28. Nothing’s More Dangerous Than A Scorned Lover
LUCIAN
Calista and I make it back to the school, and we both go our separate ways. Me to Lilac’s room, and her who knows where.
I grab Li’s violin—in case she wakes and needs something familiar—and I go to Soma, where I watch Lilac from outside the magically bounded room. Because I am a coward.
I put her in there, and I dare not enter.
This is my line of thought every time I am here. I can look, but I can’t touch.
She begins to shake on her cot. “Lilac?” I whisper into the room. Her eyes do not open, she does not respond, she only shakes further.
She’s seizing. Foam collects at the sides of her mouth, and I run, looking for a Light Folk to break the barrier. The noblewomen and men, the soldiers and guards, and all the workers of the palace look at me as I sprint the halls.
All with blue eyes.
I trip and fall. Shadows evanesce around me, and Lusia stands above me. “What are you doing here, darling?”
“Lilac,” I say, standing. “She’s seizing, she needs help.”
Lusia waves a hand. “She’s fine.”
“She’s foaming at the mouth.”
Lusia grabs my chin and peers into my eyes for a long moment. “You’re right,” she says, “there is something deeply wrong with her. We don’t know what.” She lets go of my chin harshly. “You’re still watching the septic girl, yes?”
“Yes…” I answer.
“I instructed you to bring her to me in the beginning, but I fear I underestimated her crimes and the lengths in which it would take to prove them. If you have the opportunity to strike, Lucian,” she says severely. “Don’t miss.”
“What crimes?” I ask. “Why would you need to prove them?”
Proving crimes has never been within her worries.
“Because the target on her back is exchangeable. Be careful with her. For now, get to class. Appearances are important, darling. Especially these days.”
I hadn’t realized how deeply I wanted to delegitimize my suspicions of Desdemona until this moment. Because it seems I’ve been right.
I go back to Lilac’s prison. No one comes to help. She lays on the cot, seizing and foaming at the mouth for too long before she ceases. I, like a coward, go to the wine cellar.
It’s full of every wine imaginable. I grab two reds and sit on the floor.
I’ve drank half a bottle before I make it back to Visnatus, and when I get there, I stop in Desdemona’s suite. I haven’t been here since Li moved out.
There are two beds, one full of books and clothes and the other is tidy. I suppose that is hers, since she probably doesn’t have many belongings.
I open the drawer next to the bed laced in green. There’s only a small glass jar with a whiteish substance, a journal, and a pen.
I go for the journal.
Again. I killed again. In my dreams, in my wake, it’s always the same. The guilt carries past the barriers of sleep. The two Folk and the Lucent make three, but the dreams make a number that I don’t care to count.
Again.
I keep reading, page after page of torturous dreams. Starting fires, killing people, burning them from the inside out. Like she did to me.
Then I read about what I saw in her subconscious. The little girl and her mom. Desdemona and Isa, talking about eyes and necklaces and Willow.
“What are you doing?”
I stop, put the notebook down, and when I turn to face Desdemona, there’s a knife in her hand. She steps forward, raising it to no doubt hold to my throat and make empty promises of death.
But she’s a killer. Those empty promises could soon be fulfilled.
She’s my sister’s assailant.
Shadows wrap around her hands, pulling them behind her back and forcing the knife to the floor. Then they crawl up her neck, tightening.
Answers and revenge, getting to the void, the weapon, whatever it is that initially started this rendezvous isn’t nearly as important as taking her out.
She’s dangerous.
“Aibek.” Her head tilts back with the force of my power. “Aibek, stop,” she croaks.
How I’d love to kill her for what she did to Lilac. To Breck and Jermoine. For the havoc she’s wreaked on my life.
For what she did to me.
“I’ll give you one last chance to answer,” I say slowly. Desdemona’s face flushes more by the second. “What were you doing with the moonaro?”
Her jaw clenches. The only part of her body that she can move. I release my shadows, only slightly. “You’re gonna have to kill me,” she breathes. “Because I didn’t do shit, so I don’t have an answer.”
Her mouth opens again, only for a squeak to come out. I step closer, pick up her knife, and hold it to her neck this time.
Her knee connects with my groin. I lose hold on my shadows, only for a second, yet it’s enough for her to grab my shoulders and knee me again, harder this time.
I fall to the ground, and she claws at her neck, her hands unable to grasp the shadows. “I’ll-burn-you-alive,” she chokes and gets on top of me, punching me in the face. Her hits are weak, and she eventually falls, choking.
“Lucian,” she writhes next to me. “Please.”
We both lay on our backs. Her legs kick the floor, the only color in her face is red. I don’t look at her, because I know I’m killing her. But at the last second, I begin to release my shadows, until there is orange. Her glowing eyes lock on mine.
For a split second, I forget where I am, the fight I’m in, and all I can see is her.
Sweat moistens my forehead, and I become keenly aware of the heat pooling in my palms, up my arms, and into my chest. Down my body, into every organ, squeezing them, shriveling them.
Her head tips back, pushing into the floor while my shadows constrict her further, because now the game is this: I have to kill her first.
Desdemona chokes but cannot say anything, and I can’t deny that my blood is moments away from boiling.
We’re going to kill one another.
“Truce,” I choke. I can say nothing more.
Now it is I looking at the ceiling and kicking the floor with a red face.
The burning stops, and my shadows cease. The only noise for a long moment is our ragged breathing. Until, still out of breath, Desdemona says, “I didn’t do shit to your sister.” A breath. “Yeah, the moonaro looked at me. But this is why I lied.” Her head turns to me, sweat beading on her forehead, hair sticking to her face, wisping in her mouth. I almost reach to pull them back. “Because you’re the prince, and I’m from where I’m from.”
Desdemona sits up, leaning over on her knees and breathing. When I sit up, she flinches away. When I do nothing, her head twists to mine, her nostrils flaring.
“Try something,” her voice shakes and her eyes begin to illuminate orange. “I dare you.”
I summon my shadows in case she tries to burn me inside out again. “What are you?” I ask, my groin still throbbing. My body still overheated.
The burning knife, the burning me, Cynthia not being able to put out her fire. “You’re not a Folk, are you?”
“What are you talking about?” she whispers.
I look at her neck, where I’d cut her in Combat Training. “Your wounds cauterize themselves, don’t they?”
Desdemona’s eyes stray from mine.
“What are you?”
She stands. “How about you tell me when you figure it out, seeing as you know so much.”
I stand too, and when she walks away, I grab her hand that was burnt when she killed the Soman soldier, but the skin looks perfect.
The glass jar in her drawer is a glamour.
What else is she hiding?
She jerks her hand back. “You said that when you unravel, you’ll be taking me with you, but what you didn’t think about, Prince, is that I’m going to be your undoing. So threaten me again,” she says slowly, the dagger she hadn’t held a moment ago gleaming in her hand. “And I will do so much worse than sink this blade into your chest.”
* * *
Freyr sits in the corner, mostly mended from whatever poor healer Cynthia sent.
I sit on the floor on the other side of the cage a few feet back so he can’t reach me through the bars.
“Have you tried to burn these yet?” I ask, tapping on the bars and knowing that would be the first thing he’d do. They were made from a special alloy with a melting temperature higher than the Flame.
Freyr only looks at me, and I can make out his eyes—even in this dank darkness—for the first time in two days. They’re not swelled shut anymore. “Isa Althenia had a child directly after the events that led her to fake her death,” I say, though I also know he knows this. “I need to know if you’re her father.”
Freyr’s head snaps up. “Desdemona?”
He even sits like her.
“Yes,” I say. He is the father, which means she is a Fire Folk.
“She’s here?” I hear a hint of panic in his voice.
“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “An answer for an answer.”
Freyr grunts. “Fine.”
“Are you Desdemona’s father?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Is she here?”
“Yes,” I answer.
The words tumble from his mouth in a panicked cohesion. “What happened to Isa?”
“It’s my turn,” I say, and Freyr clenches his healed jaw. “When did you start building the weapon for Lorucille?”
“Eighteen years ago,” he bites out. “What happened to Isa?”
“The Arcanes got her. She’s in the void.” His face falls and his shoulders are slack. I consider him for a moment. “Do you know what the power source is?”
“By the gods.” He barks out a laugh and runs his hand along his dirty, scruffy beard. “You think us Fire Folk would ever be granted that kind of clearance?”
“It’s not your turn for a question.”
“It used to be us—Isa, Willow, and I. Then Willow and Isa cut me out when our agreements… slacked. Now they’ve changed the design so many times throughout the years, I’ve lost track.” I nod, and he asks, “How long has Isa been gone?”
“Almost four months. Why do they keep changing the design?”
Freyr shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s not doing what they want it to do?” He studies me for a moment, through his freshly healed eyes. “Look, all I know is every time we rebuild it, they take it. Most times they give it back, but the materials aren’t reusable. Has Desdemona been using her magic?”
“Yes,” I say, almost as if it’s a question. I want to ask why. I’ll save it for my next question, as there is one more pressing. “What is the weapon being made for now?”
“Honestly? I have no idea, not with how often they change it. My best guess is something they can use against the lesser planets.” He leans against the wall, resting his elbows on the tops of his knees. “Unluckily for you, I’ve run out of questions.”