9. Scotlind
NINE
SCOTLIND
My mouth dropped.
The rebellion. Tezya brought me to the rebellion. The same rebellion he had destroyed over and over again by the King’s orders. “I don’t understand. The stories—they said you left the battlefield in ashes.”
“I did leave it in ashes. It was just never Advenian ashes.”
“So, you never killed them? Any of them?”
“I have killed, Rumor. But I try not to.”
“How? How did you do it?” Because the size of this camp… There were thousands of men here. Even more women and children.
“Anytime the rebellion started up again, my orders were to kill everyone. The Lux King didn’t want anyone left alive, even for questioning, so I made sure that’s what everyone thought happened. If thousands of soldiers believed all the rebels died, no one gave what I was doing a second thought.”
“How does everyone think you killed them, though?”
“It would start off like a normal battle,” Tezya said. “Men would die. Rebels would die. My soldiers died. Brock and Rainer would help me locate whoever was leading the attack as quickly as possible. Once we did, I would fight their commander, not to kill, but I’d make it long enough to give me the opportunity to talk with them. If they refused to hear me out, I’d compel them without anyone seeing.”
“You compelled them?” I was still trying to wrap my head around him having compulsion—but to know he regularly used it…
“Yes.” He was staring at me, giving me time to process everything, not saying anything else until I was ready.
“Isn’t that risky?” I finally asked. “Having people know you have a dark ability?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But if they refused to speak with me I would’ve had to kill them, so I thought it was worth the risk.”
I tried to not let it bother me—that Tezya told rebels he was fighting against the truth about him, but not me. It was stupid, jealous even. What he was saying only proved he was a good person, that he put others before himself, and here I was finding a way to turn it around to be about me. I hated it, hated that I kept doing it…
I also hated that I couldn’t get past the fact that he had compulsion. It was wrong. I knew I didn’t only feel that way because of my past. I hated the ability to my core. I hated knowing Tezya possessed it, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around how he was able to hide it from everyone so easily, especially if rebels now knew inside the camp.
“I’d compel them without anyone seeing, Rumor,” he said, like he knew where my thoughts went. “Not even Brock or Rainer saw me use it, and it was only to get them to hear me out. Then I’d compel them to forget I was half Tennebrisian, but that was all I’d ever done. I never once forced anyone to come here. I couldn’t risk bringing anyone here until I knew they wouldn’t cause harm to the camp or to the people who already lived here. So I’d make their leaders hear me out, then I’d explain what the camp was. I would try to convince them to come with me. Most took a long time to persuade, sometimes forcing us to battle for days. They usually thought I was leading them into a trap, and with all the rumors about me, it was easy to believe.”
He shook his head as if remembering moments of battle. “So we did fight—for days, sometimes weeks—but once they agreed, I would orchestrate a fake defeat. I called my men back. They thought it just meant the end of the battle, my finishing move. Once we were two halves, split down the middle, I’d call my flames to form a wall so high and thick, the soldiers couldn’t see through it. They couldn’t see Kallon creating a portal. It would take hours to do it, sometimes an entire day, draining Kallon of all her magic in order to get the remaining men out and safely into Brighta. I tried my best to keep the flames contained, but in order to block out what she was doing, the fire had to be large. By the time she finished, I usually burned through many trees and bushes. The soldiers thought I was just taking my time killing them slowly. They call it the bonfire .”
“The women and children? Were they a part of the rebellion? Were they fighting too?”
He shook his head. “No. Some train now, but it’s by choice. They never fought in the original battles. Once I returned from the fight, the King would order me to kill the families of the deceased rebels. He didn’t want anyone alive who had thoughts of demolishing the current ranking system. It didn’t matter to him if it was a helpless infant, he wanted everyone dead. So Kallon and I would portal the families through, faking their deaths, while pretending we killed them.”
My gut twisted at thinking back to all the kids I saw in the camp. All the children the King ordered Tezya to murder. Relief washed through me. Tezya never killed them. It was the one part of him that never fit. I couldn’t make sense of someone hating the system, hating the King, hating how our society operated, but then following through on orders to make sure it continued to thrive.
“So what is everyone doing here?”
“Waiting, training, living their lives in the meantime. It’s always been our plan to fight back, but we aren’t ready yet. Our numbers are good, a match against Lux and Tennebris if needed, but we don’t have the level of experience the soldiers in Lux have. The demands the King puts on me to train them so thoroughly… I tried to mimic it here, but they just don’t have the stamina and many of the civilians just want to live in peace. Most of the Advenians at this camp are made up of zeroes, ones, and twos. There are higher ranks among them, but not as many as I would have liked, and despite knowing Advenians are capable of fighting with little to no powers, I can’t deny that it helps to use abilities. The Luxian army is bred of only fours and fives. They’re the strongest men in Lux and training is all they’ve ever known.”
“You said you aren’t ready yet, what do you mean?” I asked.
“We just started a war, Rumor.”
“Because of Sie? Because we rescued him?”
“Yes. You, Peter, Sie… the King isn’t stupid. It started the day I broke you and Peter out. He knows what we declared by leaving.”
“I didn’t mean for it—”
“You didn’t,” he interrupted. “The war isn’t because of you or Sie, even if you were the catalyst. It was bound to happen sooner or later. With Sie off the Tennebrisian throne, the Lux King plans to manipulate and control the Dark Kingdom. Synder doesn’t have a real claim to power, so he’d allow it if it meant he got to wear the crown. He’s too daft to realize he would never be the one in control. The Lux King is already one step closer to getting what he wants.”
“Which is what?”
“Everything. He wants everything. Do you remember me telling you he plans to take over the humans when we visited Florida for the first time together?”
I nodded.
“He wants to keep the ranking system the way it is. He doesn’t want people to challenge it, but it’s more than that. With the way it’s set up now, the strong rule. In Lux, no one questions his authority. His bloodline has been ruling since our kind lived on Allium. The Council members are selected by him , and they’re all rank fives who agree with his ideologies. He has the strongest army out of the two kingdoms. But it’s not enough for him. He wants this world . He wants to take over the humans. He wants land, to expand, to be the singular ruler of the entire planet.”
“But the humans overpopulate us,” I said, recalling our history. It was why our kind resigned to hiding in the first place. I hadn’t comprehended how small we were in comparison until I went to the mortal territory with Tezya. I was blown away by how many humans I saw and that was just one area, one tiny blip on the planet. I remembered the maps we were shown during Human Relation lectures back in LakeWood… There was no way he could pull it off.
“I know, but he’s been working with Arcane, developing serums that, if they succeed, could be utilized for mass compulsion. It’s another reason he wanted Sie off the throne. He needs to control the Dark Kingdom, and Sie was too strong for the court. He never would have been able to do it during his rule, but now…”
“Synder is ruling,” I finished for him.
“Which means the King is really the one ruling.” Tezya took another step toward me, and I realized how close we were standing. I was so engulfed in our conversation, in the casualness of it—despite the horrible topic—that I forgot things were different. I looked down at my palm. My scab from Tezya was still raised and prominent. The one from Sie was hidden beneath—a thin, white scar, barely visible, but it still left its mark. A mark that would never leave. It would always be a part of me. They both would.
I closed my fist. “Do you think Arcane will figure out a way to develop a compulsion serum?”
“It’s likely,” Tezya said. “He was successful with making Alluse serums. His next task was making a serum out of you. You’re the only living enhancement user, and the Lux King has an obsession for seeking power. It’s his only weakness. It makes him predictable. He sees you as a tool to become stronger now. He planned on keeping you chained at his side, forcing you to constantly use enhancement on his abilities. But if there was a way to harness your blood, that all he had to do was use a serum and become stronger—”
I thought back to the week I was chained to the King’s side and a chill ran through me. Arcane sampled my blood every day, but at the time, I had no idea what it was for. The exhaustion of constantly using my enhancement on the King was getting to me, how I was forced to follow him everywhere, his sick nickname for me… pet.
Tezya stopped speaking for a moment, assessing me. “If Arcane pulled that off,” he started again slowly. “If he found a way to do that with your blood, he’d easily be able to make compulsion serums. Yours would be the most complicated because he would have to alter your powers. You can only enhance others, not yourself, and the King seeks to reserve that. He wants to drink the serum and have it make his abilities stronger, not others.”
It dawned on me then. “The King was using me as a trial before having Arcane work on a compulsion user? And if he got a serum that made himself stronger in the process, it would have been a win-win.”
“Yes. Why do you think he’s kept Kole around?”
Kole. A compulsion user. He was going to use him to create a mass serum, and Tennebris willingly handed the Lux King everything he needed. I always thought it was weird he was treated with respect in the opposing kingdom, but now everything was coming together. And Kole had no idea he was just livestock the King was waiting to slaughter.
“So like I said, it’s not because of you that this war started. It started years ago. It’s just now coming to head. But we have the advantage of surprise if we attack first. The King will believe we’re a small group. He doesn’t realize the vastness of the camp. He has no idea I saved everyone he ordered me to kill.”
Only then did I realize I was standing in the middle of a camp with thousands of rank zero sympathizers—and not just that, they didn’t like the way everyone was treated, they wanted a better world—they were ready to attack the King, ready to protect the mortals, ready to change the system. Ready to do everything I ever wanted.
I was standing in the middle of the rebellion, and the Lux King had no idea what was coming for him.
Bells clanged throughout the camp.
“Dinner,” Tezya said, noting my confusion. “We can check on Sie first if you’d like. Then, it’s time for you to meet the rebels.”