Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Alethea watched Nakir’s pupils dilate, slow and wrong, spreading dark across the amber she’d come to know so well.
Xytharia was already moving. She took his face in both hands without asking permission, her red eyes searching his with clinical precision, her lips moving in a low, rapid incantation. The air around her fingers shimmered faintly, the way heat rises from stone in summer.
Dawes stood very still beside Alethea. Neither of them spoke.
“It hasn't fully set,” Xytharia said, though her voice carried something beneath the reassurance: a careful control that told Alethea she was more worried than she was letting on. Her hands moved to his throat, his wrist, his chest, each touch accompanied by another murmured word. She worked quickly and without hesitation, the way someone did when they’d done this before. “This should help.”
The shimmer intensified briefly, then faded.
Alethea watched the High Priestess work and felt something uncomfortable settle in her chest. There was an ease between them, a familiarity in the way Xytharia touched him, in the way he let her.
She clearly cared for him. It was obvious in every precise, quick movement, in the way her brow furrowed when she pressed two fingers to his pulse point and held them there.
After a few minutes, Xytharia stepped back, studying him with those unsettling red eyes. She reached into the folds of her dress and withdrew a small folded paper packet. Inside, a fine powder the color of pale gold, almost white.
“Take this if you don't feel better within the next few minutes,” she told him, pressing it into his palm and closing his fingers around it. “All of it.”
Nakir nodded, pocketing the parcel.
“Are you all right?” Alethea asked quietly.
He looked at her for a moment before answering. “Yes.” His voice was even, composed, the same voice he used when addressing his soldiers, when making decisions under pressure, when he needed the people around him to believe everything was under control.
He’d let his guard down. She could see it in the set of his jaw, in the way he’d already straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. The people around him needed him steady, and so he would be.
“And we’re leaving,” Dawes declared. “Let’s find the others. Quickly. I’ll get Emi and find Balthasar. The two of you track down Kerrigan.”
“I’ll find the hosts and let them know what has happened,” Xytharia added.
Nakir held tightly to her as the buzzing sensation drained from her body, replaced with cortisol and fear. Someone had tried to poison him.
“I didn’t see it,” Alethea murmured, her voice laced with self-reproach, as he guided her through the festival. “I didn’t see it.”
“It’s all right,” he assured her, attempting to console her as he scanned the Revel, but his words felt empty in comparison to her guilt and shame.
“Why didn’t I see it?” Her voice wavered with regret and frustration, the weight of her failure pressing down on her.
“You’re intoxicated, Alethea,” he said as he continued to search the crowd for their fire mage. “It’s all right.”
“I should have seen it,” she lamented, her words barely audible. “I could have protected you.” The sense of helplessness gnawed at her.
She was spiraling. Doubt, fear, and frustration clawed at her thoughts, threatening to consume her. Each beat of the drums and all the laughter around her seemed to mock her, emphasizing her failure.
Nakir stopped his search for a moment to bring her close, cradling her face. “No, love. It isn’t your job to protect me. Do not let this consume you right now. We must hurry. Come—let’s go find Kerrigan.”
Bonfires blurred by as he led her across the grounds. She watched him the entire way, studying the line of his shoulders, the steadiness of his stride, the careful mask of composure he wore like armor. Was he actively dying underneath it? She couldn't tell. That was the most frightening part.
They must have searched the entire festival before they found her—or found someone who’d seen Kerrigan disappear into one of the tents.
Alethea hated nothing more than the idea of interrupting whatever she’d chosen to do with her evening, but Nakir had no qualms about bursting in through the low entrance.
Alethea stood just outside, arms crossed awkwardly.
“The fuck, Hasan?”
“We’re leaving. Someone’s here. We’ve been made.”
“Fuck.” Rustling sounds came from within the tent. “What happened?”
“Nightshade in a goblet brought to me. The servant said it was from the hosts.”
“Fuck!”
Three figures emerged: Nakir, Kerrigan, and a third figure dressed in fine robes of Azmarin make. Alethea’s mouth fell open at the sight of the beautiful young woman. Olympia Delaney. Reingard’s younger sister. Reingard’s betrothed younger sister.
Olympia was just as surprised to see her.
“Alethea?” she inquired, her tone tinged with disbelief.
She absently brushed aside her tousled yellow locks, securing them behind her ears, and stood there, a vision in her elegant emerald-green dress.
She was one of the youngest of the seven Delaney children and easily the most fair and gentle of them all.
Alethea wanted to crawl into a hole and never come back out. Two Delaneys was too many Delaneys for one evening.
Kerrigan drew the younger royal close and kissed her deeply. Alethea recognized that kind of lover’s embrace for what it was: a long goodbye. She turned away, unwilling to intrude any longer on the deeply personal moment.
“We have to go, Kerrigan,” Nakir commanded impatiently, the only crack in his mask.
The fire mage kissed Olympia one more time before she was finally able to let go of her and leave.
“Not a fucking word,” she shot at them as they broke into a run toward the exit.
Balthasar, Emi, and Dawes were already there waiting for them beside several armed guards standing watch over the festival, now on high alert. Bal was in deep discussion with one, but he greeted them with a curt nod as they arrived.
“There haven’t been any other incidents,” the spymaster reported.
The festivities raged on behind them, the other revelers oblivious to the danger unfolding.
“You really can’t stop a Revel, can you?” Dawes echoed her thoughts, half in awe, half in disbelief.
“All right, everyone. Back to camp—quickly now.” Nakir ushered them toward the gates.
The six of them exited the Revel, Alethea finally starting to sober up. The castle grounds were mostly unlit, so the only light they had for the long journey back to the encampment was the faint illumination of the waxing moon.
They’d barely emerged from the gardens back into the snowy evening when Balthasar halted them with a single extended hand, narrowing his eyes in concern. “We’re surrounded,” he declared, tension cracking in the air around them.
A surge of fear gripped Alethea, her heart pounding in her chest, as Nakir tightened his grip protectively around her.
“Do not go far from me,” he ordered, his tone firm.
She was too panicked to acknowledge his demand as the shadows crawled closer. They stretched and twisted, converging ominously from all sides. More than a dozen menacing figures closed in, their presence casting a dark pall over the courtyard.
Was this like the day Nakir’s parents died? A dozen assassins arriving in the dead of night. Would they take her with them, or kill her along with the others?
Kerrigan’s palms flickered with wavering fireballs, her usual formidable power diluted by intoxication. The once fierce determination in her eyes was now clouded and distant, and she struggled to keep her flames burning.
Alethea’s heart sank with helplessness, a sense of urgency prickling her skin as the figures drew closer still. No one had any blades, as per Revel tradition. There were so many of them, and yet Nakir, Alethea, and Dawes were all defenseless.
Emi stepped forward, placing her friends at her back.
Alethea hadn’t ever seen a look on Emi’s face like this one.
Every ounce of warmth had been sapped from her, leaving nothing but ice and darkness.
She looked back at Nakir with a hard expression that conveyed more than words—her only warning as she reached her hands out to her sides, palms opening wide, radiating an aura of controlled power that hinted at the storm she was about to unleash.
“Get down,” Nakir ordered, his voice a hushed, panicked whisper. “Now!”
In a single breath, he grabbed Alethea and Kerrigan and forced them to the ground.
Alethea fell clumsily, her face hitting the gravel.
Bal and Dawes were a fraction of a second behind, and then only Emi remained, the air around them beginning to spark.
The shadows moved even closer, but before Alethea could process what was transpiring, Emi summoned her power.
Every hair on her body stood upright as a thunderous roar reverberated around them.
Emi’s lightning bolts struck down like white-hot whips, one after another, each crackle filling the air with searing brightness.
The light was blinding, forcing Alethea to close her eyes and cover her ears, seeking refuge in Nakir’s protective embrace.
His frame surrounded her like an impenetrable shield, protecting her from the shockwaves of Emi’s incredible power.
Alethea marveled at the sheer impossibility of it all, her mind struggling to comprehend the raw force Emi wielded.
Alethea was certain her friend would burn out, and she was far more afraid for the mage than she was for the assassins as Emi’s entire frame lit up with her explosive power.
Finally, there was silence—though perhaps it was because Alethea had momentarily lost her ability to hear. She blinked, trying to regain her senses, her ears ringing painfully.
Emi stood before them, breathing heavily, her hands still crackling with remnants of the potent lightning she’d unleashed seconds before.