Heavenly Element

Hael Drax soared through his uncontested kingdom, vast halls of spiralling clouds and cool, glassy air.

“The skies are yours,” Kheo had said with a negligent flick of his fingers. “I have no need for an empty heaven.”

And so he wheeled through the empyrean in a mad tumble across the air currents, fighting the winds every step of the way until his wings ached with the strain, until his hawk’s eyes were full of icy vapour, until at last he could fight no more. Body burning, he let the gales throw him about like a ragdoll, toppling through the weather and the gleaming blue down towards the killing grounds...

He had no thoughts left to haunt him: only the screaming air and his body bowing to the immense pressures of drag and gravity, only pain flaring along his bones, only the fall.

This fall, which he surrendered to absolutely, plummeting with the devastating speed of a meteor.

The ground loomed, a cracked expanse of dirt and ash with fissures stretching away in fractal networks. Smoke veiled parts of it, but he knew that bleached bones lay amidst the wreckage, that the earth had soaked up enough blood to make the rivers run with a tinge of red.

He gave me an empty heaven while he made the world a busy hell. And I helped. I helped him to do it.

For a fleeting moment, Hael considered diving into the darkness, letting jagged earth batter him and entomb him-

But even now his will to survive was too strong. There was still enough to keep him alive.

He had the promise of vengeance, if nothing else.

And so, metres from the ground, he let his body scatter into air; and then he fled these too-fresh battlefields, twisting through the maze of airstreams until he came at last to a place that was all his own. Deep within the conquered forestlands, the trees meshed thickly about it so that only a knowing heart could find it – this small, lush glen with the river winding through and the fragrant lilies that grew along its edges.

Ryar’s touch lingered here still in the soft babble of the water, dividing into a multitude of rivulets that seemed to him a reflection of her shattered self.

She had been the only one to help him bury them. It wasn’t the way of his people, to cage their bodies in the damp earth, but he couldn’t bear to scatter them onto the winds knowing that they would drift among the smoke and the stench of decay.

So he had interred his family in the midst of the forest, taking frail comfort in the thought that they would mingle with the roots of the trees, and float on the breeze in blossom petals and seeds when spring finally came, as it must, as it had to do when this cursed war was done. And Ryar wove a net of streams across the grass, so when the sunlight slipped through the mesh of leaves, it danced on the water like countless stars, and flung rainbows across the dappled green shadows.

It was beautiful, but it was still a graveyard, and it was the only place left in the world where no one dared disturb him.

Here, Hael Drax sat among the roots of a vast tree as his thoughts crawled back in like locusts, and thought of love and betrayal, which he could not separate, and of the times before war had torn his home into scraps.

~*~

“I can give you their powers,” he’d said, serious and close to begging. “Nena...”

“No.” Her refusal had been flat and firm, as it had been every time before.

He’d hissed, exasperated. This was the sixth time he had offered, and nothing he said seemed to persuade her. “Don’t you see how dangerous this is? You live with witches-”

“But I’m not one.”

True. There wasn’t an ounce of unearthly power in Persephone ap Nadine. Of earthly powers, she had an abundance: although her face was plain and unlovely, and her short hair meant more than one person had mistaken her for a boy, her grey eyes leapt with intelligence, and her mouth was perpetually caught on the cusp of a smile.

Perhaps it was that air of secret amusement that had drawn Hades to her when she walked into hell and demanded an audience; or some other sweet mystery residing in her pink blush, the small motions she made as she spoke, the timbre of her voice. Or maybe it was the simple fact of her defiance when she stood in the dank underworld and refused to be afraid of him.

But the Lord of the Dead cannot protect you now, Hael thought sadly. Your half-year in hell has tripped by, and he can lay no flowers at your feet or kisses soft upon your mouth, though I know he yearns to. Instead, he broods in hell, behind the creaking gates, chained by the five rivers until you come once more to love him, until you will spend one night in hell, and in his arms.

He traded his freedom for the hope of your love. And still I do not think you truly comprehend what that means. You have left him crippled, and you have let Kheo gain a foothold in the underworld: it was a devil’s deal he struck with the pair of you, love and hope and life the prize: and what the price?

War, I fear, Kheo left uninterrupted while you exist to threaten Hades with.

He said none of it to her then – it had all been argued before, and she had refuted it endlessly. She wasn’t so foolish as to trust Kheo’s word, but she did claim that he needed her alive. Her death would only awaken Hades’ wrath, she said, and Kheo had not stepped into hell since they had made the bargain.

She was right, and yet...and yet, Hael could not help but feel uneasy.

“Do you think they’ll see any difference? It’s going to be war,” he said bluntly. “And when the first soldiers come to your gates, do you think they’ll care that Hades’ last lives here?”

“Don’t call me that!” Persephone snapped, chopping a hand across the air. “Don’t make me his possession.”

Hale nearly choked, his anger chased out by the absurdity of it all. “I don’t think there’s any danger of that.”

Last time he’d gone to the underworld, the edge in the air had been palpable: in her absence, the flowers had withered, and the stone had become as dark and rough as Hades’ temper. The rivers were sluggish, glazed with ice while frost rimed upon the ground, and no one who came to petition Hades could doubt that he was a man possessed.

Possessed by this little human girl, no less.

Destroying many a throwaway retort, and against all odds, hell had finally frozen over.

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll understand when you go back to hell-”

“Don’t call it that. It’s not...” She stopped, confusion etched on her features, but too late – he’d heard the intensity there, heated and reflexive.

He waited, raising his eyebrows. Perhaps that relationship was not as one-sided as he feared.

“Not hell.” she finished quietly, and met his eyes with impunity. “Not for me.”

And then she blushed, and turned away, scrubbing at her cheeks as if she could rub it off.

Desire is not so easily erased, he thought, but waited until she was composed. “Nena, all the more reason to take these powers. It may not be much of a chance at survival, but it’s something.”

And if you die a witch, you will not vanish from Hades’ grasp. Humans have no place in his underworld unless you survive to become his queen.

“No, Hael.” The weariness was back in her voice and posture, matched by the stubborn line of her jaw. “I don’t need them. I don’t want them. I’m happy being human. Why doesn’t anyone seem to understand that?”

“It’s not about understanding. It’s about what will keep you safe.”

“And what about what’s right?” she demanded. “Or doesn’t that matter anymore?”

Hael had no answer for her.

He walked away that day and did not press her again. Now, sat amidst the verdant grass, he wished he had tried harder. Persephone’s death had shattered a dozen fragile alliances, true, had launched this foolish war, but more than that, he missed the human girl who’d argued with him so often, who’d lanced him with common sense when no one else would – who’d cared nothing that he was one of the Five, who’d never feared him.

Perhaps you should have, Nena. Not for yourself – but for the others that I killed.

So many, and all because I believed Bhari’s lies. I wanted to believe her, and she knew it.

~*~

“I don’t think it was witches,” Ryar began, laying a tentative hand on his arm.

He’d shaken her off, trembling with rage. His eyes were sore and itching from too many tears, and his head ached fiercely. None of it had diminished the pain a shred. “It was them,” he said. “I created them. You think I don’t know the feel of my own magic? You think I couldn’t taste it there, smeared on their bodies, in their blood, everywhere, Ryar, everywhere...”

And then the words strangled in his throat, and he stood there, swallowing back the grief, struggling to claw himself out of this nightmare.

No such luck.

“But why?” she asked. “Your brother had no grudge against the witches.”

Her eyes were that deep, warm purple, the swelling colour of a summer night; innocent eyes, somehow clinging to naivety. And it enraged him – that she stood there questioning what he knew to be true, the terrible knowledge he had felt slip coldly between his ribs like a knife as he knelt over his family, wishing them back to life.

“Do you think they cared?” he snarled, turning on her because she was there and it was easy. “This isn’t about reason, it’s about power. They always told me humans shouldn’t be given power, but I didn’t listen. I thought they were gentler than us. I thought it was the right thing. So I made monsters and let them spread into my home, I gave them shelter and arranged the peace between my family and them. I let them in, and they betrayed me. They wanted the forestlands, and they killed my family to take them.”

A harsh laugh skittered from his lips, rattling like old bones.

“Stupid of me, wasn’t it? Here was Kheo, full of ambition and hungry for slaughter, and to try and stop it all, I made a thousand just like him.”

“And if they’re like Kheo, why are you following him?” she asked, and her voice was almost a whisper, but the sharpness of the question cut.

He faced her, caged within his claustrophobic grief, needing to assuage it any way he could. And all he had left was revenge: all he had left was to punish their duplicity.

“Better the devil you know,” he said, and his eyes were as hollow and hopeless as a condemned man’s.

Better than the devils you made yourself.

~*~

Or, of course, the devils you had not raised a hand to destroy.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he’d shouted, flinging Fireblade against the wall. The dragon barely seemed to feel the impact, his face contorted with fury.

At their feet, Ryar huddled, sobbing softly. Blood flecked her hands and clumped her long hair where Fireblade had ripped handfuls from her scalp. Her skin was mottled with bruises, and he imposed his body between the pair, guardian and threat.

“You don’t understand,” said Fireblade, composing himself – but the air still rippled from the waves of heat rolling from him and his mouth had a sullen twist.

“Exactly right.”

He took a step forward, and Hael held up a warning hand. “I’ve turned a blind eye for too long. This stops now.”

Fireblade boggled. The expression of gormless shock was laughable, or would have been if he could find any humour in this situation. “Damn right it does. Her treachery stops right now.”

“Ryar?” He did laugh then, and the sound echoed from the marble walls. “Have you gone mad?”

“Have you? Or are you sneaking off to free prisoners too?”

Ah. So that was it. He’d suspected, but kept silent because she had found the courage to do what he could not. Still he could not forgive the witches and the humans for his family, even seeing their emaciated bodies, the mutilations inflicted on them in the name of justice when it was merely barbarity.

“Compassion is not treachery. I know both well, and there is a difference,” he answered sharply.

Fireblade’s grin was savage. “Aye, you slew one and screwed the other.”

He sighed, used to such cheap gibes. “I suppose you’re referring to Anharra and Bhari. Though I wouldn’t exactly call Bhari compassionate.”

Hael knew his lover well: and for all her kindness, for all the solace she had offered when he lay sleepless and aching in those first long nights, he knew she did not extend such comfort to others. It was his alone, that tenderness, that warmth, that unexpectedly gentle woman.

“No. I was referring to Anharra,” drawled Fireblade, and the words threw Hael into confusion that he kept well hidden.

“She butchered my family,” he said flatly. “I’d hardly call that an act of compassion.”

The cruel edge of Fireblade’s smile should have warned him, but he was too sure of himself and the truth. “She found your family dead, Hael. Just as Bhari had intended. It was all so very clever, you see – Bhari crept in and left them inches from death with that delicate touch of hers, those lovely, careful hands you let hold you every night. And then she sent a message to Anharra – and of course, when she arrived, what could she do but try to heal them? Too late, of course, and it drained her to the point of exhaustion, so that by the time you arrived, it was ridiculously easy to cast a few spells around her and force a confession...you’ve been had, Hael, and I mean that in every sense of the word.”

Behind him, he heard Ryar’s gasp scratch over the air.

He felt his certainty crumbling. “That...that isn’t true.”

Fireblade sauntered forward, hands held out. “Look in my mind. I have nothing to hide – unlike Bhari.”

Disbelieving, he stretched out a trembling hand and dipped into that blazing persona, all white-hot heat and towering arrogance: and there it was, playing out in conversations, Bhari spinning her scheme with an arachnid’s patient skill, her glee, her determination and her absolute mercilessness that he had not dreamed could be directed at him.

Her betrayal.

With sickening clarity, he realised why she had been so secretive lately, why her thoughts moved under a veil. It was no shyness, no fear of love – it was fear of discovery. He had been fooled, well and truly fooled.

His belief crumpled around him, smashing into dust and lies. All those nights, those times he had clutched her as his only anchor in this wasting world, nothing but strands of her web: all her words of love could not seem as significant as her silences now, and yet he still wanted to believe that it hadn’t all been lies, wanted it with a desperation and a fervour that he could not explain.

He was besieged by irrelevant details, by pieces of her that were his – the slip of her hair along his chest, the weight of her arm thrown over him, the light push of her breath against his skin, the slow stirring of her body as she woke.

For it all to have meant nothing...

With an exclamation of disgust, he broke the contact, but Fireblade’s malicious eyes held him still. He was reeling, rudderless, devoid of any star to steer by.

And the Drax leaned forward, eager and cruel.

“Will you tell me now that treachery shouldn’t be punished?”

Perhaps if he hadn’t said that, Hael might have collapsed before him. But the words goaded him, and from somewhere he found the nerve and the steel to pull Ryar to her feet and support her, to brush back the matted hair from her cuts and lay a gentle kiss on her cheek as all the apology he had.

And when he faced Fireblade, the words were there. “I won’t tell anything, Fireblade. I’ll show you.” And he let his power roll over his skin, a promise of storms and suffocation: he drew the air from around the Drax, and saw Fireblade’s eyes widen as he found himself wheezing for breath that was not there.

Fire needs air to survive, you blind idiot. And that means you do too.

Beside him, Ryar whimpered, and he saw the anguish in her face. “Don’t...” she pleaded.

He stared at her, disbelieving. “Do you think I can just walk away?”

“Yes, walk away,” she whispered, her voice so thin and soft that only he could here. “Walk away to the witches, and turn the tide, Hael. Isn’t that the best revenge you could choose?”

~*~

And so he sat in his glade with his beloved dead, her words echoing in his head.

It all comes back to that, doesn’t it? To revenge. I have lost count of the people I must fight for: for Persephone, for my family, for Ryar...none of whom can do it for themselves.

Persephone’s voice echoed in his head, the last remnant of her he kept.

“And what about what’s right? Or doesn’t that matter anymore?”

You fought for what was right, didn’t you? You died for it. There was no glory or honour to it, only a squealing rope and your feet kicking. But you chose your death and you did not flinch from it when you might have.

If I fight for what is right, I suppose I choose my death too.

But maybe that isn’t the point. If I won’t stand up and fight, who will? I have stood by while his war raged, and I have been part of the atrocities and the indifference – I have caused this as much as anyone. And as long as I am part of the Five, it will continue. Without me, I will cripple them as Persephone crippled Hades.

Not in love, no. I will not cry out in the name of love. But for justice...

Yes. I think I can believe in that.