River of Lavender (Allium #3)

12. Scotlind

TWELVE

SCOTLIND

Kallon portaled Dovelyn and Rainer back yesterday, and apparently Tezya thought it was still a good idea for her to train me.

I was dreading it. Dovelyn didn’t like me on a good day, but now—when Brock was still somewhere in Lux—it wasn’t going to be pretty. And to make matters worse, I was already late.

I followed the handwritten directions Kallon had sketched for me earlier today. But her drawing skills were almost as bad as Peter’s, and her map was illegible. I’d been walking in circles all morning. It didn’t help that all the tents looked identical. Tezya offered to walk me, and now I was regretting being stubborn and saying I could do it on my own.

I looked back down at the map in question. I was supposed to meet Dovelyn toward the back of the camp at the opposite end of the training rings.

When I finally made it past the clearing of trees, I halted. Dovelyn was sitting against the corner of a tent—there was only one in the area. Her legs were pulled tightly into her chest as she sobbed into her knees.

Behind the lone tent were open fields. I could just glimpse one of the border control towers—from Kallon’s map there were supposedly twelve—but that was it. There was nothing else here.

I stood there awkwardly, unsure if I should leave. I waited a good minute before deciding to do just that. I turned to walk back the same way I came.

“You don’t have to go.” Her voice came out in jumbled sobs before I even managed to take a step. Of course she already knew I was here.

“I’m sorry about Brock,” I offered. I was upset when they arrived without him. He was quiet and the most closed off out of Tezya’s friends, but he was also the kindest. If Brock was still with the Lux King, it was because of me—because of the assembly…

The moment Kallon portaled in without him, Dovelyn used her ability and made herself invisible. Rainer sobbed as he choked on his words while Kallon kept whispering it wasn’t his fault, and everything was going to be okay.

But it wasn’t.

I thought back to Tezya’s punishment, about how cruel and sadistic it was, and that was only because Tezya kept information from him. The King did that to his own son, or at least someone he still believed was his son. I didn’t want to think about how enraged he’d be now that we were all gone. We openly committed a crime against the kingdom by freeing not only me and Peter—who were considered his property—but now Sie too. And on top of that, his own children were the ones who did it. I doubted he’d hold back with Brock, and it broke a piece of me. I couldn’t imagine how Dovelyn was feeling. I kept envisioning how I would feel if it was Tezya left behind…

Besides him offering to walk me and telling me my training with Dovelyn was still on, I hadn’t seen Tezya all morning, and I found myself wondering how he was holding up. I knew it was killing him .

Dovelyn wiped her eyes once, then stood. “Me too.”

To my surprise, she didn’t say anything else and started training me.

I could sense her abilities as I reached my enhancement out to her. We worked with invisibility first, and by nightfall, I managed to turn a quarter of the camp invisible for an entire minute. Dovelyn explained she normally made shields within a thirty foot radius. Unless she was working with other air users, it was easier to make multiple smaller shields than one larger one.

“That’s enough for today,” she panted. I wanted to fight her on it and beg her to keep going. I wanted to make the entire camp disappear and for more than just a minute. I needed to master my abilities so I could be an asset. I didn’t want my inexperience to be a reason I was left out again.

But I didn’t push it. I knew what was behind her sullen face and little words. She was distraught and emotionally drained. A pang of guilt sprang through me as I realized she worked with me in silence, only speaking when absolutely necessary, which was unlike her.

“Thank you for training me,” I said as I turned to leave. “I know I’m not your favorite person, but I appreciate it.”

“I don’t hate you,” she replied, surprising me.

I seriously doubted that statement. I raised an eyebrow as I turned around to face her again. “You don’t?”

She shook her head softly. “No.”

“Right,” I huffed a laugh.

“You terrify me.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”

“Because I see what you can do to my brother. I love him with all my heart, and I will always pick him over anyone else. If I had to sacrifice everyone in the camp to save him, I would. But I see the way he looks at you… I see the way he loves you. You should talk with him. Hear what he has to say. ”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you have the opportunity to be with the person you love, and you’re wasting it. It infuriates me. Back in Lux, Brock and I could never be together. We both knew it. He’s a rank four, and I’m a five. But even if we were the same rank, my father never would have allowed it out of spite. It was the same for Tezya. He never would have been able to be with you if you stayed there.” I nodded, knowing the King arranged his engagement to Kallon, even though I hated it. “But my brother always planned on getting you out. Tezya’s a dreamer to a fault. He was working on a way to fake your death, to safely get you away from my father without raising questions and risking the camp. He planned on bringing you here. He was going to tell you about all of this when the time was right. But seeing you at dinner that night, chained to my father, it did something to him. He acted rashly. We lost our element of surprise because of it.”

I didn’t move, scared if I did it would bring her out of her uncharacteristic candor.

“I know what that feels like,” she continued, “to love someone so desperately, to be forced to see that person every day, but never have them. It’s not something I wanted for my brother. So I tried to stop it before he developed feelings for you. I didn’t think his plan would work. I didn’t think he’d be able to get you out. Not with my father’s new obsession with you now that he knows you have the capability to make him stronger.” She wiped at her nose. The tip of it was bright red. “But now, that doesn’t matter. The people in this camp may look at Tezya like he is their prince, but he won’t act on it. He will lead them, but he has no interest in politics.”

“And what does he have an interest in?” I asked.

“You.” She paused to look at me. Her silver eyes were biting and restless. “You are free to be together. Once this war starts, that’s one of the things these people will fight for. Freedom. Freedom to do what they please. Freedom to love who they want. If we win, you two can be together for good. So don’t punish him because he didn’t fully open up to you. I would have thought that you of all people would understand him, could relate to the sheer terror it takes to reveal something so ingrained in you to keep locked away. He wanted to tell you he was from both kingdoms, but I convinced him to wait. I forced him not to open up until after he brought you here. I’m the reason he didn’t let you in.”

“Everyone makes their own choices in the end,” was all I could think to say, but my mind was whirling. I could understand the need to keep secrets hidden, how revealing something that big wasn’t done lightly. I never had the opportunity to open up to Tezya because he witnessed my entire life on the monitor screens when I was brought into Lux. Would I have been able to tell him all my secrets if he hadn’t already seen them, or would I have struggled to open up after so many years of forcing it down?

“What did I overhear that day when you were in his room?” I asked her, hoping her willingness to confess everything would last.

She sighed loudly, pausing long enough I thought she wouldn’t answer. “I have visions,” she admitted and even the wind stilled. I assumed that was her second power—she brought it up during the conversation I overheard in Lux and then again outside the trench—but I was so mad at the time, I never questioned it.

“My powers manifested at a young age,” she continued. “I was foolish and didn’t know how to interpret them yet. My father has always been cruel, and as you can imagine, our childhood wasn’t a pleasant one. Once he realized I possessed more than just an air ability, he started treating me differently. I no longer got punished alongside my brothers. Instead, I got to sit in on his meetings. I was flaunted about, put on a pedestal. I yearned for his approval when I was younger so I told him everything I saw. I couldn’t control the visions that came to me. I still can’t to this day. I randomly see flashes of images. Sometimes I can make sense of them, sometimes I can’t.

“I saw you decades before you were born. The girl with the unique back markings. At first that’s all I saw, just bits of your early life in Lux. I had no idea why you kept showing up, but I knew you were important. Something in my gut told me to never tell my father about the visions I had of you, so I kept you a secret. My visions are usually lone occurrences, small glimpses into the future before it happens, but you were the only thing I kept seeing over and over again. I spent years searching the library, trying to find the meaning of your back markings, looking through our records to see if you were born yet, but you weren’t.

“Then I started getting visions of my younger brother. I saw golden markings covering his skin. Tezya was only twenty-five when they started. I didn’t want to believe it. I loved my brother, but the images of him terrified me. What the prophecy showed me in my visions… I knew it was bad. So I went to our mother, who was kind and nothing like our father. She loved us, and I knew I could trust her with it.

“That’s when I learned the truth about him, that he was both Luxian and Tennebrisian. Only my mother wasn’t surprised. Tezya and her already knew what he was and what it meant. But we never told him about the bad visions, at least not at first. My brother never really believed in the prophecy, but I couldn’t shake this feeling that my visions of you were entwined with him somehow.”

Tears pooled down her face. “My mother, knowing what I saw, knowing the full truth, began to go insane. She loved us all dearly, but Tezya was special to her. She hated our father just as much as we did, if not more. Arcane and I are his heirs, but Tezya was brought into this life with a male she once loved from Tennebris. She wanted to protect him.” She paused, stifling a sob. “Then one day, she had some of my mind wiped by a compulsion user. She took away the visions I had of him and the prophecy.

“To this day, I still don’t know what I saw. The only thing I know now is whatever fate awaits him isn’t a good one. Our mother took her life a year later because of it, leaving only a letter behind, telling me to always protect him. She thought with her death, the prophecy would die with it. Only I had another vision. I saw her die. I watched it.” She inhaled. “In the vision, she came to Brighta first. Tezya and I didn’t even know the camp existed until after everything happened. Then, I watched her take her own life right before she sealed her grave in her blood. I made the mistake of telling Tezya that I believed the Goddesses were showing it to me for a reason. That I thought it meant the key to the prophecy was buried with her.”

Her glossy eyes found mine. “Then I had a vision of you again. I hadn’t had one in decades, and with everything going on with my family, I forgot about the girl I used to see. It was clear as day, exactly as I’m seeing you now. I saw you marry the Dark Prince, and I got an idea. I knew my father was restless. I knew he wanted to kill whoever the prophecy was about. He doesn’t like anything lingering that could threaten his rule. We all grew up knowing the bare details of it—that a boy born from both kingdoms would destroy the current systems.

“I knew if my father ever discovered who Tezya really was, he would chop him to bits and spread the remains of him until there was nothing left. I was so scared for his life. I couldn’t lose him. I just couldn’t… not after the death of our mother, so I lied. I finally told my father about the visions I had of you. Only I didn’t tell him the full truth. I made him believe you and Sie would conceive the chosen one, that he just wasn’t born yet. I told him about my visions of you two marrying, of a rank five coming to power on the Dark soil. I convinced him to send you there. I helped orchestrate everything .

“I knew what I saw would come to fruition. I knew you two would marry. That all I had to do was get you to the Dark Kingdom. I saw a vision of you two together in a bathroom. I thought you slept with him. The only thing was, I didn’t see everything that happened, only little glimpses of your life.

“I told my father the only way to gain control of Tennebris—which I knew he desperately wanted—was to wait and bide his time. I knew you would be captured eventually, but I thought you’d be pregnant with Sie’s child. I thought the King would kill you and the baby, and he’d never think about the prophecy again. But I read the visions wrong. I didn’t think you and Tezya would ever meet. I never thought you would survive.”

I didn’t know what to say or how to process what she was revealing to me. I just stood there, staring at her, listening to the words coming out of her mouth, but it wasn’t registering yet.

“I feel this guilt when I look at you,” she admitted. “I knew what you were going to face by going to Tennebris, but I sent you anyway. I’m sorry for your pain. I truly am. But by the time you were born, I’d spun so many lies I couldn’t take them back even if I wanted to. My father had your fate sealed the moment you took your first breath.” She paused for a moment, considering. “I am sorry, Scotlind, but I would do it again if it meant that my brother gets to live.”

“You… you planned everything?” I was still stunned, still trying to wrap my head around it.

“Yes.” She no longer had tears running down her face. “My father orchestrated your kidnap. The men that took you were hired assassins my father later had killed after you were in Tennebris. We informed only those who had to know and most that were involved would turn up dead after their task was completed. He would bribe them with gold, have them complete what he wanted, and then send more assassins to murder them after it was done.”

She took a breath as I held mine. “Your counselor was hired too when you first arrived at LakeWood. She was specifically picked for her abilities. She had you compelled to never be able to speak about who you were until you left school. She worked under Synder. Since he was promised the Tennebrisian throne once everything was said and done, he orchestrated everything on their side. It’s why you were chosen for Sie. I told my father every painstaking detail of my visions, and I made them all come true. He listened to everything I told him because I promised him he’d be able to kill the boy the prophecy was about while also getting control of the Dark Throne if he waited long enough.”

“I was taken by Kole. They almost killed us in the warehouse…” I didn’t need to finish before she nodded.

“A vision,” she said as she swiped the snot from her nose again. “That was one I saw clearly. The Lux King had Synder set it up. I knew you two wouldn’t die, but it served as the catalyst to get you discovered. To move things forward. I thought I had the timeline right. I thought you had already slept together. I needed you to be pregnant so he would believe the prophecy was over.”

She knew. She knew I was going to be tortured and almost killed. She knew what haunted me. She caused it.

She caused it all.

“I’m sorry, Scotlind, for everything. But I would do it all again for Tez.”

“Does he know?” I whispered. I was terrified of her answer, terrified to know if the man I was falling for knew everything his sister had done. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think until she spoke next.

She shook her head. “No. Tezya doesn’t know all of that. I told him decades ago about a girl with your back markings. I used to tell my brother everything back then. I wanted to see if he could make sense as to why I was seeing you. I figured he forgot about it. It was nearly a century ago now, but after the day you were brought up from the dungeons, he suspected I had my hands in your fate. We all saw your markings on the monitors. Tezya was livid. He sought me out afterward.

“ He only knows I told the King to send for you, but he suspects some of the rest. After your interrogation, my father was half furious you weren’t pregnant, but half elated it meant we could use you to get Sie off the throne. He punished me for not properly reading my visions, which was proof enough for Tezya that I was involved, because my father hadn’t brought me to the punishment cell for over three decades. Arcane probably goes once a year. It’s only Tezya that he regularly uses it on.”

“You had my parents killed,” I said, my voice was cold and toneless. Everything else she said washed away, and all I could focus on was that one single thing. My parents died the night I was taken.

“I didn’t,” she said as she looked at me with pity. “I didn’t tell them to do that. That was all my father’s doing. I had no idea he was going to kill everyone.”

Everything stilled. I wanted to hit her, to fight her, to scream, to cry, to do something, anything, but I just kept staring at her in disbelief, unsure which emotion was winning. She was the reason for everything . If it wasn’t for her, my parents would still be alive. I would have grown up in Lux as Haevely Sirena. I never would have been Scotlind Rumor. None of this would have happened.

“I don’t expect your forgiveness. I never anticipated having to see you, as you can imagine. My visions never showed me that my brother would fall in love with you, but I see it now.” Her gaze settled on the scab on my palm. “I think the Goddesses gave me the visions of you because it had to happen, all of it. I saw you and Sie together before I even came up with the idea to use you—”

I called to my abilities. I wasn’t sure what I planned to do, but as soon as I felt the familiar sensation of water inside of her, I let myself be consumed by it.

I felt nothing but rage. Her mouth flew open—and I knew she was screaming—but I couldn’t hear it. All that existed was a high ringing in my ears and the need to avenge my parents, avenge what my life could have been, what it should have been…

Every horrible thing I ever went through came crashing through me. I was reliving it all. All the death, all the torture, all the fear…

I felt the draw of water in her bloodstream as I pulled it out. Her shield came up a second later, blocking me from ripping everything out of her until she was nothing more than skin and bones. I wanted to leave her a husk. I wanted her to feel the same hollowed out sensation that was tearing through me.

I watched as sweat poured from her—slow at first and then faster and faster—before her scream finally registered in my ears. I was killing her. I was killing Tezya’s sister—someone he cared about…

It brought me back to reality, and I stopped pushing, letting my powers slowly fade back into me. I blinked as her silver eyes came into focus before she collapsed on the ground.

I stayed there for three seconds, long enough to make sure she was still breathing, before I started running.

I hated everything about Dovelyn, and I probably always would, but I didn’t want her to die. There was a small nagging part in the back of my mind that was grateful. Tezya was alive because of it.

And as angry as I was, I knew I would do it all again.

For him I would.