Chapter 72 #2
He goes unnaturally still. His dark blue eyes find mine, and the apology in them guts me. But it’s not enough. It will never be enough. Not after this.
“Who are you?” I demand.
Silence.
The king sighs and clasps a casual hand on Ryot’s shoulder. Ryot winces, flinching from the familiar touch. “Come on, son. Tell the girl.” The king turns back to me, a smile ghosting on his lips. An amused smile that looks exactly like Ryot’s .
I’ve been used . Lied to.
“King Agis is—” Ryot begins haltingly. “He’s my father, Leina.”
I take a step back. Another and another until my back hits the wall of the tunnel.
Really, it’s so obvious. I’m a complete idiot. The eyes. That smile. His voice. Ryot’s familiarity with Rissa and Elowen—his sisters .
“But I didn’t know,” Ryot rushes out, following me as if he can fix it.
“I haven’t been in line for the throne since I came of age and presented as an Altor.
I didn’t know about the Collection until Amarune.
I didn’t know of the conditions in Selencia, not until I went to investigate, to find your brothers. I?—”
I didn’t know my heart could shatter like this. It’s not like when you mourn someone who’s died. Betrayal is a different kind of grief. My chest tightens, my stomach knots and churns, a sick, twisting mass of rage and disbelief.
The words rattle in my skull, over and over, but the more I try to make sense of it, the worse it feels. My hands curl into fists without me realizing it. Heat rises, flooding my face.
I want to scream, to demand answers, to tear the world apart—but I’m frozen. Pinned to this awful moment, unable to move forward or back.
“Now, now,” King Agis interrupts, and my eyes swivel back to his. There’s a buzzing in my ears. I forgot he was even here. How could I forget the king is here? My hand slides back, finding my scythe. It warms against my palm, steady and sure—like a hand squeezing mine in silent comfort.
“She doesn’t have brothers anymore.” The king raises an eyebrow at me. He tsks like I’ve done something naughty. “She took the Synod oath, did she not?”
I rip my scythe free. Ryot curses, lunging as if to block me again.
“Like I don’t have a father anymore,” Ryot tells him, trying to step between us. But I barely hear him. Ryot’s nothing but a blur at the edges now.
“How could you? How fucking could you?” Ryot demands of the king. Of his father.
But his anger is too little, too late.
I lock eyes with the king.
“I had brothers,” I tell King Agis, my voice low and vibrating. “I had brothers, and you took them from me. You slaughtered my brother.”
I step closer.
“Like I had parents,” I spit. “And you butchered them, too.”
I pivot to Ryot and take a step forward. His eyes land on my scythe, but he keeps his sword lowered. He doesn’t raise it against me, and that makes me angry, because now I want to fight him.
“It’s not murder when I kill him,” I lash out at Ryot. “It’s vengeance.”
I pull my scythe back to swing. I barely register the pounding of boots on the gravel path—running toward us, fast.
“Godsdammit!” Ryot shouts. “Don’t!”
I’m beyond listening to him. I’m beyond him.
Ryot throws up that shield between me and the king, but I don’t swing for the space between us. I’ve locked onto the king himself—his essence. His soul .
I step through the Veil, and swing my scythe, effortlessly sliding past Ryot’s defenses. But still, I miss. I fucking miss.
My scythe slams into a hammer made of adamas with enough force to rattle my teeth. I jerk back, catching sight of this new threat—the hooded man who’d walked away earlier.
“Kill her,” King Agis orders calmly, as if he’s demanding a cup of wine with his dinner. “But don't injure my son.”
The king turns and exits down the shaft, his velvet robes billowing behind him. He’s escorted now by two other men. Both carry weapons of adamas, but they’re not any Altor I’ve ever met. With a growl, I lunge for the king at the same time that hammer arcs through the air toward me.
“Fuck!” Ryot shouts. He throws out another shield, and the hammer slamming against it throws the hooded man backward into the stone wall. But the man doesn’t stay down for long, pushing up with unnatural speed.
Altor speed.
“Stay away from her!” Ryot roars. He plants himself between me and the hooded man, sword raised, shield shimmering.
I shove at Ryot, hard. “I don't need you,” I snarl. It's a lie. But it's a lie I have to believe.
I will not break again.
“Well, I need you, Leina Haverlyn!” Ryot shouts back at me, wild and desperate. He’s holding his sword in guard position, aiming at the man. The threat.
But the man doesn’t take up an attack position. He drops his hammer, his fingers going limp. The weapon falls to the ground with a heavy clang. And that pull, the one that brought me here—it hits me again. Harder .
I wasn’t drawn to the king. This pull wasn’t about vengeance or justice.
It was this man. I take a halting step forward, enticed by a magnetism I can’t explain. There’s an echo of a memory. My breath hitches.
“Leina?” the man asks.
My mind is at war with my heart. One is screaming that it’s impossible, the other is screaming that it doesn’t care. I can’t move. I’m frozen between disbelief and the kind of hope that terrifies because it’s too much to bear. My vision blurs, tears stinging my eyes.
The man jerks back the hood. His face—gods. It’s ruined; a map of pain etched across his skin. But his eyes are the same. Dark and deep, almost black, like whispered secrets on a moonless night.
The memories hit me, unbidden and overwhelming.
His laugh, his touch, the way his eyes lit up when I walked into the room.
And then the pain comes, sharp and gut-wrenching, because I remember the way I would wake screaming, night after night, from nightmares that strangled me in the dark.
Nightmares of him dying endlessly, of his soul shredded by cruelty.
I thought they were my mind twisted up in grief. I thought the nightmares were my own broken heart turning against me.
But they weren’t nightmares. They weren’t imaginings.
They were glimpses, through the Veil, of him. His life. His torment.
Because he’s here. Alive.
I reach for his name, my voice barely a breath.
"Alden?" I whisper.