37. Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Kya
I don’t know if you can hear me. I don’t know if you’re listening. If you are, watch over Ryker. I made a mistake, and I’ve hurt him because of it.
Tell him I’m still here. That I’m coming back to him. That I belong to him.
Until the stars die out…
It was the same thing every single Godsdamn day.
Talum came to get Leysa and me.
Daegel took us to the island, and Leysa was given a collar.
A shield was erected over me, then Daegel would mutter some incantation with some fancy hand flourishing.
And I spent hours at a time trying to make the Glaev.
Nothing worked. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I willed my energy to work the way I needed it to.
“Perhaps you’re not motivated enough, Diamond,” Daegel sneered. He was growing impatient.
I was so fucking tired of Daegel watching my every move and barking at me to try harder. All I wanted was for him to take down the barrier so I could snap his neck.
“I told you, asshole, I’m trying. What more do you want from me? I can’t do it,” I clipped.
He glared at me for several moments, holding my stare.
“I thought having Leysa here, suffering, would be enough. But I guess not. How about I bring your friends here too, and put a collar on them? Nikan and—what was her name? Mal, I think you call her.” His voice was cold.
I froze, not wanting to show any reaction, but my heart was racing. I wouldn’t put it past him to make good on his threat.
“No? Then how about that mate of yours?” he snarled.
My blood rushed hot, and my nostrils flared.
Leysa flinched at his threat.
I snaked my Waalu down my arms, the jade energy swirling along my skin. I would peel his skin off if he so much as touched Ryker.
Daegel’s expression remained neutral, but I caught the slightest twitch of a smirk on his lips. “He’s been searching everywhere for you. Flying all around the continent looking for his long lost love like the little bitch that he is.”
“Shut up!” I screamed, blasting out my energy all around me.
Daegel stepped up to the barrier, slapping his hands on the surface. “Maybe I’ll take away his wings too. Would that be enough to get you to do what I fucking want?”
I roared with a rage I had never felt before, releasing everything I had in an attempt to break through this Godsdamn shield. The bond burned so fiercely I could practically smell it.
But it wasn’t the bond.
Daegel’s lips spread into a wide, malicious grin, staring me directly in the eyes. He glanced down to the ground.
I followed his gaze, and my eyes widened. The entire surface within the dome barrier was completely dead and desolate, the land black as night except around my feet.
The Glaev.
If I moved even the slightest bit, I’d touch it. I panicked and looked at the swirls of energy around my hands that were still a soft, jade hue. Sending out only a small bit a little ways away from it, my Waalu restored a small portion.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I created a wider space around me so I didn’t accidentally step on the Glaev.
Daegel chuckled in a low, wicked tone, and I looked up. “And that’s how you make a diamond really shine.”
Daegel took me and Leysa back to my cell early as a reward. She had been forced to stay with me. I knew it was so we would grow closer and I would care for her more—just more incentive to do what he wanted so she didn’t have to suffer as much.
I hated that it was working.
I was in a daze for the rest of the day and through the night. Leysa spoke, but I didn’t register much of what she said, my murmuring responses falling from my lips without thought.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Daegel, about Ryker. My body was practically vibrating with fury.
I was done. I had to get out of here. I couldn’t let Daegel capture anyone else to be used against me.
Stewing with my thoughts, I lay there, staring at the ceiling trying to think of how I could possibly get out of here. I would need help. Would Leysa help me?
I wanted to believe she would, but she was so adamant for me to just submit. That was probably the easiest route, except Daegel had to have a reason for why he wanted me to kill that island.
“Leysa,” I said in the darkness of the cell.
“Hmm?” she murmured. She had been asleep in the cramped bed next to me.
“I need you to tell me why Daegel is making me do this. What does he want? What’s the purpose for everything he’s been doing?” I shook my head.
Leysa let out a rough breath. “He’s never actually said it, but Talum let it slip once…” she paused as if gathering herself. “He needs to take over one realm to destroy another.”
I suspected as much. “Is he wanting to take over this one to destroy ours or take over ours to destroy this one?”
He was using the Glaev on Taeralia to absorb its power. It made sense if he was trying to use that power to take over Vansera. But then again, he was having me create the Glaev here, destroying the magic-rich land. So I wasn’t sure what his angle was.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “But Gods, I wish I did. Either way, Taeralia is in peril, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
I wanted to tell her we could get out of here and stop him, but until I had a plan in place, I waited. The last thing I needed was to approach her with some half-baked idea only for her to shoot it down before it was complete. Or worse, she’d try to talk me out of it. So I would wait. And I would plan.
I closed my eyes and recalled every detail of the prison, everything I had seen and felt through my terbis on the island, everything I had learned thus far.
“So, King Zalen—”
“Don’t,” Leysa clipped.
“Don’t what?” I asked.
“Don’t even think about it, Kya. I know what you’re thinking, and it won’t work. He won’t help us,” she said sternly.
“Let’s say I was thinking about it. Just humor me. Why do you say that? Maybe he’d be sympathetic—”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Ha! From what I heard, King Zalen is worse than Daegel.”
I sat up and looked down at her. “Why is he so feared?”
“I’m not sure.” She shrugged. “I’ve just heard about him being more powerful than the other Kings, or something like that, and that everyone is afraid of him.”
A small flame of hope flickered somewhere in the darkness of my chest.
Perhaps he’s more powerful than Daegel…
“Does Daegel fear him?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know. He’s never mentioned him. I can’t imagine much scares him,” she said quietly. “It won’t work. Trust me, I’ve thought about it. But even if you could get out of here—which you can’t—you’d be escaping from one tyrant and running straight into the clutches of another. That doesn’t solve anything.”
She sighed and turned over, facing away from me.
But even tyrants wanted something.