Chapter 60
CHAPTER SIXTY
RYOT
“Don’t start a fight,” Thalric mutters at me under his breath. His gaze sweeps the elaborate banquet hall, taking in the wary Aishan Altor lining the room wall-to-wall, all of them on high alert. Not one of them are drinking, and they’re all armed.
“Agreed. This is not the place to get into a brawl over a girl,” Caius says. “I’d back you up any other time, but here …”
“Here, we’d get our asses handed to us on one of these silver platters,” Thalric finishes where Caius trailed off, fingering the fancy serving ware the food is brought out on.
He’s not wrong. We’re outnumbered 30 or 40 to 1.
“Well, I’d still back you up,” Nyrica adds with a wry grin. “But we’d lose.”
I scowl into my plate, refusing to look across the table at Leina, sitting next to Aruveth.
The sound of her laughter floats around the room.
It’s a sound I could easily pick out in any crowd, even one of this size, even with the dozens of other women who are laughing and giggling throughout the large space.
Her laughter is normally a sound that somehow both soothes and excites in equal measure.
Right now, as she talks to Aruveth, it burns.
I hunch my shoulders and stab viciously at the fish. It’s my only distraction, because I’ve also shoved my drink to the side. Surrounded by distinctly unfriendly Altor, with a Kher’zenn attack apparently imminent, is not the time to indulge. As much as I’d like to.
“Don’t call her a girl,” I mutter to Caius. She’d hate that. I hate that.
Thalric smirks, but he still keeps his eyes on the room. His gaze sweeps to the left and then to the right, and then to the left again, on a constant loop.
Nyrica, too, is on edge. Caius has his eyes on Faelon, even though the boy isn’t his ward anymore.
Because Faelon is still a boy, in a way that has nothing to do with age.
Even Leif, his junior in both age and rank, can be trusted to keep his godsdamn mouth shut.
But not Faelon. Every time Faelon goes to open his mouth, Caius glares him down until he snaps it shut again.
Every time Faelon’s eyes spark and land on one of the beautiful Aishan women sashaying around the room, Caius slaps the back of his head to make him look away.
And every time Faelon tries to rise to chase after one of those pretty ladies, Caius shoves him back down with a firm hand on his shoulder.
None of us want him to offend our hosts.
Though, things certainly seem to be very different here in Aish.
Altor and civilians mingle freely. Many of the Altor are paired up with civilian men and women, and they engage in an easy intimacy that looks like relationships.
That suspicion is confirmed when I watch one of the men—the man who’d handled the larkling earlier today, Drennek—press his hand against the belly of a heavily pregnant woman and press a soft kiss to her lips.
I’m not the only one who notices. Nyrica is clenching his fork so hard his knuckles turn white. Thalric lays a calming hand on Nyrica’s clenched fist. When Nyrica relaxes his hand, the fork is a mangled mess of metal.
Leif leans back in his chair, a puzzled look on his face. “Aishan Altor are allowed to have families?” he asks the question we’re all thinking, and not quietly. The question seems to ricochet around the room, making the hall go quiet.
Drennek, sitting directly across from us at the u-shaped table, turns his head toward us, as he links fingers with his woman. “You aren’t?” he asks, his own shocked curiosity answering Leif’s question.
Leif jerks his head to the side. “No.”
Leif is one of the few young ones bothered by the Synod’s prohibition on having families.
Most of the wards—hells, even most of the sentinels, like Faelon—still feel like they’ve escaped a dreadful fate.
They’re too turned on by the thrill of battle and the hedonistic lifestyle at the Crimson Feather to realize what they’ve given up. Most of them die before they ever know.
I don’t look at Leina. I don’t look at Drennek or the pregnant woman.
I don’t look at Thalric and Nyrica. I blame the vicious ache in my chest on the too-rich dinner and shove my plate away.
Without the fish to distract me, I look across to the other side of the room where a u-shaped table faces us.
Aruveth sits at the head—a position of honor for the elected leader of the Aishan Altor. They call him the Steward. The Elder sits to his right and Leina to his left.
At another u-shaped table opposite, Rissa sits with the Prime—the elected leader of the civilian Aishan government. I run my tongue over the words again—elected, prime, steward. They’re unfamiliar words. Everything is unfamiliar here. The food, the dress, the weather, the architecture. The people.
Faelon grins broadly and winks at one of the women walking past our table. She ignores him, unimpressed.
“You need to learn some self-control,” I say to Faelon.
He rolls his eyes at me with all the attitude of a teenager talking to his father. “You’re one to talk about self-control,” he mumbles back.
My shoulders stiffen, at the same time Aruveth rises from his seat in the middle of his u-shaped table, holding his drink in the air. The room quiets, the music coming to a stop.
“Brothers and sisters, warriors and citizens,” Aruveth begins.
“Friends from near and far. Tonight, we stand together, not as strangers divided by borders, but as one people under the same sky, bound by honor and courage to fight the same war.” He pauses and turns to look down at Leina.
He holds the cup toward her in a salute.
“Tonight, we raise a toast. For tonight is the first time that Aishan, Faraengardian, and Selencian Altor have stood together—have feasted together, have strategized together—since the Faraengardian massacre of the Selencian Altor 986 years ago.”
“Aldros Vin'Tharak,” he shouts, raising his glass. All for honor.
The Aishans all raise their glasses with him, and Altor and civilians alike shout Aldros Vin'Tharak back to him.
But I’m frozen. Rendered mute and dumb by a toast. My ears are buzzing, so that I barely hear the surge of excited chatter that fills the room or the merry tune the band starts to play.
My vision tunnels, narrowing on the only other person in this room—in the godsdamn world—who matters.
And she’s frozen, too. Leina’s pale, her eyes are glassy.
She looks like someone who witnessed a death.
There’s the sound of glass breaking, and the distant pain of it slicing through my palm.
I look down to see I’ve crushed the ornate glass cup I’d grabbed for the toast, and the jeweled fragments are sticking out of my palm.
My blood drips onto the table. The smell of it, acrid and sharp, yanks me back.
I drop what’s left of the cup and scan the room.
The Aishan men and women are all staring at me, their expressions varying levels of distaste and concern.
My Stormriven family, though, all look as shaken as I am.
Even Rissa—a trained stoic through and through—is staring at Aruveth with open-mouthed horror.
I push my chair back from the table, standing with slow precision. The music stops, the merriment dies down to nothing.
“What did you say?” I whisper. My voice is hoarse.
Aruveth is wary. The Aishan Altor around him finger their weapons, like I’m about to attack because I’m offended by something he said. They don’t understand.
I open my mouth to try again, but Faelon beats me to it.
“What are you talking about? Massacre? Selencian Altor?” Faelon scoffs. “Selencia doesn’t have Altor. That’s why they’re our protectorate.”
But the horror that’s already on Rissa’s face—she’s always been the smartest person in the room—spreads first to Thalric and then to Nyrica, then Caius and Leif, all before Faelon even finishes speaking.
The Elder suddenly looks ravaged. His shoulders hunch and he covers his mouth with an old, trembling hand.
Aruveth hardly spares Faelon a glance. He’s considering me, looking at me with something very close to pity.
“Anyone born of Aish—clear the room,” he says, his voice that of a commander.
Chairs scrape back immediately, and the hall empties through four sets of wide, double doors—one at each end of the rectangular space—in seconds.
Only Aruveth, Rissa, the Prime, the Elder, and our cast remain.
It’s too large a chamber for only twelve people. Our voices echo.
“You didn’t know,” Aruveth says, and his eyes travel from me to the other men, then to Rissa. Finally, he looks at Leina. “None of you knew. But …” For the first time since we met him, he looks truly flustered. His hands flutter, his confusion evident.
“How could you not know?” he finally asks. “When the Selencian boys are rounded up every year before maturity like cattle for the slaughter in … what’s it called? The Collection? What did you think that was?”
The blood drains from my face, and I’m so dizzy that I stagger, gripping the back of my chair for balance. But Leina … Leina slaps a hand over her mouth to cover a keening cry. She comes out of her chair, too, but I don’t even know if she sees. She stumbles around, lost.
She’s crying out names. Levvi. Alden. Over and over again, she says their names, her voice breaking with each repetition, until her legs give out and she falls to her knees on the cold stone floor. I’m moving before I realize it.
I vault across the room, reaching for her, desperate to pull her into my arms, desperate to anchor her back to herself. But she jerks away from me with a gasp, stumbling backward across the ground. Her hands scrape against the stone, but she keeps crawling, trying to put distance between us.
“Don't touch me!” she shouts, her voice raw and terrified.
I freeze, hand half-extended toward her. It’s plain in her eyes, which are wide and wet with horror. It’s clear what I am.
I always thought I was the hero. The one standing at the precipice, holding back the tide of evil threatening to consume humanity.
But that was never the truth, not in this ugly, terrible—true—version of history.
The final missing puzzle piece clicks into place, cold and sharp as a blade sliding home.
The picture is complete now. There’s no room left for pretty lies.
I’m not the hero.
I’m the villain.