Chapter Forty-Four #2
“Ronan killed your father. You can’t imagine how I felt when I heard it. The news was so hard to come by in the mines. I didn’t know for months what had happened to your brother and sister. I prayed every day for their protection. He killed your father, Sylvara. My Lysander. How could you?”
I eye Seth nervously, silently begging him not to say anything.
“It isn’t like you think,” he begins, and all of the color drains from my face.
Please don’t do this.
Seth shakes his head, turning from me to Mother, his beloved Mother, and in this moment, I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anyone.
“It was a duel, Mother. Father requested it. They fought up on that hilltop.” He looks at me, his face unreadable.
I seethe in response. “And Father lost. It was a fair fight, a fair loss.”
I keep my own expression neutral, mirroring his, but inside, I’m screaming with gratitude. Maybe after everything we’ve been through, I can truly count on Seth.
“You’re so fucking na?ve. I’ve never believed that. General Sullius never returned. We can never know that. Unless you learned it from your lover.” Adria spits the word like it’s made of acid. “Mother, he’s as lost as she is. You were right.”
Mother turns to Seth now, regarding him with the same coldness. Seth flinches under her gaze. “They tell me Ronan took that Orsa of his as a guard, and that you were found living with him?”
“In the same house,” Seth says, his ears going red. “Not with him. Not like that.”
“You shared a house with an Orsa, and we’re supposed to be grateful that you weren’t fucking him?”
Seth and I look at each other, shocked to hear the words from our mother’s mouth.
Adria pulls herself up, her back stretching with sanctimonious anger. “Gods, they’re still children. Look at them blushing like they’ve been caught with their hands in the sweets basket. You both betrayed us. Your family, your people. If I had my way, I’d put your heads on spikes tonight.”
Mother stands finally, and we all stand up with her.
“I must confess, I had hoped you sister was wrong about you, Sylvara.
I understood her anger, but I had hoped there was some explanation for it.
Maybe you had realized a flaw in her plans and had made some of your own.
Maybe you had taken after me and learned to keep things secret for the greater good, even when it hurt you to do so.
Or maybe he had taken you against your will. Maybe you were a prisoner, like I was.
“And Seth, I believed for some time that you were too. We spent months trying to find you. We scoured Selara and Nithyria. We even had Felix searching Brakkar. I was terrified you’d ended up somewhere like I did.
I didn’t believe it when they found you.
I swore they were mistaken, that someone had disguised themselves as you, that you must have been in chains.
“But now I see the truth. And yet I still cannot let you go. You are my children.” Her voice catches, and when she lifts her hand to her cheek to wipe away a tear, I begin to cry as well. “You cannot imagine what I have done to return to you. I will not give up on you so easily.”
“Mother,” says Seth miserably, a tear in the corner of his eye. “Please. I’ve missed you so much. It doesn’t have to be like this. You know another war is coming. There’s still time. We can negotiate; you have us now, and Ronan will do anything to get her back—”
“Oh, we’re counting on that,” says Adria, her expression smug. “It’s a little delayed, but thank you for finally enabling me to do what I was trying to do last fall. What you ruined.”
“You will be held here in the palace. But after what you managed the first time Sylvara was held captive, there will be other precautions. You’ll have to forgive me, but I couldn’t have you using your magic against us.”
I reach for my shadows, suddenly feeling their absence. There’s nothing there at all. It’s like I’ve been drained of my magic, only I feel no exhaustion.
“The wine?” asks Seth, reaching the same conclusion. We’ve been poisoned with the anti-magic elixir.
“From what they told me when I stepped out, you were quite busy tonight. But you missed one of our stockpiles: the one here in the palace.” My stomach lurches.
They still have anti-magic elixirs to use against Ronan and his legions.
“Although the tincture I gave you was from my personal supply. Anti-shadow is quite a rarity, but I’m told you have some sort of power that I couldn’t risk finding out about the hard way.
Coming by a light-born wasn’t easy. In all my time, I’ve only found one.
A fellow slave who helped me in Brakkar. ”
“And you repaid her by stealing her blood to use against your own daughter.” She stands there crying, telling us that she won’t give up on us, and yet she poisoned us. She refused to listen to us. She’s planning to kill my husband—
Fuck, I can’t believe I just thought that. I don’t have the right to think of him as my husband still.
Godsdammit, I miss him so much it’s tearing me apart.
She’s planning to kill Ronan, and she won’t stop there.
Mother’s lips press into a thin line. “I repaid her by freeing her at great personal risk. I repaid her by bringing her here with me. And I will repay her once more when we take Brakkar and the heads of all of those who wronged us.”