Chapter 24
Allie
Like a fool, I watched Ryker leave the city from the safety of my own room, though nothing in me felt safe right now.
He said his goodbyes to Nadya and Geryll and kissed Mrs. Thornbrew’s hand, before his gaze slashed straight toward my balcony windows. Of course he’d known I was watching.
I inhaled sharply, as if he’d reached out and caressed my cheek.
He lingered for one more moment, eyes softening at the edges. Hesitating. But he still turned into a crimson blur.
The shivers racing down my spine intensified as the red speck of him vanished between the mighty firs and mounds of snow. They settled at the base of my skull, like on that day he’d returned to the crater.
My body betraying me or a warning?
Before I could pick at that particular thread too closely, vigorous knocks resounded against my door.
I sighed a groan as Dax let himself in, bringing all of his overbearing vibrancy into my stale room. It wasn’t his fault–it was mine.
I hadn’t shared any of my grief with him, still stuck in the role of older cousin who wasn’t allowed to make mistakes.
“Blessed day, darling cousin,” he said with that pompous, nasally tone we used to make fun of as children. “Our family honor is about to get ruined. Or bolstered. I don’t quite know where we stand on the Clan hierarchy now.”
Nobody did.
I ran my hands down my face, trying my best to redden and liven it, and turned.
I shouldn’t have.
“You look like something dragged you through the crater.” His gaze widened.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “And that comment really helps with that, thank you.”
“Lying doesn’t do any good,” he sing-songed.
“Neither does pointing out the obvious.” I took a deep inhale. I needed all the calm I could muster to face this day. “What’s gotten you in such a good mood? Find anything amiss?”
If anybody could discover the traitor, that was Dax. Ryker hadn’t brought the attackers into the passage, or that cursed dagger on Sanctua Sirena–he denied it, at least–so someone was toying with our lives.
“Listen, we need to discuss what you consider strange, because this entire place runs on different rules,” he said. “Then there’s this strange fellow who keeps drinking raw goat milk every day? And brags about it in the city square?”
I huffed a sad laugh through my nose. “Krysor loves his goats.”
“Everyone has such a precise schedule, from their training hours, down to cleaning the fortress. And they never stray from it. It’s almost like they’re not human. One guy who looks like a bear actually goes to the arena five minutes early. Every. Single. Day.”
“Does he have an eye patch?”
“No, red, scraggly beard, not blond.”
“That’s Krynn.” Who was, indeed, built like a bear and probably just as dangerous in close range; that mace of his looked like it could do serious damage.
“Vylkor mostly watches. Too closely in my opinion, but I haven’t found anything wrong with him other than his obsession with his weapon.
He sharpens it every night, just to not use it the next day.
” He threw his hands in the air. “They’re too precise.
In everything. Apart from a few affairs and indulging in one too many wine carafes when it gets colder, they don’t stray from their routine. ”
“Which makes them easier to track.”
“Yeah.” He sighed, disappointed. “Takes all the fun out of it.”
“Quite unfortunate that these people mind their business.” Which only made the betrayal that much more surprising. Why incriminate their Commander and risk the crater when their lives were so sorted? Unless someone hated the order. “Then what’s with the grin?”
Because Dax was beaming and it didn’t feel all that natural, nor the hectic energy the truth serum usually gave him.
“I plan on being in complete and utter denial of our current circumstances today,” he declared cheerfully and deposited a fresh stack of parchments onto the table, almost covering the palaver journal. He wrinkled his nose. “Is that it?”
“Yep.”
I’d opened its scarred, yellow pages already, in anticipation for the moment Ryker would open his end of the portal. I didn’t even know what hour the wedding was supposed to start.
“Fantastic.” Dax licked his teeth. “At least we don’t have to dress up and make small talk with those small-minded advisors.”
“Yeah. Lucky us.”
“There’s nothing we can do right now. So why bother? We have plenty of other things to stress over. Things we can actually control.” He placed his hands on my shoulders. “For some ungodly reason, Evie cares for this new groom of hers. She is lucky to have that.”
“You’re right,” I said, despite the unrest drumming through me. “She actually wants to marry him.”
“Each to their own. You seem to like that brooding giant of yours.” He shivered dramatically. “But if Evie’s happy, we can be happy for her.”
Dax’s theatrics managed to draw a smile from me. Just because my little life seemed on the brink of collapse didn’t mean others’ were as well.
Yet a strange weariness still clung to my shoulders, almost like it wasn’t mine to bear. Maybe Ryker’s suspicious ways were leaving their unwanted mark on me. “We can very much be happy for her.”
I truly was. If she loved this Dragon of hers and if they were truly fated mates, then she was blessed. With her new power and that kind soul of hers, nothing would be able to stop her.
“Excellent.” Dax patted my shoulders, giving me more strength.
I scraped the chair away from the table, took another deep breath, and let Dax’s forced zest lull my weariness away.
“Let’s get to work,” I said. “We have a wedding to attend.”
“That’s the spirit.” Dax smiled and instantly began scribbling faster than normal.
Time slipped away in tune with the quill, my eyes rushing over every line it scarred onto the paper.
The journal lay there silent, not even the breeze from the now-open windows disturbing its pages.
Its stillness only increased the pressure we tried so hard to ignore.
The clock striking from Ryker’s room didn’t help; it reminded me too much of the peace which had washed down the drain in his ridiculous crystal bath.
Evie was getting married–truly, this time. He was there.
I wasn’t.
Ryker promised she’d be safe, but we’d taken all precautions back on Sanctua Sirena, and my father had still been murdered. Tanthe Issa had ended with arrows spearing her frail body. Gods, I’d had a priest’s blood splattered on my face.
Now Evie and Ryker were alone in the Capital.
My breaths came out short, no matter how hard I tried to quiet them. Focusing on the words in front of me didn’t keep the poisoned arrows from spearing my mind.
“You were right to intervene, you know?” Dax said softly, yanking me back into the room. He looked at me with that rare seriousness he tried so hard to hide. “That day, on Sanctua Sirena. We could all sense something was wrong with Evie and Fabrian, but you were the only one who tried to stop it.”
The page in my hand flopped in the middle as my lips parted. I hadn’t known how much I needed to hear that until the knot in my stomach unclenched.
“But that was then,” he went on. “That massacre will not happen again.”
I hadn’t realized my body had betrayed my thoughts so easily.
I nodded–and kept on nodding, because the knot had moved to my throat.
“It was hard,” I said at last, voice raspy. “To have a different opinion. To be forced to go against everyone.”
“I can only imagine.” A muscle in his jaw flexed. “If it helps, you did it beautifully.”
“It does.” He drew another small smile from me. The ghost of the arrows began to fade. “You’re too perceptive for your own good.”
“Such bitter words after I tried my hardest to liven that scowl of yours.” He chuckled and nodded at the parchment in my hands. “Anything good?”
I tilted my head to the side. “Silas drank more than we knew. Only the pricey wine, too.”
“That unhealthy glow of his didn’t come from overindulging on fish and lettuce.” He scoffed. “I’m surprised he bothered to write it down.”
“Everyone even remotely connected to the First Family had to. We have Dria Vegheara to thank for that,” I mumbled, gaze racing down the lines.
“Yes, but if he was the one who emptied our vaults–or facilitated it–then he wouldn’t have wanted his name in there. Especially for frivolities.”
“Maybe those frivolities were there to distract from something else.” I bit my lower lip. “Speaking of frivolities, Bia seemed to love them.”
“Bia again?” Dax shook his head. “She barely had time to sleep. Like you said, she probably borrowed for those parents of hers and was too embarrassed to tell anyone.”
“These are all official expenses from when she went to negotiations, outside Aquila.”
“Uhm…no. There’s a special fund for every mission. Or there was. Tiny, too. Clara and I used to complain about it all the time.”
My brows rose. “So you never had to get money from the vaults?”
“Not directly. It was funneled out of them and given to us.”
“Who handled that?”
“Uncle Maksim. He handled everything about missions outside of Protectorate territories, though he hated dealing with numbers.”
I shuffled between the parchments. “Then why am I not seeing his name anywhere in here?”
“You will,” Dax said with absolute confidence–and, honestly, some reproach that I even dared to ask about the man he respected most in the world. “Uncle Maksim lives, breathes, and bleeds Protectorate. He wouldn’t have intentionally hurt the Clan for anything in this world.”
Questions still bubbled at the outskirts of my mind about this fund and why I hadn’t heard about it, but there was one undeniable truth that crumbled that grim theory. “He definitely wouldn’t have put Silas on the throne.”
“He would have rather died than see Silas with an inch of power.” Dax waved his hand.
“I know I saw his name plenty of times. Even one relating to a big shipment of pink peonies. Ever since his lungs started hurting, the healers insisted he spend more time in the garden. As if pollen helps with coughing.”
My insides twisted. Dax swore Uncle Maksim was safe and I knew he could handle himself, wounded or not, but not hearing from him chaffed something deep inside of me. He’d always been on my side, ever since my father had taken the crown.
“So that’s why he promised me some red roses next summer,” I whispered sadly.
Roses I’d probably never see again in my life–if I even got the chance to hug him again.
Yet I kept looking at the parchments, a growing unease stirring inside of me.
“If this fund existed, then why did Bia ask for extra gold?” I asked. “And who in Xamor’s name allowed it?”
Dax and I both stared.
“Silas,” we said at the same time.
He shook his head. “Bia’s not the kind of person to mess around with things like this. She worked hard all her life.”
“And Silas didn’t seem like the kind of person to bother stealing a throne, yet here we are.”
“This doesn’t feel right,” he argued. “She gave up too much to get a spot at the Academy and then make a name for herself to blow it all for gold.”
“Gold twists the mind, right?” I set the parchment on the table and pressed my finger to it. “My father asked me to find something wrong in the ledgers. This is wrong.”
We kept staring at each other, our stubbornness filling the entire room, neither backing down. We were so caught in this silent battle that we both flinched when a silvery thread wafted out of the journal.
My heart leapt as we both scrambled our seats closer, parchments abandoned to the sides–but not forgotten. I didn’t care what Dax said and the family ties we had to Bia, I was digging into this.
My breath caught as the silvery thread turned into an oval. But instead of Ryker’s sparking eyes, all I saw were glimpses of gold and flashes of haughty expressions I didn’t recognize as the portal jumped from face to face, seeking to settle on one.
I squinted my eyes, trying to make sense of the chaos.
But the quick movements only reminded me of the grim glimpses I caught on Sanctua Sirena as I ran for my life.
When the portal settled on a set of red doors, all I could see was blood.
The metallic stench of death flooded my senses so fast, my knees forgot I was sitting down and shook.
Screams erupted in my ears like they were happening right behind me.
The hiss of arrows was so powerful, I jerked in my seat as if they flew right past my ear.
“You alright?” Dax muttered.
“Fine. This jerkiness is giving me a headache.” I rubbed my temples, willing the grim images out of my mind. The pressure at the back of my skull was building again. “I should’ve asked Mrs. Thornbrew for something strong to get through this.”
“Already ahead of you.” He took out a metal flask from his satchel. As soon as he uncorked it, a stringent, bitter smell filled my bedroom, overpowering the phantom scent of blood. “A toast to the future Blood Brotherhood queen and the family who aren’t allowed to even be in the same room as her.”