Chapter 45
As I’m hurtled through the shadows, I can’t stop thinking about the wounded look on Durvla’s face.
I’d bet my ass that whatever these people do to me, nothing could ever hurt more than seeing that look in her eye.
When my feet hit solid ground again, I blink a couple of times until I can make sense of what I see.
My wrists are still shackled, and the man who apprehended me still grips my shoulder as though he intends to break it.
Beneath my feet is a red carpet.
Marble statues of the gods and goddesses all around.
I know exactly where I am, even before I drag my eyes up the carpet-covered stone steps to the throne.
And there’s the bastard in all his newly crowned glory.
He doesn’t need an actual crown on his head to exude terrorizing dominance.
Arrogance practically leaks from his pores, surprise, confusion, and intrigue in tow.
Someone stands beside him, dressed in all black save for a red cape and the golden accents on a bizarre face mask.
There is something dizzyingly familiar about them, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
I don’t have much time to dwell on the masked person before Lord fucking Commander Rheon, the sovereign, stands and steps toward me. My entire godsdamned body shudders against my will, and from the gleam in his eyes, I know he notices.
“You are the Shadow Wielder?” he asks.
“Why does that surprise you?” My words fly out, unbidden.
He’s close enough to practically share a breath, his eyes raking over the side of my neck with a sickening sort of satisfaction.
At the scar that he inflicted. Pride pulses from him in overwhelming waves.
Sick fuck. As much as I want to appear unaffected, my knees are quaking and sweat beads on my palms. My chest expands only after he takes a step back.
These shackles may dampen my Wielding mimicry, but my Empath powers seem intact. I have yet to decide whether that’s a good thing. I need to keep my wits about me.
“Remove his weapons,” Rheon says to the man at my side.
My eyes flick to the man. There’s a flowy, luminous air to him—Waterweaver.
A short Zenith member who I hadn’t noticed before, is the exact opposite, an unyielding, ponderous ambience within her.
Damarlach be damned, she’s a Terraforger.
I’ve never encountered such an aura, but I’m certain of it. Somehow.
The Waterweaver tugs my swords from the sheaths on my back. They clatter against each other on the carpet. He pulls the visible dagger from my hip next.
Rheon, the leech, sets hard eyes on me. “Do you have any hidden weapons?” he asks.
“Didn’t you train me, sir?”
The corner of his lips twitches up into a sneer. “Where?”
I clench my jaw to keep from telling him that he also taught me not to reveal any hidden weapons to the enemy. It’s hard to believe I once considered this asshole to be a decent human—my godsdamned mentor. And now I consider him my greatest enemy.
“Pendry,” says Rheon, and the woman hesitates before she exhales audibly, her anxiety and remorse worming their way under my skin.
She lifts her hand, palm up, and I suck in a sharp breath as the dagger in my boot slices through my sock and grazes my ankle.
The other two hidden within my vest, luckily, do no harm.
All three daggers hover in the air in front of the woman before she lets them clatter to the floor just beyond the carpet.
I’ve never seen a Terraforger at work before, and I hate to admit it, but her abilities are impressive.
I try not to think how easily she could transform any metal into a weapon.
How easily she could probably slit a man’s throat without even being in close range.
She’d sent these manacles onto my wrists from quite a distance.
Yet she seems unwilling. Grudgingly doing Rheon’s bidding. I know that feeling.
“Lynx, confiscate the weapons,” Rheon says, though he never takes his eyes off me.
Who in hells is Lynx?
The figure in the red cape quickly descends the steps from the throne.
I cautiously lower my mental shields just enough to hopefully find a crack in her mind.
But I’m met with a frustratingly imposing blockade not unlike Ava’s.
Not necessarily Ordinary, but I sense no Wielding either …
There is, however, something oddly unstable about her.
Unable to get a better read on her, I give up for now.
“Kilkenny!” Rheon’s authoritative voice hauls my wandering mind back to him, but it’s as if I’ve been catapulted into the past. I stomp to attention, but my salute is stopped by the damned shackles.
Rheon’s amusement tickles my nose. I scrunch my face to keep from sneezing. As much as I want to reel my Empath powers in, as much as it exhausts me to keep using them, I need all the information I can get.
“When I sent my men out to find the rumored Shadow Wielder, the last person I expected to show up in my castle was you.”
His castle. I bristle, wanting to put my fist through his face.
I’ve spent five years in this castle. Five years of literal blood, sweat, and tears, secrets, pain, and love.
The people here were like family to me. Though only ghosts of the past walk this castle now, it will never be his.
I would pluck his sorry ass off the throne myself if it was within my power.
“My apologies if the revelation that I am the Shadow Wielder you sought is a disappointment to you, sir.”
“Excellency,” he corrects, and I damn near scowl at him. “Not a disappointment, but a surprise. I don’t suppose you would willingly join the Zenith? We seek to make Erleya a safe place for everyone to be who they are. Where Mages are not feared but revered.”
Rheon is not a Mage as far as I can tell. Why would he go to such lengths to make things safe for Magekind? “Not feared?” I ask. “Somehow, I highly doubt that, sir.”
His eye twitches and I suffocate a grin.
“Fear is your middle name, if I recall.” Gods, is this what it feels like to be Carys? To not be able to hold my tongue?
Rheon smiles, something deranged flashing in his eyes. The heat of his anger stings my skin, but he speaks with unnerving calm. “Fear is only necessary if reverence is not upheld.”
I clench my teeth to keep from speaking, but then again, this egotistical bastard seems more than willing to give up information. Even if he doesn’t realize it. “What drives your interest in Magekind, if I may ask, sir? Do you possess magic?”
A muscle twitches in his jaw, and I know I’ve struck a nerve. “We shall chat again tomorrow. For now, you’re dismissed.”
I stare down at my shackles. I have a feeling this dismissal is—
“Take him to the brig,” Rheon tells the Waterweaver.
“Yes, Excellency.” The Waterweaver grips my shoulder, and we go tumbling into the shadows again.
I’m still not used to it, and when we land in a dark cell, my stomach clenches and my throat constricts.
I close my eyes and fight the nausea. The Waterweaver says nothing to me; he simply steps out of the cell and a guard just outside of it slides the gate shut with a clang.
My eyes roam the small space as the click of the lock reverberates.
The cell is about twice my arm span in width and perhaps a little deeper.
A chamber pot sits in one corner and there is no mattress in sight.
On either side of me are roughly hewn stone walls.
Only the front is gated, but it doesn’t allow me to see much aside from darkness and oil lamps. No … not oil lamps, magelights.
Magelights in Paramount. Oh, I could find the humor in this. I could.
Cries and pleas echo somewhere outside of my stony cell.
There are other prisoners here. A surplus of emotions and powers that makes my head spin and crawls through my blood.
Voices echo in my head—a steady stream of incoherent words muddling in my mind until bile rises into my throat.
I swallow forcefully and reel in my Empath powers, blocking everyone else around me.
Only my surroundings fling me into the memory of Rheon towering over me, of the blade that scarred my skin and my dreams.
How long before he figures out that I’m a Mimic and not a Shadow Wielder? How long before they go in search of Durvla? Until she’s here in this horrific place?
No one pays me any attention, but I know how these things work. They’ll let me sit here, let the anxiety take hold of me. Maybe someone will eventually bring me water. Maybe food. Then the real threats will begin.
I sit down on the cold ground and tip my head back against the wall, closing my eyes. I can’t let fear control me. Keeping it together is the only option I have. What did I always tell Durvla? Be brave? Don’t break?
My stomach sinks at the thought of her. Shortly before leaving the Verge, Ava took me aside to explain the extent of her Obstructor power. It was at that moment that I asked her if she could block Durvla’s shadow wielding if ever there was danger of her being exposed.
“Ava, please do this for me,” I begged. “She might never forgive us, but we’ll deal with that later. She has to get to Siad Nahar.”
“I’ll ask you again, Kilkenny. Could you go on living, knowing that you broke her heart and her trust?” Her words were a knife to the heart.
“I could go on knowing she’s alive,” I said. “And let’s face it, Ava, if they take me into custody and discover I’m not who they’re looking for, I won’t have to go on living for very long.”
Ava remained silent for a while longer. I thought she would just walk away or say something snide. Instead she twisted the dagger already in my heart. “Maybe so, but she would have to live without you.”
Boots echo on the stony ground as someone approaches my cell. I allow my shields down, but I still feel nothing.
“Open the gate,” a hoarse, feminine voice says.
I’m met with an impenetrable mental shield again as the masked woman steps into my cell.
If she’s Ordinary, she must have magical blood to enable her to keep her defenses up this way.
She chucks something at me, and I reflexively catch it.
The shackles dig into the skin around my wrists.
The soft bread is surprisingly still warm, but why would they give fresh bread to a prisoner?
“Thank you,” I dare to say, awkwardly holding the bread in my shackled hands.
The masked woman stands there in uncomfortable silence, observing me. Refusing to be rattled, I munch on the bread slowly.
“Bizarre,” says the woman, her voice laced with amusement. “Seeing the great Major Tiernan Kilkenny diminished to a groveling prisoner.”
My hackles rise. It takes longer than it should for me to get the bread down my throat.
“For now, anyway,” she adds. “Oh, I do hope you don’t make things too easy.”
She takes a waterskin off the belt hidden underneath her red cape and tosses it toward me. It hits the stone ground with a sloshing sound. I know she expects me to rush for it right away, but I don’t dare take my eyes off her.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“A nightmare,” she says. A surge of sensations momentarily flows out over her fiercely erected wall—cold sweat, searing pain, and white-hot fear. In a heartbeat, she mentally smothers it all again. I shudder.
Interesting.
She sweeps out of the cell with excessive flare before I can pick up on any more emotion.
I miss Durvla’s presence—I miss the way her thoughts are launched at me. I miss the sound of her sweet, melodic voice, her laughter, her body against mine.
If these miscreants end my life, there will be so many things left unsaid. But maybe it’s for the best. At least when all is said and done, I will have given the woman I love a chance to live. She’ll one day be able to move on without me.