Chaos Lies Beneath the Night, Episode 1 by J. Leigh Bralick

Author:J. Leigh Bralick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SisterMuses
Published: 2021-04-13T18:25:39+00:00

Atan’s litter delivered him to the steps of the palace just as the last light of day faded past the gold-gilt domes, leaving the sky a wash of tawny copper. Fires burned in countless brass braziers and in lamps hung on every marble wall, replacing what light and warmth the evening had stolen away. Jadin and Stelyos helped Atan from the litter and onto a carried chair, and Atan did not even have the energy to complain about the excessive attention.

A small army of servants immediately swarmed the chair like scarabs. As they hurried to lift him up and carry him toward the palace, Atan caught Stelyos’s worried glance. If he had to hazard a guess, he would have said Stelyos was angry—but at what, or whom, he didn’t know. Likely he was angry at Atan himself, and Atan grudgingly admitted that he rather deserved it. He maintained an uncharacteristic silence the entire way into the palace, and when his servants deposited him on his silk-draped couch, he dismissed them all with a wave.

Jadin hovered a moment, perturbed to be sent away with the lower staff, but Atan skewered him with a savage glare that sent him scuttling out on their heels without so much as a backwards glance. Stelyos stood stalwartly at the edge of the lattice screen, both hands braced on the haft of his halberd.

“I thought I dismissed you,” Atan said, lying back on his pillows.

“I’m not one of your servants,” Stelyos said.

Atan snorted and reached toward the goblet one of his attendants had left on the table near his head, but his arm shook so violently that he doubted he could even lift the cup. Letting let his hand drop back on the couch, he turned to stare out the window at the sultry night.

Stelyos, watching impassive from his post, said after a moment, “Can I get you your wine?”

“I don’t want it.”

Deferring to his wishes, Stelyos made no response, and didn’t move. Atan felt oddly relieved that Stelyos hadn’t leapt forward to retrieve the goblet for him; he expected that fawning subservience from Jadin, but Stelyos was disciplined to the point of rigidity.

“Why don’t you go away?” Atan said. “I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not in any danger.”

“That judgment is my prerogative, Splendor,” Stelyos replied.

Atan grumbled and turned a little further on his side. He didn’t want to sleep, though he desperately needed it. In sleep he would wander the outermost rim of his Aether, drawing its life and energy back into his soul, restoring him to his natural strength…but something deep inside him shied away from the thought of drawing so near to the Aether again. He had come closer to it that evening than he had in a long time, and the memory of it still sang in his veins, luring him back again with a strange magnetism.

It was said that the Aether was always calling out to her children in sleep, drawing them back to her embrace. Every Aetherial would face the night when the song was too sweet to resist, and then they would wake no more.

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