Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Malakai
The moment those words left my mouth, I wished I could have taken them back.
Spirits, I’d barely paid attention to the majority of the meeting, too tired and honestly uncaring after last night.
Suddenly, voices were raised, Ophelia was drowning, and my hackles snapped up.
The last thing I wanted was strangers in our home.
“Malakai.” Ophelia approached, steps slowed with uncertainty. “You are more than welcome to disagree with my decisions, but would you at least show me the courtesy of doing so in private?”
Courtesy?
I looked toward the corridor, where the minor clans had disappeared. Only Tolek, Cypherion, and Jezebel had been close enough to hear, and they were now sneaking out, letting the door close quietly behind them.
“No one heard, and I don’t know if I’d care if they did.” I was too wrung out to care, and her accusation only stoked my fire.
“Do you not take these alliances seriously?” Anger reddened her cheeks. She didn’t seem to want to let it explode, though. She’d been fighting it lately, biting her tongue and pleading with me. She stepped closer, only inches away. “You’re jeopardizing everything I’m working so hard for.”
Fucking Spirits, what did that mean? Of course, I didn’t want these alliances. Why should we need them? Even considering it had my chest tightening, that fire bubbling, but I tried to fight it back to show her reason.
“What if that hard work is directed toward the wrong goal? You’re being reckless by letting threats in.” I looked down at her. “We can’t trust them.”
How could she think otherwise? Relations had been fine between all clans until Kakias and my father launched a false war against the Mystiques. A false war with very real repercussions—the likes of which our people were still recovering from.
“Who’s to say the minor clans aren’t going to revolt against us the same way Kakias did? Who’s to say they aren’t already scheming? Working with her?”
“Why are you so quick to believe ill of them? They haven’t acted against us.” Ophelia’s eyes were round with hurt, like my mistrust of this plan was a personal insult to her. Ridiculous.
The real reason burned through my memories.
I clenched my jaw, swallowing a whip cracking through the air, bile stinging the back of my throat.
For a flash, I was back in my cell, air heavy with the cloying scent of blood and sweat.
Body numb to everything around me. Closing my eyes, I took three deep breaths, forcing the images within the unfeeling place inside of me.
When I spoke again, my voice was low. “I once trusted too easily, Ophelia. I won’t be a fool again.”
“You think I’m a fool?” She inhaled sharply, her breasts touching my chest, and both of our eyes flicked down to where our bodies connected. This was usually the point when one of us gave in, when we buried our arguments in pleasure.
But neither of us moved. Pain twisted her expression into shock.
Fucking Spirits.
Not wanting to fight and worried about what I’d say, I backed down a step. “I think you’re hopeful, but faith for a better future is turning you desperate when you need to be strategic.”
“Desperate?” She recoiled, my words striking deeper than any physical blow could. “Is it desperate to seek change?”
“That’s not what I meant.” She was fixating on the accusation without seeing the bigger picture. She wanted alliances and peace, but what we needed was tight borders and tighter leadership.
“That is exactly what you meant, Malakai. Don’t try to take it back now.” She braced her hands on her hips. “Have you stopped to consider that perhaps I am strategizing?”
“You haven’t spoken of plans,” I scoffed.
“I learned to keep secrets from the best.”
The remark hung heavy, widening the space between us, silent except for our breaths and the wild calls of birds soaring above the mountains. I waited, but she didn’t crack.
Didn’t take back her slight.
It seemed my mistakes still festered between us, turning us away from each other.
“Fine.” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose and leaning against the table.
“I believe you’re agreeing to these terms—someone else’s terms—rashly.
You’re not thinking through every possibility.
And yes, I do think a desire to achieve stability is driving those decisions rather than logical thought and action.
” I hated myself for exposing any doubt I had in her decisions, but how did she not see these risks?
“Hope can be a weakness wielded against you.”
I should know. Hope that my father was not the despicable man I’d suspected him to be was what drove me to keeping secrets all those years. It was why Ophelia and I now stood across this chasm.
“And you’re thinking logically by locking everyone out?” She was lethally calm, save for the harsh emphasis on that one word. We were both aware the argument had shifted from strictly alliances.
“We don’t have to lock them out, but we don’t have to let them control us either.”
She froze, and when she spoke, her voice was as cold as ice. “I will not be controlled. Never again.”
That struck my heart, because I knew that control had become a cliff she clung to.
She thought I’d tried to control her future in leaving after we received the Bind.
She thought I should have told her my father’s plans instead of handing myself over and locking us both into his fate, but I’d done it for a reason.
Besides, I wasn’t the one trying to control her now.
“By giving in to what the minor clans want, you are allowing them to control you. Doing so at the start of your term as Revered will show weakness.”
“Kakias is breathing down our necks, Malakai.” She grasped the queen’s note and flung it at me. “She’s waiting for a chance to attack, and we have no idea what that will look like. Working with others will show cooperation, increase our chances of survival.”
“We don’t need to cooperate!” I roared. Spirits, this was too much. Everything piled on my shoulders—my mother, the sash, the alliances. “We’re strong enough on our own.”
Here, in the mountains, away from any threats.
Away from anyone that could capture and hurt us.
My breathing quickened, heart pounding. Whips cracked again in my ears; voices taunted me.
Warrior Prince. I squeezed my eyes shut against the walls pressing in.
Doors slammed, chains clasped around my wrists, cutting into my flesh.
But when I opened my eyes, it was all gone.
Yes, isolation was the only way to ensure we were never betrayed again.
“You’re blinded by your own pain,” Ophelia breathed, realization widening her eyes.
“You didn’t see what it was like after the war.
Without allies, without trade…We need these things.
You say I’m not thinking straight, but neither are you.
Shutting people out won’t solve anything.
These problems—they’re so much bigger than one person can handle. ”
“Shutting people out ensures safety!” I rubbed my wrists, counting those ridged scars. “It is the only way to guarantee it.”
“It ensures certain death. A hollow, lonely atrophy of the heart.”
“Don’t let them do this.” I nearly fell to my knees under the weight of my memories. “Tell them to leave. Propose a solution the Mystiques come up with—on our terms.”
“That will only cost us time and possibly even the tentative agreement we already have. I’m sorry.” It was breaking her, to choose this over me—I saw it in each slow blink of her eyes. And dammit if it wasn’t breaking me even more. “If I turn them away, they may not come back.”
“It’s a risk you should take.” It is one I would have taken in order to assert my power.
She heard the words I didn’t say and hesitated a minute before reminding me, “You don’t make the decisions here, Malakai.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t either,” I mumbled.
My words hit her with the force of a star crashing to earth. Her jaw dropped open, but hurt stole her words, glistened in her magenta eyes.
Fuck. I hadn’t meant that. As if I could possibly want the position after the way my father had stained it. He had tainted my future, my name, my being. And that taint now warped my mind, making me question everything I thought I knew and damaging it all. Starting with the woman standing before me.
“Well, I suppose it’s good you are not in that position of power.” The anger she’d been suppressing cracked the surface. “We would be driven into the ground far quicker.”
“What does that—”
“You are not the Revered. I am. These are my decisions to make for the good of the Mystiques, and though I appreciate your counsel, I won’t have your emotions tangled up in your advice.”
My emotions? As if she was making decisions out of anything but fear of Kakias and desire to prove herself to the Rapture. Who gave a fuck what those five people thought? She was allowing their vapid opinions to endanger us all.
I opened my mouth to tell her as much, but she held up a hand.
“I’m done arguing. I’m going for a ride.”
My heart stuttered as she stormed past me, the shreds of our trust in each other stomped out beneath her boots.