Chapter 43
“I—I don’t understand.” My voice is foreign to my ears.
I need someone, I need—
I’m shaking as I repeat, “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t do anything yet,” Reid tells Orin quietly, releasing me. He walks past the warlock and takes Fiona’s tied wrists from Matt.
“Reid…?” My voice is strangled. I couldn’t move even if one of these men lunged for my throat.
“Both of you, out,” he instructs Orin and Matt. Fiona thrashes at his knees, her frizzy blond Lisette hair caught in his tethered grasp. “Guard the door. Nobody comes in. Kill who you must.”
Kill who you must?
“Reid.” Horror swamps me.
A single tear has slipped down my cheek. I only notice when my hunter hearing picks up on the tiny pinprick of it falling to the archives floor. Sinking into the dusty threads of the carpet. That’s how still the room is when Orin and Matt walk out, closing the doors behind them.
“I didn’t want to have the conversation this way.” Reid’s eyes are soft on mine. “But with my uncle having his own syrabraxa now, ready to use tomorrow night…I’m afraid I’m out of time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t want to see Caspar open the Chasm any more than you do,” Reid says. “But the only way to stop him is to get the Caspian Ring. And Lisette is the only one who knows where it is.”
Reality warps and rearranges. Fiona tries to wrench free, disgust and fury painting her face, but Reid shoves her down. I’m not sure my heart is beating.
“I need the ring, Viv. To save you. To save your grandmother. To make this world right again.”
“All the possessed students…” The warlock who abandoned the Brood this morning. “You’re working with Orin? Why would he align with you?”
“It’s my birthright.” He sounds resigned. “To many in the Brood, that still means something.”
Fiona shudders, blood and snot dripping down her nose as she gapes up at Reid.
Time slows as I piece his words together. The understanding is sinister and sudden and wholly unfamiliar. A reshaping of everything I thought I knew.
My father was as barbaric a man as any demon I’ve known, Reid had said.
Deacon had called him a kind of evil even I can’t articulate.
And my vision this morning. Caspar, thinking about killing his own brother, Mouric, to steal the Throne of Bael.
“Your father was the High Thane.”
Reid nods very slowly. “I was his only legitimate child.”
The strength—the power—flooding Deacon and Reid. Heirs to the Throne of Bael. “But Deacon was the eldest.”
“He’s a fucking bastard,” Reid hisses.
Fiona flinches and I take one step closer, hands out like he’s a rabid animal. Blue eyes on fire, sweat on his brow—he is a rabid animal.
“Not just a bastard but a half-born. A mongrel.” Reid presses his lips together, barely containing his fury. “My father had two sons, but he would have told you he had only one.”
I force my heart not to strain. Not for him. Not anymore.
“They said Deacon was destined for greatness even though he was an atrocity, Viv.
A demon birthed by a half-born. And still, my father had him trained by the best. Had Deacon accompany him on every exotic trip and visit every royal court.
He was worldly, experienced, beloved by all.
Well-versed in everything that mattered to my father, from torture to fucking…
And had no desire to rule. All the benefits that came with the throne—near immortality, unique abilities, the duty and honor of leading the mass of deviants to righteousness—all of it bored him.
“And I made peace with that. I never wanted to be an instrument of cruelty, even if that was the only way I’d have earned my father’s love. It didn’t matter to him that the throne was mine by birth. You know why?”
“Why?” I breathe.
“Because he was a deviant, Viv. Incapable of good.”
“He may have been incapable of good, but not all deviants are your father, Reid.” Suddenly Reid’s entire life crystalizes before my eyes.
Born empathetic and thoughtful. As kind as he was strong.
As Deacon said—unwilling to kill a hellhound.
And yet he was punished for that goodness in him.
Raised with such abuse, raised to believe he was less than his brutal brother, that he turned on his entire species.
“I hated my family—hated myself—so much I wasn’t far from taking my own life. Until I met Thea.”
Thea. The woman he loved. The woman Deacon killed.
“I never would have sired more demons. Never would have fallen for something as reprehensible as myself…But she was lymantrian. Not deviant at all. A nymph. Unselfish and kindhearted. We were going to run away.”
I don’t want to hear what happens next. A childlike instinct that if somehow he doesn’t tell me, I can stop it from having happened.
“And Deacon killed her.” The words rip through him with pain that is both ancient and raw. Fiona winces as Reid yanks at her hair, still grasped in his hand. “He never wanted me to be happy. That’s the man you call your friend. The man you flirt with and sleep beside.”
“Reid…”
“My father exiled Deacon to hell for the murder. It destroyed him, to do that.” Reid’s jaw tenses. “Of course, if I’d have murdered someone Deacon cared for, my father would have had me killed, but I’ve already told you how he favored Deacon.”
“With Deacon gone,” I say slowly, inching forward, “you would have ascended the Throne of Bael eventually, right?”
“My father never would have let that happen. Not with how he despised me. Not after I humiliated him by falling for a lymantrian. Some deviants say that when Caspar killed him for the throne it was a kindness. Most of the Brood followed Caspar instantly. They didn’t think me worthy.
I was just the spare, and their heir was in exile.
He’d actually escaped long before then, of course. A secret I kept for him.”
Not as noble as I’d once thought. He kept Deacon’s secret not to keep him from being banished back to hell but so he wouldn’t have to see his brother ascend the throne. Or reject it. Whatever would hurt more.
“So what, all these years later you’re planning a coup? What does any of this have to do with Fiona…” I bite out through gritted teeth, willing myself not to look at her. If my bloodlust gets the best of me, I’ll get us both killed. “With the students your warlock possessed—”
“No,” he says quietly, loosening his hold on Fiona.
He shakes his head like he wishes he could restart.
All of this unearthed anger—these things he never got to tell me—clearly getting the better of him.
Forcing him to stray from whatever it is he set out to say.
“I don’t want the throne, Viv. I want to fix things.
I want to save you. I want to save this world and the people in it who I care about. Who you care about.
“After nearly two centuries of working for my father’s Brood, hoping that despite how I sickened myself, one day I’d find a way to punish them all…make Thea proud, Caspar sent me to Harker. Not to kill Edgar, but to help him find the aeon.”
Five years ago…when Nora would have been twenty-one. Caspar sent Reid here to find David Cadell’s first daughter, thinking maybe she’d inherited the gift and been enrolled. Everything in me wilts.
“It was the light in the tunnel. What I’d wanted all along. A syrabraxa to wield.”
“Why? You keep saying you have no interest in the throne. You hate deviants. You despise what you are. What would you do with all that power besides kill all of them?”
The look of resignation on his face sends ice through my veins.
“No…”
Fiona’s eyes go wide as she stares up at Reid.
I am at a loss for words. Roaring silence in my ears. Deacon. Ward. Baz…“You’re not planning a coup…you want to use a syrabraxa to kill all deviants.”
“I’m the same person you fell for, Viv. The same man who taught the students of this school how to fight the evil that roams this earth. It may not be a cause you believe in, but how is it any different from what you do every day?”
Mass extinction of deviants. Something I never thought I’d be so vehemently against. But the level of hatred…
of self-loathing…of cruelty needed to do what he is planning…
I want to tell him of all the good deviants I’ve known.
The djinn, Nicco, who tried to help us. Ward, running on his impaled leg for me and Penny.
Deacon and Baz…Reid will take out far more people than he’s bargained for. He’ll take out himself.
“You’ll die too. You’re a deviant.”
“My life isn’t worth the thousands and thousands of deviants roaming the earth.”
“Don’t be a martyr—”
“I didn’t care. I really didn’t care if I died, doing this. Not until I met you. And I’ve never felt so selfish in my life, Viv. Suddenly I have something worth living for. That’s why I’m doing this. Why I don’t just—”
“Kill me.” I finish for him. The two words are like acid on my tongue.
“I would never do that.” Reid’s voice doesn’t waver, and despite everything, tears brim in my eyes.
Not because I love him, but because my heart is breaking for him.
“I want to find this ring not just to rid this world of deviants, but because once I can place it on your finger, you will be free. I can’t end my life until I know you’re safe. ”
I’m assaulted by images of that dream I had. The one in which Reid was snaking through Astera, hunting for the Caspian Ring.
“I thought I had more time,” he breathes.
“Find the ring, save your life, maybe even use the High Thane’s censer to spare my own…
but Caspar’s plan with Ada has forced my hand.
” Real pain is etched into his face. “I should have told you sooner. I just wanted to have everything in place. I wanted to show you how we could work together.” He looks around at the destruction, at Fiona. “I never wanted this.”
“Reid. Can you hear yourself? You are holding Fiona hostage. You are working with a turned warlock to possess Harker students. You—”