Chapter 43 #2
Another humorless laugh. “That's a yes, then.”
I sit up straighter, subtly testing the strength of my chains.
“Well, I hope it was good for you. That it was worth it.”
“You don't have any right to be jealous.”
“I'm not jealous.”
“I thought you were dead.”
He rolls the tension from his neck and shoulders before turning toward me once more. “If only, right?”
I run my fingers over the chains, gaging their thickness, wondering if I could manipulate what remains of the campfire's energy into a spell strong enough to melt my way to freedom.
But then what?
Even if I escape, I can't outrun these revelations.
“This isn't about me,” he says, slowly making his way back to me, still clutching his knife.
“Or us. Or jealousy. Even if I was dead and buried, even if there was never anything of any consequence between you and me, he's still the godsdamn King of Mouren, Owyn. Did you forget that, somehow? Did you forget what he did to our world? How could you willingly lie with such a disgusting creature?”
“You don't understand. It's more complicated than we realized, it’s—”
“Complicated.” He crouches down in front of me, a savage little smile playing at the corners of his lips. “Do you want to know more about the complications I've endured since that last night we had together? What I went through while being held prisoner?”
“Reave didn't do any of that to you.”
“No. But Meira was able to rise to power because of the chaos Mouren's rule sowed across our empire. Because Dralsk was left in ruins, its royal family ripped apart by the dragons and magic that corrupted realm wielded.”
“He's not responsible for what his ancestors did!”
“Well, someone has to be held responsible.”
“And you'll start a war over that?”
“That, and the fact that I know he's not as innocent as he's led you to believe. Even if we set the crimes of his bloodline aside, there's also the way he's personally taken you in and clearly corrupted you—oh, and the small matter of him murdering my brother.”
My breathing turns shallow at this confirmation of another terrible theory. “Gareth really was your sibling, then.”
“A bastard half-sibling, but yes. The only family member I had left. One who was willing to do anything to see me restored to the throne that was rightfully mine.”
I try to pick through the wreckage of my thoughts, trying to remember everything I knew about that man, and I land on something Reave told me—how Gareth was allegedly able to sense the ebbs and flows of divine power in the world. “Was he truly a Flameseer?”
Mal regards me silently for a moment, as if deciding whether he owes me any more information.
My expectant glare eventually convinces him.
“That's how I ended up in Halvgate to begin with. Because he sensed something about you, even before your dragon was fully born and bonded with you.”
The knowledge sinks like a blade into my heart.
It wasn't fate that brought us together.
He didn't stay in my city because he fell in love with me, as he once swore.
It was a calculated move made by two desperate, exiled royals.
They hunted me. They knew what I was. What I would become.
And Malachi branded me before I even became it, while I was still too weak, too stubborn and foolish and na?ve to realize what was happening.
“He was furious about the attack on Halvgate, and everything that came after,” Malachi continues.
“When he finally managed to free me from the depths of Meira's dungeons, he wanted to abandon our dealings with you altogether.
He was convinced he'd gotten things wrong—that you would never be useful to us and our plans.
Because you certainly took your time embracing your divine bond, didn't you?”
I avert my gaze, staring at the brand he left on my wrist. At the Ashwalker symbol I carved on the opposite arm.
These two marks that I clung to while I was so determined to survive, trudging along every dangerous path I came across…
except any path that would bring me toward my dragon.
Toward my true, frightening, complicated power that I didn’t want to face.
“I convinced him to continue trying to bring you and your dragon together,” Mal says. “And then, when you finally started to bond with Gareth's guidance, the fucking depraved King of Mouren decided to ruin our plans.”
“Your brother was a spy,” I say quietly. “He had to be stopped.”
A spy who took advantage of Reave's desperation.
The cave has been amplifying everything said between us, and now it makes the quiet that settles between our words feel just as vast, large and heavy enough to suffocate.
“So you think he deserved to die?” Mal asks, barely above a whisper.
When I don't reply, he grabs my jaw and drags my gaze to his.
“Answer me.”
I swallow hard. He already knows the answer. He can read me well enough that there’s no point in lying.
“Yes,” I say.
He was always slow to anger, and that much hasn't changed; the silence between us stretches so, so unbearably long as fury creeps its way into his expression, moving like the shadow of night choking out the last threads of daylight.
I close my eyes as his grip turns tighter, willing myself not to flinch when I sense him lifting his knife toward my face.
“Ruined,” he mutters as he drags the knife slowly upward, tapping it against the scars around my eye. “Just like your face.” Another horrible, weighted silence, and then: “I'm assuming this happened on that last fateful night we spent together?”
I try to turn away again, but he presses the flat of the blade firmly against my cheek, forcing me to hold his gaze.
“It's hard to look at, isn't it?” His eyes have turned disturbingly cold and vacant. “Hard to remember what happened back then. What we once were, and all that we could have already become, if only you'd embraced your divine bond the way I expected you to. The way the gods expected you to.”
His thumb grazes over my scars, as if cataloging them. As if trying to see if there’s anything worth salvaging.
Ruined.
I don't know why it's this word that’s finally managed to slide under my skin and stay there. It's not a revelation. It's not news to me that I was ruined that night, so many parts of myself lost and left behind in the ashes.
And yet, hearing him say the word is what finally makes the tears well up in my eyes, and I quickly lose the battle to keep them in.
Malachi's fingers trail over my cheeks, catching a few teardrops as they fall. “Luckily, it's not too late to right some of these wrongs. And I still want to help you do that, Owyn.”
My voice shakes, but I manage to get the words out: “You only want to use me.”
“Guide you,” he gently corrects.
“I don't want your guidance.”
“You will, once you realize you need me as much as I need you.
Mouren is a cursed, false kingdom. You know this, regardless of what lies its king has forced you to believe.
You're too smart to not realize this truth.
And I think you also know that you could never reach the full potential of your bond and its power among the tainted grounds of that place.
You belong in a proper divine kingdom with a proper king.
With someone who can keep you from turning your back on what you're truly meant to be.”
I say nothing.
“We're going to change this broken world. Isn't that what you've always wanted to do?”
He knows it is. Of course he knows. Because how many times did we talk about it?
How many nights did we sit together on the brick wall that surrounded his house, watching the stars over Halvgate and making promises about how we were going to build a different future together?
We were going to be proof that Mouren couldn’t destroy everything.
We were going to find a way to make our suffering worth it, and we were going to make something beautiful among the ashes. He made me believe that.
But it was never me that he believed in.
Never me that he loved.
It was only my god-touched destiny he wanted to share—
No.
Not share.
Steal.
“Never mind the rest,” he says, and suddenly he's using that softer, idealistic tone that made me fall for him, once upon a time. “All will eventually be as we planned it, for better or worse.”
This is not what I planned.
I'm screaming the words in my head, but for some reason, I can't get them out.
“The divine flame in Dralsk will burn again,” he goes on. “You'll help me light it, and you will look beautiful in its glow, despite your scars. And everything will change from that point forward.”
“And if I don't help you?”
He goes quiet, something unreadable crossing his face.
“Before you decide against it,” he eventually says, “you should know that I've gotten quite skilled at using our bond to control the most powerful dragons who soar through Mouren's skies. Renounce whatever relationship you have with the Mouren King, return willingly to my kingdom and stand at my side, or this will be a much messier reunion than I was hoping for.”
I don't manage a response, because at that moment, pain flares hot and sudden through the brand on my arm.
A warning.
And I realize, then, that I have no idea exactly how this mark binds us together—or what damage he could truly inflict through it.
“I'll give you a few hours to think it over.” With this, he rises, moving toward the exit.
He's nearly to the cave's mouth when a question slips out of me before I can stop it.
“Did you ever really love me?”
He pauses.
I fight the urge to curl into myself. To take the words back. It feels so foolish to even care about his answer now, after everything he’s done. So pointless. Like trying to light a candle in the middle of a rainstorm.
He looks back, studying me in silence, and I think I catch a glimpse of the man I loved. Or maybe it’s just my mind playing tricks, trying to protect me—because he’s not there, was never really there.
“Love is weakness,” he says. “Love is the reason Gareth was able to manipulate the Mouren King. And I suspect it will be that king's ultimate downfall, now that I have you.”
It takes me far too long to find my voice again, and when I do, only three words come to mind. “You're a monster.”
“Something tells me you will be too, before this is finished.” He flashes me a quick smile before turning away. “And what a legendary pair we'll make when that moment comes.”