Chapter 69
Ryker
The city’s cries for justice rocked the old stones.
My boots thundered down the steps into the one place in the fortress I’d always considered unnecessary–the dungeons.
For as long as I’d lived, they’d never been used.
Any battle we’d waged, for generations, had been outside the crater’s perimeter.
The only local mayhem were a few drunken tussles when the winter wind bit too harshly, which always ended with a few bruises, a stern talking to from Mrs. Thornbrew, and the brawlers shaking hands when their wits returned.
This once secluded and safe land now simmered with unrest. I’d quieted my people before delving into the bowels of the fortress, but they’d begun shouting as soon as I’d walked out of sight.
And I couldn’t blame them.
A plague.
Raids.
War.
Nadya had a hand in each of them.
I didn’t know if she knew why the crater had turned against us, but I had to find out–away from the scared civilians.
The ancient steps were unworn and narrow. I’d never imagined they’d carry me to visit someone I cared for so much.
The lights flickered around the coarse bend in the staircase, carved so that it would snag and impede an escape.
The pulse of two people, not one, waited beyond the stale, earthy scent.
Vylkor stood watch in front of the first door, stoic as ever.
“You don’t need to stand guard, she’s not getting out of here,” I said.
He turned to me, somber and sounding as exhausted as I was. “I’m standing guard so nobody gets to her.”
“She won’t appreciate it.”
“I don’t care. I’ve dedicated my life to upholding this land’s rules, not even a mass murderer can stop me.” His eye narrowed on me. “Justice has to prevail, Commander.”
The crowd cried harder.
“I know.” I pushed open the door as hard as I wished I could push my feelings aside.
But the moment I saw Nadya sitting behind those dusty bars, huddled in the corner of the first cell and staring out the small window, all that disappointment, hurt, and guilt flooded me once more, faster than my power could dissipate them from my veins.
Then I remembered Geryll’s frightened face as the snake bore down upon him.
The river of tears we’d shed over the graves of the little ones.
Holding my mother’s hand for one last time.
“Don’t go inside, Vylkor. She’s dangerous,” I said before closing the door and sealing myself alone with her and all this pain she’d caused.
She didn’t say anything.
Didn’t even move as I approached.
The night chill hissed through the window bars as I gripped the bars to keep from smashing something.
She didn’t care.
That’s what hurt most, I suspected. Her utter disregard for all the lives she’d destroyed. I saw flutters of something more simmering beyond the facade, but what use were those shreds of remorse and fear when she tried to suffocate them?
“Congratulations,” I said through the shouts that vibrated around us.
“For?” she asked, not turning, voice raspy, but gleeful.
“Sowing the mayhem you so desperately wanted. You might just destroy Solkar’s Reach yet.”
She flicked a careless hand. “If you would have died when you were supposed to, none of this would have happened.”
I swallowed that bite of venom, already knowing it would poison me for longer than it had any right to.
“You had plenty of opportunities to kill me. Slip some poison in my tea,” I said.
“Yeah.” She sighed. “I could have.”
“Why didn't you?” I asked, quieter than I meant to.
“Self preservation,” she said after a long pause I forced myself not to dissect.
“You’re in a more truthful mood,” I said.
Which meant she had an angle she wanted to exploit. I no longer believed.
She finally turned toward me, wearing that disturbing grin of hers. “Is it as freeing as you’ve always tried to convince me it was?”
“Yes.” Now I knew just who I was dealing with. “You hear them out there, don’t you?”
“Sounds better than that mushy chant you all insist on.” She slid herself toward me, knees to her chest, and eyes alight. She looked like she was waiting to hear her favorite bedtime story.
An act, yes, but I couldn’t help but see how lost she was among the lies drowning all the light in her.
None of them made any sense. She believed in an ungodly amalgamation of recited falsehoods and misplaced grandstanding, filled with cracks she was so eager to fill in with more leaps of logic, just to not watch it crumble.
She’d killed for this.
Probably would do it again.
Or maybe it was all another act. A vicious heart could be beating in that chest instead of a lost one.
Yet I still couldn’t reconcile this Nadya to the one who’d sipped tea in front of the fireplace with me and Geryll for so many nights, propping her feet up on the footstool so her socks–handknitted by Mrs. Thornbrew–would get nice and toasty before bed.
“Why?” I shrugged. “Why do all of this?”
“I told you.” She rolled her eyes. “My loyalty was decided long before I met any of you.”
“Why didn’t it change?”
She had the gall to shrug. “I’ve had the same mission since I was born. Nothing could change that.”
The bars began to feel brittle under the strain of my anger. I flexed my palms away from them before I ripped them from the stone.
I didn’t want to scare her.
She could erase the last few years, but I couldn’t.
From up above, the flutter of Allie’s energy flowed through me, even as tendrils of anger raced through her.
“You killed children,” I said. “Your actions led to the death of my mother–”
“She shouldn’t have died, I’ll give you that.”
“You helped the Northern Clans attack us,” I went on. “Warriors died in battle because of you. You tried to kill The Huntress. Apparently, you also wanted me dead.”
She scoffed.
“And yet, despite all of this, one death I can’t understand.” I leaned my face forward, making sure she saw my eyes. Those eyes which had watched her grow, train, and laugh. “Why did you betray Geryll?”
For the first time, the careless defiance on Nadya’s face cracked, before she averted her gaze back at the window.
But I’d seen.
Shame.
“Geryll decided to go to war all by himself,” she seethed. “I wasn’t there to push him onto that battlefield.”
“You convinced him. Didn’t you? You knew your spirit was stronger than his and you used that.” My voice rose for the first time. I tamped down the rage. “He was the first person to make you talk. He cared about you.”
“Not my fault.”
“Very much your fault, Nadya.” I gnashed my teeth to keep from shouting. “And it will haunt you for the rest of your days, no matter how much you try to deny it.”
“It was either him or your precious Huntress. And I’d already failed at getting rid of her three times,” she said, the fanatical edge gone from her voice. “She also came back, the coward.”
“Why, Nadya?” If I could yank the truth out of her, I would.
I’d already sent word for the ingredients Dax needed for this truth serum, but I doubted even that could get to the depths of the madness Nadya had been poisoned with.
“To unbalance you, obviously,” she said petulantly. “So you’d make a mistake and die in the war. The Blood Brotherhood was supposed to lose. The crater should have been unprotected and an easy target. But you fucked up the war. She fucked up the occupation. You two deserve each other.”
“Thank you.”
“She was such a pain. Watching my every move,” she seethed. “Still took her months to discover me. I’m smarter than people think.”
Dangerously smart. But I’d given her enough of my empathy.
Perhaps that had been the problem.
I’d noticed her sharp edges, but had always chalked them up to her mysterious upbringing, hoping warmth and understanding would soften them with time.
How wrong I’d been.
The sigh I let out threatened to tear me apart, as two sides of me battled for supremacy at once.
Bottomless grief over losing Geryll.
Unimaginable pain at discovering Nadya’s betrayal.
Both of them felt like losses I had caused.
I’d accused Allie of being blinded by loyalty and heart, when I’d sheltered one of our greatest enemies.
“I would have been just as unbalanced if I’d lost you,” I said. “You didn’t tell your overlords that, did you? Otherwise, you would have infiltrated our army, not sent Geryll. It would have been simpler.”
“Because it’s not true,” she protested. Too fast, too harshly. Either because she truly didn’t believe it or she was afraid whoever she was working with would have used that information to end her. “And I was needed here.”
The gathering above quieted as Allie’s energy stormed. I needed to return, quickly.
“Who sent you here?” I asked. “Beren?”
“Don’t insult me.”
At least she still saw Beren as the foulness stuck to a boot that he was. “Then who? The one who attacked the Protectorate wedding?”
Silence.
An opening.
Something to crack this shell of insanity she hid under.
“The coward who still hasn’t shown their face?” I asked.
“Don’t you dare speak of him like that,” she bit out.
Finally. A lead.
“Do you see him anywhere?” I splayed my hands out to the sides. “If he was at the wedding, he failed in whatever he was trying to accomplish–”
“He did not!”
“And if he showed his face during the war, he lost.” Gods helping, he was dead. But that would have been too easy. Nadya was obviously convinced he was still alive. “From where I’m standing, he’s a loser–”
“Shut up!” she said so viciously, spit dribbled down her chin. “The true heir will prevail and he will burn you all for what you did to him.”
I blinked the stupor away. Who in gods’ name was this pathetic being that sent children to do his dirty work and contorted their minds so much that they considered it some great opportunity?
“What did we do to him?” I asked calmly instead.
Her eyes steeled with hatred. She realized she’d said too much. “You know your sins better than me.”
“That’s why you never wanted to step foot in our temples or crypt.” I shook my head. “Whatever–or whoever–you believe in has warped your mind.”
“He set it free,” she grumbled.
“Nadya, you’re imprisoned in the dungeons with an entire city asking for your head because of your murders. How is this free?”
More silence.
I stared at her. This was the kind of foolish obstination I didn’t know how to fight.
“Why is this heir trying to destroy Solkar’s Reach?” I asked.
“He’s not. He’s making it return to its true glory.”
“Before it was a crater, only a patch of dirt existed here. So I’m assuming he’s referring to the giant falling star that burned everything in its wake, which doesn’t seem so glorious–but probably what would happen under the watch of a coward like him.”
She clenched her jaw. “The crater’s not very happy under your watch, so that would only be an improvement.”
“You caused this chaos.”
She scoffed. “I did a lot of shit, but I can’t take credit for this.”
“Then who can?”
“You.”
I narrowed my eyes on her. Until Dax concocted the serum, Nadya would defend her most dangerous secrets.
Another wave of cries resounded from above.
“You’ll be tried for the deaths of those children.” I shook my head. “I’ll leave my mother’s name out, but that is all the kindness I can show you.”
Because killing the ruler of Solkar’s Reach, a crime she’d already confessed to, meant instant death. At least this way, she would get a trial. The people would get to face the murderer they cried out for.
No emotion was above justice.
“You said you’d protect me,” she went on, voice as lost as she looked.
Another act, most likely.
But those words still tugged on my heart.
“Against everyone else, not your own crimes,” I said sadly. “People have lost their lives because of your actions. Children. You killed children, Nadya.”
She didn’t move. She just kept staring at the storm raging outside, as if she didn’t even hear me.
How could she be so careless with other people’s lives?
It truly was like talking to a wall. A murderous, apathetic wall.
My hands fell to my sides.
“I can’t make you care if you refuse to,” I said. “Nobody in this world is above repercussions.”
A muscle in her jaw twitched, but she remained still as a statue.
Even now, I tried to play at guidance, when I knew she’d only scoff at it. Maybe even pity me for trying.
I hadn’t been able to save Geryll.
Now I was losing her, too.
“You have blood on your hands and you will have to live with that,” I went on.
Maybe some sliver of humanity remained in her, if it had ever been there.
For her own soul, if nothing else. “And you have two choices–you can let it consume you, or you can repent and try to make this world better, not leave behind only ruin and despair.”
She suddenly curled her lip and speared me with her eyes. They’d turned cold and hateful once more. “You ruined everything.”
“Because I’m stopping you from killing more people? How awful of me.”
“No.” She launched herself at the bars, the collision rattling through the walls. “You made me soft. It was a miracle I was still allowed to stay here and try to fix my mistake. And I’d almost did it before you brought that she-beast here.”
I furrowed my brows. “What are you talking about?”
She tilted her head to the side. “Do you remember when I first came here? Barefoot, dirty, famished?”
“A good disguise.”
“A perfect one.” She licked her teeth. “We knew your mother’s pitiful heart–”
“You do not speak of her. Not now, not ever,” I said with deathly calm.
For once, Nadya actually listened.
“We knew you’d allow me passage inside the crater. This pitiful crater you love so much. All your precious civilians and warriors, the ones you’ve bled so many times for and defended, stared at me like I was some kind of rabid animal. And you? What did you do?”
“I brought you a cup of tea,” I said softly.
“Yes, you son of a bitch,” she spit out. “And you stood there, making sure I drank it all. To warm me up. So that I was comfortable. And then you just let me be.”
“Beastly of me.”
“You weren’t cold and harsh like they said you were,” she said, sounding angrier with every word. “You showed me kindness, not just tolerance.”
“How can you see anything wrong in that?” I asked.
“You were supposed to be cold! They told me you would be uncaring and distant!” She bellowed.
A few short, haggard breaths later, she calmed down.
But then that eerie, unhinged grin, meant to strike and hurt, contorted her face once more.
“You think you didn’t influence me? Maybe this truth will help you sleep better at night. ”
She squeezed her face between the bars, and tightened her mouth into a pout that betrayed her youth.
“Your mother wasn’t supposed to die,” she whispered, gleeful. “I was instructed to kill you, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not then, not after. Your kindness sealed her fate and Geryll’s. Now you live with that, Ryker.”