Chapter 28 Skylar #2
“We could ask for a delay?” It’s Axel, suggesting this.
Suggesting going against what his king wants.
Skylar glances at him very briefly, then looks away again before he can meet her gaze.
But she can see the way he’s looking at her.
And it’s not in fear or disgust. She’s not sure what exactly she’s seeing—but not that.
Skylar shakes her head. “No. Let’s go now.” She needs to know what happens next.
She offers Astrid half a smile. Thanks, though, Little Witch. And like Astrid can hear her, she nods. Then, with one final glance at Zryan, she turns away from them all.
“Skylar—” Zryan begins, when Astrid is out of earshot.
“Don’t,” she snaps. Then she takes a breath. “Just… let’s not, okay? Let’s just get this over with.”
Zryan waits for her to meet his storm-cloud gaze. “Okay.” And for some reason, that one word doesn’t sound like judgment. It sounds like solidarity.
“So,” the king says, bracing his fingers together on his desk.
He is the only one seated. Ottilie is standing by his side, looking out the window, while Skylar is facing the desk, flanked by Axel and Zryan.
“No dragon.” His pale blue eyes are cold and calculating on her face.
She can’t tell from his voice if the disappointment is because she returned without a dragon—or because she returned at all.
Beneath her skin, her power crackles, the first she has heard from it since the island. “But I hear you’ve been hiding things from us, my girl.”
She clenches her hands into fists at her sides.
She wants to tell him again what she spat at him the night she was dragged into the castle.
She is not his girl. Next to her, Axel shifts ever so slightly, and the tips of his fingers brush against the back of her hand.
She’s not sure if it’s deliberate, but it’s a useful reminder to stay calm.
Her fate is in the king’s hands right now—and like it or not, she has to play nice. Which for her, means staying silent.
“Explain,” the king says, looking at Axel.
Axel hesitates, glancing at Skylar. But he’s already told them, hasn’t he?
When Axel starts to speak, to explain what he saw, Skylar tries not to listen.
She doesn’t need a recap. All she wants to know is what happens now.
They still need her for the duel. But after that—will she take the executioner’s place?
Will they just kill her? Are they allowed to kill her, if she wins?
She has no idea what the rules of the Covenant are.
But regardless of that—there’s no way the people would let an Exhauster rule, is there?
There would be even more uproar than there already is.
She supposes this means that whoever out there was rooting for her to win might not be anymore.
She realizes then that the queen is watching her.
She turns her head, meets the queen’s gaze.
Ottilie’s mouth twists, just a little. Skylar can’t figure out what she’s thinking.
Is she wishing she were a higher grade Discerner—so she could have sensed this power in Skylar earlier?
Then again, Skylar has spent years repressing her power—since that night.
She’s spent years convincing herself she’s not Blooded.
So maybe the queen wouldn’t have been able to sense it anyway.
When Axel stops speaking, the king turns his focus on Skylar. He considers her for a long moment before shaking his head almost ruefully. “I did wonder how you got away that night.”
And there it is—out in the open. An admission that he had her mother killed, tried to have her killed.
Run, Skylar.
The last thing her mother ever said to her. She forces herself to breathe. Do not lose it, Skylar. Because if she does, in front of all of them—there’s only one way this can end, isn’t there?
“I didn’t even know for sure you were my daughter, back then,” the king continues mildly.
“I’d had a brief dalliance with your mother, of course.
” Next to him, Ottilie stiffens, looking away from Skylar, as if the idea of her mate ever having been with another woman is abhorrent.
He reaches out, touches her waist lightly.
“Brief and meaningless,” he says pointedly.
The queen continues to look away, but places her hand over his.
“I heard a rumor several years later,” the king says, regarding Skylar with an expression she can’t quite read. “Whispers around the city. Could be nothing—but I thought, why risk it? It took me nearly a year to find her—and you. Your mother worked hard to keep you hidden, that was for sure.”
Skylar’s heart rate is rising, bile bitter in her throat.
She can’t look back at him. She can’t look away.
He is admitting to murdering her mother.
To not caring whether the child he killed was his heir—or just a casualty.
And she doesn’t think she can do this: stand and listen to him talk about it.
She doesn’t know why he’s telling her—other than to prove the point, perhaps, of how powerful he is—but she doesn’t want to hear it.
An echo of what she felt on the island surges in her.
Could she do it? Reach out, take the life force from the king, here, in front of everyone?
He’d deserve it. And does she care if they kill her for it, as long as she takes him with her? She can already sense her power, reaching out toward him. Hungry. Desperate.
You need to live, Lar.
The next breath she takes is like sandpaper against her throat. He’s right. She needs to live; she needs to not be a prisoner. For him, she needs that.
Next to her, she feels Axel shift subtly.
Not enough to touch her this time, but enough to make her glance up.
He’s frowning at her—but not in disapproval.
She thinks it’s concern she sees behind those eyes.
Because he can sense what it is she’s feeling.
She gives him the tiniest of nods, trying to convey that she’s not going to lose it. At least not right now.
The king is still watching her. “The commander of my Dreki told me that your mother killed my guards that night, then she killed you both herself. My Projector sent me images of your mother’s body as proof—said you’d been blasted apart by the Air Bringer.
” He pauses, and Skylar has a second to imagine—Dreki, standing around her mother’s body.
Sending images of it to the king, while she was cornered in that alley.
Nausea swells, but she can’t stop her mind from going back to that night. The Dreki, invading their home, right in the southernmost part of Vatra. Her mum, begging her to run. The guard that followed her.
Nowhere left to run.
The way he’d gone in for the kill. Her body’s reaction as his knife glinted in the dark.
Her power surging for the first time in her life.
Urging her to pull. To take the man’s life force and watch as his face drained of color, his eyes protruding in horror as blood vessels popped.
To watch him slump to the street, dead. And the power, horrible, sickening, exhilarating power, flooding her system.
Ten years old, and she’d killed a man for the first time.
She found Aldric not long after. Vowed never to use her power again, so it could never be used as a reason to kill her. And so she could never be tempted to kill again.
“I sensed my commander was lying, you know,” the king continues. “A weakness on her part, wanting to protect a child. We didn’t have an Influencer or a powerful enough Reader at that time to pull it out of her. But there was something off with her emotions, wasn’t there, Axel?”
Axel’s jaw clenches—the only reaction he gives.
He must only have been around twelve at the time.
Twelve years old, and wheeled out to use his still-forming abilities.
She doesn’t want to feel sorry for him, being used like that.
But a part of her does. She sees the way Zryan glances at him.
The subtle headshake Axel gives Zryan in return—a silent conversation between friends.
“I had the commander killed for it,” the king adds mildly, “just in case. But then you never resurfaced, and I thought maybe my instincts were off. Maybe you had been killed, like she said. And as you were never formally recognized, no harm done either way.”
Ottilie turns away from her husband, her face tight. Skylar wonders if it’s the talk of all the killing that’s upsetting her—or if it’s just the reminder that the king was with another woman before her.
“Well,” the king says, clapping his hands as he straightens, “no dragon, but all may not be lost. This power puts you at an advantage, I’d say. Especially considering that familiar of hers.” Skylar bristles for some reason—almost like she wants to defend Bastet. Which is totally ridiculous.
She’s not the only one with a reaction, though. Next to her, Zryan has stiffened, those shoulders of his rigid.
Everyone looks at Zryan—including Skylar. She can’t help it. She’s seen the way Zryan looks at Astrid sometimes. But he still needs Skylar to win, right? He still needs her to kill Astrid.
“You disagree?” the king asks.
“I don’t know,” Zryan says. “This possibly gives Skylar the edge.” The words are reluctant—and he can’t look at her as he says them.
“Not possibly,” Axel says firmly. “Definitely. You didn’t see what she can do.
If she can harness that power…” He trails off, and Skylar sees Ottilie’s gaze shoot to him.
Perhaps because Axel does not sound concerned about her power.
Perhaps because he looks not at the king or queen or even Zryan as he says it. But rather at her.
The king, however, doesn’t seem to notice. “Excellent. Well, then, I think the path is clear. You will learn to use this power of yours,” he says, addressing Skylar. “And you will kill the witch with it.” He smiles around at the room like the rest of them should share his sentiment.
She hates him. No, that’s not right. Hate is not a strong enough word for what she feels for this man—no word is.
“What happens if I win?” she asks, speaking for the first time.
All four of them look at her. It hits her then—the absence of the guards. It makes her wonder if they’ve done it deliberately—keeping the witnesses to a minimum.
“If you win?” the king repeats mildly.
“Yes.” Skylar makes herself look him right in the eye. “What happens after?”
The king cocks his head, a small smile still playing across his lips. “You rule, of course.” He’s lying—she can taste it. She can see it in the way Zryan glances at his father, unsure. But no one else seems to have anything to say.
She tries to keep standing straight, fighting the heat in her blood. She’s known all along it was the king who killed her mother. But hearing him admit it out loud…
She’ll kill him. After the duel, she will use this power—the power he and countless others before him have condemned people for—and she will end him. She looks him in the eye as she makes this promise to herself.
But for now… They’re not locking her up.
She tries to hold on to that. Presumably it’s as some kind of incentive, to keep training, to believe in the future she could have once she kills Astrid.
And she’s grateful for that—it gives her the time she needs.
Because she may not have any kind of future herself, once this duel is over—but she still has a chance to give Cam one.