Chapter 56
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Xenelpha.
—From Lyvia’s list.
“Can anyone hear me?” Carina asked.
My heart continued a thunderous beat as my breathing stopped, and I waited. Waited, and scarcely dared to hope that Bayne’s face might appear in the orb, unsure of how I’d feel if it did. A servant’s head bobbed into view. Her eyes were wide for a moment before she ran from the room.
“Wait!” Carina called.
The face of the queen materialized. My powers surged at the sight of her, a raging chorus echoing with their demand for release. Dark bags sat beneath her exquisite blue eyes.
“Carina?” Queen Antares questioned, her blonde brows pinched. “You’re…in Mount Telum? What’s happened?”
Carina opened her mouth to explain.
The queen cut her off. “It doesn’t matter. Our forces sail to Kayj. The plague that’s spread…the death, the decay. It’s not what we thought. I must go. The king has already left. Don’t use this again. We can’t trust it.”
My stomach pitched as Queen Antares’s face disappeared, and the orb turned opaque again. The glowing, shimmering light returned. Silence cleaved the room as the queen’s words echoed through my mind.
“We must sail to Kayj,” I declared to no one in particular. “It’s time.”
“I can’t send the Rising forces at a moment's notice,” Ronan countered. “We’re scattered. We’ve got a southern host to deal with, and I’ve no word back from those marching back from Stynguard. If I send the Rising forces, we’re left with less than half to protect the city.”
“Then just a few of us will go,” I said, eyeing the others in the room. “The Lotrennians and any willing mages. Whoever wants to stay and guard the city can do so.”
Ronan opened his mouth to respond, but Astraeus’s voice cut through the room.
“The Marisarma fleet will sail with you, Lyvia,” the pirate lord declared from the corner of the dark room.
My brows pinched up as I eyed Astraeus, a tentative piece of my heart softening despite the ringing doubt in my mind.
I wasn’t convinced he offered out of the goodness of his heart.
He’d said as much himself. There wasn’t an ounce of goodness in the man.
He was bound to me in an alliance, bound to protect the innocent, yet something in those words beneath the dungeons… I’m with you. You are not alone...
“And I’ll fly with you,” Olienna said, a note of pride riding her tone. “We need to prepare to leave. Bellators,” she said, turning to me and Nerissa. “A word in private.”
The rest of the group shuffled from the room.
Once the echo of the door shutting died off, she said, “We share a bond as Bellators, a certain connection that allows us to feel one another’s emotions. Based on what I’ve gathered since my freedom, the two of you know this but have figured out how to block it from each other.”
I side-eyed Nerissa, knowing fully well she was as aware of this as I was. “This bond had nothing to do with your parents being soulbound, Nerissa. Soulbinding does not connect your emotions. That power, that connection, was passed down from Kyson.”
I knew by now my emotional connection to Bayne hadn’t been our soulbinding thread. It had been our bond as Bellators.
“Open yourselves up to each other, to me as well. The only way we can defeat the Embodied is by working together, and this innate, shared connection has allowed us to communicate in ways that changed the fate of the War of Ruin. We leave at first light tomorrow.” Olienna’s expression turned serious as she left the room.
“I don’t like her,” Nerissa said after a moment.
“You don’t like anyone,” I countered, glancing at her. The tips of her lips twitched.
“I like my brother on occasion. I tolerate Vulcan and Isla. Sometimes, I like you.”
My lips kicked up in response until my thoughts drifted back to Bayne. “I suppose we should check in with Aquila and Ti. And then with the High Steward before we leave.”
Nerissa rolled her eyes but nodded.
Despite donning Sultiran black, I recognized the pair of Rising soldiers standing outside the late Queen Galena’s quarters. They nodded as I approached and slid open the double doors to the large living chamber.
Evening winter sun, tinged with pink and lavender, shone through the arched windows that lined the curved edge of the room and painted the marble floors like a watercolor canvas.
A large bed sat in the middle, draped with used, soft pink linens and gray furs.
Ronan hadn’t allowed the maids to touch the room once the Death Scholars had removed his sister’s body to ready it for burial.
I recognized the names of those they had brought in, but I had no desire to see them. To allow them to see me. Not after Aeriden and Father Marcus, both of whom were horrified by me, by the shadow I’d become.
My eye caught on a small bassinet on the other side of the bed, a mobile with stars and moons hanging above. I moved to leave when the smallest, softest sound cooed from the opposite corner of the room.
I looked to the source and started as I found Nerissa’s tall form leaning against the wall that curved inward toward the adjoining sitting room.
I joined her and peeked around the armoire to find Ronan, his light, curly hair a mess, dark bags beneath his closed eyes, reclining in a velvet chair.
His curvy lips were parted as he breathed heavily, with his head bent forward.
And there, in his strong arms, was a babe of only a couple months. Tiny and delicate. Fresh.
The babe was awake, his little hands reaching out of the snug blanket Ronan had wrapped around him. A soft snore rolled from Ronan’s throat, and the babe responded with his own heart-melting coo. The tiny hand reached up, fingertips brushing against Ronan’s stubble.
Emotions threatened to surge at the sight of the ex-queensguard and his nephew.
Loss for what might have been, those days in the Lumerians when I thought I’d been falling in love with him. And an envy I didn’t exactly understand. Pain at the words Bayne spoke last year in Rivaner…
We are not the same, chanted often in my mind when I spiraled into a pit of self-doubt, self-hate, and led to the painful conclusion I’d come to over the past year…that I was not enough.
Self-pity gave way to rage as my thoughts flowed… Rage at Queen Antares for her manipulation, disbelief at Bayne for binding himself to her. Anger at him for not believing me, at myself for not pushing harder, for losing something I’d never had.
I watched them for several long moments, when out of nowhere, a tiny sliver of emotion drifted toward me.
Pain… Regret.
I blinked, doing my best to clear my head as I looked at Nerissa, whose skin glimmered with a single tear as it eased its way down her cheek.
I reached for her hand, lacing my fingers in between. She allowed the connection to stay open, and I gently pushed my own feelings back. She knew what I’d lost with Bayne. Her fingers squeezed.
“It was always him,” she breathed, nodding at Ronan.
My throat bobbed as I dipped my chin in acknowledgment. She’d always love Ronan.
“We need to leave,” she murmured after a moment.
I swallowed, continuing to stare at the small babe in Ronan’s arms.
“You could stay,” I whispered back, knowing she didn’t need permission, but feeling as if she might need to hear it.
Nerissa blinked, a few more tears chasing the first down the side of her face. She shook her head, her loose brown hair swaying. “We need each other right now. And Bayne needs us both.”
A surge of warmth swelled in my chest.
I nodded, the truth of her words steeling me. Bayne was a Bellator. He needed us as we needed him.
I replayed the words of Olienna’s prophecy that Nerissa had spoken over a year ago as we climbed the foothills of the Lumerians.
If shadowed and dark,
Death to the Monarch.
Olienna was right. I was shadowed and dark, and Death came to the Monarch of Sultira. The rage that funneled deep into my core, into the chasm that housed the dark and the light, continued to spark like the warrior’s eyes. And I would come for the rest of them.
“Dark King Daimos first. Then Queen Antares.”