CHAPTER 84 ROHAN
ROHAN
Some bargains, once struck, could not be undone. Some crowns, once passed, were gone.
A signature in purple ink. Rohan’s fingerprints immortalized beside it in his own blood. The entire process recorded. No good would ever come of claiming such a thing had been signed under duress. A Proprietor who could lose the upper hand to that extent was no Proprietor at all.
“It’s done,” Zella said, once he’d passed the paper back through the gaps in the blades.
Rohan closed his fingers around the metal quill. “I’ll be keeping this.” It might have some utility as a weapon. Though he’d attempted to negotiate for his own release on top of Savannah’s survival, some things, it seemed, were not in Zella’s power.
Katalin wants us here.
“My turn.” Toby’s voice was cavernous and dark. “Make me an offer.”
“I can’t save your daughter, Toby.” The new Proprietor of the Devil’s Mercy was not without compassion, and her tone made that clear.
“Daughters,” Toby corrected. “Plural.”
“One of them,” Zella replied, “does not need saving.” She did not specify which one. “And regardless, if you’re looking for a savior, Toby, it’s hardly likely to be me.”
Within moments, Zella was gone.
Mirrors on the ceiling. Mirrors on the floor. Mirrors on the walls—all but one. It took Rohan and Toby time to figure the puzzle in the chamber out: how to use the light, what to make of the web of blades. But eventually, they solved it.
Nothing happened.
“Why isn’t it working?” Toby’s tone that of a desperate man.
And desperate men rarely come out on top. Before Rohan could venture a guess as to the answer to Toby’s question, someone else beat him to it.
“They disabled the puzzles after you two solved the first one.” The far wall, on the other side of the blades, swung inward. “The challenges in these rooms were never meant for men. For you, I’m afraid, this chamber is nothing but a cage.”
A familiar figure stepped into the room.
“Hello to you, too, Nora.” Rohan smiled through the blades.
“Did my mother send you?” Toby demanded.
“I’m here of my own volition,” Nora replied, “as far as I know.” Even standing perfectly still, she had the air of a fighter about her.
“But I did pick up Jameson’s trail in London to follow him here, and Alice very likely had a hand in my path crossing his to begin with, so it’s entirely possible that my old mentor anticipated all of this, engineered it in some way.
Perhaps she knew what the lot of you would be wearing when you stormed the metaphorical castle like militaristic lambs to the slaughter. ”
Wearing. Rohan was suddenly keenly aware of his own bare chest, of Toby’s, of what they’d been wearing in those vests. The explosives.
“In retrospect,” Nora continued with a sort of calm that Rohan could only describe as detached, “I don’t think Alice ever believed either of the other Ascendants would choose me for the Crucible.
I am quite convinced at this point that she dangled me out there solely as a reminder of another option, a much more enticing option for a monster like the Omega. ”
Toby frowned. “Savannah?
And suddenly, irrevocably, Rohan knew.
“Gigi’s sister?” Nora took a single step forward. “No.”
Damn the duchess to hell and back, he knew—
“Not her sister,” Nora said. “Mine. My half-sister. Her name is Freya, and she is very much her mother’s daughter.”
All Rohan could think was that the duchess had said that without assistance, Savannah would not come through the Crucible alive.
She’d said that she could ensure that Savannah did not lose.
She’d promised that Savannah would live, even though it was not in her power to save whichever of Toby’s daughters was in need of saving.
And all of those things could be true, would be true… if Savannah was not in the Crucible at all.
“She played me,” Rohan said. “The duchess. She never once lied but…”
If Savannah wasn’t a Candidate, she would not, could not come through the Crucible in any way, shape, or form.
And it was a simple thing to guarantee that someone would not lose if they weren’t competing in the first place, to pledge that someone would live if that person was not, in fact, in any danger of dying.
He’d given away the Mercy for nothing.
“Grayson called Savannah,” Toby said quietly. “He called and called her phone, but she never answered. Alisa couldn’t even track it.”
“Because she bloody well turned it off.” Rohan was tempted to laugh—oh so tempted, but he didn’t.
“So it’s Avery, Eve… and your half sister.” Toby paused. “The heir to the Kyrie line? Raised as a warrior. Beyond dangerous. And when Zella told me she couldn’t save my daughter, what she really meant was that she can’t affect the Crucible at all. She can’t save either of them.”
“No one can.” Nora’s voice was chillingly soft now—soft in volume, not tone. “And even if we could, the Crucible must be completed.”
“Why?” Toby demanded, but Rohan suspected he already knew the answer, just as Rohan did.
The explosives. The ones that they had brought in.
“Don’t you see?” Nora said. “Freya is the third Candidate. If she survives the Crucible, she will be there for the anointing, along with all three Ascendants and the head of the Kyrie line. My stepmother, monstrous creature that she is—she’ll be the one to consecrate the Judge’s death so that a new Watcher might ascend. They’ll all be there.”
“You’re going to kill them all.” Toby’s voice was little more than a ragged whisper. “The Ascendants. The head and heir of the Kyrie line. The other Candidates.”
“If there was a way for me to save the innocent…” Nora stared off into space for a moment. “But there’s not. I can’t risk tipping any of them off, and the end justifies the means. I think Alice knows that deep down. I think she knew she couldn’t do what needed to be done. That I could.”
“We’re in an underground cave system with thousands of tons of stone above us,” Rohan said, his ears ringing slightly.
“A small number of well-placed explosions is all it will take to cause a cave-in of massive proportions.” Rohan and Xander Hawthorne had calculated as much themselves.
“You’ve already taken care of placing those explosives, haven’t you?
While we kept the Ascendants busy, you slipped in unnoticed.
We were your distraction. You stood by and waited unseen as they stripped us of every last weapon, and then you found a way to take what you needed. ”
“The Candidates will be at the epicenter,” Nora told Toby. “I can’t save any of them, but I might be able to give you two a chance.”
“I don’t want one,” Toby said—but Rohan did. Despite everything, despite the fool he’d been, for better or worse, he wanted to live to play another day.
“I’ll release you when I can, if I can. In the cavern, the tunnel on the left will take you out.” Nora caught Rohan’s gaze one last time. “When the doors open, run.”