Chapter 36
She had seen this day nearly a decade ago, fresh dew on the leaves.
Her eyes were—different; special and true. And she had seen.
She had known since she was just a girl. He would come for her; she would call for him. None of this, she thought, was ever going to be easy.
She’d been young, then, and foolish. Coddled with naiveté that her people only continued to foster. They said that her blood was greater than the likes of which they’d seen in lifetimes, and that they wouldn’t dare to stifle the flow of it. Not even to tell her, only once or at all, that there were moments in life that never vanished, even with effort, even with time. Scars on hearts, and hers the grandest of canyons; edged deep, spread wide, bared to the open sky.
She had been the brightness of laughter and the joy of hope, a young girl finding her place on a world she would never leave. Glimmering like gems, her eyes shone through the mist, too wide for her face. Hers was an unmistakable presence amongst her people. Her elven ancestors had inhabited these mountains for centuries, further back in time than even her great grandmother could recall. And like her grandmother and her mother before her, she would rule these lands.
One day.
When she’d woken from the dream of a sunflower bursting with the light of life, mad with the brightness of sincerity, she’d thought, one day, but not too soon.
And it did take time; two centuries passed; Hinata grew into her body, the sharpness of her family’s passed down ears, the elegance of her bloodline. Her hair grazed her tailbone, long and full and just the exact shade of the sky when the moon centered above her. Adorned in the finest silks edged and hemmed with embroidered beading, she shimmered in the moonlight. Her every step was a bystander’s sharp inhale, her proud chin raised not in arrogance, but whimsy: the moon and the star-speckled night had become a companion of sorts.
She gazed up at them now, barely feeling the way the breeze toyed with her skirts, her sleeves. She heard his approach long before he settled beside her, and when she turned at last to gauge his temperament, she found him stern. This was not unusual, but there was a certain sharpness to his jaw that spoke of genuine concern. It made her smile, acknowledgement settling warmly under the skin of her chest. Her lips quirked, but her humor was hampered with the heavy weight of reality pressing in against her.
“I know, cousin.”
After all, his sight was special, too.
“You’re not running from this,” Neji intoned, soft as the breeze against their skin. It was a question and a statement, too. Acknowledging the decision she’d crafted jaggedly into her elegant posture.
“No,” she agreed, so softly. When she glanced over at him again, there was something more than the mourning she felt growing in the pit of her stomach. It was surprising in strength, though not in presence. She’d been curious about this day for centuries, wondering what it would feel like, daring to question the unerring accuracy of her own sight—would it truly, truly occur the way she’d seen it?
If the past was anything to go by, then it would, and that was devastating. But—if for some reason, something went differently? Over the years she’d played with this train of thought enough for hope to fracture through, a gleaming brightness in the sea of murky unease within her mind. Maybe, she thought, it would go differently. Though it was small, light and weightless as hope often is; immeasurable but present; she held onto it with steely determination. It cast her eyes alight with more than moonlight, but expectation, too.
She reached up to the simple crown of silver woven through her hair, and though she smiled, her eyelashes fell.
“I am to be queen,” she whispered, letting the words go with the wind. “It is my duty to protect my people.”
After a long moment of study, Neji agreed. He nodded his head, slowly, waiting for her to say more. “Yes.”
When she turned to him, there was disquiet in her eyes. Conflict. She studied the hardened planes of her cousin’s face, the way time had only made him more beautiful. He was all sharp edges and mystery, her best friend and her counselor. His robes were alabaster white, even finer than her own, heavy on his shoulders. His sleeves would reach the floor at his full height, and Hinata knew him to be a dangerous opponent even with them getting in his way. He was strong, wise, honest, and loyal. A good person for advisement, a strong warrior for protection, a valuable asset to the voice of their people. He was all of those things, and much more, and also her closest friend.
It is with this in mind that she admits her greatest secret to him in a voice too soft to carry.
“I have met him once before,” she watches the way his eyes widen, snapping to her without filter. “It was not seen.”
“When?” He demands, then shakes his head, turning more fully towards her. “No, no. Never mind. That doesn’t matter. When was the last time you had the dream?”
Hinata smiled. Her eyes were heavy. “Last night.”
Neji cursed, low and under his breath, at last turning from her to the grand landscape before them. They sat looking over the entirety of her future kingdom, a pristine and seemingly endless spread of alabaster buildings edged in gold, silver, and onyx. The mountains helped to lift the buildings high into the air, gems reaching from the earth, grazing the sky. And Hinata and Neji, higher than all of them, cast only in moonlight. Disclosing secrets. Hoping for something different.
“Then it is unchanged,” Neji voiced Hinata’s own thoughts, her own fears. She merely watched him a moment longer, eyes still heavy with acceptance of what was to come. What she would have to do. She turned back to the moon and gazed up at her fondly, feeling cherished under the strength of her light, which was bright enough to leech through the surrounding darkness.
“You are certain—” Neji began, and Hinata laughed.
“I would not forget the face or the name, the sound of his voice carrying through my own streets.” She said these words and felt them pulsate in her heart, the dream coming back to her like a chasm opening beneath her. She felt freefalling. “He will come for me. And I will call for him.”
She turned to Neji once more, saw the resignation winning in him, his resolve turning to ash on his tongue. She knew that feeling, too. Had lived with it for decades. Her sight was unerring. They studied one another silently, then, because there was nothing left to say. They both understood what was to come in only hours. Hours were short, felt like nothing, time moving too fast when she’d lived for centuries. An hour was a second, and the hands of time continued to tick, tick, tick away.
They remained there for many silent, heavy moments, until the moon inched her way across the glistening sky. Neji moved first, the heat of his hand on her shoulder remaining long after he left. By the time Hinata stood from the dirt and felt the coolness of the breeze blowing her skirts between her calves, the moon had vanished.
The sun rose before her, as bright and powerful as ever.
She thought of the sunflower.
✧
It happened just the way she had seen it.
News of his arrival came from the echoes of her own people talking in the streets, reaching her nobles’ ears, and then her own. She sat in the throne room and felt the familiar brush of velvet against her wrists as she leaned back, chin lifted. She thought of going to him, meeting him in the streets, begging him to turn back.
But then she remembered the look in his eyes the first time they’d parted, when he’d held her so close and so carefully she’d felt the impossibility of ever breaking under his watch. The way he’d promised her he’d return, despite her commanding that he didn’t, for his sake, for her own. They would not listen to her pleas, not even her mother, clan leader and the ultimate elven authority.
An elven princess could not marry a monster, no matter how decorated a warrior he was, or how tender she knew his heart to be.
When it was Neji who came to her side, as she had previously seen, as she knew he would, she sat straight up on her throne. Everything was falling into place. She was the highest authority in their land, with her parents away. Neji was there, as she knew he would be. As she had seen. He put his hand on her shoulder and she heard Hanabi in the halls, knew her swift footsteps well enough to pick them out of a crowd.
She opened the door to the throne room and said nothing. She knew too much, and always said too little. She settled on Hinata’s other side and for a moment, a flicker of time too quick to register, she held Hinata’s hand.
It was time.
The doors opened, almost simultaneously, and her court flooded in. Then her nobles, and so many of her people. All of them beautiful, elegant and chiseled, and afraid. She looked into their faces—she’d seen them all before, with a young girl’s eyes, and she hadn’t understood the gravity of their fear, then.
She felt it now; it pressed her down into the velvet of her throne and she could feel her pulse hammering away in her throat, her wrists.
“An abomination,” she heard, “A monster, disgusting, repulsive, dangerous,” hushed voices bouncing off of high walls, a higher ceiling. Raining over her like arrows.
One man, braver than the rest with a glimmering fall of sable hair stepped forward. She knew him as more than a brave man, an elven leader, a general, commander of one of their armies. One of her armies. She knew him best, however, as her uncle.
Hizashi looked Hinata in the eyes and with a sweeping gesture of his robes he began to make the demands that the crowd dutifully reinforced.
“You must cast this beast from our lands,” he demanded, spittle flying form his lips. “Or command your warriors to do it for you.”
“It’s not enough to cast him out,” someone called out, and Hinata’s eyes found hers easily in the crowd. Her own were heavy, blank and veiled. All the while, her heart shook, and ached. “All murderous beasts receive the same treatment, why should he be excluded? He has too much light in him. It’s driven him to lurid offences!”
Somewhere, in another time, another universe, parallel with her current reality, she stepped off the throne with her chin raised proudly, and her voice unshaking as she said, “Because I love him.”
Somewhere, in another time, another universe, she allowed herself to be selfish.
Now, however, she remained silent. She heard her people, faced down their demands, understood their fear and felt their needs. She felt Neji tensing next to her and wished that she could reach out to him, tell him it would be alright. That she didn’t blame his father, and neither should he.
She felt far from alright.
Hizashi stepped closer, though his voice would have carried even from across the room. The windows nearly shook with it, his unquestionable anger. He never once looked to Neji. Instead, he folded until he was on one knee, his head bowed, respectful and pleading even as his voice never wavered, his shoulders tense with fury.
“Princess,” he intoned deferentially, before looking up to meet her eyes once more. “I call on you to act in favor of your people. Strike down this monster yourself, or sentence his throat to my blade.”
Hinata lifted her hand and the room fell silent in waves, her eyes casting over them. She gave herself a moment longer to steady herself, ensuring her voice wouldn’t waver, her gaze firm. There was no identifiable allegiance on her face—she knew this, because she’d practiced for decades in order to get it right. She wondered if they could still see the burn behind her eyes, the way fires ate up her insides as the words formed on her tongue.
“I have heard your concerns,” she spoke, deceptively calm with authority. “And I will answer them.”
“This monster you speak of is a human man,” she began, and she could feel the recoil go throughout the room. But she was prepared for it. She’d seen it in her dream for years. “As a noble race, we have prided ourselves on diplomacy. We are not a barbaric people.”
Hizashi remained bowed low, staring grimly up at her, and when Hinata turned back to him she returned that stare unflinchingly. She raised her chin.
“We will not blindly attack a human, however dangerous he may be, without first offering him a chance to explain himself.”
“Princess,” Hizashi cut in, and Hinata allowed it. “He transforms in the night; he’s capable of desecrating entire lands. He shapes light in his hands and uses it to destroy. Were he simply a human, we would never call for such punishment. But he is no human.”
Again, the whispered echo filled the room.
Monster, monster, monster.
Hinata’s heart beat heavier with every whispered pulse, until she was forced to lift her hand again, calling for silence, and order. It took much longer to follow, this time, and she could see the way they hungered for his destruction in their lack of absolute obedience. Elves were notorious for their loyalty, to the crown most of all. Any hesitation in respecting that was a sign of true fracture amongst her people—and something that she had to tread very, very carefully around.
“I will not permit an instant execution. It is not war time.”
“Not now,” Hizashi intoned quietly, voice carrying. “But are you so willing to allow him the chance to start one?”
At the risk of your people was an unspoken but easily heard addendum that had Hinata, for the first time, showing a genuine reaction. She closed her eyes, if only for a second, before returning her tired gaze to Hizashi.
“I will not permit the start of a war. Not his,” she said in acknowledgement, before her gaze sharpened, becoming something stifling and dangerous. “Or yours.”
Hizashi was not cowed. He said, “If you do nothing, princess, you will find out the hard way that war does not care either way for permission.”
Hinata narrowed her eyes. He had worded that perfectly to make it appear she had known nothing of war. She, the general of their armies and the constant wraith on their front lines. In a single sentence, he had made her seem the fool once more, a young and coddled princess, and he the battle-hardened veteran only looking out for their people. She’d known it was coming and yet still allowed herself to walk right into his trap.
“Enough,” she said, chin raised. The crown on her head felt ever-heavier, then.
Hizashi’s lips sealed, the finality of her authority clear. He bowed his head lower and Hinata waited for any other voices to rise, though she knew that there would be none. They were so clearly on the side of execution, Hizashi’s strength of person and interest catching in the air. She had thought to talk her way out of this. To give him a chance. She’d thought herself capable, even as she accepted the consistent truths shown right before her, matching perfectly what she had dreamt. Still, she had hoped.
But now she looked out into the sea of faces, hundreds gathered in fear in her great hall, asking for her to take action in favor of their protection. She was their princess, soon to be their queen, and she had a duty to protect them. Her loyalty, she had been taught, over and over again, was to her people.
Even, she realized suddenly, when she wanted to be loyal to herself.
A queen would put her people first. And a queen she would be.
At long last, she could taste the words she’d dreamt of for decades, for centuries, looming behind her teeth. She’d wondered for years how she’d come to them, how she’d faltered so consistently so as to find herself saying them at all. Now, she understood.
She looked out at her people, and she didn’t let them see the way her heart wavered. This, she remembered clearly. The chasm opening under her, shaking her apart. The reality of her sentencing her beloved to death.
She was no longer foolish. She understood that nothing could defeat the passage of time or the way it weaved itself into a tapestry even elves couldn’t alter.
It was cruel and unfair, but she had lived for a long time and she knew that life and time were not careful with lovers who belonged together down to their souls.
She thought of the sun that morning, and the inevitable way it rose to meet her.
“Bring me the man who has gone mad with the light,” she said, her heart breaking, remembering the first time she’d seen him—light had stuck to him, captivated by the radiance of his presence. He’d smiled when he first met her. Reached out and touched her cheek before he left her.
“And I will serve him his justice.”