Chapter 68
Allie
“Idon’t–” Mrs. Thornbrew shook her head, her hand flying to her chest. “I don’t understand. Did you get into the moonshine?”
Nadya’s top lip curled. “Doubt there’d be any left to steal after your early nightcap.”
“You will watch your tongue, Nadya,” Ryker said. “Mrs. Thornbrew has treated you like a granddaughter. Fed you. Nursed you when you were sick.”
“Yes, yes, you’re all so virtuous and honorable and I’m the bad seed.” She huffed an annoyed snort that looked forced.
Like a scared wolf that knew there was no escape, but wanted to bite, scratch, and leave a bloody mess with its final breaths.
I saw the way her disturbing smile trembled.
The harshness of her breaths.
How her legs tensed, ready to spring up and attack.
Nadya was scared.
Discovered, cornered, and scared.
And she knew it.
“You just need to tell the truth and I’ll set you free from my arrows.” I curled my fingers into fists, my healed palm still tender.
She could have kicked the vial out of my hand, but no. She’d wanted me to suffer.
“Is that all?” She rolled her eyes. “Gods, you’re disgustingly preachy. And I can finally say it.”
“Yes, because you’ve been so restrained until now,” Dax said dryly.
“I could have done much, much worse,” she said, puffing out her chest. Like it was a point of pride to destroy everything in her wake.
“This isn’t a game,” Ryker said. I felt him suffocating the maelstrom of emotions hurtling through him, quieting his thundering heart and evening his breaths. “Tell us what happened.”
“Are you going to torture the truth out of me, Commander?” she goaded.
“When you came here, shivering and scared, I promised you would be safe in these lands. I keep my promises.” The angles of his face tightened. “I still have faith you’ll do the right thing.”
Nadya threw her head back and barked a laugh. “You haven’t managed to convince me your path is better in years, you think you can do it overnight?”
He took a deep, slow inhale. A cold, bitter acceptance snapping inside of him, quiet and final.
He crouched slowly, so that he was almost eyelevel with her. “And what path do you follow?”
The gentleness in his voice was so at odds with the unhinged glint in her eyes.
“The winning one,” she said.
He tilted his head to the side, analyzing the battle in front of him. This one wouldn’t be fought with weapons and monsters. It was so much worse–facing someone he loved.
“Did you allow the attackers passage into Solkar’s Reach?” he asked, shocking the crowd and me.
My mind hadn’t flown that far yet.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nadya shrugged her shoulders, and it looked awkward and strained.
Another stab of pain carved Ryker’s heart. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I couldn’t. Not now, when he was facing a snake in his own land.
“When I carried you through the tunnels, wounded and barely standing on your feet,” I said as a horrific realization settled at the base of my spine. “You scratched your axe against the walls. You were drawing those attackers to us.”
To me.
“What can I say? I wouldn’t have cried a river if we’d gotten rid of you,” she said flippantly.
“I see,” I said, despite the hurt I shouldn’t have been feeling.
I’d risked my life to save hers, only to have her calling death upon me.
“How could you do it? How could you endanger the crater?” Ryker asked, struck by her gall. “We offered you shelter. You became one of us.”
“I swore my allegiance long before I came here.” Her grin turned twisted and brutal. “You think food and a soft bed would change that?”
“What about the support? Kind words? Believing in you?”
Her strange grin trembled, but didn’t fall. “You’re a fool if you truly believed.”
Ryker didn’t lose his calm. Not on his face, not in his energy, tightening his hold onto that patience.
“Then what would it have taken?” he asked, the curiosity radiating off him almost brimming with desperation.
What could he have done differently to change the path Nadya held so tightly onto?
There he went, blaming himself again.
I blamed myself, too. For not seeing her sooner.
She’d played her part of hurt, lost, and misunderstood well. Even Dax, who hadn’t suffered her too much, looked at the entire scene with wide, surprised eyes, an annoyed twist to his lips–probably because he hadn’t uncovered her plot faster.
“It doesn’t matter,” Nadya said petulantly. “It’s done.”
“It is not done,” Ryker said. “You’re young–”
“I’m only a few years younger than you and I’ve done a whole lot more,” she spit out.
“Really?” He tilted his head. “Do enlighten me.”
“You’re a pawn,” she said, the words sounding rehearsed for so many times, it was no wonder she’d started to believe them. “You’re weak.”
“How so?”
“You should have gone to war.”
He raised his brows, the first tendrils of anger finally bursting the bubble of composure. “You might have noticed I was gone for a few weeks. Probably used that time unwisely.”
“Not now.” She grimaced. “When your crater’s power was in danger. You yielded, Commander. Just like they warned me you would do. I was beginning to think you weren’t as feeble as they said and you proved them so right. Guess I was a fool, too–along with everyone here who you lied to.”
Whispers bubbled around us. They halted as soon as Ryker lifted a hand.
“It’s true,” he said. I could feel the muscles of his back constricting, but he went on, undeterred, finally facing a truth I, for one, thought should have been faced long, long ago. “I negotiated a truce with the Northern Clans to protect my people.”
The whispers sharpened. Some understanding, mostly shocked.
“It’s what any true leader who cares about his people would do,” I said. Ryker protected me in public, I would protect him. It’s what we did.
It was also the godsdamned truth.
“Beren wouldn’t have done that,” she said.
“Nadya.” He exhaled noisily. “Beren has sent hundreds of his own people to die. They’re still lying underneath our ice. He has not come to retrieve them and he never will. Just because he beats his chest and shouts he’s the best warrior on this side of Malhaven doesn’t make it true.”
“He said you’d say that.”
“Because it’s reality.” He took a slow, centering inhale. “One you have witnessed yourself. When his soldiers attacked us. When I told Vylkor to save Edrin’s wife because he wanted to kill her for his mistress. The Northern Clan leaders don’t care about anyone other than themselves.”
“They certainly don’t care about you.” I shook my head sadly. “No matter what they promised, they will not protect you.”
“And none of you can protect me,” Nadya said, a hint of desperation finally burning in her voice. “No true warrior would ever follow a leader who caves.”
“That’s just Northern talk.” The words infuriated me now as much as they had the first time, as another horrid realization swooped down upon me. This one cracked my heart. “Save your breath, Commander. She’s beyond salvation.”
“See?” Her head moved eerily slow toward me, her grin growing more sharp edges. “She knows.”
Everything inside of me roared to attack her. Wipe the smugness off her face and make her feel a fraction of my pain. I only nodded instead. “You stole the dagger.”
She just kept grinning.
Ryker’s hands shook. His eyes sparked darker.
“Did you also injure the troll to force an attack between us and them?” I asked.
“That was only a happy coincidence,” she said, sickly sweet.
So yes.
“What else did you do?” I asked, horrified.
She licked her lips, but didn’t say anything.
“You can admit it now or when Dax makes a new truth serum vial,” I said. “It’s all the same to me.”
“Then get the serum, and we’ll talk.”
I clenched my jaw. I didn’t have Ryker’s brotherly calm. This was the person who’d aided in my father’s death. The one who helped the Northern Clans attack us. Who tried to kill me and, worse, undermined me at every turn.
And I suspected much, much worse.
I hated the words slipping past my tongue. But I couldn’t stop them. “Did you convince Geryll to go to war?”
The grin finally fell from her face.
Ryker inhaled sharply. His energy burst out so fast, I had to blink through the sudden onslaught, his composure fractured.
He rose, staring down at her in disbelief.
“Did you?” he asked in a voice I didn’t recognize, unyielding and wounded. And enraged.
“It doesn’t matter,” Nadya said viciously. “He’s–he’s dead now. He died under your watch.”
“And yours,” I said, not letting up. “You were the only one who talked to him during the war. It’s easy to put the blame on someone else, isn’t it, Nadya?”
“Shut up,” she hissed, squirming like she wanted to crawl out of her own skin.
“No. You did all of these heinous things. We lost seventeen warriors during the Northern attack alone–”
“You think I care about them?” She laughed. It sounded more deranged. “My soul’s been hardened long ago, Huntress.”
“It’s like talking to a brick wall,” Dax said and turned to me. “Remember what we said about twisted minds and cults? This is the proof.”
“Shut up!” She thrashed harder, hands reaching out and legs kicking, like she wanted to tackle him. “You don’t dare speak of us that way.”
Dax simply pointed at her, jaw clenched.
“What did they do to you?” Ryker asked, horrified.
“I’m not some helpless doe. I make my own choices,” she said with absolute conviction, even as her voice cracked.
She was breaking down in front of us. Ryker’s heart was bleeding and I felt every single shard. My own chest ached–for the life Nadya could have led, which she so frantically refused, like it would have boiled her alive–and for the ones she helped in taking.
“Clearly you’re very much in control,” Dax drawled, but closed his mouth when I glared at him.
“You should be more concerned about yourselves.” That unnerving grin of hers returned as her gaze travelled over the crowd. “All of you.”
A few civilians flinched back, hiding the children behind them, as if her stare alone could harm.
“Yes, hide the children you have left,” she went on. “You weren’t able to help the others.”
Ryker’s nostrils flared, a realization I didn’t understand slashing through him. “No.”
“Oh, yes.” She chuckled. “You think I’m weak?”
My jaw clenched. That’s where Geryll had learned all his worries about weakness. The pressure of his father’s legacy had planted the seed and Nadya had watered and poisoned it–just like she’d endured.
“Remember how you cried over the little one’s graves?” she went on.
“Almost a year had passed since your arrival,” Ryker said, as if trying to deny the obvious.
My heart broke for him.
“You taught me patience, Commander,” Nadya huffed a mean laugh. “One vial and I decimated this crater.”
In the sudden stillness, an ugly understanding finally dawned on me.
The plague.
The one which had obliterated so many young lives from Solkar’s Reach. It had killed Ryker’s mother, and led to the union with the Blood Brotherhood.
A roar erupted from the gathering. A man surged forward, fists raised, angry tears streaming down his cheeks. “Out of my way!”
Vylkor caught him before he breached the edge of the crowd, blocking his path.
“She killed him!” The man fought against Vylkor’s hold. “She killed my boy!”
More angry voices rang out, all of them crying for revenge. Dax jumped in and joined Vylkor to contain them.
My blue tendrils burst forward, ready to stop another death. Because if they got their hands on Nadya, they would have ripped her apart.
We needed answers from her–and they needed to keep their souls untainted by her death.
In the chaos, Nadya only laughed, gleeful. “You still want to set me free, Huntress?”