Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
- AYC -
E verything hurts.
The realization comes to Ayc slowly—the burn between his shoulders, the pound at his temples—and then all at once as his eyes fly open. His skin blazes like it’s been lit on fire; his nerves rattle like they are screaming for relief. His arms suspend above his head by metal handcuffs, high enough his toes barely brush the stone beneath him.
He groans, fighting past the wall of pain to make sense of his surroundings. His vision swims and blurs, and in the darkness, all he can make out are the stone walls of a circular room, barren save for a few wooden benches. And then Ayc focuses enough to see him , standing near the wood door with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face.
Marcellus.
Ayc’s lips curl back in a snarl. “So this is eternal torment, huh? Always knew I’d see you here someday. ”
“You’re not dead, human,” Marcellus says. “Though I suspect you probably wish you were. I hear dazewood burns like eternal torment when you come out of it. Wren said it should be out of your system in an hour or two. Maybe longer. She had to give you multiple doses for you to stay under until you got here. You have incredible tolerance…” He pauses and then adds heavily, as though trying to make a point. “For a human.”
“Where am I?” Ayc wishes he growled the words, but his head still spins, and it sounds more akin to a gasp.
“In the lower levels of a Lux Aester temple. Consider yourself blessed. This is a small sanctuary in the priest’s quarters, and you certainly aren’t worthy to be in it, but I needed to make due.”
“Do all priests get chained to the ceiling here?” Ayc asks, finding strength behind his voice. “If so, sign me up. Sounds depraved in the best sort of way.”
The smile tumbles from Marcellus’s lips. “You’re a degenerate.”
“I take that as a compliment.”
Ayc assesses his situation carefully. Looking down at his body, he appears to be physically unharmed, despite the pain. They have stripped him of his leather armor, leaving only his breeches and linen shirt behind. They’ve left his leviathan’s tooth, dangling from the cord around his neck. His chains are secured to a rafter, above which the ceiling is painted with a golden sun in the bluest of skies. His bracelets press tight to his skin where the iron chain digs into his wrists. If only he could snap the chains in half, he would willingly be at Marcellus’s throat, but these chains were made to hold fae, likely a blend of iron and tungsten. A Drakr warrior couldn’t break free .
Ayc forces himself to breathe. In and out. He imagines the pain as a wave, slowly receding, until he isn’t drowning; he’s swimming. He focuses on Marcellus. With his arms crossed, his chronicler is visible. All but two of the gems gleam in the dim light of the two torches that hang on either side of the door.
“I guess working with Drakr has been profitable to you in a very small amount of time, huh, Marcellus?” Ayc asks.
The bastard doesn’t flinch.
“Doesn’t the divine have anything to say about cheating?”
He drops his arms to his side. “Is it cheating to use all the resources available to you?”
“Did the Drakr tell you to kidnap me?” Ayc asks, even though that doesn’t seem right. Wren was already in Silvae before Lora told Lahlis no. This plan was in place long before that.
“The Drakr have nothing to do with me completing the last two quests,” Marcellus says. “Right now, they’re busy making sure the Noxumbra and Lycendi victors don’t see tomorrow.”
Fuck. Ayc almost feels bad for Wylder, and if there are gods or the divine, he would send a prayer for Wylder’s Five, particularly his brother. They are all strong warriors. Surely, they’ll survive.
“So what’s your plan for me, then, Marcellus?” Ayc changes the subject. “Can’t get enough of my baking? Want me to perform for you?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You’re bait.”
Ayc was afraid he was going to say that, but he makes his voice sound bored. “Lora is too smart to fall for your stunt. She’ll know this is a trap. ”
Marcellus leans back against the door, and his smile returns. “I’m sure she will. And she’ll still walk right into it to keep me from killing you.”
“Me?” Ayc snorts. “I annoy her far too much. You’d be doing her a favor by getting rid of me.”
“Is that why she threatened to rip our hearts out? Is she truly so blood thirsty to threaten people over someone she hates so much?”
“You truly don’t know her at all, do you?”
Marcellus’s smile creeps higher, curling up his pale cheeks like slithering snakes making tracks in snow. “Oh, but I think I do.”
Ayc responds with an exaggerated roll of his eyes that does nothing to quell Marcellus's smile. But Ayc isn’t certain which of them is right. Nor does he know who he hopes is right. Lora has demonstrated she cares for Ayc in some way and has chosen to protect him before. But she must know he’s not worth the risk of losing the Trials. Ayc’s suffering will be a small price to pay for defeating Marcellus. And yet, some part of Ayc hopes he’s wrong, and that she cares enough to come for him. A truly foolish part of him.
“But if she doesn’t—” Marcellus lifts his palm in a gesture that says ‘Oh, well’ “—I’ll just send your heart back to her tied in a lovely pink bow.”
Ayc refuses to let fear flicker on his face. Instead, he grins right back. “I hope you have fun with those three generations of bad luck.”
Marcellus’s cold laughter echoes through the room. “Lying is a sin, human. And I’ll be happy to deal the divine’s judgment upon you when the time comes.”
A shiver trails down Ayc’s spine. He doesn’t think Marcellus is bluffing. Whatever Marcellus saw when he dueled Ayc in the dragon’s lair, Ayc revealed far too much. And now, he’s fucked.
Marcellus opens the door. Two priests, identifiable by their blue robes, enter. “Watch him closely. Don’t let your guard down even for a moment. He’s not what he seems.”
Marcellus slams the door behind him, and the two priests stand still as statues before the door, their Lux Aester blue eyes never leaving Ayc. They look almost like ghosts—so pale they're nearly translucent. They barely seem to blink.
Ayc swallows down the fear and the pain and anchors a smile onto his face. “Hey, have you ever heard that one about the merfolk who swam into a bar?”
TEN YEARS AGO
- LORA -
The human boy wore a smile that didn’t make sense. Lora studied it like a puzzle as Ayc spooned a perfect dollop of chocolate pudding into the bowls in front of Lora’s mother and her Five. The smile illuminated his entire face, making the sky-blue eyes glimmer like a bright summer day. Surely, he couldn’t be that happy. She wondered if that smile was real, or a disguise, or perhaps a weapon.
The young fae who rotated through the Wyntra school never smiled at her. They were all too terrified of Lora, too busy whispering behind her back. They called her “the little villainess”—evil, just like her mother. They were only repeating things they had heard their parents say; they didn’t really know what it all meant. Lora knew she should do as her mother always said and make her skin thick as stone, so nothing could touch her, certainly not silly words. But it hurt, anyway.
Ayc served Lora last. She always sat at the very end of the table, separated by a couple of seats from the others—always there but never really present. She quickly looked down at her plate so he wouldn’t notice that she’d been staring at him.
“Hey, Lora,” he whispered in a familiar, teasing tone, as he spooned the delicious looking chocolate into her bowl, “do you want to hear a joke?”
Lora peeked at her mother, but Yris currently had her head bent toward Fennix. Still, Lora’s heart hammered against her breastbone unsteadily. Ayc did this a lot, whispering jokes when he noticed her mother’s attention lapsing. Lora had no idea why, but she wished he wouldn’t. She wasn’t sure what her mother would do if she caught him.
Yris had warned Lora the very first day. As the fae ship crossed the sea from Creed to Wyntra, Lora had tried to sneak food to Ayc where they had him bound in the hull of the ship. But Yris had caught Lora and forced her to throw out the food.
“Do not get attached to that boy, Loraphne. Kindness is weakness.”
Though Lora said nothing, Ayc went on with his joke anyway. “Have you heard the one about the merfolk who swam into a bar? They said, ‘Sure is sandy in here’.”
Lora frowned. Then, oh. Bar. Ocean bar. The desire to laugh bubbled in her throat, and she bit down on her bottom lip to staunch it, lest anyone hear .
His smile wavered, like he was disappointed. And Lora didn’t understand why her laughter meant anything to him.
“Human,” Yris snapped from the other end of the table, “what are you lingering for? Go back to your kitchen.”
His smile vanished completely. “Yes, my l-lady.”
He hurried to the door, and Lora’s heart sank lower at each of his retreating steps. She often wondered about him, though she tried not to. Did he ever feel as lonely as she did? She understood how this castle could be a prison, because it was hers as well. She carried a journal in her pocket, something her father had given her, to write down all her thoughts and feelings, her plans and her dreams, her ideas for tapestries and clothing she would get to make when she returned to Avia in the summer. At the very front, she kept a tally, tracking all the days left until she could return.
At the door, Ayc cast a look over his shoulder. He arched one eyebrow. Dammit. He’d caught her staring. Before she could look away, he pulled a ridiculous face, eyes crossed and his tongue sticking out right before the door slammed behind him. And she couldn’t stop it. One burst of laughter broke from her mouth. She bit down hard on her lip, hard enough she tasted the sharp metallic sting of blood. But it wasn’t enough to keep Yris from hearing.
Her mother’s gaze could cut deeper than any blade. It slices into Lora’s spine, slipping between her vertebrae.
“Leave me alone with my daughter.” Yris’s command rang through the dining hall.
Only Fennix hesitated, sending Lora a concerned glance. He always looked concerned, but Lora learned long ago he’d never actually help her. He was the last to leave, but still he left, shutting the door behind him.
Yris’s chair screeched against stone as she stood. Lora continued to stare at her plate, fisting her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. Her mother hated when Lora shook, when she sometimes flapped her hands or fanned her face when the tension in her body became too much. She had learned long ago to hide it. She forced herself to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth, the way Peregrin had taught her.
“I thought I had made myself clear about that boy,” Yris said as she stopped beside Lora, looming above her. “And yet, you continue to be merciful. Do you think I don’t notice how you look at him with such sympathy?”
The back of Lora’s eyes burned. Don’t cry. Do not cry.
Her mother would slap her if she cried.
Her vision blurs as everything inside her trembles. One day, she will learn to take this feeling and turn it into rage. She will understand that it’s easier to be angry than to be afraid. But she hadn’t yet learned that. So she stared at the pudding and imagined a merfolk swimming into a sand bar until her vision cleared.
“Loraphne, look at me!” Yris didn’t give her the chance. She seized Lora’s face and yanked it toward her. Her long nails threatened to pierce Lora’s cheek, but her mother was too careful for that. The poison in Yris’s fingernail paint would lead to scars, and Yris couldn’t accept her daughter’s face being scarred. “Kindness is weakness. And I will not tolerate my daughter being weak. Your destiny is to be Sovereign one day. You must be as immovable and as unfeeling as stone. If I believe for a moment that you’ve let yourself get attached to the human boy, then the divine be damned. I’ll see him dead, and I’ll make you do it.”
Something imploded within Lora’s chest. She didn’t have words for it then; she still doesn’t. She only knows that it hurt. She only remembers it as the day she learned how painful it is to want things that she cannot have.
So she stopped wanting.
Or at least, she thought she did.
NOW
Xylie digs out the map from Tavish’s pack, before he can even take it from his back. She flings it open on one of the tables.
“Find him, Tavish,” Lora orders, but Tavish already bends over the map.
He flattens his hands on the paper, sensing. It takes him only moments, and he taps a finger on a spot in the northeastern regions of Everadyn. The Lux Aester lands take up nearly all the eastern border of Everadyn, through the plains and over the eastern edge of the Stella Rune Mountains before finally giving way to the warmer lands held by the Sal Maris. The expanse of their lands grants Lux Aester power. Each clan has its shares of farmers and hunters, but Lux Aester has the most, their production of food vital to every other clan except perhaps to Noxumbra.
Not much is marked on the map in the Lux Aester territory, but they have made sure to include their temples, their proportion disproportionate to the surrounding structures. Tavish’s finger poses above one of those symbols, a steepled building. Throughout most of Lux Aester, people cram an entire family into a single room house, while everything they earn goes into tithing. Tithing that the religious leaders than use to build temples lined with marble and crowned in gold. The buildings are beautiful and magnificent and an utter waste.
Bronwen squints at the letter she now holds, the one that fell from Lora’s fingers. “It matches the coordinates you were given. At least, Wren wasn’t lying. Ayc is there.”
Peregrin reaches for the letter, and Bronwen hands it over. “It says to come alone and unarmed.” Peregrin grits their teeth. “It’s a trap.”
“I know,” Lora replies. Just as she already knows what she must do.
Protect him.
Just as she’s always tried to do. Admittedly, she’s never done it very well. She could never make it obvious to her mother what she was doing, lest Yris follow through with her threat to make Lora kill him. But Lora did what she could.
When Yris nearly drowned Ayc by tying him to the cliffs above the Bellum, Lora waited until the water was at his chest, hoping he would do something to save himself, before she ran to get Fennix. When she heard Ayc was sent into the gryphon pasture, she warned Peregrin who hurried to intervene. Later, when Yris enlisted some of the students in her games to continually torment Ayc—long past when Ayc showed his powers, long past when he would have been Bound to Yris—Lora always threatened them not to take it too far. Yes, sometimes Lora even tormented him herself, but only did it when she feared Yris suspected her of becoming too soft. Or sometimes, just for Lora to convince herself she hated him again.
The protection wasn’t enough; she knows that now. She should have found a way to help him escape. Maybe, she should have run away with him and never looked back. But she never was brave enough.
Until now.
Bronwen brushes a hand on Lora’s shoulder. “Lora, I know what you’re thinking?—”
“No, you don’t.”
“You think you can storm in there and save him with nothing more than hands and your teeth.”
All right, so maybe Bronwen knows exactly what Lora is thinking.
“That is exactly what Marcellus wants you to do,” Bronwen continues. “He will exploit any weakness he can find, and he thinks he’s found yours.”
Lora means to deny it, but Bronwen lifts a single eyebrow and Lora finds herself lacking the energy to lie to her. Kindness is weakness. Her mother’s words ring in her ears, even now. But her mother was wrong to fear kindness. Lora has never been particularly kind. Villainess, the children at Wyntra called her, first as an ode to her mother and then because she earned it. Relentless, Peregrin always told her instead, while her instructors at Adamant preferred, Merciless. Even Lora’s own father worried about the influence her mother had on Lora before he was exiled, even as he and Hellevi taught her—showed her—what she should truly be fighting for, what is worth being ruthless for.
Kindness has never been her issue.
But Ayc…
“ Has he found your weakness?” Tavish asks, breaking the thick silence hovering in the air.
“What am I supposed to do?” Lora snaps. “The letter says that Marcellus will kill him if I don’t go. ”
Xylie sniffs, and Lora can’t bear to look at the flicker of silver tears in her eyes. Xylie loves Ayc, with the same adoration that Xylie holds for Lora. Maybe deeper, as their bond has only grown while Lora has been away at Adamant.
“I’m not asking you not to go,” Bronwen says. “I’m asking you to think it through. Marcellus cannot win.”
“No, he cannot, but I can’t—” Lora snaps her teeth together to silence the next words. I cannot lose him. Unspoken, they tremble throughout her body. In her throat, in her head, through her very soul.
She knows everything that is at stake. Everything that is good about Everadyn will die if Marcellus rules, and with the Drakr now helping him, they only have days to stop him. Lora has watched Marcellus wreak ruin on countless lives, lives she’s tried to save. She’s listened to Bronwen in the dark of the night, explaining all the damage Marcellus did to her and to others. Lora loves her people, and they will suffer if Marcellus wins. She would sacrifice anything to prevent him from becoming Sovereign. Anything.
But Ayc?
Please not Ayc. She cannot sacrifice him. The very idea of something befalling him feels like she is cutting open her sternum and ripping her heart from her chest.
She can’t explain why. She doesn’t want to look too closely at this feeling inside of her, the feeling that only lives and breathes when Ayc is near, the one she’s spent years trying to pretend doesn’t exist. But Lora thinks she finally understands why Ayc jumped into that river eight years ago to pull her from the water, knowing it would cost him his chance to be free. If it felt anything like how this feels, he had no choice. She won’t be well again—will not feel like she can breathe again—until she sees him still breathing with her own eyes.
And then— then —she might kill him herself for not listening to her and choosing instead to face Wren alone. Even if his reasons were utterly different from what he led Lora to believe. If he told her what he was thinking, all of this could have been avoided. But no, he had to be a stubborn and obnoxious ass, like always.
Bronwen presses two fingers on the back of her elbow, a familiar, comforting gesture. They’ve done it dozens of times before duels and tests at Adamant as a subtle signal of support. Lora shifts away. Her skin already feels like it might be peeling from her muscles, and the sensation is simply too much, even if it’s meant to be comforting.
“He’s divina,” Tavish says. “Marcellus can’t kill him. He won’t. He didn’t kill me.”
Peregrin groans, and beside them, moisture floods Xylie’s eyes. Her hands move swiftly, despite the way they tremble.
Lora translates, “Marcellus will kill him, like the letter says. He was going to kill him in the dragon’s cave. I heard him say so.”
“But why?” Tavish asks. “Surely, he wouldn’t risk the anger of the divine.”
Xylie’s hands move, and Lora’s mouth goes dry. Surely, she read the signs wrong. She blinks rapidly at Xylie. as she repeats the sign, but Peregrin speaks.
“Ayc isn’t divina.” Peregrin’s eyes are closed, their fingers pressed to their temples, like the words hurt them to say. “That man at Creed Castle told a lie to spare his life.”
“What?” Bronwen chokes out.
“But I’ve seen him turn invisible,” Lora protests. She never bought the other fancy tricks—the slight of hand, the little fire that always seemed to backfire and set him ablaze instead. But the invisibility…
“ It’s a trick,” Xylie confirms. “ The fire is just magic powder, and I’m not sure how he does the invisibility, but I know it’s a trick.”
Bronwen gasps. “Lots of things could render him invisible. An enchanted object, maybe.” Clearly, Bronwen believes them then, or she would not offer solutions so quickly.
But Lora can’t accept it. “And he’s admitted this? To both of you?
“He’s never denied it,” Peregrin says. “I told him years ago that he had to find a way to convince your mother, and I suppose he did.”
Lora shakes her head. “I know my mother suspected he wasn’t telling the truth. I think that’s why she got the Binding stone. Surely, she would have commanded he tell her the truth about his powers, and he couldn’t have lied to her. If he had, he’d have suffered consequences. He would have been in pain this entire time. And he can’t?—”
Lora’s voice cuts off as Peregrin’s face contorts. Her teacher is a warrior through and through, always careful not to give anything away with a careless expression or show of emotion. But the truth is written plainly on their face now.
He’s been in pain this entire time.
Her heart plummets from her chest. It feels as though it falls forever.
Memories flicker through her head of subtleties to which she never paid attention, from as far back as before she moved to Adamant. A wince turned quickly into a smile, a hand braced against a wall to hold him upright, tonics swallowed down when he thought no one was looking. And more recently, she saw the look of pain as he slid off Tempest after the long ride. She saw Tempest give him a feather.
Lora glances to Xylie, her last hope that this isn’t true. But a tear glides down her cousin’s face. Xylie only learned about the Yris Binding Ayc with the stone last night, when Lora told her. Ayc would have had no choice but to keep it a secret from Xylie, and perhaps, Lora had no business telling Ayc’s truth. But Xylie is her Second and she needs her help to do what Lora has planned. But now Xylie knows, and she’s put the pieces together, just like Lora.
“I never asked why he needed my tonics,” Xylie signs. More tears rain down her cheeks, and she lets them pour. “I didn’t think it was my business why he needed them, but I should have asked. I should—” She releases a sob and drops her face into her hands.
Lora should go to her, but her feet are stitched to the ground. Tavish reaches toward her. No one has translated for Xylie, but her sobs seem to beckon him. His hand hovers near her back uncertainly, before his fingers curl and he presses the fist to his lips instead. Saga whines.
Ayc has been in pain for eight fucking years. Behind his smiles and his jokes and his silliness he has been suffering . And it is all Yris’s fault.
A scream swells in Lora’s chest. She bites down on her tongue to suppress it. She’s afraid if she surrenders control than she will not stop screaming, that she will let out the rage and tear apart everything around her.
Lora has wanted to hurt her mother many times—when she kept Lora away from her father all but three months out of the year. When she banished her father without letting Lora say goodbye. When she threatened to not let Lora go see her grandmother again until Hellevi showed up with multiple other council members, and the regent of Totus Omni themself, stating calmly but firmly that Lora was Totus Omni too and their claim on her remained. If she wanted to come, Yris could not stop her.
But this—this is a new level of rage.
Lora lifts her hand to fist her hair, not caring if she rips it out, and her chronicler catches her eye. Three stones are lit now.
She claws back her sleeve to see what line has disappeared from her flesh.
Reveal a long-concealed lie.
Has this been her mother’s plan all along? Is this the reason she suggested Ayc? Yris loves to play games. She must be so furious that she suspects that Ayc has somehow bested her for ten years now. A Binding stone couldn’t break him, but maybe the Trials could?
I’m going to make her pay for this.
Lora is certain the four around her note the chronicler’s change. Xylie has dropped her hands and drags the edge of her coat’s sleeve across her cheeks. But no one comments.
“I would not have told you the truth,” Peregrin says. “It wasn’t my place, but I need you to understand that the threat to him is real. And maybe, you won’t want to save him now that you know he’s lied?—”
“Fuck you!” Lora snaps, because it’s easier to be angry than to feel the sting of Peregrin’s lack of faith. They have known and trained her since she was a small child barely big enough to lift a wooden sword; they have sheltered her within their home when she needed an escape from her mother. Do they truly think she is the sort who might doom Ayc because of a lie—a lie that spared him as a child and he has been forced to keep ever since?
Peregrin holds up a hand. “Easy, Lora. I don’t know how Marcellus knows the truth, but if he does, then he will kill him.”
“But you go, and Marcellus might win,” Bronwen says. There’s no judgment in her tone. “It’s your decision, Lora.”
None of the four before her offer any opinions or even a clue on what they themselves might choose. Instead, one by one, they press their hands over their sternums, the way Bronwen and Lora started when their bond truly forged when Adamant dumped them in the middle of the ocean. It is an oath and a reassurance.
My heart is with you. You are not alone.
Whatever she decides, they will follow.
Ayc or the fate of her land? Which is she willing to sacrifice? She knows what she should choose, what is right. A hero would choose to save their land. One life for millions is a fair trade. But Lora is not the hero.
She is the villainess.