Chapter 55 Skylar
Finally. Ottilie’s voice echoes around Skylar’s mind as she realizes just what the queen means.
Realizes that this is not a rescue mission after all—but a trap.
Cold spreads through her and she reaches out automatically to take whatever energy she can in preparation to kill the whole damn lot of them—only there’s nothing.
I can’t cast, Astrid whispers into Skylar’s mind.
Can the Heart do this to us? Block our powers?
I don’t think so. I think it’s her.
She’s a Discerner—she can’t.
I don’t think she is. I think she’s a Nullifier.
A Nullifier. It makes sense. Because that’s what’s happening, isn’t it? Which means… Which means all this time, the queen has been lying. To her country, to her people. Even, if Zryan’s reaction is anything to go by, to her son.
And she’s not just an ordinary Nullifier. To be blocking all their powers like this, she’s got to be a Prime.
Zryan straightens, his chains rattling. “Why are you doing this?” His voice is hoarse and his gaze darts from Astrid to his mother and back again. Well, good. Between the two of them, they might be able to protect Astrid from whatever the fuck is about to happen.
“It’s all for you, don’t you see?” The queen’s voice is soft and so obviously sincere. And that, Skylar thinks, is what is really scary here. “So that you’ll still have something to rule.”
Zryan observes his mother for a second, then lunges toward her, his face an echo of Mjolnir’s thunder. But he’s barely got to the end of his chains when he is jerked to a stop, his expression twisted.
Skylar looks around frantically—and then she sees.
There is the queen’s pet Blood Wielder, holding out his hand toward Zryan.
So, it’s only their powers that are muted, then.
And Skylar realizes now why the queen kept the menagerie around.
Not for protection—she clearly doesn’t need that.
But to collect them—collecting powerfully Blooded the way some people collect shells.
“Don’t hurt him!” Astrid cries, stepping toward Zryan.
“Hurt him?” The queen actually sounds offended. “He’s my son. I would never hurt him.”
Not him—but them, for sure. Skylar feels weirdly calm about it, but still, she shifts so she is in front of Astrid, sees Bastet do the same.
If Mjolnir was with them… But if the queen is here, that means Ziva is nearby, too.
And Skylar doesn’t want to know what a Solar Celestial can do when enraged.
“I thought you’d come for him,” Ottilie says, with a flicker of a smile. “It’s nice when hunches are proven right, isn’t it?”
“Come for him?” Skylar repeats dumbly.
“Yes,” the queen says mildly. “In case the duel didn’t go the right way.”
Skylar clenches her teeth at that—and is relieved to find a spike of anger fighting the calm. The right way. What, with Skylar killing Astrid, then the Dreki killing her? Or vice versa, if the army backup at the duel was anything to go by.
Astrid moves from Zryan’s side to Skylar’s, putting a restraining hand on her elbow. There’s no way we’re getting through that lot without our magic. We have to be smart. And we need to know what’s going on. She hasn’t killed us yet. That means she wants something.
The queen’s eyes dart from Astrid to Skylar and back again, almost like she can hear the conversation. Skylar supposes, being mated herself, she’s one of the few people who knows what it’s like.
“I can’t see either dragon anywhere.”
Skylar’s heart stops for one brief, horrible moment. She knows that voice.
Calm. She feels so calm.
Her stomach twists sickeningly. Of course she does. Because of course Axel is here—where else would he be other than by the side of his queen?
The menagerie step aside to let him past, his green gaze briefly scanning the collection of people before landing on her.
Axel. He’s Influencing them. Keeping them all calm so that Ottilie can…
“You’re a part of this?” Her voice comes out as a whisper. She shouldn’t be surprised. She knew all along, didn’t she, who he served?
His gaze holds hers, the corners of his mouth turned down. “I’m so sorry, Skylar.”
“Sorry?” She almost laughs, though nothing about this is funny.
She lifts her hand, gesturing vaguely with her pin.
The queen’s gaze snaps there. At her side, Astrid’s grip tightens on her arm.
“Sorry for what, exactly? Did you know what she’s been doing here?
Do you know what she’s doing to the Blooded—draining them? Killing them?”
Nausea swells, as it did outside. She still can’t believe that this is what they’ve been doing to them—the Champions.
Cam was drained like that. Drained of power—to create Vitalas, to keep the royals and nobles rich in fucking electricity. Murdered. She can’t feel it like she should. She wants to feel it—wants the anger, the grief. To know that even though Cam is gone, he meant something.
The queen purses her lips, like the word “killing” is somehow distasteful, and a hint of something crosses Axel’s face. “I know she’s been doing what is necessary. I told you all along, Skylar—I only want what’s best for this country. This is the only way.”
“Necessary? How can doing that”—she gestures outside the dome—“ever be necessary?” Sickness and anger curl within her. Axel frowns at her, like he’s concentrating, and the feeling ebbs, just a little.
She glares at him. “What happened to wanting my feelings to be real from now on?”
He shakes his head. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were supposed to kill the witch in the duel, supposed to come out as the rightful ruler of the Heart.”
“And, what, I was going to just go along with you, was I? Going to allow you to keep murdering the Blooded?”
Cam. They did this to Cam. The image won’t stop churning in her mind as she thinks of him in one of those cocoons, trapped, the life force drained from him. The fear, the horror, the hopelessness he must have experienced. And for what?
“Let us go,” Zryan says quietly.
Ottilie’s gaze moves to her son, and Skylar swears she sees something warm there.
But Astrid is studying the queen. “She won’t let us go. You were behind the assassination attempts, weren’t you?”
Not the king, after all. But his mate.
“Well, not me personally. And not me alone.” Ottilie glances at Axel in a very deliberate way, and Skylar feels something cold spreading from the bottom of her stomach.
She stares at Axel, at the man she thought she was starting to know.
He doesn’t even have the decency to look away from her.
“You?” Her voice is coarse. “You’ve been trying to kill me this whole time?
” She thinks of the night he took her out into the city, when the Levitator came for her, when she only got away because a stranger helped her.
She hadn’t been bait, after all. She’d been a sacrifice.
“No, Skylar—” His voice is on the edge of a plea. “At the beginning, I thought it was necessary, but as I got to know you—”
“The ball,” Astrid whispers. “Jessa. And Quincy.” Bastet lets out a low growl.
“That wasn’t me.” Axel’s voice is firm—but how can they possibly believe him? “By that point, I thought the plan had changed. I wanted you to rule, Skylar,” he repeats. “I knew that you could.”
“Oh, well fine. You only tried to kill me twice, then—so let’s crack on, plan a first date, shall we?
” Because there was another time, wasn’t there?
When the assassin went for Astrid, expecting to kill them both.
Fire licks her throat as she speaks and she wishes, so much, that Kaida were fully grown.
That she’d swoop in right now and burn every single one of them.
Astrid looks back at Ottilie, her face deathly pale.
“You killed Jessa.” And it’s true, isn’t it?
She might not have struck the killing blow, but she killed her all the same.
“All that time, I was sure it couldn’t be anyone in the royal family and…
” Astrid swallows, and Skylar feels the pain as if it’s her own.
“Funny thing, isn’t it,” the queen says mildly, as if they are simply having a discussion over tea, “that they never explicitly forbade the hiring of assassins. Then again, maybe the Covenant is stronger than I’ve given it credit for.
Maybe it would have forced Vatra to cede the Heart—all speculation, of course.
We’ll never know the answer to that, I suppose. Not that it matters, in any case.”
“It doesn’t matter?” Astrid repeats, staring at the queen.
Ottilie. All this time it was Ottilie. How did Skylar not notice how deranged she is? She’d been so focused on her hatred of the king, refusing to see who stood next to him.
Zryan is staring at his mother, color drained from his skin. He is holding himself so still. Axel must be working hard to keep him calm, but Skylar catches the look Ottilie gives him, like she’s checking that Axel’s Influence is holding.
The queen claps her hands. “I’ve only ever done what is needed to keep Vatra safe. You both needed to die. Zryan needed to rule—it was the only way to buy us time, to stop the kingdom from crumbling. But I don’t expect you to understand that. Now, Axel, if you’ll—”
“And, what,” Astrid interrupts, staring at the queen with an expression Skylar doesn’t think she’s ever seen so fiercely before. Pure hatred. “You thought Zryan would be okay with it?”
The queen’s gaze stays level. “I’d thought, as my son, we would be able to find a way forward.”
Zryan pulls at the chains that bind him. “You were wrong. I would never have gone along with this. Never.”
“And I figured that out, when Axel found out what you’ve been up to.”
Zryan looks at Axel—at the man he grew up with, the man whose mother died to save him. “You set me up?”
Axel grimaces. “I’m sorry, Zryan. I knew there were traitors in the castle somewhere. And I couldn’t be sure, but I had my suspicions you’d been working against us for some time.” He drops his voice, like he wants to speak to Zryan and Zryan alone. “We were worried you might betray us in the end.”
Zryan laughs, the sound dangerous. “I don’t think my betrayal is the one we should be talking about right now.”
Astrid has been watching Zryan as he speaks, but now she tears her gaze away. “So it all comes down to this?” She gestures to indicate what is going on outside this room. “This is why you wanted us both dead? This is why Jessa died? All to stop us finding out the Heart is broken?”
The queen laughs, the sound high and unhinged. She looks from Astrid to Skylar and back again. “You still haven’t worked it out, have you? There is no Heart.”