Chapter 12 The Halo #2
“There you are.” King Altair sneers as he looks down at me on my knees, trapped.
I realize too late how intense my gaze is, my nostrils flared, my mouth a snarl. Fuck.
He glowers at me. “Now let’s see if you’re capable of honesty. Where is the rest of your family?”
My father looks only at the ground. Eyes never lifting. He’s never been a coward … why the hells won’t he look at me? I focus on King Altair, confused why he’s even asking.
“My brother was taken by the elves. You have my father.”
“And your mother? Where is she?” King Altair presses.
My father meets my stare now. His head shakes ever so slightly. A warning maybe, not to lie. I don’t know for sure. Suddenly, he feels like a stranger, where once he was more familiar to me than my own face.
“The druids took her six years ago,” I reply honestly. “For avoiding Selection.”
The color blazing around my throat changes from white to gold. King Altair’s gaze goes a little slack.
So the halo gauges my ability to tell the truth.
“Where is she now?” King Altair’s question is not for me, but King Silas.
Silas’s brows narrow, clearly lost. “I’ve no idea.”
“She was sent to the Destarion.” Draven’s fists shake at his sides.
I’m too terrified to think straight, but even if I wasn’t, I doubt I could figure a way out of this noose of star fire.
Draven’s nostrils flare, veins straining. “Try that little trick on me if you don’t believe me.”
“The halo would likely burst into flame,” Altair snarls.
“Watch yourself when you speak to my son.” The back of Silas’s hand glows emerald along a tattoo of the Judgment Arcana.
The ability to control both the living and the dead.
He flexes it, silver eyes glinting with acidic green.
“And let’s move past these dramatics. Do you agree to this trade or not? We won’t accept a delay.”
I lift my chin to look at Altair, trembling to my core. He sees too much, this halo knows every lie, sees straight through to the righteous anger woven in the fiber of my being. But I can let this fury go … for my father.
The halo’s light turns red and another shickt sounds, my throat so dry I want to swallow, but the warmth of the halo halts me.
If I breathe too deeply, I won’t have a head on my shoulders.
It knew I was sitting here, lying to myself.
My eyes flutter as the heat burns, but I force my expression to be neutral even though rage devours my heart, bile rising in my throat.
An anger that’s built from the Selection, starting with the one when I was six, when I lost my brother, and realized the severity of what it was.
Then when I lost my father and mother, slashing scars across my soul.
Amping to this last one, burning it all up from the inside out.
Altair’s jaw tightens, as if he’s biting back his full judgment.
“What is your destiny, Rune Ryker?” King Altair’s light eyes draw up that field locked in my mind. But there’s something new in the image I’ve never seen, glinting gold. For a moment it overlays what’s in front of me, like a window into the past.
After the druids burned down our home and took my mother from me, I ran.
Desperate and alone and terrified I sprinted as hard as I could.
Until the breath stopped holding in my lungs, the winter winds no longer pushed at my back, and my legs simply gave out.
I collapsed at the edge of that snow-strewn field.
The tears ceased spilling down my face. It was then I left behind the soft girl I was.
Like a serpent shedding its old skin, the former life went with it.
I begged any mortal god listening to help me survive.
I vowed that if they did that, one day I would make the immortals pay for their Selection.
That I would not stop until I’d found my family and reunited us.
It’d take years until I’d remember my promise, until I would snap at the Lord of Westfall’s side and come back to myself.
But now I see something in that memory that had not been there that day.
I dig at the object, a golden peak visible under the deep wet slush that burns my injured hands.
It’s heavy, metallic, and its cold touch bites as I pull it from its half-buried spot.
I lift it up in my mind, the sharp ridges of the crown both familiar and not.
While I turn it around, inspecting it fully, I realize why.
It’s mended, smoothly, with pieces from every immortal king’s crown.
Then I know something undeniable. Unexplained but certain all the same.
It is mine.
It belongs only to me.
The image vanishes as quickly as it came. I don’t know if it was a vision, a prophecy, or a hallucination. My hands are held out in front of me still, and the phantom outline of what I’d envisioned shimmers in my palms. From the looks on everyone’s faces, they see it, too.
Understanding what it foretells.
I can’t focus on the intense stares of those around me, only King Altair’s simmering fury. He’s going to kill me.
And I know in an instant why—he sees me as a threat to Arcadia. How could he not after what we’d all seen? My breath catches as the mechanical hum begins again.
“Father—no!” Princess Reva tries, grabbing for his hand.
Then shadows erupt around me. I drop as if the floor has shattered beneath me, plummeting into the darkness at the same moment I hear one last shickt. I’m yanked through the shadows—the sound of a fast-riding chariot blaring in my ears one moment, gone the next—and then I’m colliding into Draven.
He thrusts me behind him as King Altair suddenly closes the distance between us too fast, wings spanning out so wide they engulf us.
A heavenly, golden sword appears in his hand at the same moment Draven calls a black sword crackling with fiery red energy along its blade.
I’ve never seen it before. It’s glorious.
He slams it against the glowing edge of Altair’s sword to keep him back, his own burning like lava, sparks flying.
His mother and Prince Ansel scream, but I can’t see beyond the two males in front of me.
One protecting me with his blade and body, the other intent to annihilate me.
My gaze shoots to Altair’s halo, only large enough for maybe a wrist to slip through, but certainly not a neck.
“She is an abomination. You saw the truth of her. Give her to me,” Altair growls.
Thunder crackles through the room and lightning sparks off Draven’s blade, the burning energy cutting into the seraph king’s sword. “Touch her and I’ll end you.”
“STAND DOWN!” Silas hollers, and a green energy sluices into the two of them. Altair and Draven break apart, as if puppeteered to do so, their eyes glinting emerald for a moment. The strange coloring dissipates.
The seraph king lifts his sword, looking at the notched split Draven’s blade carved from it.
Altair’s mends itself, light weaving to fill the spot until it is unblemished once more.
I watch as Draven’s blade transforms, too, bending and coiling and shrinking until it is a ring along his finger, glowing fiery red before cooling out again.
Princess Reva breathes heavily, reaching for her father’s arm, but he jerks away.
Prince Ansel slips his mother’s grasp and collides into Draven’s other side, arms wrapped around his waist. I’ve never seen the princeling so absolutely feral.
He bares his fangs, protecting both me and his brother before his mother scoops up the child and sweeps out with a couple of guards.
The tension in the room is more tightly drawn than a nocked bowstring.
“You dare use your magic on me?” Altair demands of Silas.
“You forget that I, too, am king,” Silas growls.
He strides forward until he stands between them, a poisonous jade light filling his irises, and I realize he did not use his Judgment Arcana just against Altair, but on the seraph guards, too.
Their eyes glow green, swords drawn, standing ready to bring their own king to his knees.
“I tire of your demands, Altair. I know what the others say of my kingdom. The elves refer to us as ‘night elves.’ Mortals call us heathens, worshippers of chaos. And you seraphs call us demons. But we are druids, not some weakened version of your peoples, but our own. You forget our strength with every slight, and I am so very tired of pretending I am remotely in fear of you.”
My father’s hand inches toward the hilt of his sword, and he looks to me with a mirrored desperation and devastation in his amber eyes. I want to run to him, cling to him while we have the chance.
“Your debt to me still stands, Silas Vos.” Altair is as immovable as a mountain and yet Silas does not look any more tamable than the sea.
“Give me this girl. I will handle her as I see fit. Then we can call off this false truce. My daughter Reva deserves better than this leftover uprising scab anyway.”
His daughter folds her arms, her gaze shifting between Draven and me.
At least she attempted to stop her father from beheading me.
I swallow, panic firing through every synapse at how close I came to death, a position I’m still in but at least now I’m on my feet.
Draven and his father exchange a look. Judging by the way they hold themselves, prepared for a fight, I realize we’re inches from catastrophe.
My hand slowly moves to hover over my deck. I realize how badly I should’ve been mastering more powerful Arcana, ones that could aid in a duel. I don’t know if I can help in a fight of this scale, even though it’s all I want at this moment.
My father holds no green glow in his warm eyes. Yet he hasn’t moved. Not to stop his king from executing me, not to beg for my life, not to do anything.
“If you insult my son, then you insult me. I will do what I should’ve done from the start of this arrangement. Prince Draven.” Silas gestures to his son. “Do you want to end this betrothal? You know what it will cost.”
Me, I realize, it will cost my life.
My breath catches. I don’t think there’s anything I or anyone here will do to stop the seraph king should Draven hand me over. My father can’t. And Draven could guarantee he isn’t stuck with these horrific people for an eternity. I hate how my knees quake. How powerless I am.
“You would allow him to decide this?” Altair’s face curls into a scowl. “She is a danger to all of us, Silas. You included, and I’ve never known you to back down from a threat.”
Silas ignores the sheer fury drifting off the seraph king, still waiting on Draven’s answer. I’ve never seen the prince so still. Desperately I open a small sliver in my mental shield, binding a thought up and spearing it to him. A promise and an offer. All I have left.
Save me and I will give you anything.
Draven’s head tilts toward me, recognition in his eyes, along with something hungry.
Anything? His dangerously soft hiss fills my head like an empty cup. The wall I’ve opened allows his dark smoke to pour inside, but I don’t stop it. I let him see I mean it.
His eyes flutter for a heartbeat, then harden as he turns to the kings.
“Rune is not livestock for you to slaughter. She is a druid of the highest Arcana, the only one besides me chosen for such holy power in over half a millennium.” Draven’s fangs grow increasingly prevalent. “You saw her holding a crown because we are fated. She is clearly meant to be my queen.”
His words ring like the tolling of the bells, my destiny sealed inside them.