Chapter Fifty-Two
“ H oly. Fucking. Shit.”
Marcella sits on her bed, wedged between Draven and Gray. Her cobalt eyes are round, and her brows are so high on her head, it looks painful.
Finding Gray had been easy. He was in his chambers, reading.
Finding Marcella had been a bit more difficult, but made possible through utilizing Draven’s peculiar magical abilities.
Thankfully, she and Griff at least had half their clothes on when we found them, and Griff was kind enough to open a portal for us back to my chambers.
What’s been truly difficult is explaining the four-hundred-year-old journal I’ve kept hidden from all of them.
Watching Gray’s face fall—if only slightly—with hurt as I recite the words his father spoke to me the night my magic awakened—as he learns of the knowledge I’ve withheld.
As I explain my mother’s role, her request. I tell them everything I know, down to the finest of details I can recall.
The most difficult of which is explaining Casimir Vivaldri’s final entry. What it means. All that it implies.
What it states I am.
A Binder, as he called it. Second of my kind.
Draven and Gray take the overload of information with surprising grace.
Marcella, on the other hand, has not stopped gaping at me as the journal is passed around and everyone takes their turn reading the last entry, dissecting Casimir’s final words and eerie prophecy.
She’s only been able to utter one sentence.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit,” Marcella breathes again.
Yup—that’s the one.
I blow out a sigh, puffing out my cheeks. “I don’t even know what I should be doing with all this information,” I murmur. “Should I tell someone important? Go to Bathara’s council?”
“No,” Draven and Gray answer at the same time. They exchange looks, Draven’s stare lingering a few seconds longer than Gray’s.
“Until we have a better idea of what’s going on, we don’t say a word to anyone.
” Gray holds the journal in his hands, flipping through the pages.
He looks up at me, his mossy eyes lined with a quiet disappointment.
“You could have told me,” he whispers in such a gentle way, I know the words are meant only for my ears.
I drop my eyes to the ground, biting at my cheek. “I know,” is all I have to offer him in response.
“It’s understandable why you said nothing.” Draven cuts Gray a sidelong look, his tone leaving no room for objection. “If this type of information got into the wrong hands—”
“—You mean like your father’ alls?” Gray interjects, his tone like a sharpened blade.
Draven swivels his steely gaze to Gray. “Yes,” he replies firmly.
“ Exactly the type of wrong hands I mean.” He runs fingers through his tousled hair and blows out a breath, as if checking himself.
“If someone like my father got a hold of this knowledge, Lyra would be subjected to all kinds of…” Shadows awaken in his eyes, and it’s like he can’t make himself finish the sentence—imagine the thought of it.
“Anyway,” he breathes, shaking his head, his eyes returning to me.
“I understand why you did what you did.”
Marcella bounces her stare between the two of them, an arch in her brow. “Perhaps our time would be better spent figuring out if what the journal says about Lyra is true,” she says, shooting each of them a look.
Draven nods. “Agreed. We need to first figure out how your magic works—why you haven’t been able to use it.”
Gray clears his throat, lifting his fingers.
“I have a theory about that, actually.” He glances at me, then back down to the journal.
“Assuming Lyra is the one referenced in the journal, he called her a Binder, implying she binds to things. And if Lyra is right and the story Nuha showed her is true, then her essence flower represents any magic she’s touched .
Meaning, connected to.” He pauses, pinching his chin as he thinks.
“I think, somehow, Lyra’s magic is that her lakt? binds to other lakt?.
In theory, it would allow her to wield all magic. ”
Draven glides a hand along his jaw. “That would make sense, even if it defies any present understanding we have of lakt?. It would at least explain why she’s been unable to conjure anything alone. In fact…” He tilts his head. “Lyra, when you’ve wielded, has Marcella always been near you?”
“No,” I answer. “The first time I wielded, it was only Gray, his father, the King, and a few of his personal guards.”
“Where a network of vines and roots appeared out of nowhere, scaling the throne room, leaving no trace of damage,” Gray whispers.
He snaps his gaze up and at me, his eyes rounding.
“You didn’t wield flora magic that night like you thought; you wielded an illusion of it, pulling at the thing that’s always comforted you most. You used my magic to do it.
” His features wash with both shock and understanding simultaneously.
“It explains what I felt that night. I just thought it was a result of the whipping—of the loss of adrenaline mixing with the exhaustion from the pain. But…it wasn’t.
” His voice drops into a whisper. “It was the fatigue from losing so much of my magic’s resources at once. ”
Marcella watches Gray through lowered brows. “Whipping?” she asks, the question quiet. “Aren’t you a Nightenjoy? Why in god’s veins would you be whipped?”
My voice is just a shade above a whisper. “Because he took the lashings in my place.”A heavy ache squeezes in my chest, as if I’m just feeling the full weight of that night for the first time.
I guess in a way, I am.
Gray does not meet Marcella’s downturned gaze.
“It all makes so much more sense now. Why my father sealed your magic away, never to speak of it again. He knew what your magic was. I’m not sure how, but my guess is it has to do with whatever your mother told him she saw in the Veil.
” Gray’s brows are wrinkled as he leans forward, peaking his fingers and pressing them to his lips.
“And then after he found the journal, he must have read it and pieced everything together. That’s why he collapsed in front of the king when your magic appeared—until the very end, he tried to keep it sealed.
To prevent you from revealing yourself. There’s no other explanation. ”
A long silence stretches across the room.
“Whatever information he did or didn’t know,” Draven begins, his tone low and rough-edged, despite his gentle words. “The fact remains that your father’s choices very well saved Lyra’s life.”
Spoken aloud, the realization rushes through me like a storm, rattling my bones and flooding my heart.
Sterling knew better than anyone about my position with the king.
He knew King Alastair’s cruel tendencies.
Knew how capricious and whimsically foolish he could be—how bloodthirsty.
And he must have realized one small slip on my end, whether I knew what I was or not, and it would have put a terrible target on my back, larger than the one I already wore.
And the gods only know how King Alastair would have abused a power like that. The things he would have made me do…
Guilt sprouts suddenly in the pit of my stomach.
The night Sterling confessed to me what he’d done, he looked as if he had been carrying such remorse for his actions—for the path he had chosen. He appeared to clutch tightly onto regret for taking such a pivotal thing away from me for so long.
But I owe him for all the breath that got to live in my lungs; for all the rhythms my heart has been allowed to dance to.
I owe him everything.
And I have not done nearly enough to show him my gratitude for that.
I watch Marcella study Gray, a crease between her brows, then blow out a sigh. “Since you thought you were a flora-wielder to begin with, and seeing as I’m right here, why don’t we test this theory and have you try to conjure something.”
Nerves creep into my veins at the request, yet still I nod.
I close my eyes, but I do not give the flash of the white soporis plant the room to take shape in my mind. Instead, I allow the image of petals splattered with stars to form. And when my veins hum, I flick my wrist.
A vine of Nox’s Caelum appears, stretching along the wall—resulting in Draven’s lips tugging up with a soft, knowing smile as he glances down at the floor.
“Pretty,” Marcella comments, observing the sparkling petals, oblivious to the way Draven had used the flower on me a few, short hours ago.
“When you did that, I definitely felt…something. I think Gray is right, and you pull on our direct resources. Remember the first test, when you wielded in front of me?”
I nod.
I do remember. I wielded, and Marcella suddenly became light-headed.
She dips her chin, not needing to elaborate. “Now try to conjure an illusion.”
My brows pinch together as I think, wondering what in god’s veins I should create. Until, all at once, it becomes glaringly obvious.
I close my eyes, and I try to feel for something…different. To connect to Gray, the person so familiar to me. I’m shocked when my lakt? answers, and my veins hum a different tune—when I realize, if I pay attention to it, I can recognize the difference.
I flick my wrists and reopen my eyes, unprepared to actually be met with the sight of a glittering comet soaring above our heads, lost in its own orbit and system of stars. When I glance at Gray, I find his eyes filled with something wistful and delicate.
“Well,” Marcella murmurs, staring up at the illusion. “That settles that.” She slides her gaze to Gray. “Did you feel anything?”
He nods, the gesture soft. “I did.”
Marcella hums, folding her arms over her chest. “Everything lines up, then. Makes sense.”
“It does,” Draven agrees. “Without your wielder’s mark, your lakt? probably hasn’t been able to pick up on the frequencies of all the lakt? around you yet.
My guess is your magic has basically been a drugged captive in your veins, stifled and diluted—which would also explain why you’ve been mostly unaware of its true potential. ”
“And,” Marcella continues, drawing on his line of thought, “if you were always reaching for flora magic, then you were unintentionally closing yourself off to everything else, too.”
My head is spinning from everything moving too quickly. “So, all that to say…”
Gray huffs a laugh. “All that to say, once your wielder’s mark manifests—whatever it may be—the Dalmar over there will no longer possess the strongest magic on the continent.” A pause. “You will.”
A cold chill dances down my skin, sending the hair on my arms rising. I shake my head. “But I don’t want that,” I answer truthfully. “I don’t want any of this.” My arms make a sweeping gesture.
And I hate the sympathy that suddenly appears in all of their eyes.
Well, all except Draven.
“Then don’t accept it,” he states, plainly. “Say the word, and we forget everything we’ve just learned. I will find you someplace where you can live safely, away from all of this.”
Both Marcella and Gray whip their heads toward him.
“If that prophecy rings true,” Gray warns in a low voice, “then Lyra’s magic could decide the fate of kingdoms.” He glances at me, his expression apologetic, before back at Draven.
“I’m sorry, but she no longer has the privilege of just walking away. ”
Draven does not balk. “She has the privilege of doing whatever the fuck she wants, with me standing by her decision. I will not ask anything of her that she doesn’t want to do. I think she’s bled enough for kings already.”
“So you’d let kingdoms fall?” Gray counters. “Let hundreds, thousands of people die in a potential war Lyra might be able to stop?”
Marcella looks conflicted as she weighs the questions herself.
But Draven doesn’t.
“Yes,” he answers without a shred of thought. “And it’s a damn shame you don’t feel the same, considering how much she loves you—considering even I know, without a doubt, she’d do anything to protect you , right or wrong.”
The words send Gray’s jaw snapping shut. He drops his head, his shoulders hunching forward with the action, as if they’ve suddenly become too heavy to carry.
Marcella glances between the two of them and sighs.
But not before she places a comforting hand on Gray’s back—without even realizing she’s done it, I think.
“Perhaps for now we can all agree that everyone needs to sleep. I know tomorrow’s test takes place later in the day, but we’ll all be useless at this point if we don’t shut our eyes for a few hours. ”
I suck in a breath, feeling all at once hollow and overflowing. “Agreed.”