24. Chapter 24 #2
Sylas looks up at me. At first, his eyes flicker with hesitation. Then, they yellow with disease. My mind unravels as I fight back the urge to stuff the entire vial down his throat myself, glass container and all.
You’re running out of time, you insolent snake. Drink it.
Strewn in a puddle of his own filth, Sylas tips back his head and chugs.
The elixir must taste god-awful, because he almost heaves it back up.
Within moments, however, his yellow eyes morph into two crystallized balls of fizzy energy, as though the truth serum siphoned all of the poison from his blood, diluting it with itself.
A dopey smile tugs along the crook of his lips as his voice becomes an inebriated string of hardly intelligible words.
“I paid the Truthseer a mighty sum to find you, Shadow,” he whispers.
“Without you, my magic is only half its strength. I must make you my queen if the dragons are to stand a chance at rebuilding our country. You are my twinflame.”
“What the hell is a twinflame?” I ask, as I take a step closer to him, my sword aching to cleave his head from his body.
“A soulmate,” Augustine explains, hardly able to contain himself.
Why must he always be so amused by everything?
The tension that ensues is thick enough to choke on.
I shove the heel of my boot against the dragon king’s cheek as rage engulfs the very air I breathe.
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret, King,” I hiss at him.
“I don’t believe in prophecies. And I certainly don’t believe in twinflames, or whatever other bullshit that conniving Truthseer has been feeding to you on her bony spoon.
My future can only be written by me. And I certainly do not love you.
Absolutely the fuck not.” As my words fall away, I remove my boot from his face, admiring the pretty imprint I leave behind in my wake.
Then I turn toward Augustine and say, “Take me to the statue, now. Before I eviscerate you.”
Augustine doesn’t hesitate. Immediately, he wraps his bulky arms around my waist, his cape billowing like a protective blanket around my body.
One moment, I’m glaring down at Sylas, feeling almost sorry for him, and questioning whether he’ll survive.
And then suddenly, I’m bracing myself against the void of an otherworldly vortex, where palettes of color and shades of wonder merge together, transforming into ribbons of light that melt into a kaleidoscope of life-giving atoms. They lead me straight across space and time, to a place where everything goes dark and silent.
I wipe my watery eyes with my sleeves, only to realize that I’m standing inside a dome-shaped room with a brass telescope at its center.
Curved walls formed entirely of sparkling lumicite encase the room in light, paving the way to pirouetting support beams that hold up a vaulted glass ceiling.
The sensation of weightlessness swaths me in such beautiful twilight, I nearly forget about the arms still wrapped around my body.
“Where are we?” I breathe.
“Inside the castle Observatory,” Augustine says as I peel away from him, noting just how much lighter and emptier I feel without his all-consuming grip on my waist. I spin in a circle as I soak in my surroundings beneath the tepid light, disbelief carving into my chest cavity and clouding my eyes.
“I must admit, that was a pretty neat party trick,” I say, the last vestiges of my astonishment dissipating into something harder and more calloused.
Did I just compliment him?
His silent eyes glide along my silhouette as I spin again, this time planting my feet before him.
A roll of thunder clashes overhead, releasing a monsoon of rain over the glass-domed ceiling.
And that’s when a realization hits me. “Wait a minute. You could do that this entire time?” I ask.
“Transport me across the countryside on a whim?”
He nods slowly.
“So our little adventure through the forest a few days ago with the wolves? What was that?” I ask.
“Would you have trusted me if I’d done it any differently?” he asks, cocking a brow. His golden eyes are doused in patience as he waits for me to really think this through.
“Bold of you to assume that I trust you now,” I snort.
“What have I ever done to earn your distrust?” he asks.
I resist the urge to clobber him upside the head.
“The universe is such a vast and unbelievable place, don’t you think?
” I respond strangely, advancing on him further until I can feel his chest rising and falling against my hands.
“With black holes that defy gravity and stars that implode on themselves, decimating everything in their wake. It makes me wonder why, out of all the stars in the galaxy, you chose the one who adamantly refuses to get married.” Satisfaction curls along my lips upon realizing that I’ve left him utterly speechless.
“Why lock me in your castle, Augustine?” I ask, catching him more off guard by grabbing a fistful of his shirt fabric beneath his midnight cloak and twisting.
I wonder what it would feel like to send him off to Purgatory, and if I’d cry.
I then wonder if I’d be overcome by guilt and I’d withdraw into a cave of shadows, never to be seen again.
No. Most likely, I’d be fine. “Back in the forest, you claimed you had an errand to run,” I recall.
“That errand involved finding the raven, didn’t it?
That’s why you’re so fascinated with my spellmark. ”
Augustine’s breath shudders to a halt, his body towering over mine like a sentinel of time. He looks like an ageless being with no clock on life, one who is still trying—and failing—to get things right.
“It’s not what you think,” he says softly.
“Really? Because I think you followed me to that parade,” I realize in hindsight. “And after that, you followed me to the inn, where you tipped off the innkeeper regarding my identity, and then you told him that your name was Eric.”
His eyes widen.
“You proceeded to purchase Wraithbane from the innkeeper’s excess reserves in order to lace your weapon,” I continue brazenly, “and then you coated your weapon, and gutted him from head to toe with it. All in some well-articulated plan to ensnare my heart and entice me to come with you willingly. You even drew that picture of me, didn’t you?
The one on the back of the queen’s letter?
” I scrunch my nose in recollection, and he tips his head, waiting for me to finish.
“Eric couldn’t draw so much as a stick figure,” I scoff.
“I should’ve known it wasn’t him who’d ratted me out to Frank in exchange for the drugs. It was you all along.”
Augustine hardly moves beneath my clenched fists, his silence speaking volumes louder than my hammering heart.
“That drawing was quite good,” he drawls.
“You tricked me.” I choke on air as I release my hold on his shirt, leaving behind a wrinkled battlefield of fabric in my wake.
“You’ve known about the prophecy this entire time.
You knew who I was—the raven your sister was hunting—yet you didn’t think to fucking tell me.
” A sliver of a tear creeps down my cheek, threatening to collide with my lips.
Augustine chases that tear with his focused stare, as though he’s imagining wiping it away with the back of his thumb and then painting a pretty portrait of me with it later.
“We didn’t meet by happenstance,” I breathe. “You hunted me, just like she hunts me.”
The queen.
“I didn’t hunt you,” he says quietly. “I was trying to protect you.”
“Without so much as an explanation as to why!” The backs of my eyes sting. “Exist. That’s all you said I had to do. Do you remember that?”
He winces.