Chapter 39
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
RYKER
I ’ve always prided myself on telling the truth, no matter how uncouth or blunt others considered me, but this one tasted like acid in my mouth.
I, the so-called Blood Brotherhood Commander, who was supposed to lead the army if Zandyr fell, second-in-command only to the feared Dragon, had made a bargain instead of going to war.
It seemed so logical back then.
I’d been freshly named leader of the Starhollow Clan, still mourning the passing of my mother–the only real family I had left and the only one who’d truly cared for me–and trying to contain the disease which had swept through the crater and taken too many of my people and our resources.
Still too green and inexperienced for such a decision, but with a hatred in my heart that demanded it.
The Northern Clans were enemies to me in everything but the name.
There had never been any love lost between Solkar’s Reach and the rest of them–aside from my mother falling in love with my father, for some inexplicable reason–but their refusal to aid us the one time we asked for help had burned through the disgusted indifference, leaving only hatred between the ashes.
We’d helped them through famine, floods, and landslides. I’d risked my own life to save Ashrift civilians when a mine had caved in.
But they wouldn’t allow us mere passage through their lands and my mother had paid the price for it.
I wanted to rid myself of them once and for all.
But Beren–whenever there was mayhem, Beren was always behind it–had known what power he’d have to give up if I joined the Blood Brotherhood.
What access to power he’d lose, because the bastard couldn’t move one pebble on his own without sipping from the heart of my land.
The Northern Clans threatened to wage war Malhaven hadn’t seen against my people unless I allowed them to keep accessing the power through the veins hidden deep inside the ground.
And I agreed.
I knew the Blood Brotherhood wanted Starhollow to join, but I didn’t know if they would go to war to protect us. Burned by my own relatives, I couldn’t trust strangers which had been declared enemies most of my life.
Now I had to pay the consequences for that decision–in more ways than one.
Allie still hadn’t said anything.
She didn’t even look at me, gaze jumping around the floor as she took it all in.
What would she say when she’d stop nibbling at her lips?
Would there be disappointment in her eyes when she finally met mine again? Disgust at how weak I’d been?
My fingers dug into the doorframe hard enough to crack the wood.
“Let me get this straight,” she began after what felt like the longest silence.
I didn’t relax. It wasn’t a curse, but not a great start, either.
“You promised to give them access to the fallen star’s magic so they wouldn’t kill your people,” she said.
“Yes,” I hissed at myself.
“And the Blood Brotherhood doesn’t know that–”
“No.”
“Nor anybody else from Solkar’s Reach.”
“No.”
“Just me,” she said.
“Yes.” She’d been the only other soul I’d shared this secret with. The only one who’d known where to dig for it.
“And now those rotten Northern Clans are saying they’re not getting as much magic as they did and want more, yes?”
“With thinly veiled threats, yes.”
The quiet stretched and stretched as her brows furrowed more and more. I braced myself for whatever disdain remarks that beautiful and courageous mind of hers could concoct.
She was brave.
The Huntress would not stand a weak man.
“Those fucking hypocrites,” she exploded. “Did they ever give a grain of frozen sand to anyone else to demand anything in return? The Northern Clans are more stingy than the goddamn Fair Isles. And those profiting bootlickers would sell their own eyes if they could replace them with golden coins–”
“Wait.” I blinked at her, confused.
“For what? It’s true, they have the absolute worst reputation in Malhaven,” she said with that same Vegheara fire, tilting her pointy chin up as if she was fighting the Northern Clans right now. “Not even the Borderline Bands are that wretched–”
“You’re upset about the Northern Clans,” I said, still disbelieving.
“Yes! Threatening innocent people because you want more access to magic you don’t own or sacrificed for is absolutely revolting. I don’t know how they can look at themselves in the mirror in the morning without retching right then and there. I’d be ashamed to even think of cheating power.”
This woman would drive me mad one day if she kept shocking me like this.
“What about me?” I asked.
Her brows furrowed. “What about you? It’s disgusting that your own family threatened you, but we both know uncles can be absolutely horrendous–"
“You–you don’t think less of me?” I forced myself to ask.
I hated how my voice sounded. Like a youngling’s, waiting to be forgiven.
“Why in the underworld would I?”
“Because I caved.”
Finally, her eyes widened with understanding and I braced myself once more.
Then her face, which had been so deliciously irate only moments before, softened. She shrugged. “I would have done the same thing.”
“You wouldn’t have. You broke a wedding arch and risked your life to protect your people.”
“Yes. And your goal was to protect your people without any bloodshed during a time when you were all hurting. Would you have felt better if you’d refused the Northern Clans and they would have attacked? You would have won, obviously, but at what cost?”
One I’d never even dared to calculate. My civilians’ lives couldn’t be quantified.
“I understand pride. I am prideful.” That Vegheara chin of hers–that begged to be touched, tilted, and tantalized–rose high.
“A good leader always thinks of others before themselves. That’s how I was raised and that’s what I believe in.
Only weak men sacrifice their people on the battlefield to protect their pride.
I would have had less respect for you than that waste of space Fabrian if you had done that. ”
This woman.
This woman who could kneel the entire continent with the storm raging inside of her made me want to kneel because of the heart that stood at the center of it.
Principles were rare in the Clan world. Even rarer when someone upheld them even if they could lose something in the process.
It was humbling, in a bizarre way, to stand in front of another being who’d been through betrayals of her own, had lost her parents, her throne, and, for the briefest moment, her will. But she’d returned, blossoming once more, even as darkness clung to the edges of her energy.
I felt it.
I saw it.
Her gaze was colder and sharper.
Her movements as efficient, but more determined.
There was a tension in her shoulders, as if stubbornness to survive had raised her back from the depths and now kept her upright to finish what she had started.
She didn’t see it, not yet. But she would–the same way I had after I’d gathered myself up.
But I had years of solitude to lick my wounds and regroup.
Allie had months, if that.
The Serpents would attack, of that I had no doubt.
This war could plunge Malhaven into pure chaos, the likes of which the continent had never seen in millennia.
Even without a continental conflict, her Clan–because the Protectorate will always be hers, no matter which usurper stood on the throne–would oscillate, tilt, and crumble under Silas’ rule.
Optimistically, I gave it a few weeks.
The Huntress would need to rise once more, whether Allie wanted to believe it or not.
Because she was not the kind of leader who could stand by and watch injustice. Her own people would suffer.
The same civilians who hadn’t risen against Silas or cried in the streets for First Daughter’s return.
They might have turned their backs on her, but Allie wouldn’t do the same to them.
She would fight and she would be glorious, of that I was sure.
Right now, I knew she thought she was done for. A forgotten name in the history of the great Clans. A cautionary tale that trust didn’t amount to triumph.
Yet even in the face of defeat, permanent or not, she stood up straight and fought for her values, even against enemies who weren’t hers.
Allie was a newcomer in Solkar’s Reach. She still considered herself an outsider, from the not-so-subtle hints Mrs. Thornbrew had kept launching my way.
And she was completely and utterly outraged at the injustice.
For the first time in a long while, perhaps ever, I felt understood. Because even my Brothers and Sisters thought I was too much of an idealist at times.
Too rigid in my morals, too unforgiving to those who crossed them, too set on protecting those who needed it.
I was enough of a man to admit that I doubted myself sometimes. When everybody calls you drunk, even a sober man glances at his boots to see if he’s swaying.
Standing by my own creed, born out of conscience and my mother’s chants, had been difficult in the wake of a neverending stream of curious glances and outright contemptuous questions.
Yet here she was, the embodiment of all those principles–and proud of it.
“Raised as a warrior, but taught to be a diplomat was not easy growing up in the Northern Clans,” I found myself saying.
I’d never voiced this split I had to endure. My mother–may the gods appreciate her kind soul in death as it should have been in life–had made it her mission in life to make sure I cared for the smallest being, down to the worms and falling leaves in our long walks through the forest.
“Every being lives and dies, my heart,” my mother used to say as I looked up at her.
At six years-old, I already knew about Solkar and participated in my fair share of ceremonies in the Memory Hall, and I’d always thought my mother was his sister.
A goddess among mortals. She let her long blonde hair down, the sunrays making it glimmer.
“But their lives and sacrifice should never be in vain.”