Ben's Dream
TRIGGER WARNING:
Contains thoughts of self-harm.
This is a deleted scene from Dragon's Crown (Book 4 of the Blood of the Covenants Series).
I originally wrote this to be the epilogue to Dragon's Crown, but then I took it out for a lot of reasons.
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First, and most important, Ben is at his absolute lowest point at the beginning of this scene, a point so dark and terrible that I was worried it would be jarring or (my worst fear) even damaging to readers, given how the tone of the series overall is hopeful and light-filled.
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Second, I didn't think I could write the scene any other way without being true to what I know—I just know—Ben was experiencing in that moment. These characters are real to me, as if I am merely telling you the stories they told me, and I knew I would not be doing Ben's story—much less his pain—justice if I glossed over it just to make it fit the tone of the rest of the series.
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Third, I knew some people would then find Ben's turnaround after he woke up unbelievable. I understand that perspective even though I truly think a transformation such as his is possible, especially given the source of both his pain (his belief in his unworthiness to be loved) and the start of healing (his acceptance that he was loved and forgiven anyway).
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Fourth, I couldn't figure out where in the book to put it. Putting it in chronological order would reveal too much too soon, and didn't fit the pacing besides. I experimented putting it at the end as an epilogue for a few beta readers, but one person found that confusing, and I didn't like the "aftertaste" it left besides. I wanted the book to end on the note it did in what became the final chapter, "Purpose."
However, I still thought the scene worth sharing with people who were prepared and interested in it, because it's also critical to understanding Ben's turnaround.
Because Kor got the source of Ben's pain slightly but critically wrong. It's true, as Kor claimed to Sarah in Dragon's Heir, that everything to do with Ben's mental state goes back to his mother's death, but that's for a reason Kor never knew: that Ben believed he was at fault, and that guilt cascaded into everything else. His inability to bear the guilt of also being the death of his father, his inability to see anyone else be hurt for his sake, and, ultimately, his misbelief in his unworthiness to be loved.
So the cure wasn't to convince him he wasn't a monster, as Sarah thought; it wasn't (as Kor attempted) to force Ben past a mental block and into a relationship. The solution had to go back to the original problem. The love and reassurance Ben needed couldn't come from anyone living because the root of the problem was tied up in someone who was dead.
That required a very special kind of meeting. And I'm not talking about with the Tree.
That is the part that Ben never, ever told anyone, because it's the most personal, sacred, and transformative moment of his entire life.
This ... is Ben's dream of his mother.
Setting: After the Battle of the Solstice and his father's ultimate sacrifice, Ben shuts Sarah out of his Realms in a guilt-driven attempt to prevent her from dying for him too. A month into his grueling, solitary kingship, Ben is a hardened, almost unrecognizable version of himself, once more at the breaking point. Kor, knowing this, tries to talk Ben into letting Sarah back in, but failing completely, Kor leaves, leaving Ben alone in his study.
POV: Koriben.
I, Koriben Sunfilled, the drakón King of the Six Realms, was dying.
And I was glad to be.
Well, as glad I ever got about anything these days. I watched Kor walk numbly out of my study with cold eyes and a colder harder flameheart. Even the coals my leftwing had momentarily stirred within were once again being buried under the life-quenching ashes that I was heaping on them. I had plenty of those ashes to go around, after all—and made more every day as my paper-thin soul slowly burned to nothing.
I knew what would happen once that soul ran out. The Tree would revoke me—perhaps even strike me down Herself.
And oh, how I longed for that day. For Her to finally finish the job She had started when She gave this cursed life and crown to me in the first place.
Why was it taking so torched long?
The greatest lingering frustration of my conversation with Kor was the realization that he would offer me no relief. The coward. Had he ever been my friend? Or did he, too, prefer to see me continue to suffer, to turn his back to me as he was doing now and leave me utterly alone to bear the weight of a burning hot crown that was slowly burning its way through my soul?
How ironic that the whole purpose of my life, from before I was even conceived, was to bear that crown. Yet it had not been mine more than a day, more than an hour, before it began killing me.
Or perhaps, out of spite, I was using it to kill myself.
Though I knew more than spite was involved. That emotion was almost just a distraction from the terrible resignation that lay underneath, in the marrow of my bones. Somehow, even now, I could not entirely give up on the duty my parents had instilled in me. It was in the very blood they gave to me, after all. In the lives they gave up for me.
If I stopped now, if I just gave up now, if I just collapsed face first in the ashes or—worse, much worse—went out in a blazing rage of spite, then their sacrifices…my star’s sacrifices…would be for nothing.
My current life was hell. By the next surely would be even more so if I had to face them all without having even tried.
And so, I tried.
As much as it was killing me.
Even though I would never be enough, even though they had all been wrong about me—my parents, my star, my Tree—from the beginning. At least I could tell them I had tried.
Even though it was getting harder each day as the utter pointlessness of it all suffocated me.
Why?
Why did they all do this to me?
Why did the Tree choose me, wholly inadequate, doomed to failure as I was? Did She truly love all Her children except me? Look on me with such disdain that She set me up for failure from the beginning? Wish me to suffer to the point of self-destruction?
Why did my parents, after seeing what kind of child they had brought into the world, continue to believe in me? Love me?
Die for me?
Wholly unworthy as I was.
And proving more unworthy by the day, no matter how hard I was still trying.
That was the most terrible tragedy of it all: that by even trying, I was only digging a deeper pit for myself.
A dark voice deep inside me, one I had been trying desperately to ignore, but one that was growing stronger by the day, whispered that the best thing I could do now was end it all. Before I hurt anyone else. Before I disappointed them even more. Before anyone else sacrificed themselves for me.
Perhaps that was the only truly noble choice left to me.
Once Kor had closed the door behind him, leaving me truly alone, my hand lifted, almost unbidden, from where it had rested on my desk, and my skin shifted to scales briefly enough to bring out my ceremonial dagger. I unsheathed the blade and held it, contemplating its sharp, shining edges with longing.
This was not the first time I had brought it out like this. But this was the worst time, the pain and weariness stirring under the ashes I always tried to bury them in, more strongly than ever before, with Kor having stirred them up so dangerously. More so than I’d let him see.
Yet another hope for relief, gone up in smoke. Kor could have given me the easiest, swiftest way out. And yet, for whatever reason, he would not. I could see that in his eyes when I called his bluff. Perhaps I had finally shown him what a terrible burden a crown truly was, one he wasn’t willing to bear.
Well, tough. He would have as little choice in the matter as I had, when I was gone.
When.
Yes, even if I never used this dagger, I know it was only a matter of when now. I was dying, plain and simple.
So why not end it now? the dark voice whispered. Why continue to suffer? Why continue to disappoint? Why risk her life further?
Because there was perhaps yet one more person living who loved me, undeserving as I was. One more who could die for me, if she ever found her way back.…
The blade gleamed golden in the light of the gems in the study walls. As if offering me my last beacon of relief.
My last chance to save her.
My hand gripped the knife tightly as I suddenly struggled, harder and more perilously than ever before, with the urge to use it.
And yet…something held me back. Something even quieter and more soundless than a voice.
My gaze, almost unbidden, fell to the mug of tsha on the food tray on my desk. I smelled the calming, mildly soporific blend that the cook who had prepared it had no doubt hoped, however faintly, would help soothe me to sleep tonight. So of course I had not touched it, and now the liquid was cold to my heatsense.
And yet, it gave me an idea. A strange one, considering my state of mind just then and particularly my streak of self-castigation. One that made me wonder if it came not from myself at all.
Rest, it said, without words. Give yourself just a bit of rest first.
I hesitated one moment.
Then I grasped onto that thought like the lifeline I knew it was. I would extend my life just a bit longer. I was so bone-deep weary, I knew I wasn’t thinking straight. So, to show them all that I was giving every effort to try, I would rest for just a few deken, just a few…and then decide.
Yet that tsha alone wasn’t going to put me under in the state I was in.
I put away the knife and instead brought out a small canister. When I unscrewed the cap, the sparkling purple of the finely powered dreamhaze petals greeted me. The second the sweet herbal aroma hit my nostrils, I stopped inhaling. Yet I carefully tipped the canister over the mug and tapped it until a few pinches-worth fell into the liquid. Just enough for a few deken. Just enough.…
To say I tried. Not to live, because that seemed impossibly pointless at this point. But at least to survive. For a few deken longer.
As I stirred the liquid with the spoon on the tray and then brought the mug to my lips, I tried excruciatingly hard not to think of a time not so long ago (and yet what felt like a former life) when Yvera had drugged my tsha with this very plant, and I had been distracted enough at the time to not smell it before drinking, or notice the alteration in the taste. Our lives—including my star’s—had been on the line that night, and Yvera’s well-meaning act and my distraction had nearly cost us all.
And now here I was, deliberately drugging myself this time, with stakes perhaps just as dire.
Still, I sipped.
I was surprised to discover that the soothing blend, even cold and altered slightly by the sweetness of the dreamhaze, still had the power to offer me a modicum of comfort, even amidst the dark maelstrom in my vanishing soul. Perhaps because the taste, the smell…brought me the faintest traces of a feeling of warmth, hearth, home.
This had been Avvi’s favorite blend. And perhaps it was just the lethargy beginning to sink into my mind and body, but I thought I could almost catch a whiff of her.…
I laid my head down on top of my folded arms on the desk and closed my eyes, surrendering at last to that beckoning rest, that soothing warmth. I thought it was just my wistful imagination when I felt a familiar hand softly stroke my head.
Then.…
“Wake, Koriben,” she said softly.
Adrenaline surged through my veins like fire and jolted me wide awake. My head shot up, and my mind spun, disoriented, as I found myself lying face-down on the floor of the dais at the foot of the Tree of Flame. It was night, the fires that eternally burned but never consumed the Tree’s leaves and trunk faded to a dim glow, leaving much of the cavernous room in shadow.
But it wasn’t the abrupt change in scene or lighting or position that was stunning me now. It was the sight of the woman crouched over me, smiling down at me softly, a look of such pure love and compassion in her emerald eyes and breathtakingly beautiful, ageless face that it knocked the air from my lungs.
“Avvi?” I said in a strangled gasp.
Tears pooled in her eyes, adding an extra glimmer to those emeralds I had once known as well as my own. That had once been my own.
She reached forward and cupped my cheek, her thumb brushing the upper edges of my bare cheekbones, where the upper border of my beard would have been had I not shaved it in mourning, and only then did I truly believe she was no illusion.
“Oh, my boy,” she murmured. “My son.”
Then she pulled me into her arms. Strong arms, but much smaller ones than I remembered. I felt a flicker of concern, then I realized that she had not shrunk; I had merely grown.
That thought broke me, shattered the crust and blasted away the ash I had so carefully built and piled around my flameheart.
But what surged forth from the breach was not raging, deadly lava but soul-drenching waters of grief. I rested my head on her much smaller shoulder and sobbed as I had never sobbed for years. Ages.
Certainly not since the last time my mother had been able to hold me like this—long, long before those arms became too weak to do so.
Not even her death had made me cry like this. Not for a lack of grief but simply a refusal to allow myself that kind of weakness. My mother had died for me. In my fourteen-year-old mind, I thought that meant I had to endure as manfully as I could. Even though for months I couldn’t see how.
Or why.
Not so unlike my agony now.
“Why?” I sobbed, asking the question that had burned inside me for six years without hope of ever being answered. “Why…did you…do it?”
“Because I love you,” she whispered, holding me tighter for a moment.
“Why?”
She pulled away to look me in the eyes. I lowered mine, unable to meet hers. Though something about her touch and the look in her eyes that I saw out of the corner of my own made my sobs begin to slow.
“That, I cannot explain,” she said softly, cupping my cheek again. “It is a kind of love that cannot be explained. Only felt. And so, though your pain breaks my heart, I am afraid that you will not be able to understand it…until you have a child of your own.”
I let out a choked, bitter laugh. “Then I guess that means I will never.”
She lifted my chin to meet her eyes, a flash of motherly sternness I knew so well going through them. “Do not be so hasty to declare something like that, my son. Especially something so counter to the Tree’s will for you.”
“Avvi.…” I swallowed thickly. “I…just can’t. I won’t.”
Never again, I had vowed. And felt the force of that vow now more than ever.
My mother saddened again, and whispered, “Not even to save the woman you love?”
The spring gushing out of my broken heart froze solid, and ice raced through the paths of my veins where the water had flowed. The last of my sobs died in my chest, choked off in the frost.
“What?”
Avvi sighed deeply as she let go of me. “As much as I have longed to come to you for your own sake, the Creators have parted the veil between us at last for more than one reason. The other is to give you warning. And to do so, They did not send me alone.”
My blood chilled further, especially when she turned and I followed her gaze…to the Lady of Flame standing mere feet away from us, on the other side of the sacred firepit.
I immediately ducked my head under the crushing weight of my unworthiness. I did not just want to die, then. I wanted the cavern roof to collapse to hide me from Her burning gaze. I wanted to sink into the stone and cease to exist. Suddenly, even being in the presence of my pure, mortal mother was too much.
And yet.…
I gripped my thighs as I knelt in front of my Flamemother. Even bowed over with guilt, I could not give in to oblivion just yet. Not with Avvi’s ominous hint still ringing in my mind.
Part of my spirit, a part I had thought long since silenced and beyond recovery, rose up, even as my body bent. Apparently I was not quite ready to die.
Not if that meant…her death.
“My Lady,” I croaked.
“Koriben,” the Tree of Flame said, Her crackling voice neither cold nor warm. It gave me no hint of how She felt about my behavior and sometimes open defiance over the past month of being Her King. Yet there was something telling about how She did not address me with that title now.
I flinched, gaze still fixed on the sandstone floor. “My Lady, inflict whatever punishment you see fit upon me, revoke me if You see fit, but if it’s true that…”
Even now, her name stuck in my chest, unable to rise beyond the region of my frozen flameheart. Even as cracked as it was now.
“…that the Queen of Ice is in danger.…”
“That, she is,” the Tree said. “For the Devourer rages at its defeat at her hands, and in one moon from this night, it will come for her.”
Forget my veins—the very air in my lungs seemed to freeze solid, and my chest convulsed uselessly for a moment until I finally choked out, “What?”
In my desperation, I dared lift my gaze to meet those of my Tree. No matter how I burned under the gaze of those fires.
“Please,” I begged, hands gripping my thighs even more tightly. “Please, is there anything You can do…anything.…?”
“Only the King of Flame can aid her now,” the Tree said, Her words soft. And yet every one pierced me to my frozen flameheart, shattering it further with each strike. “Whether that be you…or another…is up to you. But decide now, and decide once and for all, Koriben. For if you no longer wish to serve Me, then for her sake and for the sake of all the Realms, I will pass My flame to another who will.”
This was it. This was the moment I had been waiting those long, agonizing days for. The moment when the Tree would finally let me go.
And yet, now that it had arrived, I immediately choked out, “No! Please! Forgive me! Just tell me how to save her, and I will do it! Whatever it is, I will do it, I swear! Just let me save her.”
Please, please. My star, of everyone, did not deserve to suffer for my inadequacy. If, for her sake alone, I had to live, to be, to bear a crown…then I would.
Part of me recognized the familiarity of this moment. How similar it was to the time in which I had begged the Tree, in this very chamber, on this very spot, to give me a way to save my father. How similar my words.
And yet how different. Then, I thought I had known true pain, fear, guilt. How much I had to learn about all three. Those were the emotions of a boy terrified of losing his father. These were the agonies of a man unable to live for a day longer without his true heart, as his own finally shattered completely.
The reminder of that moment did not stop me, no matter how it also inevitably reminded me of the outcome. Yet the Tree had been true to Her word, even then. She had saved him. My father was, in the end, the one who had decided to give up his life—again—for me.
I could only pray my star was not about to do the same. But I still didn’t even hesitate.
If there was even a chance I could save her…I had to take it.
There was no other option.
The Tree’s face seemed to…soften.
“Then heed Me now,” She said, almost gently. “You cannot hide her. You cannot protect her. You may only help her, in one singular way, and that one way alone.”
I swallowed, then rasped, “How?”
Her eyes burned into mine, and I felt my mother’s strengthening grip on my shoulder.
“You must give her a child.”
At first, my mind could not comprehend what She was saying. Then I glanced at Avvi, and she just gazed back at me with compassion in her eyes.
I choked, looking back at the Tree. “A what?”
The Tree’s expression and voice were both implacable. “In order for the Queen of Ice to be strong enough to survive the Devourer’s attack in one moon from this night, she must be bearing the child of the King of Flame. And so now, I give you your final choice. If you wish to withdraw from that mantle, say so now, once and for all. For if you agree to carry it from this time forward, then you must swear to never part from the Queen again…and to give her that child.”
I looked back at Avvi helplessly, as if to ask if I was truly hearing what I thought I was.
I had thought that the Tree had nothing left to ask of me that would hurt as much as She already had. I thought there was nothing She could ask that I would hesitate to give to save my star. And yet…it seemed I was wrong.
Avvi smiled sadly as she gripped my shoulder more tightly for a moment. She shook her head, tears glistening in her eyes again. “Only when you have that child will you begin to truly understand, Koriben.”
“Understand what?” I asked desperately.
Avvi’s eyes, for a moment, were deep green wells of eternity. “Life. Death. And the life after. Love. Sacrifice. Joy. In other words…everything.”
“Make your choice, son of Flame,” the Tree intoned, and I looked back at her. “From this moment forth, will you be My King? Will you become consort to My Sister’s Queen? And will you give the Queen the gift she needs to save all Our Realms?”
Because it had a work to do, my flameheart began to piece itself back together, bit by agonizing bit. And so, when I finally began to feel it pound, I knew I had already made my choice.
If that was the only way to save my star, my heart…then so may it be.
“I will,” I rasped, bowing under the weight of Her will.
Though how Sarah was going to forgive me for this, I had no idea. I didn’t know how I was going to forgive myself.
Avvi pulled me back to her and held me tightly. For a moment, I closed my eyes and allowed myself to drown in her familiar scent, which had always reminded me of nothing more than life itself.
“All will be well, son,” she murmured. “You will see. You will have joy again. There are bright days ahead…for you both.”
“I don’t see how,” I whispered hoarsely as I wrapped my arms around her. Around that form I knew so well and yet was so much smaller than I remembered. “Avvi…I don’t even know how to get her to forgive me for what I’ve already done to her. Let alone.…”
There was a twinkle in Avvi’s eyes as she pulled away and cupped my cheek again. “Oh, she may not find it so hard to forgive you as you think.”
I swallowed. Heedless of the Tree still looking on, painfully aware that my precious moments with her were no doubt slipping through my fingers, I asked the question that now burned in my chest as fiercely as my first to her had. “How did you forgive me?”
Because I could finally see that she had. I had pictured this reunion so many times in the six years since her death, and each time, I couldn’t help but imagine some hint of regret, and more than a hint of reproach. I had expected to beg for her forgiveness. Instead, I found it already freely given.
If…forgiveness had even been necessary.
Avvi smiled softly, shaking her head at me. She raised her other hand to cup my other cheek. “Ah, my son. My dear, precious Koriben. That is precisely what you still cannot understand, and will not even begin to until you are a father. And even then, you will never know a mother’s love. There was nothing to ever forgive. I chose you. And I would choose you again. I have no regrets. Now, I do not even regret the pain that I caused you with my death. Because now I understand the joy that it will teach you to know in the days to come. And there are few of those days yet until then.”
I just stared at her, breathless. Unable to comprehend that kind of love for anyone. Let alone for someone so unworthy as me.
And yet…that love, which had broken me open…began softening the shattered edges of my heart and healing them without crack or seam.
Giving it a flicker of flame again.
Enough to keep me going until I reached my star again.
My vision blurred, and I cursed myself, swiping at my eyes furiously. I did not want to lose sight of my mother for one second before I had to.
“I love you, Avvi,” I croaked. “I’ve missed you…so much.”
Her smile faded into solemnity. She bent forward and kissed my forehead softly. “I love you, Koriben, my son. More than you will ever know.”
And then, just like that, she was gone.
“No!” I cried, reaching forward with one hand, but in vain. My hand just passed through empty air. I bent over fully again and clutched both arms to my chest, giving over to burning tears once more.
“You will see her again,” the Tree murmured, voice as soft as pillows of ash and gently burning candles in the dark.
Not soon enough, I thought. And yet, there was enough of me healed by now that the words rang more falsely than I expected. I still had things to live for, it seemed. Things I had to do. Someone else to beg for forgiveness.
Someone to save. As much as I would be allowed to.
No doubt reading my thoughts, the Tree’s voice firmed. “If you do as you have sworn, then I and My sister give Our oaths in turn that the Queen will live.”
I gasped and rose, eyes widening in shock as I looked at Her once again. My tears stopped flowing, I could feel the trails drying, and my heart pounded once more.
This time with more hope than I had dared let myself feel in a month.
“You swear?” I rasped.
A Tree’s oath was final. Completely binding as the laws of the universe. If They said Sarah would live…she would live. And that assurance was more than I had ever expected to receive.
“So We swear,” the Tree said, eyes burning. “As you keep your word, so shall We. Yet you have one moon, son of Flame. And even now the danger approaches. Go to her, now. Before it is too late.”
With that jolt of adrenaline, I woke.
This time…to life.