Chapter Thirteen #2
Our older sister twists her wrist and ignites a flame, illuminating her face in long, flickering shadows as I fight to extinguish it.
The shadows settle into the faint lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes, and with her blonde hair pulled back, she looks so much like Father that I almost lose my grip on my magic in surprise.
She flicks her wrist again, and another flame ignites. “I’ve been fighting all day with barely any magic required. Are we going to keep wasting our time with this nonsense, or are you going to let me see you before I burn this tent to the ground?”
“Adria, I told you, these are my prisoners—”
“Shut your mouth before I shut it for you,” she says, using her flame to walk towards Seth. Behind him, Taran prepares the ice shard.
I raise the shadow to let Taran see his target. I had few qualms about Taran taking out Seth.
I have none about him taking out Adria.
But she’s faster than him. Without warning, Adria tosses her flame at the ice, shattering it in a spray of steam and sleet. Taran backs away from the sudden explosion, and this time, he doesn’t create another icicle.
Against two fire-born and in chains, there’s little we can do.
Adria gives Seth one of her most scathing looks. It’s a look I know well. “You didn’t even bother to drain his magic?”
“I was getting around to it—”
“Idiot. What are these bandages? Did you even torture him for information?”
Seth pulls himself up and tries to look somewhat intimidating, but it’s minimally effective.
He’s taller and larger than Adria, but the amount of visible muscle on them is roughly equal.
And I know for a fact she can still best him in a fight.
“He can hardly give us much information if he dies of a festering wound. Like I said, I was getting around to it. I’ve been busy. You wanted the camp moved, remember?”
“You were supposed to be outside Faros days ago. I’m surrounded by morons.” She slaps her forehead. “Give me the key. I’ll be taking them both.”
I look at Seth, pleading with him to keep me here. To keep us here. Adria is going to torture us. Seth is probably also going to torture us, but at least with him, there’s a chance he’ll forget.
“No,” says Seth simply.
“No?” Adria laughs, coming closer to him. “Give me the fucking key right now.”
“Or what? You’ll have me tortured? These are my prisoners. I caught them. You let her get away.”
“How fucking dare you,” says Adria, shoving him.
To his credit, Seth barely moves. “I have done EVERYTHING for this family, and this is the thanks I get from the two of you.” She turns towards me, and Taran steps instinctively in the way.
“What did she say to you, Seth? Did she tell you that Ronan is just a lost, sad puppy who needs a home? Did she tell you that he’ll give you all the love I wouldn’t give if you get down on your knees for him? ”
Taran’s back stiffens, the ice reaching his fingertips again.
“Don’t even fucking try it,” says Adria, flinging fire at Taran that he narrowly dodges.
“My tent!” says Seth as it ignites behind Taran.
It takes both Taran’s water and my shadow to extinguish the flame.
“What did she say to you?!” screams Adria.
Seth tilts his head towards her, unfazed by her anger.
“She gave me information, and she did it willingly to keep me from hurting him. It’s called leverage, darling sister.
” He runs his fingers over his desk right on the spot where he cut off the brute’s hand.
“I’ll do what I have to do to get her to talk.
And then I’ll do the same to her to get him to talk.
Ask yourself this: who do you think they’re more willing to talk to? Me, or you?”
Adria seethes, her blonde hair slipping from its bun as her shoulders heave with anger. “Information?” she finally asks through her teeth, gritting them just the same way Seth did.
“About Ronan’s griffin forces.”
A lie. I didn’t tell Seth anything about Kira, and Ronan has no other griffins, although he did think of trying to catch more.
Seth is lying to her for me. Or for himself, more likely, but it benefits us both.
Adria looks at all of us, weighing her options.
She needs Seth—his people will likely follow her, but they’re loyal to him and accustomed to his command, and as much as she’d like to, she can’t command our tens of thousands of soldiers on her own.
And though she outranks him, if she pisses him off, he’s likely to make her life even more difficult than he already does.
And as much as she’d like to murder me for what I’ve done, I’m certain she can see the value in the information I have. She had planned to torture it out of me herself before killing me. If Seth does it, it saves her some trouble, although it would also cost her some satisfaction.
“You have one day,” she says finally.
“A day? I need at least a week—”
“One. Day.”
“Five.”
She slams her hand on his desk, forcing some of his wine to shoot from his bottle and onto the stack of papers collected on the top. “This is not a negotiation!”
Seth frantically mops up the spill, his jaw twitching. “These are the orders for your legions.”
“It’s just some fucking wine!”
Taran takes a seat on his cot, shaking his head and looking at me with sympathy.
I give him a look that says, you see what I had to grow up with?
“You’ll give me a week because I’m going to have to spend all night rewriting these orders.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sakes,” says Adria, snatching the orders from him but then returning them to the desk when she sees that they truly are ruined.
“I’m so sick of hearing your stupid fucking voice.
And I can’t take one more second looking at her traitorous face.
Take your week. But if you don’t get something useful out of them by the end of it, I’m killing them. ”
“No issues for me there,” he says, holding up his hands and smirking at his victory.
“You’re a fucking liar, and a bad one at that. I know you’re soft for her just like Larus. She isn’t a baby anymore, Seth.”
This is such a gross mischaracterization of our relationship that I can’t help but laugh. “He’s going to torture me, and you think that’s because he cares too much about me?”
But then I wonder if there’s something to what she said. He could have tortured me by now, easily. He could have hurt Taran.
But he hasn’t. He’s threatened us, but he hasn’t hurt us.
Could it be that somewhere deep down, Seth is more like me than her?
But then I remember what he really wants, and how he’ll use me to get it.
Adria strides over to me, yanking the chains that hold my wrists and pulling me to my feet.
Her eyes are filled with hatred, her expression sneering and cruel.
She flickers a flame into her palm and holds it an inch from my face as I try to escape her grasp.
“If you’d prefer, I could kill you right now. Just ask, and I’ll do it.”
Taran rises to his feet, and Adria flings the flame at him. It hits him square in the chest, but his water magic shields the worst of the damage.
Then she ignites the flame once more and presses it to my sword hand.
I scream from the agony, and Seth jumps to his feet as Taran’s water snuffs it out.
“Keep your fucking distance, or I’ll kill all three of you,” shouts Adria.
She turns to Seth as I yank my burned hand away from her, the charred flesh stinging and sending jolts of pain deep under my skin.
“They need leg irons, you idiot, and you should keep them separately so they can’t help each other. ”
Seth rolls his eyes. “Yes, your highness. Are you finished? I have a lot of writing to do.”
Adria turns back to me. For a moment, her expression softens.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” she says.
She tucks a strand of my hair back behind my ear as I flinch away from her.
“The thing I’ll miss the most about you is seeing Mother’s face.
You look so much like her.” Then she snatches her hand back suddenly, and her eyes turn cold.
“But you aren’t Mother. Make this week count.
The next time I see you, it will be the last.”
Just before she leaves the tent, she turns back to Seth. “I want those orders before midnight,” she says, and then she’s gone with nothing but charred and wine-stained ruins to mark her presence.
“What a fucking mess,” says Seth, sorting through the stack of papers with something like genuine grief.
His evening has well and truly been ruined, but I find it just a little difficult to find any sympathy for him as my eyes fill with tears from the pain of the burn.
Taran comes over, but his chains won’t let him reach my bed.
I hold out my hand to him, shaking, and he presses water to it gently.
The cool touch of his magic is immediately soothing. “Aloe,” he says to Seth.
Seth doesn’t stop his sorting, trying desperately to find something that can be salvaged. “What was that?” he mutters.
“She needs aloe,” says Taran, his voice taking on the commanding tone of the leader of the Royal Guard. General Taran Orinsen, Ronan’s second in command, is making an order. “For her burn.”
And for his own. His shirt is singed, and a black mark is visible on his pale skin near his tattoo. The Orsan tattoo that marks him as water-born, a symbol I once despised and now am eternally grateful for.
“Oh,” says Seth absently. We’re beneath his concern at the moment. He reaches into the drawer and finds the bottle, tossing it to Taran. “Here.”
Then he tosses the willow bark bottle too. “For the pain.”
What the fuck.
After all of that about torturing us, he’s just letting us treat the wounds Adria gave us?
I look at Taran as he helps me with my hand. How did he know Seth would help us? “Your family,” he mouths, shaking his head as he touches the aloe to his own chest, “is seriously screwed up.”
“I know,” I mouth back.