Chapter 81
“This is the diary of Elluin Neván.” Arkyn leans over my shoulder, his breath sour like the reek of rotting fruit. “Former Princess of The Shade.”
Former princess …
The Shade …
The statement crumbles in my head like a ball of crushed parchment, making it hard to understand. A sentence stripped of its shape, words floating on a long-forgotten wind.
“Well, until she became queen,” he murmurs, lifting the front cover to reveal a scrawled entry written with such beautiful, delicate handwriting. Letters that resonate … within. Little pieces of a puzzle I want to pluck off the page and cradle close to my heart.
Mine.
Those words are mine.
A lump gathers in the back of my throat, painful to swallow past.
“Not that she ever signed off as anything other than Neván,” Arkyn mumbles, turning another page with a careless swat I want to strangle him for. “So much intrigue!”
The world around us smudges as I meet Kaan’s gaze through the flames, the haunting weight in his eyes telling me everything I need to know:
He, too, has no idea what’s pressed between these pages.
Surely something terrible for Arkyn to be so giddy.
“You know what, there’s a lot of unnecessary drivel. I’ll paraphrase.”
Kaan’s eyes ignite, his muscles flexing against the chains constricting his bulging might while Arkyn continues to turn through the entries.
“It starts a bit boring, really. Elluin loved her brother—blah, blah, blah. Felt responsible for the injury that crippled him.”
The words maim—a thunder of dragons swooping down, slashing me.
“She tames a mature Moonplume at nine phases, before even hearing the Creators’ songs.
I must say, that’s impressive,” Arkyn continues, flicking forward another page.
“Then she dons the Aether Stone and becomes the subject of an arranged binding, carted off to The Burn after her entire family is poisoned in their sleep, and things get really juicy.”
“Stop.”
I scream it. Blast it loud.
Hear it ricochet off faraway walls.
Arkyn lowers, pinches my chin so hard I feel the bloom of a future bruise, and turns me to face him—his answer a smooth whisper blown against my face. “No.”
Against my better judgment, I hold his merciless stare like our swords are crossed.
He tsks and lets go.
I gasp, chest heaving as he averts his attention to the diary again, flips forward a few pages, then stabs the tip of his ravaged finger against a line of script.
“Ahh, yes, then she meets him,” he seethes, and recites straight from the parchment: “‘Kaan Vaegor—the eldest son of the King, only recently back from the Boltanic Plains to watch over Dhomm while his pah helps Tyroth secure his foothold in Arithia.’” Arkyn lifts his head, attention homed on Kaan jerking against his chains with renewed might, blood dribbling from where they’ve worn through the skin in places.
“She’s wrong there. Eldest son, you are not. ”
Kaan stills.
Arkyn hums, looks down, and brushes the page aside. “You know, had Pah not disowned me and ordered his dragon to chase me across the plains for being such a great disappointment, Elluin would’ve fallen in love with me. Not you.”
Kaan jerks so hard his heavy stone chair grinds across the ground, his flickering chains seeming to squeeze.
Not that Arkyn so much as looks up, his attention wholly on the page he just landed on.
“Ahh, yes. Here you gave her a trinket of your love. Then she fucked you.” He clicks his tongue three times, shaking his head.
“Disgraceful, given she was promised to our brother.”
The words clang in my ears.
With quiet violence, things begin slotting into place. Building something too painful to look at.
Too devastating.
“To think he bound with her thinking she was untouched.”
I jerk from the sunken memories of a male moving inside me. Not Kaan.
Someone else.
Somewhere cold. Familiar. Regally ornamented, the sky beyond the window heavy with luminous moons—
A sound slips up my throat.
“I know,” Arkyn drawls, shaking his head. “So much for family values.” Again, he flicks the page. “Believe it or not, it gets even more interesting. Here, our dear pah discovered your affair.” His attention spears at Kaan, now parchment pale as he stares into the shadows of his brother’s hood.
All the confirmation I need to know this is new to him. That he wasn’t aware.
Arkyn shrugs, looking down again. “Seems you weren’t careful enough, brother.”
Kaan sits statue still, a haunted look in his eyes that won’t meet mine.
Never have I wanted them on me more. Have I wanted to surge forward, wrap my arms around him, and hold tight. Tell him we’re in this together. That we’ll get through this together. Because we have to.
Because—
Something small, soft, and wet is tucked snug against my chest, squirming, nuzzling my breast.
I drop my head and kiss a sodden tuft of white hair. White, like—
Someone’s.
Someone I loved. Except this love is different. A love that eclipses all the rest, blazing in my chest like a wild flame—
“Blah, blah, ‘he told me Kaan is not fit to rule a kingdom and unworthy of a crown,’” Arkyn drones, ripping me from the memory like pulling a bone from its socket.
“To which Elluin spat in his face and spoke some trop about choosing her own king or nothing at all. Things escalated, he tortured her, threatened our sister. Threatened you, yada, yada. ‘I felt fear like I’ve never felt before—’ Ahh, yes.
Here we are.” Arkyn clears his throat, like he’s preparing to pass a speech to a crowd.
Part of me already knows what he’s going to say. As though the words are etched on my heart and soul. Threaded through the marrow of my bones.
Have been for a long time—since I woke in my cell beneath this mountain so many phases ago—just waiting for the dust to be blown free.
My face is already crumbling, heart breaking as Arkyn recites straight from the page: “‘He said that if I left the next rise to prepare for the binding ceremony, he’d offer Slátra safe passage back to Arithia. Alternatively, he’d leave her hutch unguarded as I’m dragged across the plains, and I’d be forced to watch her kill herself trying to follow me home.
Then he got real close and looked at me like he could see straight through my skull.
Told me he’d been informed that my bleeding is late—something I hadn’t considered until that very moment. ’”
Kaan makes a dense sound, like he just got punched in the gut.
“‘He said this is the only way my youngling will have a chance at life. That if Tyroth believes he sired the small seed apparently growing in my belly, all will be well. Otherwise, there will be nowhere Kaan and I can hide where they won’t find us. They’ll hunt us down for this filthy dishonor we’ve bestowed upon our families. ’”
Kaan finally meets my gaze as twin tears slip down his cheeks. As my own loosen.
He stares at me with eyes that bear a crushing amount of pain, the pile already sitting on my chest now growing too heavy to breathe beneath. Because I already know the outcome. Already know how this ends.
With Kaan not knowing he had a daughter now caged in the same cell I lived in for phases. A beautiful daughter—raised by his younger brother in The Shade’s decorated capital—whom I hugged and cradled moments ago without knowing she was mine.
Ours.
A daughter … born of our undying love, into a world that’s left her beaten, broken, barely clinging to life. Into a world that’s failed her.
Just like I’ve failed her, by not listening to Kaan. Not letting him tell me the “important truths” I so desperately wanted to avoid.
By cowering from my past—
“In the next entry, Elluin leaves a note in her lover’s sleep space, telling him Tyroth is the more gifted Sire. A better fit for her to breed strong young.” Arkyn huffs out a laugh, glancing at Kaan. “Can’t argue that.”
I feel the cold spill of my Other shifting.
Rising.
Listening.
“I have Kyzari in Raeve’s old cell,” he continues, lifting his hand to flex his fingers into a ball, “and she broke like a twig beneath my fist—no doubt because she’s got your weak blood diluting my Fire Lark’s. As we speak, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s pulling her final breaths.”
Kaan’s muffled roar shakes the air. Gnashing like a caged beast, he thrashes against his chains, more blood painting his skin in slow, dribbling strokes.
I don’t roar. Don’t speak a single word.
Instead, I go deathly silent—a river that just cut a path into The Shade and solidified. A quiet ferocity injecting through my veins … or perhaps it was always there. Waiting.
Knowing.
My essence shifts around it, sharpens. Forges me into something that should frighten me, given the urges now wrestling with my heartstrings, stretching them long and tight enough to anchor the thumping organ.
I’m not frightened. All I feel is cold-blooded rage.
“Then Elluin leaves for Arithia, destined to perish on her birthing pallet moments after she pushes Kyzari from her womb, spouting words about her undying love for you.” Arkyn looks up from the page, straight at Kaan still battling himself bloody against chains so tight they’re creating deep grooves in his flesh, making his veins look like they’re about to burst. “Don’t worry, brother.
She tried to run from me, too.” He tsks. “I’m sensing a pattern here.”
Though the words hit, they’re blunt. Impervious to the sheets of armor shifting over my heart, my own pain becoming a small, silent thing in the wake of Kaan’s agony and the knowledge that our daughter is suffering in my cell.
Perhaps moving through her final moments without us there to hold her tight.
To comfort her.