Chapter Fifty-Five
Analleia
The light was gone, the utter bliss.
My eyes fluttered open, and I found myself in a room enclosed by windows, the sun beating against the panes. A dull ache throbbed in my head, my limbs heavy. I blinked, not remembering where I was. Why I was here.
I turned to the right, surprise jolting through me.
But maybe it wasn’t a surprise.
Maybe I had gone to the next world, because Nadiyah sat curled up in a chair beside the bed, her thick hair falling over half her face.
“Nadiyah?” My voice cracked, my throat dry.
Her eyes shot open, and she practically jumped into my lap, flinching in pain. “You’re awake!”
“How are you—”
“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” She lifted up her tunic, revealing a row of neat stitches.
“Wylan Athello knew what he was doing, struck without hitting anything vital. I played them all for fools, acted like I was dying. I’ve endured so much worse.
They thought I was helpless and didn’t watch me as closely as they should have.
They were stupid enough to take me to where they were holding Desmond.
The first time they turned their backs, I incapacitated them and broke Desmond out. That’s when we came looking for you.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry, Nadiyah. It’s my fault. It’s my fault you were captured. It should have been me. I should have waited for you. Should have tried to—”
“Hey,” Nadiyah cut me off, placing a hand on my arm. “We knew what we were risking, and we would risk it all again. You weren’t alone in this. We signed up for it. And Desmond ...”
Her voice trailed off, as if waiting for me to remember something.
And I did. The events from the king’s chamber caught up to me, overwhelming me again.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He didn’t—” She hesitated. “He didn’t know if you would want to see him.”
I might not want to, but I needed to.
Nadiyah stood from the bed and avoided looking at me. I frowned. She never shied away from anything. It took me a moment to understand it.
“You knew,” I accused. “Didn’t you?”
She met my gaze, guilt written all over her face.
They had lied to me. Both of them.
“Why?” I asked. “All this time, you knew. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shook her head. “It was not my story to tell, and I think it would be better if you spoke to him first.”
I tried to bury the resentment. The hurt, but it rose within me unbidden.
“You weren’t able to find the man who killed your family,” I said.
She shook her head. “I didn’t find him, but vengeance did.
Often it seems injustice bears no consequence, but other times the world rights its own wrongs and spares you the burden.
In this case it pulled in my favor. He was listed among the dead from the explosion.
While far too merciful, my family can now rest in peace. ”
A knock came at the door, and Nadiyah dismissed herself as Desmond stepped inside, looking anywhere but at me. A dark bruise shadowed his left eye, and his right hand was wrapped in a bandage. His weary eyes made him look as if he had aged ten years.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” he said.
I reached up to the bandage on my head. “But how am I?”
He ventured over to the side of the bed, easing down into the chair.
“Valeris thought you were dead. We all did. When you released the knife in your gauntlet, it didn’t have enough force or speed to completely puncture your skull.
It grazed up the side of it. I’m sure there’s a nasty scrape we can’t see.
You lost a lot of blood, but the physicians managed to keep you alive.
Because of what the Enchantress did we didn’t know if you would ... ”
He trailed off.
“I remember everything.” I stared up at the ceiling.
The silence stretched between us, neither wanting to address the angry monster in the room.
“You should have told me,” I said.
Desmond raked his hands through his hair. “Yes, I should have, but—”
“I would have forgiven you, but it would have taken time.”
He shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t have.”
“Yes,” I argued. “I would. I would have been hurt. Angry. But you’re the only family I have left. I wouldn’t have turned my back on you.”
Even without his help the Paravellians would have found a way to break in and destroy us, but his betrayal helped make their entrance and destruction thorough. He should have known better, but he also hadn’t been much older than me at the time.
“And what about now?” he asked.
I pursed my lips. It hurt. Not only the betrayal, but how he had lied to me all these years, always kept me in the dark when he held the answers I sought.
But he was still my brother.
“I think it will take time for trust to form again, but I would never cut you out or turn my back on you.”
I met his eyes and understanding passed between us.
“What happened?” I asked.
He told me how the Enchantress had jumped to her death trying to get the ring and how both he and Valeris had thought I was dead.
“Are we prisoners here?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, Valeris is treating us like guests.”
Valeris held the authority. A pang of guilt hit me at what I had done to him, then overwhelming empathy for the loss he had experienced. Both of his parents, dead within the span of a few minutes.
“Five years,” I whispered. “Five years planning vengeance on the wrong man.”
“All for the sake of one woman’s pride,” Desmond said. “But they’re gone now.”
The silence hung between us, each lost in our own thoughts.
That was it. It was over. I expected to feel accomplished.
Justified. But instead I felt empty. Sadness overwhelmed me at how pitiful the lives of the king and queen must have been to resort to violence over such pettiness.
To what end? Had they found nothing more in life to live for?
“Only one thing has consumed my life for the past five years,” I admitted. “What am I supposed to do now?”
Desmond leaned back, pulling a slip of paper from his pocket. “I think I might have a solution for that.”
I peered at him as I unfurled the letter, unsure of its contents. I stopped only a few sentences in, rereading it thinking I had misunderstood. I stared up at my brother, shock jolting through me.
A smile lit his face, an emotional nod encouraging me to read on.
I devoured the letter, reading it over and over again as if the words might change from one reading to the next, but they didn’t. They stayed the same, speaking to a piece of my heart I thought had died long ago.
“Is it true?” I asked, tears slipping down my cheeks.
He nodded, his own eyes shining.
And I wept.
Wept with sorrow, with happiness, and for the first time in a long long time—with hope.