Chapter 66
Chapter
Sixty-Six
“ T eller? ”
“ Diem? ”
My brother and I gaped at each other in blinking, blank-faced shock.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Remis sent me here to—” He paused, his eyes darting to Luther, then Stuart, then back to me. “Where is she?”
“Remis sent you?” I snapped. “I swear, when I get back, I’m going to—”
“ Where is she? ”
I jerked back at the harsh bite in his voice.
“Mother’s safe. She’s... with friends.”
“What friends?”
I eyed the crowd beginning to form. “Let’s speak in private.”
“Why, so you can lie to me again?”
I fumbled helplessly for words. I’d expected him to be disappointed, even angry, but not this. My brother was glowering at me like I’d betrayed him in the worst possible way.
“Teller, I’m sorry. It wasn’t safe to bring her back to the palace. I tried, I swear.”
His honey-brown eyes narrowed. “Why are you here, Diem?”
“To convince the Crowns to coronate me so I can come home—and bring her with me.”
“Well, good luck, I guess. Maybe someday I’ll find out from someone else how it went.” He turned to his Descended escorts. “Let’s tour a different building. I’ll see this another day.”
I glanced in panic at Luther, who was staring at my brother with an accusatory kind of frown.
“Is Lily here with you?” he called out.
Teller’s head dipped. “No. She’s in Lumnos.”
I grabbed his arm. “I’ll fix this. I won’t let Remis exile you. As soon as I’m coronated—”
“Remis didn’t exile me. I chose to leave.” He pulled out of my grip. “There was nothing to stay for.”
“Did you just call my sister nothing? ” Luther asked sharply.
“No! No, that—that’s not what I meant. Lily is...” His chest sank as pain flickered over his face. “She’s better off. Now she can move on to someone she can spend her whole life with.”
“Oh, Tel,” I breathed sadly. Knowing my brother’s nature, I’d worried the moment might come when he would walk away—not for himself, but for her. I’d hoped to be around to talk him out of it, but I hadn’t been much of a sister to him lately. “Is that what Lily said she wants?”
His listless, heartbroken shrug answered for him. “Sometimes the best way to show your love for someone is by making the hard decision they won’t.”
Luther stilled. “Those are my father’s words. This is his doing, isn’t it? He convinced you to leave.”
“Remis suggested it, but it was my decision.” Teller sighed and turned away. “Do what you came here to do, Diem. Leave me out of it.”
Luther and I shared another look, this one full of mutual rage. “I’m going to murder your father,” I seethed.
“I’ll help,” he grumbled.
I set my jaw and took a deep breath, then stalked to Teller’s side. “I need a moment with my brother,” I barked at his escorts. “Is there somewhere private he and I can speak?”
“I don’t want to talk,” Teller said.
I ignored his protest, arching a brow at the two Descended. “Well? I’m a Crown. Don’t leave me waiting.”
They blanched in unison. “Um... there are offices in the back,” one said, pointing to a row of doors. “But—”
“Perfect.” I grabbed Teller’s arm and hauled him away.
“What the hell, D?” he shouted. “Let me go!”
“No. If you’re going to be a bratty younger brother, then I’ll be a bully older sister.”
I threw open the first office I came to and shoved him in. I shot a hard stare at Luther, who silently nodded and took up a post outside the door as I slammed it closed.
“You have no right,” Teller snapped.
“I have every right. I’m your Queen.”
“No, you’re not. I’m a subject of Sophos now.”
“Well I’m still your older sister, and I’m not letting you stay here.”
He threw his hands up. “I make one choice that’s not about you or Mother, and I can’t even have that. Haven’t I lost enough? You have to take this from me, too?”
If he’d carved my heart from my chest with his fingernails, it would have hurt less than the pain I felt at those words.
I rubbed my throat, my head hanging low. “It’s not safe here, Teller.”
“It’s safer than Lumnos. Everyone there knows my mother is the rebel leader and my sister is the traitor Queen who broke her out. I can’t go to school anymore. I can’t even leave the palace. I’m a prisoner.” He sighed and turned toward a window that looked out over the city. “At least in Sophos, no one knows who I am. I’m just another mortal here to study.” His expression hardened. “Or I was, until that scene you just made.”
I winced. “Mortals aren’t as safe here as they seem. There are things about this place you don’t know.”
He laughed harshly. “Of course. More secrets.”
“Tel, can we please just talk? I know I promised to bring Mother home, and I failed. You have every right to be angry—”
“That’s not why I’m angry.”
I paused. “It isn’t?”
“I’m mad because you lied .” He fixed me with a cold glare that felt nothing like the brother I knew. “Before you left, I asked you if there was anything else you were keeping from me, and you swore there wasn’t.”
“That was the truth. I told you everything.”
“Then why did I have to find out from Remis Corbois that the Sophos Crown invited me to study here months ago?”
Shit. Shit .
The offer the Sophos representatives had made at my Ascension Ball.
“Gods... I completely forgot.”
He flinched back. “You forgot? My dream comes true, the one thing I’ve been working for my entire life, and you not only keep it from me, you don’t even remember?” He couldn’t have looked more disgusted with me if he’d tried. “Is that how little I matter to you?”
My chest squeezed tight with a crushing pressure. The air felt thicker, harder to breathe.
“You’re the most important person in the world to me. I would do anything for you.”
“Except tell me the truth.”
I grimaced. I deserved that.
“You’re right. I made a bad choice, and I let you down. I had my reasons, but...” I shook my head miserably. “None of them excuse not telling you. I’m really, really sorry.”
He crossed the room and stood in front of me, folding his arms over his chest with a frown.
I was taken aback by how tall he loomed. My Descended blood made me taller than most mortal men, but Teller had outgrown me some time ago. He was so often at a desk hunched over a book, I rarely noticed it. He wasn’t my baby brother anymore—his body was filling out, all the soft roundness of youth chiseling into the sharp angles of a man.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.
“I didn’t trust the Sophos Crown. I was worried they were trying to use you to threaten me. They knew about you before I’d told anyone we were related.”
“A lot of people knew we were related. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“There were other reasons. I heard... rumors.” I scratched anxiously at the burning on my neck. “Mortals who come here go missing, Tel. The Sophos Descended run experiments on them, and no one ever hears from them again.”
His head slowly tilted. “Who told you that?”
“Henri. He said the Guardians have—”
His loud ripple of laughter cut me off. “What would Henri know about Sophos—what would any of the Guardians know? Do you know how hard it is for mortals to get in here? If you breathe too close to someone suspected of being a rebel, they ban you for life. They only let me in because Remis is good friends with Doriel. He begged them to make an exception.”
I frowned. I hadn’t known that —and it definitely didn’t ease my fears.
“The mortals here get paid so much, most of them send money back home to family,” Teller explained. “Thieves realized this and started targeting anyone with relatives in Sophos, so people here began to fake their deaths. Their loved ones know they’re safe, but everyone else from their home realm thinks they’re dead.”
“I... but... the experiments,” I stammered. “I confronted Doriel about mortals dying. They admitted it was true.”
“Those mortals volunteer . They want to do something useful with their lives, and they get paid a fortune to leave behind for their families. It’s a noble choice.”
I reared back. “A ‘ noble choice ’? They’re only desperate for that money because the Descended put them in poverty to begin with. They’re selling their lives away because it’s a better end than dying of hunger in some dirty Mortal City back alley. That’s not a choice, Tel, that’s a last resort. They’re exploiting desperate people, and there’s nothing noble about it.”
Teller’s mouth opened, then closed, a wrinkle forming across his brow as he thought on my words. “Maybe you’re right. But that doesn’t make the people here murderers.” I snorted in disagreement, and Teller’s face turned stern and scolding. “Everything isn’t so black and white, D. The results of those experiments save thousands of lives. And the money the mortals make here will keep their families out of poverty for generations. Yes, it is unfair. The world is unfair. The people here are just trying to do what good in it they can.”
Teller’s firm yet fair demeanor, his calm lack of judgment, his focus on what was and not what should be —it was all so very, very much like our father. Grief seemed to wrap its ruthless hand around my neck, choking my protests back.
Teller’s tone softened. “I’ve met a lot of mortals here, and they’re really happy. They’re treated well, and they’re proud of the work they do. And the Descended...” He smirked. “They’re eccentric, I admit. I’m not sure most of them have ever had any fun that didn’t involve a book.” He cocked his head. “But they don’t seem like killers. They seem like good people.”
I slumped back against a desk as my resolve wobbled between condemnation and doubt. What did it mean to be a good person in a system built on such a fundamental bad? Could the best intentions and noble ends ever justify reprehensible means?
“So you told Henri I’d been invited here, but not me?” Teller asked archly.
“Henri didn’t know,” I mumbled, still lost in my thoughts. “Only Remis and Lil—”
I stopped too late.
“ Lily knew?”
Shit. Shit shit shit.
Hurt flickered over his face, then anger, then resignation. He closed his eyes as his features pinched. “It doesn’t matter. We’re over now.”
I stood and gripped his shoulders. “Forget what Remis said. You and Lily should be together.”
“Remis might have had his own motives, but he wasn’t wrong. Lily and I were always doomed. At least now she can move on.” He sighed unhappily. “Even though I never will.”
“It doesn’t have to be like this. You two love each other. You—”
“Don’t,” he interrupted. “I made my choice, Diem. It’s over. Let it go.”
The air deflated out of me in a slow, sad exhale. I was far from done with this fight, but until it was safe for him to go home, there was no point trying to convince him.
Teller glared at me, though it was lacking all its bite. “I guess if you thought you were saving me from dying as a laboratory experiment, I’m required to forgive you.”
“I’ve been an awful sister. I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” I gave a sheepish half-smile. “Maybe you’ll take pity on me and give it anyway?”
He grunted. His irritated face said absolutely not , but I knew his peace-loving heart had already said yes .
“I heard you killed the Fortos King,” he said.
“And his High General. Not to mention releasing most of their prisoners.”
His brow furrowed. “The Crowns are going to kill you for that.”
“Actually, if my plan works, they’re going to pardon me. Mother, too.”
“How in the world will you talk them into that? ”
I groaned wearily. “You can’t imagine how much has happened since I left, Tel. There’s so much I need to tell you.”
“What’s that on your neck?” He squinted as he leaned in. “There’s something glowing...”
I frowned and dipped my chin, realizing I’d been absently tugging at my scarf, trying to get some air into my too-tight throat. The scarf fell away, and the room flooded with an intense light.
Teller shielded his eyes. “What is that?”
I started to explain as I reached to touch it—then stilled as my fingertips brushed against blazing hot skin. It hadn’t felt that intense since...
My heart plummeted.
Ophiucae was coming.