that opens slowly unveiling a staircase behind the wall, Avi isn’t surprised by its existence but rather by the fact that Kamir has found it at all. Either way, Avi follows the younger boy up the staircase and onto the palace roof. There they find the Gift of Fortitude, standing on the roof waiting for Kamir and dismissing Avi entirely.

He learns that night, that Avna and Kamir were from the same village and that they had been friends before he was a Sin and she was Gift. He learns that whatever tenseness that has come between the other Sins and Gifts has not extended to them two. Them two who were closer than anyone Avi had seen before. Like the trunks of two trees tangled and lost within each other until deemed as one. Like two halves coming together to create a whole. It was like their closeness filled the air and snaked down his throat until he was suffocating in between their friendship. Like they were a puzzle with no room for his piece.

But there’s something about their suffocating friendship that makes Avi want more. So it becomes like that, Avi goes on walks at midnight, sneaks onto the roof, finds Avna and Kamir already there talking until their breath turns blue.

He wonders, not for the first time, on the night he joins wordlessly on the roof, on the night Avna and Kamir are playing a game from their hometown; Avi wonders if they’d even notice if he were to disappear. So he does. He slips back down the secret staircase, waits at the base, he waits for what feels like hours and hours and hours. And when no one comes down, he decides he won’t come back to the roof again.

—

After that, the seconds and minutes bleed and bleed and bleed until it’s been days, weeks, months since his last night on the roof. Things seem to get lost between curt nods in the corridors and his lessons on etiquette and diplomacy.

“Avi,” his mother whispers one night when he’s snuck into bed beside her, “did you attend your lessons today?”

He buries his face in her lap. “Yes.”

“Don’t lie to me.” She chides, combing her fingers through his hair in a gentle way that doesn’t at all match the tone of her voice. “You can’t skip lessons, Avi. They’re important. One day you’ll be King of Leraak, and I promise that you’ll find them coming of great use then.”

“I’m still young. I have time.” He whines into the fabric of his mother’s sheets despite knowing how this conversation will end. Avi’s mother was two years younger than he is now when she inherited the throne and the crown.

“Avi,” she repeats, her voice sending a chill down his spine, “you never know.”

She’s right. Avi doesn’t know how things will play out a month after that night.

He doesn’t know what it means when one of his mother’s close lady servants comes to his room one day, the servant who made his mother giggle behind her palm and the same one that Avi caught lingering around her rooms one night. He doesn’t know what it means when the servant falls into his small, child arms like he’s the ground and she’s a falling star. He doesn’t know what it means when she clings onto his clothes, tugs on his skin, and cries into his shoulder until they’re both drowning in a puddle on the floor.

He doesn’t know until the Seven Sins appear at his door. Until words fall from their lips like a mantra that’s been broken and forced into their mouths. Avi knows what it means when they kneel before him and pronounce solemnly, “For you we serve,” he meets Kamir’s eyes, small and teary,

“King Avi.”

Two days before his coronation, a week before the funeral, and the night after rumors of murder travel between the cracks in the walls, the Seven Gifts of the Spirit flee from the Golden Palace. And in two days time, once he’s completely crushed, obliterated into dust under the weight of his mother’s crown, he sits down with his mother’s council members, stares into their green eyes, and announces the start of the Holy Wars.

(a cry rings throughout the entirety of Leraak that night. from the eastern mountains, to the Zalazar River, to the southern sea, to the western peaks, to the Giant Forest and to the Nomads’ Land within. every corner of Avi's kingdom cries for the misery to come, for the misery that will drag on for five long, unbearable years)

And one night, after the coronation but before the funeral, he finds Kamir, the youngest Sin, on the palace roof. “I can’t believe she’s gone.” He whispers when Avi joins his side. And Avi knows, through the crack in Kamir’s voice, that he’s talking about the Gift of Fortitude. Avna, who is probably innocent, but who is still part of the group that orchestrated the murder of Avi’s mother. So Avi pretends Kamir isn’t. He reaches into his mind and pulls on the ringing sound of Kamir’s voice. He twists the memory and contorts the heartbreak until it fits his own. That night, on the roof with the Sin of Pride, is the first time Avi cries since the day he drowned in the puddle on the floor.

—

A fire is lit. Eventually. 30 days after Avi’s mother dropped the crown on his head and threw him towards the throne. And it burns and burns and burns. Reaching towards Avi until he feels compelled to extend his arm and let the flames lick his skin and tarnish his red shirt. And suddenly he’s lost in the flames, sitting in the middle, fire closed around him like curtains. Avi watches, between the holes and rips in the red curtains, he watches everyone watching him burn alone.

It’s the service leader who pulls him out. Handing him a log and lighting it in his hand. Only family members were allowed to throw logs into the fire at funerals. So when Avi tosses the burning wood into the flames, it’s the only one. And the entire court watches it burn.

(and later, when the service has ended but the fire still flickers, Avi, hidden in a corner, watches his mother’s servant sneak back into the room and throw a stick from the apricot tree into the dying fire)

Avi learns that being king is a vulnerable position to be in. The green eyes of his council members burn holes in Avi’s back and hire assassins for murder. As it turns out, their loyalty to Queen Raffa does not extend to him. Though Avi can’t really blame them; 12 is too young to be king. He knows it, they know it, all of Leraak knows it. And Avi’s reminded of his inadequacy each time his hand brushes past the scar along his back from the arrow that got too close and whenever he looks in a mirror and sees the scar at the bottom of his right cheek just above his jaw from the dagger that was pressed to his neck one night.

But despite the assassination attempts and the emerald beacons in their eyes, the council members still have the best interests of the kingdom when it comes to enacting policies and war meetings with the Commander of the Knights of the Holy Order. The Sins start joining too, recounting their wins and losses on the battlefield, recommending allocation of the Knights and redirection of old supply chains. Avi finds solace in Kamir, sharing exchanges like the whole room has been caught in a hurricane and they’re alone together in the eye of the storm. For the first time in a while, Avi knows he has someone he can trust. He knows because unlike the council members, unlike the other Sins, there isn’t a fleck of green in Kamir’s eyes.

—

The five years of the Holy Wars pass eventually, long and slow, as if they’re taking a leisurely stroll through time and space. And with each step taken, the entire world shakes, flinging lives over its edge and burying bodies under its dirt. One by one, the Sins and Gifts start to die off as well. The Sin of Envy is the first to go. Avi only finds out when six Sins show up at the next war meeting instead of seven. In truth, Avi hadn’t realized the Sins and Gifts were even capable of death. And not even a year later, when only five Sins sit down to discuss the latest battle, Avi knows not to ask about the whereabouts of the sixth.

—

It’s in the last year of the war that Avi learns the cause of it. By the time he does, the Sin of Sloth has been inching towards death with every passing day for a week. And the day before Sloth dies, Avi’s told everything. He’s told the truth. A truth much too large and much too heavy for a 17 year old to carry. A truth that has been buried for years by the Sins and Gifts. A truth not even the green-eyed members of the council know. Avi’s 17 when he learns the truth of angels, the truth of his world, and the truth of his mother’s murder.

And the next day, when Sloth dies and when Kamir returns to the Golden Palace from the battlefront to mourn, Avi looks down at the younger boy’s hands and sees that they’re stained with a bright and burning red. Red caked on by five years of spilt blood and murder. Avi turns to his own hands and finds them red with guilt. Finds it under his nails, between the lines in his palms, and dripping from each of his fingers. Kamir’s hands are stained, but Avi’s hands are submerged, drenched in a red that rivals the Zalazar River.

Avi thinks about how at six Kamir became the Sin of Pride. How at eight he was forced to fight in this war, and how, now, at thirteen Kamir’s fighting alone. His entire childhood slipping between his fingers as easily as coats slip off their hangers. Avi studies Kamir and feels the unfairness of this world and the wrongness of this war like a boulder to his gut. Avi thinks that what the Sins and Gifts have done, the chaos they’ve brought upon this kingdom, is poison walking in human form, rotting these lands, and destroying its people.

“We’ve been robbed.” Avi whispers to Kamir, who has taken his murderous, blood-stained hands and wrapped them around Avi’s, crying for the loss of the last Sin into the older boy's side. “We’ve been robbed of our childhood. You and me. Robbed by this war and by the Sins and Gifts.”

“Not just us.” Kamir says lifting his head, wiping his blue tears with his red palms, creating purple streaks over his cheeks. “But Avna as well.”

Avi doesn’t respond. Instead he comes to the overwhelming realization that there is no right and wrong; there is no black and white. There is only grey, grey, grey. And the millions of shades in between.

And in the next week, when Kamir is brought back to the Golden Palace with an injury that will kill him in two weeks time, Avi comes to a new realization that just as the war robbed Kamir of his childhood, it’ll also rob him of his life. So Avi waits by the younger boy’s side, counting the borrowed breaths and the fading pulse of his heart.

—

Kamir mutters nonsense, induced by herbal highs and too much medicine, something about his village one night, a special tree the next morning, and heaven that afternoon. But there’s a frightening amount of certainty when one day Kamir whispers “she’s coming.” Avi doesn’t have to ask to know he’s talking about the Gift of Fortitude.

She does come, one night, although Avi isn’t sure how she’s heard that Kamir was injured in the first place and then how she’s managed to slip between the cracks of King’s City.

His first instinct, when he finds her in a corridor, is to let her go. Let Avna find Kamir half dead in the palace infirmary. Let her mourn for the night and disappear in the morning. But it’s as Avi’s turning a blind eye that a bitter candy is placed between his lips and on his tongue. It’s right after he’s made his choice that he remembers those nights five years ago on the palace roof.

So he catches her hand and tugs her back before she can pass, using her shock over her strength. He stares the Gift of Fortitude down, grazing his finger against the scar on his cheek above his jaw, the bitter candy now dissolved in his mouth.

“How badly do you want to see him?”

“Avi please.” She whispers into the darkness of the corridor.

“Gift of Fortitude,” a seed falls into his mind, takes root between his nerves, and blooms within his skull, “let’s make a deal.”

—

(there’s something unmistakeable in Avna’s cries when she sees Kamir for the first time. but when it comes to putting a name to whatever it is that hangs in the air and clutters under the infirmary bed, Avi can’t think of one that fits)

—

Avi and Avna watch Kamir’s chest deflate and his blood turn cold. In a blink of an eye, at the burn of a candlestick, Kamir’s dead, and Avi hides his tears behind billowing sleeves and heavy jewelry, keeps his grief locked up in a special corner of his room, an act by this point in the war Avi’s all too used to. And he notices Avna dragging her feet along the stone floors and painting the walls a duller shade of grey, and thinks that perhaps this isn’t a one-man show, that perhaps this act he shares with her.

So Avi loses Kamir by the end of the week, and at the start of the next, he gains Avna, the Gift of Fortitude.

When the last Gift other than Avna dies, the war is ended. Five years, all those lives, the destruction of the kingdom—ended by two wax seals on yellow paper, one of the royal insignia and one of the Seven Gifts of the Spirit. And the next morning, after Avna and Avi stamp the yellow paper, after news that the war has ended spreads like fire to every corner of Leraak, Avna vanishes from the Golden Palace, disappears from King’s City, and breaks the promise she made to Avi two months ago.

It’s sometime during the first year after the Holy Wars, while Avi and his entirely new council are immersed in reconstruction of the kingdom, that the mobs start breaking out. They start in the north. Destroying every trace of the Seven Sins and the Seven Gifts of the Spirit. Ripping paintings. Setting fires to the sanctuaries. And it’s on Kamir's first death anniversary that Avi wakes up to the palace sanctuary in flames.

Coincidence or not, Avi doesn’t have the heart to clear out the ashes.

Some years pass, in truth Avi loses count after the second. Every now and then, Avna returns. Hungry. In need of money. Stays for a night, then slips out of the palace the next morning. It’s a routine Avi gets used to the third time she shows up on the palace roof, somehow sneaking past everyone on her way up.

But when she shows up this time, something’s different. Avi knows by the way she doesn’t slip through the palace’s secret passageways and by the way she doesn’t wait for Avi on the roof. This time, she shows up at the palace gates, holds a dagger to the throat of a guard, and waits for the King to come down and greet her himself.

He does come down eventually, insisting that he doesn’t need his guard to accompany him. But his guard doesn’t trust the Gift of Fortitude, or perhaps it’s that they don’t know her like Avi does. Although Avi wouldn’t consider his relationship with the Gift as anything more than the two conversations and broken promise that it is.

But either way he does come down, guard surrounding him, swords drawn and arrows strung. She drops her dagger when Avi appears from behind the palace doors, scoffs at the guard, and bows towards the King thanks to the reminder from Lady Mirana, one of Avi’s more petty council members. Avi finds that there’s a shocking amount of familiarity when Avna bows, the same as she did on her first day in the Golden Palace, still awkward and unnatural, still a second too late, still something her body was never meant to do. And when Avi asks what she wants, he expects something along the lines of money and food, but instead she surprises him by asking for a room.

So Avi throws her in the palace dungeons.

—

The palace dungeons were built underneath the ground, straight into the dirt under the palace. But ever since Queen Raffa’s crime pardons, the palace dungeons have been left unused for the most part. So when Avi sends away the two dungeon guards, he’s sure that there’s no one around but him and the Gift of Fortitude.

In truth, Avi’s never been to the palace dungeons, never felt the need to. Though he assumes Avna and Kamir must’ve stumbled upon it at some point all those years ago. He learns quickly that he’s been right to never visit this particular part of the palace. It’s cold and dark. One singular torch lighting each hall. The flames carrying each bit of light and warmth that’s been allowed between the walls. He finds her in a cell towards the center, the small torch in front casting a golden shadow on the angry sighs and lonely laughs she’s discarded all over the small space.

He greets her with her name, her real name, and when she stiffens, visibly tenses up from the corner of the cell, Avi wonders if anyone but him even knows she has one anymore.

“This is low, Avi,” she says, voice small and venomous, “even for you.”

Avi ignores the comment; he came here with purpose. “Where have you been?”

She chuckles, a scattered, broken thing that leaves from her lips and crawls between the cell bars. “I’ve been searching.”

“For what?”

“Answers.”

Avi waits a beat, realizing in what feels like too late that Avna doesn’t know the truth of the war. And instead of saying that he has them, that Sloth told him everything before the war ended, he lets the silence of the dungeons stretch from him to her, lets it peel from the walls and contaminate the air. “Why did you go?” he says finally, voice sadder than he means for it to sound.

She inhales sharply. “I told you.”

“But why,” he hesitates at the crack in his voice, “why did you leave?” And when he asks it this time, she understands. Avna understands that when Avi asks why she left, he’s really asking why did you leave me.

She stands up from the corner and makes her way towards the cell door, face now illuminated by the torch on the wall although Avi doesn’t dare look up, he doesn’t dare risk letting her see the tears streaking down his face. Especially because he knows she’s studying it closely, like a book she’s been waiting to read. And once she’s done reading between the lines of his face, she bites at him, sinking teeth and venom traveling under his skin. “You can’t seriously be talking about that.”

He is, and now that Avna knows, he doesn’t bother hiding the wavering in his voice. “You said you’d stay with me, protect me—“

“That was years ago.”

“—you promised.” He insists.

“I lost everything in that war!” She chokes out, the wavering in his words now mirrored in hers.

He meets her gaze, captures Avna’s eyes in a harsh stare, and finds that they’re as sad as his. There’s a shattering amount of conviction when Avi says: “So did I.”

Without another word, he exits the dungeons, leaving her alone in front of the single torch, his last words echoing off the walls.

The next time he speaks to Avna is when he takes her on a walk along the palace grounds, and the first thing she does when she steps out of the palace is shiver at the warmth of the sun, making Avi wonder if he’s kept her in the dark for too long. He doesn’t dwell on the thought. Guards trail behind, swords drawn, but far back enough to be out of earshot.

“You should tell your guards to back off.” Avna mutters bitterly.

“It’s precaution.” Avi looks behind him, giving the guards a curt nod. “You are technically my prisoner.”

She huffs. “I’m not going anywhere.” She pauses, and Avi takes the time to study the sincerity in her face and words. Then after another second of thought, she adds: “Not this time.”

“And how can I ensure that you’re speaking the truth?”

“Because I’ve let you cuff me,” she starts, motioning to her hands clad in wooden handcuffs, “when I can easily,” she pauses, inhales once, then splinters the wood around wrists, “break free.”

The guards clamor behind her, ready to jump the Gift of Fortitude who’s now free from whatever restriction they had against her (although Avi isn’t sure they had much to begin with). Avi waves the guards off to which Avna smirks, rubbing life back into her wrists. She halts in her tracks when she notices where Avi’s been silently leading them. “Why have you led me here?” she says, breaths becoming shallow and short, then stopping entirely.

Avi turns his head towards the pile of ash and the scorched foundation of what once was the palace sanctuary. Of what once was a beautiful building dedicated to and commemorating the Sins and Gifts, but what is now nothing more than a dark reminder of the turmoil they caused. “Was it you?” Avi asks, quiet and calm, something bubbling under his skin.

“No.” she hums, sounding somewhat amused by the scorched and crumbling walls. “But,” she murmurs, voice turning suddenly dark, “I sort of wish it was.”

“Promise me.” Avi blurts, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “Promise me that this time you’ll stay. That you’ll keep our original agreement.”

She considers it for a moment, picking at a loose strand in her sleeve. “Alright,” she nods, “I promise.”

And once Avna does, the grudge Avi has been holding against her splits as easily as the wooden cuffs. “Take my old room.”

She looks at Avi, surprised, then turns her head towards the Golden Palace behind, squinting at a window that looks into the Royal Library.

(Avi doesn’t wait for her response. instead he nods and walks back to the palace alone. he doesn’t think to mention the secret passageway that connects his room to hers)

The first thing Avi thinks when he can’t find Avna is that she’s run away again. Slipped out of the Golden Palace and broken another promise. He does find her though, praying in the palace temple, long after the last service ended.

All temples were built the same, circular in shape with pews centered around the altar, and at the center of each altar is the first teaching from the Elders known as the Sacred Scripture. The palace temple though, unlike other temples, is known for its striking beauty. Paintings cover the ceilings of the palace temple illustrating a myriad of people: the Gods, angels, humans, the Elders, Sins, and Gifts; all heading for the clouds and colliding in a burst of colors. But even that isn’t what makes the palace temple unparalleled. Rather, the revere of this temple comes from the four stone murals carved directly into the walls. The first mural depicts the Giant Forest in the north and the Nomads residing within who ceased communication with the kingdom during the second year of the Holy Wars. The next mural portrays silhouettes, supposedly of the Elders, sitting on thrones made of treetops and solid earth. The third tells the tale of the Bronze Bridge suspended over the Zalazar River and its construction, overseen by King Zalazar whose hair took on magnificent, unnatural colors and whose name is attached to the great river that does the same. The last mural Avi hasn’t had the stomach to look at since Sloth told him the truth five years ago, the thought of it alone filling the young King with rage and bitterness. It is a stunning mural though and perhaps the most intricate of them all. The final mural that’s been etched into the walls of the palace temple captures Maratelli the Archangel, with six arms and wings terrifyingly spread out, falling out of the heavens and landing in this world.

And instead of thinking about the six-armed angel, Avi slides into the pew next to Avna, sitting down by where she kneels. “May I ask what you’re praying so intently for?”

Avna opens one eye, making note of Avi’s sudden presence, then returns to her prayers. “Not what. Who.”

“Who then?”

She waits a moment, the corner of her lip lifting. “You.”

Avi lets out a breathy laugh. “Holy are the Gods.” He begins.

“Have mercy on my immortal soul.” She finishes.

And there’s something about the word immortal that ignites a memory in Avi, one concerning the slow death of all the Sins, a memory Avi thought he put out and stomped away a long time ago. And perhaps that’s that makes him say, “You aren’t immortal.”

“I know, but…” she murmurs, getting up from the floor and sitting down next to Avi on the pew.

“But?”

“There’s no war to kill me anymore.”

It takes a second for the meaning to settle between his nerves. “Maybe it already has.”

“Maybe.” she pauses. “Perhaps a part of me did die in that war. But then a part of you must’ve died as well.”

“Maybe the part that belonged with Kamir.”

“Maybe that part was the only thing left.”

Yes, Avi thinks, because it was never a part of him and a part of her. But rather, the fire of the Holy Wars swallowed them whole. And the two figures that sit in the palace temple now, a King and a Gift, are just shells, placeholders waiting for the day they both rise from the ashes, reborn.

Her voice comes quietly. “It’s been so long, but sometimes it feels like time hasn’t moved since Kamir’s death. Like the seconds and minutes and days have yet to pass.”

And Avi can only manage a nod because suddenly Avna’s grief is filling up the room and traveling through the pews. It’s spilling from her heart and overflowing into the hall, exhaling from her lips and inhaling through his. It’s like grief is a painting, each canvas and image its own. The paintings might be different, but the shades are the same. Whatever it is that makes up her grief, makes up his as well.

And oh this must be it. But of course— what else is this feeling pushing against the walls of his heart and what else is this terrifying liberty. This must be what it means to understand and to be understood.

From the silence emerges the distant ticking of a clock. A tear falls from one of her eyes and a year falls from the other.

—

(love, Avi realizes. that’s what it was in Avna’s cries the first time she saw Kamir’s body, and that's what it is in her sighs now. the four letters feel sticky and unfamiliar in Avi’s mind)

It’s one morning during breakfast that Avi recounts the way the war came to its end. After Kamir died, Avna stayed at the Golden Palace, protected Avi from the ever frequent assassination attempts like she said she would, and fought alongside the Knights of the Holy Order against the other Gift. But one day Avna came back from the battlefront, a small cut across her forearm, and whispered that the war would soon be over before collapsing into the arms of a servant. The next morning, Avi and his council received news that the last Gift was dead. The Holy Wars were ended within the next week.

Avna finds him after the service in the temple that same morning. “Are you busy, Avi?”

“Did you know it’s considered rude to address a King by his name?” Avi muses, nose flared and amused. Avi can’t recall a single instance where Avna called him King in the absence of an audience, and even then, sometimes she allowed the title to slip.

Avna ignores the comment entirely. “Do you plan to make a queen out of me?”

Avi’s unsurprised by the question. In fact, he presumed it would come up eventually with how close they had become since that day in the palace temple. They had been spotted by servants escorting each other to daily agendas, by cooks taking select meals together, and by stable boys sitting together in the gardens and courtyard. The palace court was known to gossip, and recently the blooming friendship and next to nonstop conversation between the Gift of Fortitude and the King had become a popular topic, specifically the possibility of marriage between the two. And yet, despite the lack of surprise, Avi can’t contain his own laughter at the mere thought of Avna ever becoming a queen and even more oddly his wife. His laughter seems to answer her question.

“How relieving to know.” She huffs, mildly annoyed. “Well anyways, I was just asking. You know how the court talks.”

“Did you honestly think that I would?”

“Make me queen?” She asks to clarify; he nods. “I don’t know. Unless you have a secret affair that I know nothing about, it’s not the most bizarre thing in the world.”

“And yet isn’t it?”

“How so?”

“An immortal queen whose title is a reminder of the Holy Wars doesn’t sound quite feasible.”

Avna’s face turns dark. “Well, yes. I suppose not.”

“Plus,” Avi continues, bumping his shoulder against hers, “it’s probably best that a queen doesn’t have the potent disdain for formality that you do.” She laughs at that. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you as well.” Avi adds seriously, reminded of his thoughts earlier this morning. Avna hums for him to continue. “When you came back from the battlefront the day before the last Gift died, how did you know the war was ending?”

Avna inhales sharply. “It’s less that I knew, but rather that I felt it.”

“How do you mean?”

“I could feel that the last Gift was close to death. I could feel it like a lump in my throat and a rock in my chest.” And that makes sense to Avi. It makes sense that the Gifts and Sins would be connected in some inexplicable way like that. It makes sense that when Avna came to the Golden Palace days before Kamir died, it was because she could feel it in her stomach and head.

And because his breakfast pondering has been met with a plausible explanation, he nods. Avna stops in front of Maratelli’s stone mural.

“Isn’t it odd,” she says, “how Maratelli the Archangel only had two arms in all the sanctuaries but here, in this mural, Maratelli has six.”

Avi swallows a chuckle. “Yes, Avna, it is.”

And with that, he turns on his heel and heads to his office.

There’s a knock on Avi’s office door while he’s discussing an appeal from Lady Eloise of a western town with one of his council members.

“Come in.”

“Avi—“ she stops when her eyes land on the council member, “ah, King Avi. Do you have a moment?”

He sighs, beckoning Avna in and motioning the council member out.

“If you keep this up, the rumors about us will only get worse.”

Avna snorts. “The court will talk whether I come barging into your office or not. No use in catering towards it.” She drops a pile of books and scrolls on his desk. “How often do you visit the Royal Library?”

The Royal Library, like most other libraries, is filled with teachings from the Elders, historic scrolls, maps of all sorts, and books from various scholars. It sits between the north and east wings of the palace, housing two entrances: one that connects back to the Golden Palace for the court’s use and another that opens up to the palace grounds meant for the residents of King’s City. In all transparency, there isn’t much that differentiates the Royal Library from the other three libraries scattered across the kingdom apart from its obvious grandeur. Avi hasn’t been since he stopped meeting with personal tutors. “Often enough.”

“Did you know about the staircase behind one of the bookcases and the secret room it leads to?”

“Another secret passageway?” Avi states more than he asks it. “How many have you found at this point?”

She ignores the question. “But what’s even odder is that I’m the only one who can open it. My strength is required to push aside the case. Do you suppose it means something?”

“A passageway meant only for the Gifts and Sins?” He offers half-heartedly, grabbing a book from the pile and studying the cover.

“But that doesn’t make much sense either. Why should anyone construct a secret passageway that could only be opened by so few?” She says although Avi doesn’t hear much of it, finding himself to be stumped by the book in front of him.

The title of the book is written in characters that Avi recognizes, the same ones he memorized as a child, but the words they create aren’t ones that he knows. Foreign, is what comes to mind, although Avi presumes ancient is the one that should. A whole array of words and sounds dropped in the past and exchanged for something new. It makes Avi wonder just how old these books actually are. He shapes his mouth in the form of the words, tugs and plays until they start to make some sense in his mind. And oh— Avi’s breath gets caught in his throat because from the one word he can just barely make out he reads ‘angels’.

He places the book in his lap to look more into later and picks up a scroll from the pile.

“Tell me what they say. You can read can’t you?”

“Of course I can read but these aren’t—“ he cuts himself off. “Wait,” he tears his eyes away from the scroll and meets Avna’s, “you can’t?”

And when Avna gets small, visibly shrinking under her skin, Avi realizes that he’s accused Avna of illiteracy rather than asking her of it. “I was too young for school before I was taken and…” she shrugs “there’s no use in a Gift of the Spirit knowing how to read or write.” She adds with a nonchalance that sounds forced and fake. “I was only taught how to fight.”

“Well,” Avi mutters returning his attention to the scroll laid out in front of him, “I guess we’ll have to change that then, won’t we?”

He doesn’t miss the way Avna breaks out in a brilliant grin.

It’s a rather easy arrangement for Avi to make. Hired tutors come every morning to instruct Avna’s finger along each line until the symbols and characters start to make sense in her mind. She reads to Avi during meals and has him correct her when she’s gotten a certain word wrong or misread a line.

And in the meantime, while Avna struggles to learn modern ways of writing, Avi wrestles with learning an ancient one. It doesn’t come quickly, nor easily, but eventually Avi is able to make sense of the language written in the books and scrolls Avna found in the hidden room of the Royal Library.

“What’s this one about?” Avna asks, pulling on a map from the pile.

“That one…” Avi begins, peering over Avna’s shoulder to look at the map he’s already studied, “was made by Birn and Kietha from the Midage Era. They were famed for the exploration of the eastern part of Leraak and the east end of the Zalazar River. Kietha drew the maps, and Birn documented their findings in these journals.” Avi tells her, shuffling through another pile on the opposite side of his office for one of Birn’s journals. He finds it and drops it by Avna.

“Was she a healer? Birn?” Avna wonders, tracing her finger along Birn’s drawing of a herb that’s now crushed into a tea and used to prevent pregnancy.

“I believe they both were. And look right here,” Avi says, pointing to a part of the map, “this is where they died. It’s now called Lover’s Pass.”

“Why?”

He looks at her blankly. “Because they were lovers.”

“Oh.” Avna responds just as blankly before beginning to laugh. “Ironic, isn’t it? That two women who would’ve never gotten pregnant should have found the herb to prevent it.” Avna picks up a book from the armchair. “How about this one then?”

And this book Avi recognizes for it’s the first book he tried to make sense of the day Avna told him about the Royal Library’s secret room.

“I’m not sure,” he lies, “I haven’t gotten through to this one yet.” straight. through. his. teeth.

She eyes him carefully, dissecting his words in her mind. Then after a long moment, Avna looks away and mutters, “you’re lying,” before dropping the book back in the armchair. She doesn’t ask for the truth, so Avi lets out the breath he was holding and releases the lie with it.

Perhaps there’s a reason though. A reason as to why Avna doesn’t chase after the true title of the book. A reason for why her eyes stay trained on the book as it falls off the armchair, tumbles to the floor, and gets buried under the other ancient scrolls, and another for why she fights the urge to move when it does. It’s then Avi understands that when Avna lets his lie slide, it’s because she’s hiding something as well. Something about the nature of the Royal Library’s secret room.

He tries to slip into conversation once, during dinner while Avna reads poetry silently, something she had grown quite fond of while learning to read. “Do you like it? The poems?”

She nods, leaning forward in her chair and quickly swallowing down her food. “Look here,” she says turning the book towards Avi and pointing to a line on the page. “Here the poet describes love as a burden. As a warm weight that we must accept with open arms.” Avna sits back. Eyes closed and book held against her chest as if she’s afraid the words will disappear. For a moment, it feels like she’s left the room altogether.

“How many of the secret passageways have you found.” He asks, suddenly— twisting his fork and letting it clink against the plate.

Avna lets out something between a breath and a laugh, flips a page in her book of poems, and shoves a carrot in her mouth.

“Avna—”

“I won’t play your games, Avi.” She pauses, turns another page in her book. “I know more than you.”

“But there is one,” he mutters; her eyes flit off the page and towards his, “that I know, and you don’t.”

She sets the book down. “Which one?”

—

He shows her that night. Knocks on the main door to her rooms, to which she opens, eager and awaiting, pulling him inside before anyone can see him entering. He leads her towards the sitting room and swings open the door of the wardrobe in the corner, the same one he filled with extra winter coats and boots as a child. He finds the wardrobe bare, dust collecting in every corner, and when he asks Avna about the emptiness of the wardrobe, she shrugs. “I don’t own many things.” She tells Avi simply, pushing past him to inspect the false back of the wardrobe. It takes a couple shoves for the back to budge, revealing a dark hall that leads to Avi’s extra room.

“Let’s go.” Avi says, stepping one foot into the tight corridor.

She hesitates. “Doesn’t it lead back to your rooms?” He nods. “And won't someone think it suspicious to find a Gift in the King’s rooms?” She says, sounding both concerned and confused. “Especially at this time of night.”

Avi scoffs. “Please Avna, no one will know. Besides,” he adds, with a shake of his head already starting down the hall, “it’s just you.” After a small moment, Avna follows.

In the time since Avi last used this secret passageway, his entire world had shattered, the broken pieces reconfigured into something unrecognizable. The last time this passageway had been used, Avi was still a prince and the Holy Wars had not yet begun. But, for some reason, Avi doesn’t feel off-put by those thoughts. Instead, when he remembers how everyone he once knew is now dead, he looks back at Avna, following close behind, and thanks all that is holy that the Gods spared her. Tonight, as Avi walks down the tight hall he last used as a child, he doesn’t let the reminder of the Holy Wars crush him like it would’ve a year ago.

The King’s rooms were made of six separate rooms: a foyer, sitting room, dining room, bedroom, bathing room, and an extra room. When Avi was forced to move into these rooms after the death of Queen Raffa, he handed off the decoration for most of it to a servant whose name he never learned. The same servant who was close to his mother and who has since quit from working at the Golden Palace. And so the chandelier in the foyer that shines even in the dark of night and the fine art that hangs from the walls of Avi’s sitting room were all hand picked by his mother’s lady servant. The most striking decorations she chose, however, were in Avi’s sixth and extra room. Each King and Queen was given an extra room to use however they pleased. Some transformed it into a study, others a reading room. One past Queen even fitted the space to be a personal wine cellar. But when Queen Raffa was pregnant with Avi, she changed the room to be a nursery and never changed it back. And Avi, 12 and heartbroken at the time, had no need for a sixth room that was once his mother’s, so the servant took it upon herself to fill the room with marble sculptures. Five sculptures to be exact. The first sculpture she chose was of two men dancing with Jarat sticks, except that the two men were one, their bottom halves bleeding into each other and their top halves exuding love, the kind of love that could make the heavens fall. The second marble piece was of a simple apricot tree. The third was of a child taking off her face with one hand and holding a new face in the other. The fourth piece was of a weeping woman whose hair and arms were made of pure fire. The last sculpture was of a young boy kneeling on the ground whose arms started as normal arms but by the wrists they transformed into whole mountains. It was the same with the legs of the last sculpture; past the boy’s knees, the ankles were not ankles but trees and the feet an entire forest. And from his mouth, the boy vomited an entire ocean. This sculpture was Avi’s favorite and least favorite of the five, for the sculpted boy was remaking the world, but his eyes always looked frighteningly alone.

“He looks like you.” Avna mumbles, after they’ve taken a turn around the extra room to which the secret passageway opens up to. “The boy in the sculpture. His eyes and yours are the same. You both look so alone.”

Avi frowns. “Do we look lonely as well?”

“No.” Avna pauses, ghosting her hand over the sea that’s been purged from the sculpture's stomach. “Remember those nights on the roof?” Avi nods. “When Kamir brought you up that first night, I thought you didn’t speak because you were scared of us. But then you came the next night and the night after. And no matter how many nights you came, you never spoke, not once. By that point I just thought you were bizarre. But Kamir didn’t think so. He said you were unbothered by not speaking, content with watching from the side. I never understood it, how you managed to be alone without feeling lonely as well.” She removes her hand from the waves of the sculpture, and looks up, sounding suddenly sad. “To be honest, I still don’t.”

Avi stares at Avna. He doesn’t say that he’s not sure he agrees. He doesn’t say that when he didn’t talk during those nights on the roof, it was because he didn’t think there was any room for it. Because he was sure that if he did speak, the worlds would fall into the air and fail. Instead he asks, “Do you think the servant thought so as well? That she chose this piece because of that?”

“She didn’t choose these sculptures, Avi; she made them. And she wasn’t a palace servant. She worked here as an artist.”

“She was a sculptor?”

“And a painter.” Avna adds, nodding towards the paintings in Avi’s sitting room. “Her name was Kanah. She used to let me and Kamir sit in her workshop and watch as she made her art. She was always so kind to us.”

“She stopped working for the Golden Palace years ago.”

“I know.” Avna murmurs. “I asked a cook about her when I came back. She also said that Kanah stopped painting when your mother died, and a year into the Holy Wars, she stopped sculpting as well. They must’ve been close, Raffa and Kanah.”

Yes, Avi thinks, they must’ve. And suddenly, as Avi studies Kanah’s five sculptures, something clicks. It becomes unthinkably clear that the sculpture of the young boy remaking the world is not the only one that’s familiar. No, because Avi also identifies the marble apricot tree as the same one from the palace gardens. Abruptly, he realizes that the two dancing men are not men at all, but women! With hair kept short and skirts traded in for slacks. Avi understands that the sculpture of the girl taking off one face and putting on another is his mother at ten years old mourning the death of King Levi and becoming Queen within the same month. And of course, the weeping woman made of fire is none other than Kanah mourning for Raffa alone the day of her funeral.

After so many years, Avi sees that what makes his sixth room so odd is that it was never a room, but rather a love letter made of marble, hand crafted by Kanah. He recognizes that the answer to the question of Kanah’s relationship with his mother is love, just as love explained the closeness between Avna and Kamir. And helplessly, Avi wonders how he keeps finding love in a corner of all the things he once could not make sense of.

Avi looks around his extra room again and no longer sees five sculptures. Instead, in their place, he sees Kanah. “I think...” Avi starts, taking a step towards the sculpture of the two dancing women so in sync they seamlessly mesh into one, “I think they were in love.”

“Yes,” Avna smiles, “that would make more sense.” She leaves from the extra room and heads towards Kanah’s paintings in the sitting room. A moment later, Avi exits from Kanah’s love letter as well.

—

Two large paintings sit on opposing walls of Avi’s sitting room and smaller paintings hang in between. One of the large paintings is of a man and woman emerging from the top of a tree in the Giant Forest and standing on a branch among the clouds. The other is of a cliff by the sea depicting a woman by its edge ready to jump and a man in the water waiting for her fall.

“I think I’d like to do that.” Avna says, standing in front of the second large painting. Avi comes to her side. “To jump off a cliff and fall into the sea.”

“Do you know how to swim, Avna?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen the ocean?”

She pulls at her sleeve. “No.”

“Well,” Avi pulls his attention back to Kanah’s painting, “I think you’d like it.”

“Have you seen it then?”

He shakes his head, and she scowls. “Holy are the Gods, Avna,” he chuckles, “but don’t kill yourself jumping off cliffs.”

She huffs, annoyed, and turns, standing directly in front of where a mirror once hung, but where is now only an empty gold frame and a few shards on the floor.

“I broke it.” Avi tells her before she can ask. “Had the rest of them removed.”

Her eyebrows knit together. “Why?”

“Guilt.” Avi kicks one of the shards. “I can’t stand to look at myself anymore. In truth, I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

Avi waits a beat. Avna swallows in the silence. “You see, I sat in my office for five years and watched as half of Leraak died. Let my council members deal with all of it. Pretended it had nothing to do with me. But you, Avna, you were there. Every day for five years you fought in that war. You sat with murder buried under your nails and lives splattered across your armor. And if I can’t stand myself for doing nothing, I’m not sure how you stomach your own image after what you did.”

Avna’s quiet for a while, and when she does speak, her voice is far away, somewhere between denial and disbelief. “They made me do it, Avi. You know that, don’t you? I never had a choice. Not once.”

“I know, Avna, I know. But they’re all dead. And we aren’t. So now we’re responsible for the plague that was the Holy Wars. The people need someone to blame, and what reason could they have to choose anyone but us?”

“But,” her voice cracks, falling to the floor and joining the mirror shards as a thousand different fragments, “we were just children.”

Avi shatters as well. Adds to her thousand with a million of his own fragments. “We were children with the power to stop it.”

(in the next couple days, Avi hears that Avna’s had all the mirrors removed from her rooms as well)

Avi can’t find the urge to sleep tonight. After meeting with his council members this morning discussing the same appeal from Lady Eloise as before, he spent the day in his office, hoping to make more sense of the ancient books and scrolls from the Royal Library’s secret room which Avna had yet to take him to. He had taken one particular book, the first book he picked up and the same book that he lied to Avna about, back to his rooms to read further into before bed. But the more of the book he read, the more his own perception of Leraak seemed to shift into something unrecognizable. Particularly his perception of the Early Years and what little records were kept from that time. In each line and verse of the secret books and scrolls, Avi finds more and more sense in the truth Sloth told him. The book made him sick. Even the thought of it sitting in the next room made Avi’s skin crawl. So he pulls on his robe and carries the book back towards his office.

To Avi’s surprise, he isn’t the only one who's thought to visit his office in the dead of night. Avi enters his office and finds a figure bent over a table, searching through the books and scrolls laid out on it.

“What are you doing?” He harshly asks the intruder, fitting all the authority he can into his voice. The person jumps beneath their skin and straightens. Avi comes face-to-face with Avna whose eyes land on the book between Avi’s hands before they land on him. He steps a foot closer.

“What are you doing?” He repeats, this time his voice harsh with accusation.

“Avi. It’s fine.” She scowls.

“No. It isn’t.” He spits back. A dozen questions run through his mind. What if someone else had caught you? What would they think? What would you say then? But he doesn’t ask any of those. Instead, when he catches her fingers reaching towards the book in his, he steps back, shields the book with his body, and asks. “What do you want with it?”

She looks Avi in the eye for the first time that night. “Why are you keeping the book from me?”

He counters with, “Where’s the secret room?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t trust what you’ll do with it.”

“But you said it yourself: your strength is required to open it.”

“You lied to me Avi.” She points her finger at the book behind his body. “You lied to me about it.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“From what? The truth?”

“Yes!”

“Avi, how—” she paces around the room, holding her head like it’ll blow off from the frustration. “How am I supposed to bear the weight of the Holy Wars if I don’t even know the reason for it?”

“Trust me.” He breathes. “Knowing will only make it harder.”

“Let me be the one to decide that!” She nearly sceams. And when Avi refuses to speak, she chuckles, gravely, heartlessly. Lifts her eyes to the ceiling then shuts them, breathing heavily. “We’re prisoners of our guilt, Avi. And the truth,” she gestures towards the book, “that’s our way out. Please Avi, just tell me the title of the book.” She begs. “Tell me the book’s name and I’ll take you to the secret room. I promise.”

But the thing is, Avna has a track record of breaking promises. So Avi doesn’t respond, pulling the book impossibly closer to his body instead. And once Avna realizes that Avi won’t budge, that he won’t be telling her the name of the book at least not tonight, she exhales and lets her eyes turn to an unsettling shade of cruel.

“Fine.” She snarls. “I’ll learn the language myself.”

She’s right. They’re locked in a prison of guilt, and now, Avi knows how to set them free.

The news of the first burning comes to Avna before it does to Avi and his council. She bursts into his office, this time unbothered when she finds his entire council within as well. “Have you heard?” She cries to Avi and his council, eyes frantic and wild. “One of the libraries was burned by a mob last night. The library south of the Zalazar River. The entire building is nothing but ashes now.”

The council stands in an uproar, barking questions at Avna and yelling worries into the air.

“How many were hurt?”

“Where did you hear this from, Gift?”

“What misfortune has been cursed on us!”

“Which library did you say, Lady Gift?”

“Oh Gods have mercy!”

“Lady Gift,” Avi booms from his chair, silencing his council. Avna’s eyes meet his from across the room. “Was anyone hurt?”

“No.”

He swallows. “And the contents of the library? Was anything salvageable?”

“No. Everything was burned.”

—

When news of the second burning comes, Avi and Avna are praying in the palace temple.

“What a terrible thing these people are doing.” Avna says to him once the news-bearing servant leaves. “They must be mad to burn down libraries. I can’t stand the thought of another one burning. I hope you find the culprits soon.”

“We’re working on it.” Avi sighs tiredly, looking up towards the painted ceiling. “My council and I are working on it.”

“I’m just worried—”

“It isn’t your duty to worry.” He hisses. And when she flinches at his words, Avi turns back towards the ceiling and with a softer voice, adds, “I just mean that you need not worry, Avna. We’ll take care of the eastern library.”

She stares at her clasped hands, brows drawn together as if deep in thought. Her voice comes quietly. “They never said which library was burned.”

“Oh that.” Avi swallows. “Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? This mob is working opposite of the one that burned the sanctuaries.”

“Yes,” she mutters, still glaring at her hands, “I suppose.”

Avi stands from the pew and heads towards the Royal Library. Alone.

—

When the third burning occurs, Avna doesn’t cry like the first and she doesn’t worry like the second. She peers at Avi, squints her eyes, and says, “Only one left.” Then warns, “Don’t let them burn down your palace with it.”

He won’t.

It’s hot. So hot that Avi feels as if he’s burning. Like any second his skin will melt off his bones and turn to ashes. And yet, despite the heat, all he can think is—

We’re free.

“Avi,” comes a voice behind him, “what are you…” he turns and finds Avna with golden skin and orange eyes. “What are you doing?” she asks breathlessly.

He drops the torch he was holding. The flames lick the carpeting around his feet. “Avna, it isn’t what you think.”

She ignores him completely, dazed by the flames growing behind him. “It’s burning. The bookshelf is burning, Avi. All the books, they’re burning.” She stumbles towards the burning bookshelf. “We have to save some. There must be some books we can save.” She lurches towards the fire.

“Avna no!” Avi catches her between his arms and pulls her back from the orange heap.

“You know what’s behind there, don’t you?” She cries. “The secret room. My truth, Avi. My truth is burning.”

“Lady Gift, I—” the servant’s eyes find the fire immediately, “Oh my!”

“Quick!” Avi yells to the servant. “Run for help! As fast as you can, before everything burns!” The servant rushes away, and alone, Avi pulls a distressed Avna away from the smoke of the burning bookshelf and the secret room behind it.

—

Avi and Avna stand on the palace grounds outside of the Royal Library wrapped in blankets and watch as workers douse the fire inside. Most of the library’s content would be saved. But the bookshelf that hid the secret room and everything behind it was now an unrecognizable pile of ashes.

“Were they all you then?” She inhales sharply. “Did you order the mobs to burn down the other three libraries and then wait to burn this one yourself?”

“Avna—”

“Avi, what were you thinking?” She says voice low and venomous. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

He turns to face her, pleading. “Guilt is a prison. That’s what you said. Our guilt is a prison. I set us free.”

She scoffs, not turning to face him. “You set yourself free. How could you have possibly freed me from a guilt I don’t know?”

“You murdered people, Avna.” He spits. “For five years you killed my people. And your people killed my mother. Be guilty for that.” Avna’s anger is like a fire. It spreads and grows and licks, leaving red burns all over Avi’s skin.

“Yes, fine, I killed people.” She fumes, finally turning to face him. “I killed people with my own two hands. But don’t think yourself to be better than me for that. Because you are the one who stamped the war acts and sent thousands of Knights to the battlefront knowing they wouldn’t come back. And because your name is the one they whispered with their last, dying breaths. I only killed the men and women that you sent my way, that you sent to die. The men and women whose King had them declared as dead long before my blades ever touched their necks. You, Avi, are as much of a murderer as I am. And now,” she seethes, “you’re an arsonist too.”

She storms away from Avi and the diminishing fire of the library he burned.

Avi and Avna have only spoken once since the day the Royal Library burned. It was Avi who came to her pleading for Avna’s secrecy. She had scoffed, then said, “Don’t worry, Avi. I won’t tell.”

And those five words were all that Avi’s heard from her since.

It’s the longest he’s gone without speaking to Avna since she returned to the Golden Palace. He hates it. But it seems Avna hates him more than he hates the silence. After a week, he stops seeking her forgiveness.

Three weeks after his act of arson and five days after reconstruction of the Royal Library is completed, Avna starts picking fights in the courtyard. She begins by fighting hand-to-hand with a guard or an off-duty Knight. Avi watches from a window two floors above. And every afternoon that she returns to her rooms without a scratch, a new body is added to the infirmary beds. The palace healer had scolded Avi for the bruised guard in one bed, the unconscious Knight in another, and the dozen similar injuries in between.

It’s during one particular fight with a well-known Captain of the Knights of the Holy Order that Avi appears in a corner of the courtyard instead of his usual window up above. Avna sees, somehow noticing Avi’s small presence from the corner of her eye and turning away from the fight completely. And in the three seconds that Avna’s distracted by Avi, Captain Yelena takes her fist and sends it straight through Avna’s rib.

Avna’s rib takes 7 weeks to heal.

So she starts fighting with swords after that.

The guards and Knights leave from these fights bloody and screaming.

The day the fights stop is the day Avna punches a guard in the gut, kicks him to the ground by his neck, and leaves small slashes up his leg before sending her sword straight through his thigh. An injury that the guard will survive from but that’ll leave him with a limp according to the palace healer who also mentions to Avi that if the Gift of Fortitude had struck the guard a little more to the right, he wouldn’t have left the palace infirmary alive. Avi supposes that’s something Avna knows. That she purposefully stabbed the guard next to where she knew would kill him. When he finds her in the palace temple that evening and asks her why she does it, only the second time they’ve spoken since the burning of the libraries, she doesn’t answer at first. Instead, she says, “I inflict all this pain, but if it were me, if that sword had gone through my leg today, I’d be dead by next week.” After some time, she adds. “A sick sort of empathy I guess.”

Avi doesn’t say anything after that, and surprisingly, unlike all the other times Avi’s tried to approach her since the fires, Avna doesn’t immediately leave.

“Remember that night in front of the broken mirror?” Avna says suddenly. Avi nods. “You said that the people need someone to blame for the Holy Wars. But the thing is, no one blames you for the war, Avi; you’re the king. They blame me.”

She speaks again before Avi can even begin to process the admission. “I’ll stop fighting, but you have not been forgiven. No number of apologies can take back what you did.”

Avna stands from the pew and leaves.

It dawns on Avi then how wrong he was to burn the libraries. He thought that by setting fires to the books, setting fire to the truth, he was also setting himself and Avna free. But their guilt is a prison, a prison that Avi burned with Avna still inside. He regrets it immensely.

Avi couldn’t say how much time has passed between the end of the fights and now. He gets lost between the daily council meetings and the sleepless nights he spends staring at Kanah’s sculptures. He promised to stop seeking Avna out, made it a rule even. Presumed that if an apology wouldn’t do, perhaps space would. But Avi didn’t know that the space between them could stretch from two closed doors to the width of a black Zalazar River with no Bronze Bridge in between. Avi didn’t know that the space Avna occupied in his life was the spot between his lungs and next to his heart, and that each day the silence continued between them, that space would stretch, slowly cracking each of his ribs. In all transparency, Avi couldn’t say if Avna is even still living at the Golden Palace. But he knows she is, for he can feel her guilt and hate and grief pressing against the walls of each corridor and seeping from the cracks in his stone. Avi finds her presence all over the Golden Palace without ever finding her.

The day Avi returns to himself and Avna returns to the world is the day of Kamir’s death anniversary. Avi wakes with the same weight on his chest that he feels twice a year, once on Kamir’s day of death and once on his mother’s. A sort of lingering grief that grows out of his stomach and pulls at his throat. But it’s under the weight on his chest and growth in his stomach that Avi’s struck with a startling sense of clarity: Today is the day to make peace.

The only issue is that today Avi doesn’t find Avna’s presence pressed against the walls and shoved between each crack. Today, Avna’s disappeared from the Golden Palace altogether. His only worry is that she won’t reappear, that her absence will stretch from today to tomorrow and eventually to forever. And during the temple’s service that morning, Avi can’t be sure who or what he’s praying for.

Later that day in his office, Avi remembers the first night after Avna’s return to the palace and the hushed conversation they shared in the unused palace dungeons. Avi remembers how when he asked where she had gone in the years after the Holy Wars, she said that she had been searching for answers. Avi wonders, while stamping an appeal and shelving another, if she’s still looking for them.

That night, Avi heads to the top floor of the Golden Palace and finds the secret staircase behind the hollow stone that Kamir showed him as children. That night, by accident, he finds Avna on the palace roof. He finds her for the first time in months. He finds her, and yet he can’t find her presence.

And when Avna doesn’t immediately shoo him away upon realizing he’s joined her, he’s again struck with the same sense of clarity as he was this morning.

“Where were you today?” He asks quietly, approaching her by the edge of the roof.

She inhales. “There’s a portrait of Raffa in one of the service stairs in the west wing. Behind it is a secret passageway that leads to a hidden balcony overlooking the palace temple.” She exhales. “I was there.”

“All day?”

She nods. “I saw you there. Praying in the temple this morning.” She waits a beat, mouth opening and closing as if the words get lost each time she goes to speak. “Were you thinking of him?”

Avi licks his lips. “In a sense.”

“How do you do it?” She asks lowly, picking at her nails and drawing her brows close together. “How do you think about Kamir or about your mother without feeling the world falling against your chest and the weight of the heavens on your back?”

Avi looks up at the night sky above them, the simple act now difficult with the way Avna’s grief hangs over his head. Avi’s grief is lingering, something that grows for a day and spreads from his stomach before always retreating back down to a small pit the next morning. But Avna’s grief is persisting, like a mass hanging from the walls of her heart, waiting for the day she’ll wake up and admit to her own pain.

“I grieved for my mother, Avna.” He says. “While you fought in the war, I grieved. And when you disappeared from King’s City, I grieved for Kamir as well. I lit fires for them both. You should do the same.”

Avna sighs, a helpless thing that sounds more like a cry. “Oh, Avi, let’s talk of something else.”

And so he does.

“After the Holy Wars, when you were away from the palace, you said you were looking for answers, but what were you looking for exactly?”

She blinks once, speaking slowly. “When the Gifts and Sins took Kamir and I from our village, they took us to this place called Midheaven. I was looking for that but...” she trails off unsurely.

“But you don’t remember where it is.” Avi finishes. And when Avna shakes her head, disappointed, he adds, “Kamir didn’t either.”

They stand on the roof in silence.

“Avi,” she says suddenly, breaking the quiet, “will you tell me the title of that book?”

“I-”

“Please Avi.” She begs, biting her lip. “I forgive you. Truly, I do. Just tell me the name of the book.”

Avi lets out a heavy breath. “It was called ‘The History of Angels In Our World’”

Her shoulders drop. “Will you tell me what it means?”

“I will, Avna I will. One day.” He swallows. “But not today.”

And with that he leaves from the roof and slips back down the secret staircase.

—

Back in his rooms, Avi finds there’s something about his conversation with Avna that takes him to Kanah’s sculptures and makes him kneel by the piece dedicated to his mother. Or perhaps it’s something about Avna’s grief, which has slipped from her fingers and tangled itself through Avi’s hair, that makes him sob next to the marble child holding her face in one hand and the face of a queen in the other. Whatever the reason, it’s then, on the night Avna finally forgives him, that Avi feels the heavens falling against his back and the weight of the world crashing against his shoulders.

“King Avi,” starts Tarek, one of his younger council members, “aren’t you nearing the age of which King Levi fell sick?”

Avi sighs at the question. His age, disinterest in marriage, and lack of an heir had quickly become another worry of his council rather than a personal matter meant for himself. Avi’s grandfather, King Levi, had died prematurely from a family illness passed to him through his non-Royal bloodline. If Queen Raffa hadn’t been murdered, that sickness would’ve killed Avi’s mother as well. And now his council worries that it won’t be too long before Avi is taken by the same incurable illness. But really their only worry is that Avi will die without a family member to take the throne after.

“There are things in place for occurrences like this.” Avi mutters to Lord Tarek and Lady Mirana, the two members of his council with whom he was meant to be discussing renovations for the Bronze Bridge with. “If a King or Queen dies with no heir and no family to take the throne, the bloodline will change.” Specifically, the bloodline would change to one of his council members by vote or by Avi’s wish.

“It isn’t that simple, my King,” Mirana sighs, gazing out the window of Avi’s office. “The people are loyal to your blood; they trust you. A change in the bloodline will not be taken lightly, especially so close to the Holy Wars.” She turns away from the window and approaches Avi’s desk. “Your mother made a sacrifice for Leraak. It is now your turn to do the same.”

Avi frowns. “How do you mean sacrifice?”

Tarek groans to which Mirana laughs, pushing back her greying hair and says, “This was Queen Raffa’s doing, Tarek, not mine.”

“Mirana,” Avi repeats with a stern voice, “what do you mean sacrifice?”

The room goes silent for a moment.

“Raffa never wanted to get pregnant when she did.” Mirana says simply. “She had you out of duty to her people, and she had you so young because she knew her life would be small like her father’s.” And then with a laugh she adds, “In fact—well you must’ve known but—your mother didn’t even enjoy the company of men.”

“Oh,” Avi mumbles. It takes a moment for Avi to digest that this is the truth which was hidden from him as a child, veiled by tight lips and empty affirmations, and then another for Avi to realize that he was born for duty, not for love. But once the initial shock of Mirana’s statement wears off, Avi finds that he’s unsurprised by this truth. It made sense that Raffa who never married and who was in love with Kanah didn’t have Avi because she yearned for a child. It made sense that Raffa, who always put her people first, bore a pregnancy for them too. And perhaps, deep down, Avi knew this all along.

“She still loved you, my King.” Tarek offers sympathetically while side-eyeing Mirana. “She might’ve had you out of duty, but she loved you all the same.” And those words, however fake they may be, provide some comfort to Avi.

“What we mean, King Avi,” Mirana begins again placing her palm on Avi’s desk, “is that a marriage isn’t necessary to provide an heir. A willing friend would do. Perhaps even the Gift of Fortitude.”

“Lady Mirana,” Avi scowls, a warning.

Mirana ignores it. “Think realistically, my King. It’s no secret that the Gift starts most mornings with tea as of late. A certain tea known to prevent pregnancy.” Tarek swallows nervously at that. “Perhaps you could—“

“If you are suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, Lady Mirana, then I should advise you to stop immediately.” Avi snaps at her furiously. “Who Lady Gift takes to her bed and lies with at night has nothing to do with me and is absolutely none of your business. Quite frankly, this conversation is all too inappropriate for me to entertain any further. So to make myself clear, the answer is no. I will not have a child out of duty, and I will most certainly not have another child ruling Leraak if I should fall sick and die young. I will not do what Levi did to Raffa, and what Raffa did to me. If I have a child it will be of my own will. Not of my duty. Any questions?” Avi stares them down, waiting for a challenge. They sit silently. “In that case, you are both excused.” Tarek and Mirana hesitate in their seats. “Do I need to repeat myself, Lady Mirana and Lord Tarek?” Mirana’s mouth drops open as if ready to protest. But before she can, Avi stamps the renovation forms, throws the folder in Tarek’s lap, and stands from his chair nearly screaming, “Out!”

They scramble out of his office.

—

“It’s a good thing you did today.” Avna teases, sitting down at Avi’s table. “Throwing Mirana and Tarek out of your office.”

“Of course you think so.” Avi rolls his eyes. “Your distaste in the council is rather well-known among the court.”

“It is?” She gasps.

“Don’t be funny.”

“I’m not quiet by nature, Avi. If I were there, I might’ve physically thrown them out, but, ah, a scolding from their King will have to do.”

“I cannot say that I share your pleasure in this.” Avi frowns, attempting to rub away the creeping headache.

“Oh Avi,” Avna sighs, sounding suddenly sorry, “I was only joking. You’ll tell me why you did it though, won’t you?”

Avi leans forward. “Lady Mirana suggested I produce an heir, have a child—”

“That isn’t new.”

“—with you, Avna.”

She flinches at the sentence, as if the words have reached across the table and struck her. “Oh.” She mumbles, eyes trained on the vase behind Avi and mouth fighting a grimace. “I thought the court had moved on from that notion.”

“The court,” Avi scoffs exasperated. “The court thinks we’re long lost siblings now.”

“We don’t look similar.”

“Our names do.”

“But then why did Mirana suggest such a thing?”

Avi hesitates. “She said you’ve been drinking tea in the mornings, Avna. The tea to prevent pregnancies.”

“I am not even allowed that simple pleasure now.” Avna says, eyes narrowing.

“She didn’t mean it like that—“

“Then how, Avi? Be blunt. I have no energy for riddles.”

“She thought you were drinking Birn and Kietha’s tea because of me.”

Avna stills at that, then stands from her seat abruptly. She strides away from the table, mutters something incoherently, then returns, standing before Avi, furious. “I always knew there was a reason I despised her.” She hisses finally, turning away from Avi again, throwing her hands in the air, then pivoting on her heel to face him.“Do you know Mirana has a son? Only a little younger than me. I’d take him to bed before you, Avi, no offense.”

“None taken.”

“Oh, she’s a dense woman. Absolutely maddening. I could just—” Avna stops herself, slumping back into her chair at the table. “Did you know?” She pauses, biting her lip, then adds, “about the tea?”

“I had an idea. I saw you take one of the Captains that you fought with back to your rooms, the one who managed to hit you--.“

“Captain Yelena.”

“Yes her. Then on another occasion, I saw you with Lord Tarek.” Then with a raised brow and teasing lilt, he adds: “But perhaps I’m mistaken for last I checked you despised my council.”

Avna shrugs. “He has a nice face.”

“But there’s something else too.” Avi says soberly.

“Another reason you threw them out?”

He nods. “Mirana suggested something about the manner with which my mother had me.”

Avna hums in a somewhat knowing manner. “Mirana’s a sick woman, Avi.”

“But she’s an honest woman too, isn’t she?”

Avna looks Avi in the eye. “Kanah, by accident, explained it all to me a long time ago. She said that Raffa’s decision to bear a child was one of politics and one driven by thoughts of Leraak. But Kanah also explained that for so long Raffa felt alone in this world, and when she had you, Avi, you became her home. Kanah told me that not even Raffa knew how deeply she loved her own son and that people were wrong to say your mother loved nothing more than she loved Leraak because more than anything, Raffa loved you.” Avna reaches across the table and places her hand over Avi’s. “If your mother didn’t want you, she would’ve left you to be raised by a servant. But she didn’t. She raised you herself, Avi, and she did it out of love. So yes, Mirana’s an honest woman, but she’s sick if she thinks, even for a second, that your mother didn’t love you and fiercely so.”

Avna glances down at where her hand covers Avi’s and then pulls it back into her lap. Quietly, she says, “I’m sorry, Avi. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Avi hadn’t realized he was. “Sometimes I feel as if I never even knew her. As if she lived this whole other life that I never knew about.”

She’s quiet for a bit. Then, frowning, Avna says, “The greatest mystery of this world is one’s own mother.”

“Is yours alive?”

She shakes her head. “Died in the Holy Wars.”

Avi nearly smiles, a terribly morbid joke hanging off his tongue. “Didn’t they all?”

Luckily, Avna laughs, and it gives Avi a moment to think over what she’s just told him, about how Avi was his mother’s home. And this is it, Avi thinks watching Avna laugh at a joke only the two of them would find amusing, this is his home. Because the world could succumb to another war or the sky could be falling outside his window, and Avi would still feel with a striking clarity that Avna is his home.

His voice comes like a sigh. “Why is it that time and time again I’m left feeling like it’s you and me against the world?”

She rests her cheek against the wood table. “That’s because it is.”

So Avi turns towards the window and watches the sky fall outside of it.

Avna’s voice comes suddenly from behind him. A mangled sort of thing that gets caught in his ear and hangs by his neck. The sound somewhere between a sob and a sigh.

“Oh, Avi, what will I do when you die?”

It’s then, with Avna’s question wading in the space between them, that Avi licks the salt from his lips and feels his heart sinking within.

Avi throwing Tarek and Mirana out of his office only keeps his council out of his personal life for a week, and by the time Avi’s meltdown has faded to the background of the court’s gossip, preparations for a festival have already begun.

The guests start pouring into the Golden Palace a week before the festival itself, and they come from all corners of Leraak. A Lady from the far north, a Lord from the east, and another guest which Avi heard lives almost entirely on her boat like a pirate of sorts. It’s a guest list that had taken his council months to finalize, and another few months before that spent discussing the smallest details and the millions of other preparations. The whole spectacle, really, was more for Avi’s council than for Avi himself, and pretending that he hadn’t already made up his mind on the matter of marriage and children was a small sacrifice that Avi could manage for the collective sanity of his council. So even though Avi’s bored of the whole charade long before the main night of the festival, he wears his finest clothes, bears the weight of his crown, and paints a smile every night for the palace’s grand dinner.

It does bring Avi some comfort though, how full the palace feels with all the festival guests. The courtyard buzzes with life and the temple soaks in whispers. Avi hadn’t even realized how empty he kept the Golden Palace with no family and only one Gift to fill it.

—

The main night of the festival starts long before night actually falls. And this night is considered the grandest of them all for even the people of King’s City are invited to dance around the Golden Palace, specifically in the throne room that’s been transformed into a hall by the five dangling chandeliers, long tables, and lush green curtains lining the walls.

By the time the moon becomes visible behind one of the green curtains, Avi has only danced with half the guests that his council brought in for him, and every time he bids goodbye to one dancing partner, Tarek and Mirana appear out of nowhere, pulling him in opposite directions each to a suitor they believe to be a better match.

But this time as he nods away from one Lord, he finds Avna before Tarek and Mirana can find him.

“Lady Gift,” Avi greets, holding out one of his Jarat sticks, “would you like to dance?”

Avna nods then joins her own Jarat stick with Avi’s and lets him lead her to the floor.

“I don’t understand your council’s purpose in this festival.” Avna admits as they begin dancing. “A marriage isn’t needed for an heir.”

“It is for a legitimate heir.”

“But Raffa never married.”

“And in the eyes of Raffa’s court I was illegitimate.” Avi tells her. “Barely royal, if you were to ask her council. Plus, I have no interest in raising a child, Avna. But more than that, if I die from Levi’s illness, I don’t want to leave a child to rule Leraak. I rather give the crown to Mirana.”

Avna frowns at that. “Holy are the Gods, Avi. I pray you live a long life.”

They dance in a sad quiet that doesn’t at all match the liveliness of the music being played and the cheery taps of their Jarat sticks. Avna flashes a look at someone across that hall, then turns her face to the floor, grinning to her shoes.

“Who was that?”

“Who was who?”

“Whoever you just looked at.”

“Oh them.” Avna smiles, hitting her Jarat against Avi’s and peeking over his shoulder. “Just someone.”

“Someone you’ve taken to bed perhaps?” Avi taunts with a playful smile and raised brow.

They spin around each other in accordance to the dance. “Perhaps.”

She looks behind Avi’s shoulder again, and this time, Avi follows, turning his own body to find Lady Eloise from the west sneaking glances back at Avna.

He spins back to face her. “Lady Eloise? But she was brought here by my council? Mirana’s favorite pick for queen out of the whole lot.”

Avna throws her head back in laughter at that. “Yes, well, she’d be more interested in being queen if you were a queen yourself.” Then, with another look towards Lady Eloise, Avna also mentions that the western Lady only accepted the festival invitation in hopes of getting Avi and his council to pass her appeal that she sent long ago but has since been repeatedly pushed to the side.

“Did she say that?”

“Yes. Last night.”

“Who else have you taken to bed?” Avi asks suddenly.

Avna considers the question for a moment. Then, with a shrug she takes one of her Jarat sticks and begins pointing at people around the hall. “Him. Eloise. That one. Her. Tarek, regrettably. Oh and…” she trails off, “wait, why?”

“No one else?”

“Avi!” She demands, hitting him over the head with her Jarat. “Why do you want to know?”

“Have you ever considered spycraft, Avna?”

She hits him again, snorting. “Stop talking nonsense and dance.”

The song ends soon after that, and a scowl takes shape on Avi’s face when he notices Mirana making her way towards him, probably upset that Avi wasted an entire song dancing with someone who isn’t one of her approved matches. Avna notices as well, so she takes hold of Avi’s hand and whispers a small ‘come with me’ pulling him out of the hall. She drags him behind one of the green curtains in the corridor, pushes on the wall, and then leads him down the secret staircase that the wall opens up to reveal.

The passageway takes them underground, eventually ending at an alcove behind the waterfall in the gardens. Avi and Avna slip out from behind the water and onto the garden path.

“You know, Tarek was heartbroken for quite some time.” Avi mentions as they pass the rose bushes. “After you and him ended things. I believe that he fell for you, irreparably.”

“Unfortunate.”

“Yes, it is.” Avi mutters, balancing his unspoken words on his tongue. “He was especially sad to see you with Captain Yelena so soon after.”

Avna stops walking. “What are you suggesting?”

“Do you love them, Avna? The people you take to bed, do you lay with them out of love?”

“Is love necessary?”

“No, but perhaps a bit more decency is.” Avi says. “For most, to lay with someone is not an emotionless act. Have respect for those emotions before you jump into bed with someone else.”

“I am not a monster, Avi.” She defends. “I have emotions too.”

“Enlighten me then.”

Avna exhales. “The poets always write about love. This overwhelming love that can tear down walls and make the heavens fall. I want that kind of love. I want to feel the kind of love poets write about.” After a long moment, she mutters, “don’t you?”

And suddenly Avi’s reminded of the mornings Avna spent reading poems and holding the memorized verses to her chest. He feels a drowning amount of pity for Avna, who yearns for a love Avi isn’t sure is even real.

“Oh Avna.” He sighs helplessly. “A heart is a heavy thing. Don’t take it in your palms and lay it in your bed only to throw it out the next day.”

Avna doesn’t respond, so Avi continues down the garden path and returns to the festival.

“You were right.” Avna mumbles one day in the palace temple long after the night of the festival. “Lady Eloise proposed I return to her western town with her. She even mentioned marriage.”

Avi was right, and yet he feels no elation at the news. Instead the admission saddens him. To no avail, he returns with: “I didn’t want to be.”

She sighs. “But you were.”

And there’s something about the way Avna admits Avi to be right, that reminds him of the time he was terribly wrong. There’s something in the air of the palace temple that makes him remember the truth he’s withheld and the truth he burned down the libraries for. With a deep breath, he says to her: “It’s time I told you the truth.”

Tiredly, she mutters, “the truth of what?”

The truth of the war, Avi thinks. The truth of this world. The truth of his mother’s death and the truth of Kamir’s. But instead of all that, he looks at Avna far more steadily than he feels, points to the fourth mural on the wall, and says, “The mural is wrong. Maratelli never had six arms, and he didn’t fall out of the heavens alone.”

So with Avna’s wide eyes boring into Avi, he tells her about the history of angels in their world.

—

The truth—the same truth Sloth told Avi in the last year of the Holy Wars—doesn’t settle easily for Avna. No; instead, it sends her in a silent rage that headbuts the sky and bursts into flames. A quiet anger that blankets the land, filling in all of the empty space.

She doesn’t speak to Avi for days.

But when she does go looking for him in the palace, a week after he told her everything, she cries worries into his side and sobs a broken and bewildered, “what am I to do?” into his arms.

Avi waits. He waits for the weeps to wear into thready whimpers, lets out a shaky breath that pains some part of his chest, and then croaks,

“Tell no one.”

It’s long after their last conversation over matters of the heart that Avna finds Avi in the hall as he’s exiting from the palace infirmary and suddenly asks: “How are you so content with being alone?” He jumps at the sound of her voice, clutching the fabric of his shirt. “You’ve never craved the company of a lover. You had a whole festival thrown for you, and not once did you wish to actually find love.”

Finally, releasing his hand from his chest, he answers. “I am not alone.” His eyes flit up to observe Avna’s face. “I have you.”

Her entire face twists at the remark. “And I’m enough?”

“Am I not enough for you?”

She shoots him a look. “Don’t do that.” And to Avi, the sentence sounds discreetly like guilt.

He frowns. “You’re enough for me.” Then, after a moment spent watching Avna pull at her sleeve, he adds. “Even if I’m not enough for you.”

She stops walking and turns her entire body towards Avi, an action that strikes him as a plea; she then opens her mouth briefly, only to shut it again after. Wordlessly, she continues walking.

Avi knows, of course, why he isn’t enough for Avna. Perhaps he knows more clearly than she knows herself. In truth, he isn’t even convinced that love is what Avna longs so deeply for. Avi believes, most ardently, that it’s peace. The kind of peace that Avi felt settle between his organs that day in the temple all those years ago, and again in his sitting room when it dawned on him that Avna is his home. And with her peace will come the joy of being seen and the liberty of finding shelter in someone else. With her peace will come love.

But then again, perhaps Avi is wrong. Maybe it isn’t that to find love you must find peace first, but rather that peace is love. And that when love does come tumbling into Avna’s life like an avalanche of burning snow, there—beneath all the ice—she’ll find peace as well.

“Come.” Avi whispers, placing a hand on the small of Avna’s back and guiding her towards the palace temple. Without explaining, he says, “let’s pray for an avalanche of love.”

“You were leaving from the infirmary.” Avna notices finally, despite having passed the place in question minutes ago. “What business did you have there?”

“Nothing important.” Avi reassures, holding back a cough that’s emerged in his throat. “But,” he sighs, “let’s pray for that matter as well.”

—

When Avi does receive news back from the palace infirmary, a week after his actual visit, he does not feel shock. He does not feel pain. Instead he lets out a cough of relief and spends the rest of his day thinking about Avna, her undiscovered peace, and the avalanche of love waiting for her.

The news from the infirmary hangs like a cloud over Avi’s head, infiltrating his mind with a reminiscent fog. One that makes him reflect on the years which have passed him by so quickly and yet so slow. Avi wanders the palace grounds and discovers littered memories by the stable path he used to take with his mother and in the throne room where he was made King at 12 years old. He finds a piece of his past in the hall that he first met Kamir and another piece tucked under the infirmary bed where Avi watched him die as well. Bitterly, Avi turns into a hall and finds the spot where he heard news of his mother’s death and the room just above in which he announced the start of the Holy Wars. For a brief moment, it feels as if he could wrap up the Golden Palace and find his entire life between the cracks in the stone. For a brief moment, wandering the halls of the only place he’s known as home, Avi feels as if he could fit his whole life between his palms.

Looking back, Avi knows that his life has been a bitter mix of blessings and hardships. But despite knowing that, despite remembering with a startling clarity the pain of all the death in his life and the struggle of those years in and after the war, Avi can’t help but look back and wish for more.

If Avna were here, she would tell him to wish not only for more years but also for those years to be filled with a great love. But sorting through the life in his palms, Avi discovers that the most prominent parts are not the feelings that have come and gone; they’re the people he’s known. His mother and Kamir, who appeared as fiercely and as briefly as lightning in a thunderstorm. Kanah, whose life had been intertwined with Avi’s in a way he just barely understood. And, of course, Avna with whom he spent the better part of his years, growing and grieving, diving into life headfirst and praying to emerge. And it’s because these people showed Avi love that they stick and poke and protrude from between his palms. Avi’s life may not be a love story, but it is a story bursting with love.

So with his entire life slipping between his fingers like sand, Avi walks the halls of his home and admires how delicately his story has been woven with the people he loves.

Dread. That’s what Avi feels when he finally finds Avna in the palace temple after having spent the whole morning looking for her. An inexplicable dread that collects beneath his feet and chains itself to his ankles, begging him to turn around and run back to his rooms. A dread that causes him to wonder whether ignorance is truly bliss. Perhaps the crime is not lying to Avna, but rather robbing her of her ignorance. But despite those thoughts, despite the cough that comes bursting from Avi’s lips and the way Avna inhales at the sound of it, he takes a seat next to his dearest friend and asks, “May I speak with you?”

She exhales. “No.”

“Avna.”

She looks up at him then, frowning, and Avi finds a sort of acceptance in her eyes. Then, bearing a small, off-putting smile, she nods. “Let’s go to the roof.”

—

From the roof, Avi can see the entirety of the Golden Palace’s gardens, so he watches the gardeners rake the fallen, yellow leaves from the yard. Avi hadn’t noticed the weather turn cool nor had he noticed any other signs of the changing seasons. It appears that recently, Avi hasn’t been noticing much of anything. But here, on the palace roof, Avi does notice the stiffness with which Avna stands, the distant ringing of bells from King’s City, and his own oblivion to the passing of time. All at once, Avi feels, like a small weight against his ribs, the fear of getting left behind in time.

“Is it wrong to wonder how people will remember me?” Avi asks suddenly, and for a while, Avna doesn’t answer. She lets the words sit in the air and fall into pace with the wind until they’re among the leaves and being raked up by the palace gardeners. Finally, with the same small and off-putting smile as before, she responds.

“We’ve never talked much about all that you’ve done for Leraak. How you rebuilt this kingdom, from the ground up. How you watched these lands burn and then made something beautiful out of the pile of ashes and list of grievances that were left. You bore the anger and distrust of your people and then showed them how to take their pain and turn it into love. You gave these people a kingdom to be proud of, and you, Avi,” she stops for a second, meets his eyes and smiles, “you did good.”

And there’s something about the admission that fills the air between them until it finds Avi, tickling the corner of his eye and touching the back of his throat. He thinks that if an artist were here to witness this moment, they would color him gold because how else could they describe this immense comfort and overwhelming validation? What is it if not a blinding shade of gold?

“It seems that Kanah’s sculpture had it right all along,” Avna continues, “people will look back and remember you as the king who remade the world.”

“Do you believe that?” Avi asks with a foreign smile that mirrors the one stuck on Avna.

“I do.”

“Then, how will you remember me?”

Her smile disappears.

“When I die, Avna, what will you do?”

After a long silence, she quietly says, “I have wondered that myself.”

“And?”

“And you’re the last person alive who knows me by my real name. When you die, I suppose a part of me will die as well.”

Avi doesn’t respond, doesn’t even look at her. And in the silence, he decides it’s time to tell her what he suspects she already knows.

“Avna.” He finally mumbles, after he’s mustered up enough courage to do so. She reaches across the railing and covers his hand with hers.

“I’m dying.”

With a small squeeze, she responds: “I know.”

And so they stand on the roof and gaze upon the world that they remade together.

#mine #the world is ours to remake #the world of gifts and sins #reposted from my old blog!#looking back this fic could def use some work but i love these characters still!! avi and avna and kannah and raffa !! they have my heart

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