Chapter 2 #3
“Do I really have to say it so often?” I asked, shifting aside so that he had no choice but to release me and I leaned against the rail at the edge of the balcony, looking out over the sprawling view of the city below us.
“I mean to honour you tonight,” he began but I turned to him, my chin held high as I met his cool gaze.
“I don’t require any honour. I only want what you promised me. I captured your Dragon and brought him to you. Now let me hunt the man who killed my sisters.”
Dragor considered me for a long moment and I knew he was expecting me to lower my eyes but I wasn’t the same woman I’d been before losing them and I would never back down from this. I’d made them a promise and I’d put it off for too long already.
“Do you remember the words of the oath you swore to me? The ones you bound yourself to on penalty of the stars themselves?” he asked slowly.
“Yes,” I growled. “And I upheld my end.”
“Did you? Because if I recall correctly, I specified that I would only grant you leave to hunt the man who pretended to be Cayde Avior while spying upon our kingdom once I was satisfied that your loyalty to me was without question. Do I appear satisfied to you?” he asked curiously, his eyes flashing with triumph while my gut plummeted in turn.
“I…you can’t truly be questioning my loyalty after all this time?” I spluttered, my words tripping over themselves in their haste to exit my mouth.
“Can’t I?” He stepped closer to me, diminishing me within his shadow and moving to place his hands on the rails either side of me so that my back was to the drop behind us.
I swallowed down the vitriol I so desperately wanted to spit at him because if I lost myself to fury now I might never claw back control.
“I have proven myself to you time and again,” I hissed, unable to fully keep the bitterness from my voice.
“So it appears. But I need more proof still, I’m afraid.”
“Like what?” I asked in desperation, the backs of my eyes burning with the pure injustice of it. I’d done everything he’d asked of me, I’d delivered him his Dragon despite what it had cost me to do so and yet still he denied me the only thing I’d ever asked of him.
“The Void,” he growled, reaching into his jacket pocket and taking a piece of paper from his breast pocket. “Is a Fae. One who I believe trained with you at Never Keep.”
“What?” I asked, shaking my head, the change in direction leaving my thoughts tumbling over themselves.
“She was one of the Cascadian Neophytes. Perhaps you took note of her while there?” He thrust the piece of parchment at me and I took it, unfolding it while his eyes bored into my face. I blinked dumbly at the woman who stared back at me from the sketch which was revealed within.
They’d gotten her eyes wrong, though the ferocious glint in them wasn’t without accuracy.
Her hair was a mane worthy of a lion instead of the wild tangles I’d grown so familiar with and the shape of her mouth wasn’t entirely right, but I knew her all the same. In one glance I knew her. My kitty cat.
“Who is this?” I asked and he growled in frustration, snatching the parchment away from me and stuffing it back into his pocket.
“She is the only thing that matters at the moment. She is the one who caused our people to tumble from the sky and break upon the battlefield we had been so close to claiming. That woman is the Void. And she is the only thing any of us will be concentrating on until we wrestle her from the grasp of the Cascadians and force her beneath the heel of our great kingdom.”
“I thought the Void was a weapon or a…monster,” I said, my eyes on his embroidered jacket, my mind spinning with what he was claiming. “How do you know it’s this woman?”
“The information I have on this is undeniable. Whatever rumours or expectations we might have once had of the Void...they are all null and nothing now. She is what we have all been seeking for so long. So if I decide to utilise you in any kind of hunt it will be for her. Not for some bastard who broke your pathetic heart and taught you the meaning of betrayal. Perhaps it was a lesson you were in dire need of learning – you fell for his lies easily enough after all.”
I swung for him before I could think better of it and either because it had come so fast or because in that moment I really was better than him, I didn’t know, but my fist collided with his jaw and sent him staggering back.
Dragor threw his hand out and I had the sense to stop myself from resisting him as the force of his air magic ripped me off my feet and hoisted me into the air over the drop from the balcony.
He straightened, his hand caressing his jaw where I could already see a bruise forming and to my surprise he barked a laugh.
“With loyalty like that, who needs enemies?” he sneered.
I swallowed thickly, glancing down at the drop below me while the wind tore strands of pink hair from their ties and made them lash against my cheeks.
He could hold me in the grasp of his power and dash me to pieces on the cobbles far below or hurl me all the way out into the city and break my body in the middle of the market square.
“I need vengeance,” I choked out, my heart cracking open before him and he considered that for a long moment before nodding and lowering me back to the balcony in front of him.
“And you can have it. But not until I say. And not before we claim the Void or destroy it failing that. Now come, you’re about to be honoured before the entire court – I’m sure my brother thoroughly enjoyed ruining the surprise for you on that one.”
“You knew?” I asked, shaking my hands out as he released me from the hold of his power.
“Of course I knew. And if you plan on working to win my favour you’ll agree to whatever schemes he has planned for you while reporting them all back to me.”
“He offered me his hand,” I said darkly.
Dragor released a surprised laugh. “Then perhaps I’ll have you marry him and report back to me on his shortcomings in the marital bed. The stars know I’ve never found a Fae willing to sell me scandals from his bedroom before.”
“I don’t believe he holds much interest in the bedroom,” I said, but I wouldn’t be finding out regardless. Dragor might have been able to order me to do a lot of things, but marriage had never been on the cards.
“Then I’ll have to set you on the trail of his other secrets.
It’s time my father picked an heir and we all need to stop pretending it won’t be me.
Once that has been made clear I will be able to put my siblings to work in my court in far more productive ways than their current scheming for my place allows. ”
I said nothing. It was treason to speculate after all and though I doubted Dragor would lose his head for such words, I certainly might.
I followed him back into the ballroom, ready to accept my new name and title and all the bullshit that went with it while inside, my heart was racing and my thoughts were tangling themselves into knots.
I would find a way to hunt Cayde down. And I was going to figure out what the hell the truth was about Everest too. And Bastian…well, Bastian was a mess of emotions I refused to even look at within myself but I was going to have to face what I’d done there as well.
I glanced at Dragor as he led me through the throng of Fae who hated what I was and all I’d ever been.
I hadn’t told him that I knew the one he hunted.
I hadn’t said a word about her to him. Which meant he really was right to doubt my loyalty.
Because I’d just chosen to shield a girl from Cascada from his wrath instead of spilling my secrets to him the way any truly devoted subject should.