Lightbringer

Chapter 17 Lyra

Lyra

He feels so warm.

Darian’s body trembles against mine as I look over his shoulder, locking eyes with Eres. His gaze is wide, as confused as mine must be.

“I didn’t do anything,” I repeat. My head aches from meeting the wall as I turn it to look at Duskbane. “I don’t know what this is.”

“She’s right.” The words brush against the skin of my neck. Darian pulls back, enough for me to see his face. “It’s not her fault, Kaelen. Don’t touch her.”

I don’t understand. “What happened?”

But Darian only stares at me. His eyes scan my face, and then lower.

They dip to my throat, taking in the bare expanse of skin exposed by the neckline of my shirt.

My body flinches as his hand raises, still caught in the panic I felt on waking to a roaring Darkwielder in my face, and he stops. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Instead, he pushes aside the shirt, exposing my collarbone. And I inhale sharply, looking down as his hand covers me. His fingers spread out over the riftlines left by the Binding.

“Your skin is so soft,” Darian murmurs, and I jerk my head up. “It didn’t leave a scar.”

I stop breathing. My heart begins to beat faster. “Get off me.”

But his voice only deepens. “He branded you here.”

My whole body begins to shake. “That’s none of your business.”

But now I know. Anger surges, tightening my throat, constricting my ribs until I’m struggling to breathe. “You had no right to enter my dreams.”

“They weren’t dreams,” Darian says quietly. His hand still presses across my skin, warming it. “Those were nightmares.”

His eyes glimmer as he pulls his hand back.

I wait for him to step back, but he doesn’t.

He reaches for my arm without letting any distance come between us, not looking away as his finger traces a pattern that I recognize all too well.

Nausea surges. “Your nightmares reveal far more than your memories, little Lightbringer. He carved you here too.”

“What’s going on?” Tightly controlled fury underscores Duskbane’s words as he pulls himself to his feet.

“Stop it.” My eyes begin to burn. “They were just dreams.”

“I can tell the difference.” His fingers drop to trace over my hip, above the material that covers them. “He used a hammer here. The first time, at least.”

“Stop,” I hiss. I try to push him back, but the erevas still holds me.

Don’t think of it.

Don’t think of any of it.

But Darian continues, from my hip to my back, his hand slipping in between the wall and my body. “And he whipped you here.”

The words strike against my skin, harsh with anger.

Behind him, Eres moves closer, his eyes narrowing as he folds his arms. But he doesn’t interrupt.

“Who are you?” Darian asks me, his hand dropping away. He captures my face between his palms, examining me. “I saw what he did to you. I felt every bit of it. How the fuck are you still standing?”

Eres’s expression shifts into something resembling disgust, his lips twisting. “Lightbringers have excellent healers.”

Duskbane comes to stand beside him, his brow drawn. “Who exactly is he? What did you see?”

“I can’t keep this hidden,” Darian whispers, so low I barely catch it. “The truth, Lyra.”

My mind flicks from thought to thought, memory to memory, all of them focused on him—

“Ah,” Darian breathes heavily. And my eyes widen as he lifts his hands away. His smile is close to apologetic. Almost sad. “So there it is.”

Foolish. I’m making foolish, foolish mistakes.

If Duskbane didn’t have me pinned, I’d likely fall. “Please step away from me.”

This time, he listens. Darian shifts, and I notice he moves between me and the prince staring at me as if he’d tear into my mind himself. If he could, I have no doubt that he would.

I lick my lips. “I told you that I was an orphan.”

Nothing. They wait, all three of them. Faces implacable, unreadable. I have the strong sense that if I make a misstep here, I won’t make it out of Duskbane’s shadows at all.

I force out the air caught in my lungs, let it go, and resign myself.

Perhaps this plan might have worked.

If only they didn’t have a dreamwalker.

If only Cindral hadn’t shattered my plans by leaving me for dead in the snow.

If only Eres hadn’t bound me in loyalty and kindness.

If, if, if.

“My name is Lyra Vaelion. And my father is Commander Vaelion.”

None of them move as seconds pass. Darian lets out a long, slow breath. He still looks shaken from his unwelcome visit into some of my childhood memories.

“What?” Eres takes a step toward me before stopping. “That’s impossible. We know his offspring.”

“You won’t find my name on the list,” I whisper. I lift my eyes enough to glimpse Kaelen Duskbane’s face. The shock. The tightening of his jaw, the darkness that steals across his expression.

“Why not?” Eres glances at Kaelen as well. Gauging his reaction, perhaps.

I lift one shoulder as best I can against my restraints. “You would need to ask him that. I’m not recognized publicly. My mother wasn’t high-born. An unknown. She left me with him.”

Truth. Truth woven between missing information, and with it comes the familiar brief tug of pain long since pushed aside.

My eyes slip to Darian. My survival—at least beyond the night—all depends on how much he saw inside my head.

How much he knows. But he’s leaning forward, as though this is new to him.

He didn’t see everything, then. The smallest amount of tension slips from my bones, the smallest hope that perhaps I might make my way out of this growing from the pit that sits heavily in my stomach. I keep my voice small. “I didn’t think you would offer me help if you knew.”

Duskbane takes a step—

Darian shifts, blocking him, and the prince stops short. “Get out of my way, Dare.”

A slow shake of Darian’s head makes my heart flip inside my chest. “I can’t do that.”

“Let’s take a moment,” Eres’s voice is careful. “Darian, what exactly did you see?”

It’s only then that I notice that Darian’s hands are trembling. He closes them into fists, keeping his back to me and blocking the prince. “He tortured her. Not once. Over and over again, even as a child.”

He addresses Duskbane. “Touch her skin. It’s… new. The Lightbringer healers must be as talented as you always said, Eres. Because from what I saw, they’ve put her back together from little more than pieces more than once.”

“Where were you?” Eres looks horrified. “What viewpoint?”

“Hers,” Darian breathes, and I flinch again. He turns, just barely, to look at me. “I felt what she felt. And Erevan help me, but I never want to be inside your head again.”

For some reason, my cheeks heat at the softness in his words. “Don’t you dare pity me. I don’t want your pity, walker.”

I should want them to pity me. And I would, if they were facing the version of me I intended to give them when I left Solvandyr. Soft, pretty, and a little bruised. A broken bird in need of healing.

But not me. The real me is stitched together from a thousand jagged pieces, built from twenty years of agony and goading and blood.

The true Lyra Vaelion has scars far deeper than any riftlines these men wear in their skin.

Deeper than any of them could likely even imagine.

I haven’t a bone that hasn’t been broken, an inch of skin that hasn’t been peeled away with dagger and flame—all of it in the name of preparing me for a mission that was never going to work.

In the end, my father didn’t even believe I’d make it here at all.

I always thought my training was for a bigger purpose.

That it would be worthwhile. I told myself that so many times—every time the healers worked on me, every time I bit down on my own tongue so I didn’t beg them to let me die, every time the father I barely knew as anything beyond my own torment entered a room with whatever weapon took his fancy that day and left with my blood coating his skin.

Only two people have ever met the real me. My father, and Cindral. And if the record holds true, I know well enough what comes next.

Bracing, I stare Kaelen Duskbane in the eye.

Both of us were born from rulers. Both of us born the same year, both born with a weight of expectation pressing down on our shoulders. But Kaelen Duskbane wears a crown, and I wear nothing but the bloody memories of my father’s disappointment.

He never had to face what I did, and resentment makes me spit the words at him. “Get it over with, then.”

If I have one, single regret, it’s Reena.

Let her be safe. Let it have been an empty threat.

Please.

“No,” Darian snaps. This time, he pushes his hands against Duskbane’s chest as if he’d physically restrain him, and the sight of him standing in the way for me only hurts more. “She was scared, Kaelen. If you saw what I did—”

“I was not scared.” I lift my chin up. If I’m to die, I refuse to be branded a coward. “Don’t lie.”

Darian whirls around. Amethyst eyes meet mine. “Not of us. Of him. All this tells us is that there were two monsters in your life instead of one.”

I don’t have an answer to that. Not one I’d care to voice, so I look past him. To the male watching me with silver-shredded eyes. “Make it quick.”

And Kaelen Duskbane… nods.

“Darian,” he says steadily. “Move aside.”

But Darian is shaking his head, hands still raised. “I’m not going to let you do this.”

“You’re going to fight me over a witch?” A hint of temper shows beneath Duskbane’s cool expression. “Really?”

“Add this to the list, although most of them mattered far less. If we were in the habit of punishing people for their parentage,” Darian says sharply, “I wouldn’t be standing here now.”

And then Duskbane flinches.

Turning my head, I look to Eres. He stands barely a foot away, watching me with a thoughtful expression. I inject as much bravado as I can muster into my words. “Does this count as a betrayal?”

Perhaps the Binding will strike before Kaelen does.

He sounds thoughtful. “If it did, you and I would both already be dead.”

Eres shifts. As I watch, he moves to stand beside Darian, adding another barrier to Duskbane’s path. “Darian is right, Kae. This changes little, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Vaelion is her father,” Duskbane growls. “This changes everything.”

“He won’t trade for me.” They all turn my way, but I direct my words to Duskbane. “His stallion holds more value than I do, if that’s your idea. And I would prefer you killed me now, if that’s your plan.”

His head tilts. “I highly doubt that.”

“I know him far better than you do—”

“I wasn’t talking about that cunt. And for fucks’ sake, stop snapping at me, witch. Are you so eager to die?”

I’m not entirely sure how to answer that.

But Duskbane sighs. And my knees hit the ground with a painful thud as he… releases me. “Nobody else learns of this, or Nythen will try to have me brought up for treason.”

My breath catches in my chest as I look up at him. Eres kneels beside me and reaches for my wrist, checking one and then the other. “What do you want in exchange?”

Nothing is ever given out of kindness. Whatever price he wants for my life, I might not be able to give.

“Right now?” He swipes a hand over his face. “For you to get back in that cell so I can get some fucking sleep. Everybody else leaves.”

There’s no heat to his words. His eyes tighten as I look beyond him to Darian. He’s staring at Duskbane’s back, and I have to look away. Something about it makes me feel uncomfortable. “Fine.”

“I’ll be back for you in the morning,” Eres reassures me, but Duskbane cuts in.

“Tomorrow, the witch is with me. Darian, you’re going to the healer's quarters with Eres so he can check you. I’ll watch the door tonight.”

All three of us fall silent at that.

I clear my throat. “If death is still a possibility—”

“Get in the damn cell.”

Right. Not dying today.

Darian looks more bruised in the aftermath of my dreams than when we first met. Pausing as I head past, he offers me a tired smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I hesitate. “Why did you stand in front of me?”

“Two reasons.” At his low words, I look up. His eyes are soft. Raising his hand, he touches a finger to my temple, barely brushing the skin. “Because nobody else ever did. And because I saw a little of the real Lyra in here.”

“How unfortunate for you.” I attempt to keep my tone light, but the tremble beneath my words gives me away. “Hopefully you don’t see her again.”

At least if I have anything to do with it.

“Not at all.” He moves aside to let me past. “I liked that Lyra. Very much.”

Oh.

Eres escorts me back, checking me once more before leaving with a small, quiet smile.

Duskbane doesn’t appear, but I can hear him.

Despite his words, the noise tells me that he’s not sleeping at all.

I close my eyes to the sound of pacing footsteps at the end of the hall, turning Darian’s words over in my head.

I liked that Lyra. Very much.

When I finally fall asleep, I don’t dream at all.