Chapter 11 #2
Draven balls his hands at his side, trying to keep his anger in check. “What good is knowledge if you’re dead? The information dies with you, and it cannot protect you in a fight.”
Tynan’s smirk grows tenfold at that, and Draven’s skin crawls as a true laugh escapes from his lips.
“I thought I raised you better than to think like that; how wrong I was.” He slides his tongue along his bottom lip, wetting his skin as if with anticipation.
“Knowledge, information, facts—they are the greatest protection there is. Would you like me to demonstrate?”
Draven doesn’t answer. Instead, he watches with an indent wedged between his brows as his father slowly—methodically—pulls out an ornate dagger, forged with an onyx blade and adorned with anthracite embedded into the hilt, from a sheath strapped at his ankle and gently rests it on the desk, sliding it across the surface so that it’s closer to Draven.
“Let’s play a quick game,” Tynan coos, joy wrapping around his words, licking through the air in poisonous streaks.
Distant screams echo in Draven’s mind. He smells the tangy scent of blood first. Then the scent of burnt flesh next. His throat constricts, yet he rolls his shoulders back, not willing to let his scars show. “Fuck you. Fuck your games. I’m not playing.”
“Oh,” Tynan drawls with a small pout, “I think you’ll want to play this one. After all, you did just inspire the rules. Let’s allow the game to determine what the greater power truly is, hm?”
Draven glares at him, remaining silent.
Tynan lifts a finger and begins explaining. “The rules of this game are simple: you may either take that dagger and plunge it through my chest without me fighting back, or you relinquish that opportunity in light of me giving you life or death information.”
Without hesitation, Draven reaches for the dagger and positions the hilt in his palm.
He approaches his father, prowling toward him like a predator.
Yet instead of pointing the tip of the blade to his chest, he positions the serrated edge against his father’s throat.
“Information regarding my life is worthless to me so long as your stain of existence is removed from this world.”
Tynan holds Draven’s murderous gaze, his smirk creeping up and up. “And what of the girl you’ve grown to care for so dearly? Is the same true for her life?”
Draven stiffens, his face paling. Suddenly, his chest tightens, and he finds his breathing has become ensnared in his lungs like an animal caught in a hunting trap.
“If you attempt to lay even a single finger on her,” he seethes in a rough whisper.
“I swear to the gods, there is no force in existence powerful enough to stop me from taking your life as repayment.” Yet Draven finds himself dropping the dagger from his father’s throat without so much as another thought, receding a step.
His father smirks like a snake at the sight, then shrugs cooly.
“Even if I wanted to, how could I? She’s missing, after all.
Perhaps even dead.” He plucks a black strand of hair from his opulent shirt, embroidered lavishly with both silver and gold threads.
“Now, make your choice: would you like to know what I know, or would you like to plunge that dagger through my chest? Whichever choice you make, it must be stated aloud.”
Draven clenches his jaw and glares at him, chucking the dagger back onto the dusty desk, the noise of defeat clattering loudly in the air. “Tell me what you know.”
Tynan watches Draven through sparkling eyes, not commenting on his decision. He doesn’t need to—Tynan knows his point has been thoroughly made. It leaves Draven with the sneaking suspicion this was a trap laid out for him from the very beginning, and he unknowingly played right into it.
Tynan holds the room in silence a few heartbeats longer, visibly noting the tension coiling in Draven’s shoulders with each passing beat.
Finally, he repositions himself in the chair and peaks his fingers together, pressing them to the underside of his chin.
“Bathara’s council wishes to hold a trial in front of the Tani for the girl’s crimes should she ever return in one piece. ”
“Crimes?” Draven spits. “What crimes? Destroying the Abdites during an unprecedented attack on Bathara? Sacrificing her body—potentially her life—for her fellow wielders?”
“For indiscriminately murdering over half of Bathara’s numbers in a cataclysmic display of power she clearly had no control over.”
“She is learning.”
“She is a threat.”
Draven shakes his head against the words. “That isn’t right. She should have clemency. All she did, everything she sacrificed, it was for the greater good of the Three Kingdoms. To protect.”
“Was it?”
“Yes,” Draven answers in a stern hiss.
Tynan makes a show of sighing. “Well, unfortunately for her, it won’t matter what you believe—only what the Tani does.
” He summons the Dalmar’s signature dark magic—the very magic he cursed Draven to carry in his veins—and weaves the nimble tendrils through his fingers.
As he does, Draven catches flickers of the crimson living in the heart of his magic.
Though, it seems different than Draven remembers.
Then again, he could be mistaken, seeing as his father doesn’t wield their magic often.
It’s an odd power play of his, always claiming he doesn’t need to.
“To put it bluntly: should this girl you carry useless affections for somehow return, she will be put on trial, and she will lose. The Tani will see her magic as too much of a threat, and the girl too much of a wildcard. They will find her guilty, but they will not execute her. No, someday they may need her. So instead, they will condemn her to a life sentence in Toellor prison, and you will never see her again.”
The mere thought of it uproots the world from Draven’s feet, and it is a sheer act of will he doesn’t buckle to his knees.
He can’t believe he is standing here having to entertain a reality where this could happen.
Where Lyra returns—because she will return—and Bathara’s council drags her to a trial in front of the Tani.
Where the highest order of magical governance condemns her to a life in Toellor.
The same fucking prison housing all the sentenced Abdites.
She would be forced to drink the elixir created by Gardners, disconnecting her from her lakt?.
She would be bound. Gagged. Kept in the dark.
Draven shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut against the images of Lyra suffering as they run rampant through his mind. “I won’t let that happen.” He pinches the bridge of his nose in an attempt to tamper his rage and push the images away. “I won’t.”
With every fiber of his being, he means it. He will kill who he has to, beg who he has to, make allegiances, pledge fealty—he will do whatever it takes to ensure when Lyra comes home, there is nothing but the warmth of his embrace waiting for her.
“Ah,” Tynan coos, drawing back the wisps of darkness into his palm. “That is precisely the look I expected to see in your eyes.” He smiles, the gesture more mocking than it is sincere. “You always have been the protective type. Even as a child.”
Draven narrows his gaze at him, watching—waiting.
He’s shown far too much of himself already during this conversation, and he needs to reel in his brimming emotions.
But that is so gods-damn difficult after learning Rhea’s been conscripted to Bathara and Lyra has an unjust death sentence straight to Toellor.
“I have a proposition for you, Draven,” Tynan drawls in his smoothest voice, propping his elbows up on the desk and clasping his fingers once more. “A proposition I think you’ll find serves both our interests.”
The increasing chill in Draven’s bones rises to overtake the heat from his skin. No matter what his father proposes, he knows it won’t be good.
His heart sinks into his stomach, and he is convinced the room is now three times smaller and the air four times thicker. “What is it you’re proposing?”
The corner of Tynan’s lip twitches. “I find myself in a position where, should the girl…” He trails off, brows furrowed. “Remind me her name again?”
Draven’s upper lip curls, and he makes no attempts to hide it. His father knows. He fucking knows her name. He just wants to make Draven say it.
“Lyra,” he rasps, the sound of her name on his lips reminding him even damnation can taste sweet.
“Ah, yes. That’s it.” Tynan smiles. “I remember her, you know. From that time in Rivara all those years ago. Tell me, have you told her about that encounter?” At Draven’s notable silence and clenched jaw, his father hums. “You haven’t?
Hm…how fascinating. Nevertheless, what was her surname again? Lyra….?”
“Izacalli.”
Tynan snaps his fingers. “Yes, that’s it. Izacalli. I remember now. Such an odd surname, don’t you think?”
Draven glares at him, not deigning to answer.
“As I was saying,” he drawls. “I find myself in a position where, should Lyra Izacalli somehow return, I can prevent her from going to trial and secure her a proclamation of innocence throughout the Three Kingdoms.”
“How?” Draven growls. “Bathara answers only to the Tani, and the Tani does not answer to anyone but themselves. You may be powerful in court politics and diplomacy, but not even you, Supreme Commander, hold sway with the Tani.”
Tynan lifts a lazy shoulder. “Have you ever known me not to fulfill my end of a deal? You would just have to trust me to follow through with what I say.”
Draven flexes his jaw. “And what must I give you in return for guaranteeing Lyra’s freedom?”
“You must marry Arden Larking.”
For a heartbeat, it’s like he has been slapped—too stunned or dazed to respond.
“No. No. There is—I won’t do that.”