31 Truth #3
It was hours later when Dalvia found him and Bridged him out of the lightning cage.
He had time to weave his story then. About how Drenevan had threatened him, dragged him from the manor and intended to use his voice to complete his escape.
He’d crafted better lies than this, but his mind had kept veering toward the same horrific conclusion over the hours he had stood in that forest. He couldn’t examine it. It couldn’t be true.
He didn’t know how he returned to his half-burned room, but he was sitting on his bed so it must have happened. The door creaked open. Dalvia’s pale shock of hair floated past the jamb.
“Go the fuck away, traitor,” he hissed. “I’ve already lost everything.”
She watched him solemnly. “You lied.”
“Leave.”
She stumbled back into the doorway but gripped it tight. “You betrayed him,” she noted with uncanny insight. “You could have been free if it weren’t for that.”
Furious, he seized her hands. “He left me, but you won’t, will you?” he bit out. “You’ll stay. You won’t leave.”
“Noceo, stop!” She paled, wriggling in his grasp, and he ordered her again and again until her eyes glazed and she burst into tears. Then, he let her flee the room.
He raked a hand through his hair. This wasn’t his fault.
It couldn’t be. Insensate with pain, he staggered to his feet and faced the mirror.
“None of this was your fault,” he whispered to his reflection.
“Drenevan abandoned you. He stole what should have been yours. You never attacked that girl or him. You did nothing wrong. You were the victim.”
The anguish in his chest eased, so he said it again. Then, again. Memory and torment softened with every repetition until his eyes lost their raw, glassy sheen.
Then, he began to plot his vengeance.
Sarai wrenched herself from the memory, winded by the breadth of agony she had witnessed. Ice, horror, and sheer rage melded in her chest. She allowed them reign. Pulling herself out of Noceo’s head, she gripped him by the collar.
“You absolute fucking coward!”
Metal slid out with a snick. She darted back an instant before he slashed wildly at her, tottering as his ruined hand floundered.
“So be it. You can die.” His eyes glittered. Blood seeped through a head wound he must have gotten when she had tripped him.
She darted a glance to where Kadra lurked in the shadows and discreetly shook her head when he shifted. I can handle this. She twisted out of his brother’s reach with a hard kick to his chest. He doubled over with gritted teeth.
“You Coerced yourself, you stupid fuck!” she snapped. “This story you’ve told yourself isn’t true!” Gods, poor Dalvia. No wonder she hadn’t been able to leave.
The breath seemed to rush out of him even as his body kept fighting. And she knew this too. The feeling of having one’s legs cut out from under them and reduced to little more than mindless fighting instinct. He had made her drink deep from that sour well.
“You’re hopeless! You’ll never understand.”
She dodged the next slice of his blade. “But I do, and you know it. That’s why you’ve tried so hard to convince me to join you. Noceo bu Kader, you thought we were alike!”
She had realized it upon seeing Parvine’s death. Noceo would have drawn parallels after hearing of Kadra’s demise. “Death-Summoner,” he had kept calling her. Because she had done what he hadn’t been capable of. She had made everything right again. And perhaps that was all he had wanted.
Desperation and anger battled on his face. He lunged at her, cutting into her arm. Sarai felt a hot wash of blood drip down it and refused to give him the pleasure of acknowledging the wound. When he sprung toward her with a roar, she absorbed the blow and gripped his throat.
“Move and I’ll destroy your vocal cords,” she hissed.
Clammy and flushed, he dropped his knife, and she kicked it away.
“You said that I had to see it as you did, or you’d be the villain of the piece.” She wiped the blood from her arm over astomand, the rune for “Materialization.” “Well, I did, and you look no different.”
She reached into his head a final time and pulled the truth out in the open.
Noceo spat a barrage of curses as younger versions of himself and Kadra bloomed in the cramped morgue but quieted at the sight of Finaze, memory and fear turning his pale skin colorless.
The quiet tragedy played out among ice blocks.
By the end of it, Noceo had shrunken into himself, trembling like an aspen.
“You’re lying,” he whispered.
She fisted the material of his robes. “Truth is my only task,” she repeated what she’d told him over a month ago in the Academiae’s chapel, then echoed his own words. “Did you want it sugarcoated?”
“It can’t be true.” He stared at a blank point over her shoulder, and she realized that he hadn’t been speaking to her. He withdrew from her grasp as though he was barely cognizant of her existence. “It has to be a lie, because if it isn’t, then—”
All of this was over nothing. She didn’t say it, simply watched as he stumbled toward the door like his legs wouldn’t hold him up anymore. He turned to her, lips parting, then stilled, his gaze unerringly finding Kadra in the shadows.
Something crumbled in his silver eyes.
He turned.
He ran.