Chapter 30 #2
Boss Balanyr crosses his arms. “And if we do this, we get another three years of time on the ship? The pay too. In advance?”
I feel Lord Damarcus incline his head. Boss Balanyr and Boss Charmaine come around the side of the desk and examine the potion bottles. “As long as we seal it,” Charmaine begins. “No one will question what’s inside.”
Her voice becomes fuzzy, and I blink several times to clear the sudden fog distorting my vision.
The scene’s dissolving. There’s a swooping feeling in my stomach.
I can’t tell if it’s from the potion or from the dizzying, damning realization that my father has been responsible for the flaw in my magic all my life.
The potion I drank at dinner every night was a lie.
Was it in the honey he drizzled on my toast or in the steaming mugs of cider he shared with me on rainy nights in front of the hearth fire?
Even more disturbing is the knowledge that he was responsible for Elayne’s death.
That night, a boss must have given her the potion in the hallway.
Then, they returned to the party with … I’m guessing a hair or some of her blood to mix with the light green potion.
I recall the boss I talked to on the night of the ball handing me a drink.
Bile rises in my throat, and I fight the urge to throw up.
I’ve returned to my own body, and my captors still hold tight to my arms. The others are stunned into silence.
My knees tremble, and the disorienting return to reality makes me dazed.
Lord Damarcus watches us with wary regard.
I can’t believe he thought this memory would comfort me and help me understand.
If anything, it has illuminated a bitter truth.
Cyrion Damarcus is terrified of his Morphic daughter and always has been.
He doesn’t know what I’m capable of anymore, and I certainly don’t know him either.
I strain against my captors, wanting to lunge at my father, but I remember they are as much prisoners as the rest of us.
Alana shakes her head at me, and I cease struggling despite wanting nothing more than to wrap my fingers around someone’s throat.
I can’t speak. Nothing I could say would be enough.
“You thought if the murder was pinned on Roe, they could take her Morphia,” Gray says in a shaky voice. “But you failed.”
“You were stopped,” Ivander breaks in, “by a non-Morphic woman who saw the good in Roe. By someone who lost her own young daughter to that abomination of a ship years before Roe.”
“That was regrettable,” Lord Damarcus concedes.
“Our ancestors never realized how dangerous containing Morphia would get. But it all became less important. Don’t you understand that?
The killing. The lies. Everything I’ve had to do to get here.
It’s all to win a war we couldn’t win before. To make things better.”
My knees feel weak again, and I realize the edges of Lord Damarcus are fuzzy. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. Reality is fading once more, and I have no power to stop it. I cry out, but nothing prevents me from descending into the memory.
Fresh snow on the ground and trees I know as well as the contents of my bedroom. Carodmoor Forest. Shouting in the distance and the far-off galloping of horses over dense snow. One word screamed over and over a great distance away. “Leith!”
My stomach twists. I’m back in Lord Damarcus’s body, but my feelings are all my own. Panic rises inside me so quickly that if I were in my own body, I’d lose my balance. I’m seeing the day Leith disappeared.
No.
The day he was captured.
As Lord Damarcus, I stand over my son’s body. A crafter-made arrow is lodged in his left leg, turning the snow scarlet. A man at my side crouches next to the wound and looks back up at me. “We have to let him bleed enough that they think he’s dead.”
“But not enough to kill him,” Lord Damarcus says through gritted teeth. “If you kill my son, I will kill you.”
Leith tilts his head up to look at Lord Damarcus.
It’s as if someone has shoved a knife through my chest and twisted.
For the first time in almost a decade, those stormy blue eyes meet mine.
A lock of dark brown hair falls in his face, and he blows it off with a heavy breath.
Even while losing blood, his eyes twinkle.
“That’s a nifty little potion you gave me, I’ll give you that,” he admits in the familiar lilting tone that makes my heart ache.
“Prevents me from raising my voice and shouting for help. If you need a name for it, I’d go with the Muffler.
” He opens his mouth and tries to yell, but nothing comes out but a croak.
I crouch to be level with him. The snow crunches beneath Lord Damarcus’s boots. “Are you not angry?”
“Beyond angry,” Leith replies easily. “But I don’t currently know what you want or what you’re planning to do with me, so I see the smarter course of action is to stay calm.”
The man crouching beside the pool of blood huffs. “We need to move him soon. Those Hawks may find us.”
Leith glances down to the arrow poking out of his leg. Despite his blasé tone, his face blanches when he sees the blood. “I’m guessing that’s a paralyzing arrow too. Crafter-made.” Leith lets out a low whistle. “Not cheap. You went to great lengths to stage my death.”
Lord Damarcus’s head snaps up, giving me whiplash. “I am going to great lengths for a much larger reason.”
Leith’s brow furrows. “Whatever it is, it better be the most important thing you’ve ever done. Because you will ruin my sisters’ lives.” I’ve never heard this venom in his voice before.
Leith’s eyes cloud and have trouble focusing. He’s losing too much blood to stay awake. I reach forward and brush my finger against his cheek. If it were truly my hand, I’d be so grateful to touch him again, but in this body, I’m repulsed.
“I know what you tried to do, son,” Lord Damarcus says in a low voice.
“You were freeing those Morphics you hunted. So was I, but in a different way. I sought out Morphics who failed their trials or who aged out of the Celestial. I smuggled as many as I could to Malachite. Most got to keep their Morphia.”
Through gritted teeth, Leith asks, “Why? At what cost?” He lets out a shaky breath. “There’s always a price.”
I reach into my pocket and withdraw a small potion bottle. I wish I could stop Lord Damarcus’s hand, even in the memory. As Lord Damarcus tips it into Leith’s parted mouth, his eyes become glassy and unfocused. “Yes,” I murmur. “There is.”
The scene begins to fade, and this time, I want it to keep going. I’ve seen him alive and talking. I don’t want to lose him again. Lord Damarcus wants me to understand what he sacrificed. He believed in his mission so much that faking my brother’s death felt worthwhile. It only makes me hate him.
Alana lets out a small cry of anguish. Gray is so still and silent, it’s as if he’s frozen. Seeing Leith must have been as shocking for him as it was for me. Without looking, I feel Ivander’s eyes on me. I’ve told him enough about Leith for him to know my world is spinning.
“What about Mother and Eliza?” I ask, voice hoarse.
Every part of me wants this to be a nightmare.
I want to wake up and go back in time. To when we were a happy family.
I remember the nights Lysandra would come have dinner with the five of us.
We’d always end up laughing over old stories or games—even Mother. “They’re non-Morphics.”
Father exhales, as if he’s relieved I’m not screaming at him.
“Which is why we will not get rid of all of them. But Morphics will have the positions of power. And you, darling. If you can understand, then I won’t take anything from you.
I’ll give you the chance I didn’t give you before to keep your magic.
You can have a seat on the new council. Right next to me. ”
I bite my lower lip hard enough to draw blood. I don’t believe him. “I came here to ask you to help me. To help make things better for Morphics, but not like this. You don’t get to start another war using those you’ve imprisoned.”
Lord Damarcus’s expression hardens, a muscle jumping in his cheek.
Nostrils flare in his tan face, and it takes everything in me not to recoil on instinct at his authority.
“This is how power shifts. It’s not pleasant.
It’s messy.” He holds his hand out to me.
“I thought you weren’t afraid to get your hands dirty. ”
With his hand extended to me and the pressure of my captors’ grips relaxing, I allow myself to wonder if he’s right.
This is my father, after all. Maybe the price of change must be weighed against the cost of society staying the same.
But my mind drifts back to being on the stage with Ivander, conjuring butterflies because I wanted to show him something beautiful.
I think of his idea for a school for Morphics—somewhere we could go to learn how to use our gifts.
Somewhere that would allow us to make mistakes without punishing us for it.
I think of the arrow sticking out of Leith’s leg and the potions I drank nightly at dinner. The anger in me intensifies.
There’s a new world to build in Tamarynth, but it matters how we do it.
Lord Damarcus’s hand falls to his side when I don’t accept it.
He sighs. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted with this.”
Gray shifts on his feet, wary gaze following the potion bottle. “What happens when your soldiers aren’t in a trance anymore and don’t want to go to war?”
Lord Damarcus pauses, as if it’s the first time he’s considered that those he’s kept confined for so long might not be the obedient soldiers he hoped for. There’s the possibility even his son and great general may not be willing to go along with a plan he had no part in creating.
“I hope,” Lord Damarcus begins in a low voice, “enough of them will understand why I had to do it. I am acting on my ancestor’s wishes. The Damarcus family has always been doing what’s best for Morphics.”
It’s clear to me now. Clearer than I want it to be.
My family’s great deed, our grand legacy of inventing and investing in the creation of the Celestial and the potion to contain Morphia, has been the real threat to Morphics for centuries.
That thirst for power is the reason Morphics are failing retrials and suffering on the ship.
The reason people are sitting in prison cells, unaware of where they are and why they’re there.
How many Morphics boarded the Celestial to keep their Morphia and ended up prisoners? How many died in prison for a war that might never come?
I shake my head, heat flaring through my limbs. A muscle twitches near my mouth as I itch to use magic. Anything to escape the hold of my captors. The hold of my father. Alana’s words come back to me. They’re in pain. Don’t hurt them.
She must have felt their agony, their misery.
I won’t hurt them even if I’d give anything to make Lord Damarcus bleed.
I don’t give a damn about family legacy or responsibility to an ancestor long dead.
I care that he lied about Leith and kept him in a prison cell.
I care that he tried to extract my Morphia.
My father, the person I always knew was proud of me.
The only person in my family after Leith to tell me resurrection was a gift, not a curse of nightmares.
Lord Damarcus’s brown eyes drop to my flexing fingers.
I know what he’s wondering. Will crafter cuffs be enough to hold me?
He doesn’t wait long enough to find out.
Motioning for one of Gray’s captors to come forward, he withdraws a different potion from the pocket of his waistcoat and passes it to him.
“Don’t give it to them until I give the command. ”
When the captor nods and pockets the potion bottle, Lord Damarcus pinches the bridge of his nose again. He looks between me and Gray.
Voice soft, he says, “Take them to Malachite Prison.”