Chapter 67
Allie
“You’re crazy!” She yanked her face away. I let her. I hadn’t been holding on too tightly anyway.
Even now, seeing her caught and distraught tugged something inside of me.
That maybe everything was one big coincidence my mind had jumbled into danger.
Grandpa Constantine always said there are no coincidences.
Ryker banged on the blue orb. His skin sizzled on impact, but he didn’t relent. He might have ripped the crypt stone by stone, statue by statue if it meant reaching her.
I knew what he was seeing through his sparking eyes.
He’d lost Geryll.
Now he feared he would lose Nadya.
But she had never been one of his own, not really.
“Let me in, Allie,” he said, deadly calm.
The battle raging inside of him bled me dry–he wanted to trust me, but he wanted to protect Nadya at the same time.
“You said you trusted me.” I raised my open palm to pacify his fears. “Let me speak and I’ll break the orb.”
His nostrils flared, but that pull between us won. He sensed no lie, and gave a curt nod. “Now.”
I flicked my fingers and the blue light retreated to circle my wrists, like snakes ready to strike. Only two tendrils remained, reinforcing the arrows and keeping Nadya in place.
“Speak,” he bit out.
“Mrs. Thornbrew says Nadya locked herself in her room since Geryll’s death.
” My words ripped more of him, his cracks echoing within me.
But I couldn’t bring myself to look at him and see the pain I was causing.
Instead, I narrowed my gaze on its true cause–Nadya. “To mourn. But that’s a lie, isn’t it?”
“It is not.” Mrs. Thornbrew stepped forward, all haughty and disappointed in me. “People mourn in different ways. You stayed in your room for weeks when you came here.”
A grimace pulled at Dax’s mouth, even as he slid two daggers into his palms, his own candle now forgotten on the ground.
He knew.
“I did.” I nodded at Nadya. “But you didn’t, did you? The same way you weren’t out to train that day we saw the glimmer on the crater’s rim. The message was meant for you.”
Nadya’s gaze widened for the briefest moment. Then she buried it. But I saw the change–and from the way her muscle twitched in her jaw, she knew it, too.
“You’re crazy,” Nadya bit my way. I wasn’t shocked. Just disappointed. “It’s not my fault you couldn’t protect the crater properly.”
My jaw clenched. “What did the message say, Nadya?”
How many others had she received, before–and maybe even after–I’d begun to watch the sky every day?
“She’s trying to turn you against me.” She looked up at Ryker with pleading eyes. “Please, don’t let her poison you. She’s been a pest on this land ever since she came here. Now she’s imagining glimmers and messages.”
My chest constricted for a heartbeat, terrified that Ryker would believe her. That, despite his words, he still didn’t see or trust me.
But that fear vanished as quickly as it had taken its ugly shape, as Ryker’s gaze darkened.
The change in him was instant.
His jaw tightened.
His shoulders tensed.
But his eyes…I chanced a look at them. I wished I hadn’t. They held endless sorrow, that cut the breath out of me.
“Are you telling the truth?” he asked, voice now low and dangerous, though he already knew the answer.
It drummed through him like it did through me.
“Yes,” I said, as unflinching as he always was.
“She’s lying.” Nadya bared her teeth. “She’s been fooling us all, pretending to protect us.
But the crater lost power when she came here.
The entrance was breached after she passed through it.
She brought the trolls on our doorsteps.
And now she is attacking us and you’re doing nothing about it, Commander. ”
The crowd around us murmured with unease. Hesitant. Unconvinced. Narrowed on me.
Ryker believed, however much it cost him, but Solkar’s Reach wasn’t convinced.
“You are unharmed,” I said. I flicked my fingers again and the blue tendrils vanished; they’d exhausted me enough already and could always pounce back. “Your turn. Tell the truth and I’ll set you free from my arrows.”
“I already told the truth,” she cried out.
“There’s an easy solution for all of this.” I held out my hand in Dax’s direction. “Truth serum.”
“My pleasure,” he said instantly and burrowed in his pockets.
“Is it enough for two people for the next few hours?”
“Yes,” he said, less sure. “Small sips, though.”
I flexed my fingers. “Perfect.”
Dax handed me the vial with a warning look on his face. We both knew his secret could be ripped from the tip of my tongue once I took a sip, but nobody cared about what he did in the shadows right now.
This was a clash for the soul of Solkar’s Reach.
I held the glass vial high in the air and squinted at it, making sure to shake it so the liquid was visible to everyone. The viscous truth serum shone in the crypt’s light. A hushed prayer passed the guardian’s lips, as he drew farther away from the entrance.
Nadya’s grimace grew.
With no preamble and with Ryker’s energy blasting against mine, I uncorked the vial and downed half of it.
The inky liquid raced down my throat, burning my lungs, before it thudded into my stomach. Bitterness coated my tongue and lips, so foul and festering that my body instantly wanted to expel every trace of it.
“This tastes vile,” I said before my mind caught up to my mouth. “Damn, it’s already starting.”
Uncle Maksim forgive me, but I still hated this damn serum and couldn’t fight it, despite his teachings.
“Ask you questions, because I feel like I’m about to explode,” I panted.
“Did you see the glimmer with Nadya?” Ryker asked.
“Yes. And she pretended not to know what they were.” The words flowed from my mouth like a compulsion.
I didn’t even register them until they echoed in the stunned silence.
“Like she pretended when the wolves chased us. When she threw me into the troll gathering. When she questioned my leadership while you were gone. Like she’s pretending now. ”
Pure pain slashed through Ryker’s eyes once more. He blinked it away before he turned back to Nadya. “Well?”
“You can’t believe that bullshit,” she hissed. “Her cousin’s the one who gave her the vial, it might as well be water.”
“Hey!” Dax chided. “Do not question my skills. My word is not the one on trial here.”
“So now I’m on trial?” Nadya looked desperately at Ryker and whined, “Look what they’re doing to us.”
His throat stiffened, as if trying to halt ugly words from forming.
But I couldn’t. With the serum bleeding the truth, all that unspoken resentment couldn’t be hidden any longer.
“This is by your design only. And by the way–” I turned to the people of Solkar’s Reach, who still looked at me with suspicion.
The words wanted to come out and flood their ears, and I couldn’t stop them.
“I’m not to blame for any of the anomalies in Solkar’s Reach.
I never plotted against you, I only tried to protect you, despite all your constant protests. ”
Both Dax and Ryker gave me twin warning glares. Vylkor settled his eye on the ground, a reddish tinge to his cheeks.
I cleared my throat and stepped closer to Nadya, the vial raised.
She looked at me with open resentment, but I saw a glimmer of something more there. Something which convinced me I was right.
Reluctance.
Panic.
She might’ve hid her true self all these years, but the truth serum could bare any soul.
As I tilted the vial toward her lips, she raised her leg and kicked my hand, hard enough to smash the vial in my palm.
I groaned as the glass shards sunk into my fingers, the serum greedily mixed with my blood, forming a vile, stinging concoction that seared my skin.
“You little–” Dax gripped tighter to his daggers, but didn’t move. “I can make more in a few days, you’re not getting away with this.”
Ryker rushed to my side, cradling my mangled hand in his. Despite the shock emanating off him, he gently caressed my wrist, an unspoken question in his eyes.
Did I want him to use his powers to make the pain go away?
“Please,” I mouthed, the liquid hissing as it burned.
As his power swept through me, cooling the ache and restitching my skin, his somber voice vibrated around us.
“Why did you do that, Nadya?” he asked with a forced calm.
We both stared at her, still trapped, still trying to make herself look small and pitiful.
But we all saw what she’d done.
An innocent soul would have wanted to prove itself.
Her scared gaze swept through the crowd, as if trying to search for the smallest sign of sympathy. An ally.
But she would find none.
Her closest friend had died.
Even Mrs. Thornbrew looked at her as if not recognizing the creature before her eyes, silent tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Say something,” Ryker commanded, so much pain in his voice, the corners of my eyes stung.
Nadya’s head caved between her shoulders.
There was nowhere to hide.
Not anymore.
Her shoulders began to shake.
Ryker and I made twin gestures of rushing forward, protective instincts roaring to life.
But she wasn’t crying.
She was laughing.
Her cackle grew, smothering the shocked stillness and reverberating in the entire forest.
It didn’t sound human.
She threw her head back, watery eyes narrowed on me.
“You were always a pain. At least now I don’t have to pretend I like you,” she spit out. But then she turned her mean, strange gaze to Ryker, as if she wanted to rip the heart out of him. “Any of you.”