Chapter 27 Traitors
Traitors
DRAVEN’S STARE IS SO COLD it’s starker than the field of snow and ice I collapsed in as a girl. I’m strung between them, pulled between my love and anger for them. They’re both liars.
“You betrayed us,” Draven says between gritted teeth, still baring them.
She takes a deep breath. “I told your father not to go on that mission.”
“How do you even remember that time. I don’t,” I snap at Draven, trying to wrap my head around any of it. “We were children.” He’s only a year older than I am, and I was five when the War ended.
“I bet she’s to blame for that, too.” He grinds the words through his fangs.
I turn on her.
“I … had you and your brother’s memories altered by a druid sympathetic to our cause,” she explains matter-of-factly. As if this is something any loving parent would do to their child.
My eyes bulge, fists trembling at the violation. I think of Professor Vexus using his Hierophant to wipe the minds of all the changelings training with Draven. I never fully realized the horror of losing chunks of your life.
“If we got separated during the Scourge, I wanted you and your brother safe.”
“Yet you didn’t give a shit about me or mine,” Draven snarls.
“So, you’re going to betray me now? Have your revenge?” It’s the tone she used with me so many times, challenging me to disobey her. Knowing I wouldn’t.
She still thinks of him as a child.
He takes a deep breath, but his nails elongate and clench around his arms as he holds himself tightly. He glances at me for a telling moment. “No. Though King Altair will likely find you now that they know which kingdom you’re in. If they haven’t already.”
“We … led them to her?” I feel sick to my stomach.
“Altair likely Selected your father because of who he was and what he knew. He would’ve recognized him.
It must be why Altair kept asking you about her.
” He jerks his head in my mother’s direction.
“I didn’t understand it, why it should matter.
Thought it was merely a test on your ability to tell the truth.
” Draven’s wings tighten up against his rigid back, and he stalks a bit farther into the room, wedging himself into a corner.
As the memory of my interrogation slams into me, Altair’s determination takes on a new meaning.
The druids took her seven years ago, for avoiding Selection, I had said.
Then Draven had added, She was sent to the Destarion.
The prison keeps records of transfers. We both may have led them to her.
“And … my father was Selected first … we moved afterward. He wouldn’t know where she was. Probably thought she was still in the mortal realm.” I look to my mom, and she collapses against the wall, clenching her hair.
“I changed our last name from your father’s to protect you kids, stopped using my own first name entirely.” She heaves a sigh, devastation written in the frown of her lips. “I knew one day this would come.”
I want to break. To scream out my heartbreak and frustration. I came here to save her … and look what I’ve done instead.
Draven pinches the bridge of his nose. “All the pointed fucking questions I just asked Eldarion will get back to Altair. He’ll know who and where she is in a matter of weeks.
I’m sure he has spies here.” He clenches his jaw, and his gaze rakes me over.
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do to stop it. I’m sorry, Rune.”
“That is not our deal, Draven.” I step toe to toe with him, and he straightens up, fists clenched, as he watches her over my shoulder, like a serpent coiled at my back. “She’s not safe here. We need to take her tonight. Can’t you undo the magic binding her to this place?”
His jaw ticks. “Your mother is the reason the Selection exists. She created the Curse. We can’t do anything for her.” He flinches, as if it hurts him to tell me.
I look to her, my lower lip quivering.
“Mom?” I want her to tell me it’s a lie. To say it’s not true.
My mother flinches. “Your father was a general of the rebel leader Kieran Ceres.” She takes a deep breath, tears spilling down her face. “And I was his top alchemist. When Ceres got caught, your father fled with you both. I … performed my last duty before escaping to join you.”
My mother. The soft singer. The garden keeper.
But the impossibility of it begins to fade under other memories.
My mother, who always had a medicinal remedy for any neighbor who’d become sick.
My mother, who sold tonics in town and cures for animals and crops.
Always picking flowers and crushing herbs.
If she could perform minor miracles with nonmagical items …
then what could she have done with actual magic?
What horrors could her rage have unleashed when someone so clever was given something so damning?
And Kieran Ceres had his magical blood and the ill will and determination to use it.
But that was all before my father was taken; she’d been a shell for long since. I’d remembered only the beauty of her from that time before, the singing, the everyday magic.
“The Curse and the Selection are the only thing that have kept this world in tentative peace since the War.” There’s no apology in her voice.
“The Selection ruined our lives.” The force of my voice echoes in the ensuing silence.
Hot tears spring forth, flowing over my cheeks like lava.
Her voice is steady. “If they find me, Rune, they’ll try to make me undo it.
I’m the only one left alive who knows how that blood magic worked.
That knowledge will put all changelings at risk.
The rest of the mortals, too. The immortals’ vengeance will be a lot worse than the Selection once they no longer need us. ”
I can’t even look at her. “Draven, we need to free her. Protect her,” I insist.
His lips are parted in half a snarl, his brows coming together in frustration. “It’s not that simple, Rune.”
She looks at Draven, a cold acceptance in her eyes, the slump of her shoulders. “If you cannot take me with you, if you cannot barter me, you should kill me.”
“Don’t you dare ask that of me.” He shakes his head, disgusted.
“They could use Rune to get me to undo the Curse.” My mother’s eyes narrow on him, leaving me out of the conversation entirely.
Why is she goading him with this? “And you? You look so much like your father. It’s either a miracle or complete ignorance that King Silas hasn’t noticed it.
But what’s to stop me from remarking on it when Altair comes for me? ”
“Mom!” I scold, furious.
“They already know.” Draven glares outright, eyes flashing red at the threat.
I stare at him in surprise, but it makes sense they’d know, that they tortured Ceres before his death with his son’s immortal transformation.
“Do your people?” she fires back.
Draven’s fists clench. That’s not common knowledge, he’d said about his adoption. Let alone his heritage.
My mother turns to me, a challenge in her eyes. “He knows I’m right. I’m a danger to all of you. Save me or end me.”
“We’ll find a way to get you out of this.
” I don’t know how, though, and I turn back to Draven.
He doesn’t move, just clenches his jaw, attention fixed on her like a hunter finding his mark.
Everything feels tenuous, dangerous as balancing on a spider’s silken string over a chasm.
I grab his jaw and move his gaze to mine. “Right?”
Draven blinks rapidly, his eyes so dark there’s no color at all. Finally, he forces out, “Right.”
“Without your father’s blood, it might be impossible to undo the Curse anyway. Yours likely wouldn’t work now that you’re an immortal, and no one ever found your brother, did they?” she whispers.
Draven’s eyes scan her, then flit across the wall, as if he’s searching his memory. “He’s likely dead.” A muscle ticks in his jaw. His eyes go to his boots.
Liar.
My mother only looks relieved. “Maybe then we can’t undo the Curse. Not without the help of Nox.”
“Who is that now?” I ask, exasperated. At their silence I demand, “Any more vital secrets about the world to reveal?”
“She’s the druid’s reluctant goddess of night, sympathizer to the mortals’ uprising.” Draven bares his teeth as voices float and drift down the hallway. He moves toward the door, listening.
“She was also Kieran Ceres’s lover. And Kallos and Adonis’s mother. Didn’t you know you were in the presence of a demigod?” My mother’s words twist like a knife, and he freezes, jaw clenched.
That … makes a lot of sense. Since I first laid eyes on him, he’s felt like something other, something preternatural, and his eyes are unlike any immortal’s I’ve seen. Ancient power trapped in a young man’s body, sculpted by a god. Or a goddess.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! You’re part god? What happened to no lies between partners?” My tattoo burns. It wasn’t a direct lie, but one of omission. How many more of those lie between us like land mines?
“My mother was an ethereal. Some call them gods, but … it doesn’t matter.” He clears his throat as I shoot him a contemptuous look. “Any power given to me by her is gone or lays dormant and has since I was turned immortal.”
I step away, suddenly exhausted by all this, by both of them.
The woman I was, standing at the Selection, desperate to choose my fate seems like a fool now, unaware of the journey she was about to embark on.
The Wraith of Westfall, hoarding others’ secrets, knowing none of her own.
The betrayal that seeps into me slowly burns, until it’s eating me alive.
“We need to go.” Draven’s words roll over my thoughts
My mother glowers at Draven. “If you hurt her—”
“You’re one to fucking talk,” he snarls back.
“She has nothing to do with this.” My mom’s tone turns pleading. Desperate.
“I would never hurt Rune,” Draven swears, his eyes flashing a toxic orange, as if he could incinerate her with a look. “I made a vow. I will find a way to protect you. For her. Nothing more.”
She nods to me. “Go with him, Rune. I’ll be all right.” Even with all my rage I still hesitate, the bonds that tie us strung so tightly they’re shredding. “You have no choice. I’m bound here.”
Anger boils in me as I look at her. She’s the reason that thousands of families have been torn apart. The reason for all of this. The root to the thorns. Between love and fury … my anger wins.
I stalk to Draven. He summons the Hermit and it takes nothing for me to do the same. I give my mother one last look as the invisibility washes over me.
Tears line her eyes, and I hate that all I can think is, How could you?
Draven leads me back through the house, his hand an insistent pressure. We spool onto the front lawns, the cool air hitting me, but I can’t seem to get a solid breath.
Draven draws Death and the shadows blare into us so hard I nearly stagger off my feet. We step into the portal, and once again I have to turn my back on my mother, leaving her behind.