Chapter 40
DIEM
Teller got to him first.
I was still swaying, immobilized by truth’s bitter blow, when my brother went flying past me. The music abruptly stopped as people leapt out of his warpath across the camp. Henri looked up from where he was sitting with a group of mortals by the fire.
“What did you do?” Teller snarled at him.
Henri frowned at the venom in my brother’s voice. He shifted Lana off his lap and slowly rose to his feet.
“Tel, buddy,” he said, “is something wr—”
“I’m not your buddy or your pal or your little bro.” He grabbed Henri’s shirt and yanked him chest to chest, hissing in his face. “What the fuck did you do?”
“What’s going on?” my mother asked, her confused expression darting between her enraged son and her dazed, trembling daughter.
Henri raised his hands in surrender. “Teller,” he said, his voice going low, “Diem and I made amends. We’re friends now.
Right, D?” His focus shot to me, but I could only stare in speechless horror.
“All four of us are friends, right?” He looked to a terrified-looking Lana, who hurriedly nodded, then to Luther.
But my mate’s attention was on me. His happy mood had vanished, his mouth set in a hard, grim line. He looked, inexplicably, as furious as Teller. But there was something else lurking in the shadows curling at the edges of his blue-grey eyes. Something soft and sad.
Like he knew my world was about to come crashing down.
Like he already knew why.
The air punched from my lungs, my wobbling knees struggling to hold the enormous weight ballooning in my chest. Everything was spinning and bright. My skin felt too hot and too cold, all at once. I wanted to rip it off and throw it away, to put on another body, another life.
Teller slid a knife from a sheath at his hip and held its blade to Henri’s neck. “Tell me what you know.”
Lana screamed.
“Teller!” my mother shouted.
Some nearby Guardians jumped forward to intervene, but a few members of the Royal Guard pulled their weapons and stepped in the rebels’ path, ready to defend their fellow Guardsman without explanation.
“What the hell?” Henri shouted, wrestling with my brother’s arm. “Tell you what I know about what?”
“About my father’s murder!”
Henri instantly stilled.
His eyes shot to mine.
That was the only answer Teller needed. He flipped the knife around in his hand and punched it toward Henri’s chest with a growl. Henri managed to lunge enough to prevent a killing blow, but he cried out as the blade sank deep into his shoulder.
Lana screamed again and rushed toward him, then slammed against a glimmering dome that had trapped Henri inside with Teller. Nearby, Taran stood with his hand extended and a chilling glare.
Lana went staggering backward at the impact, then lost her balance, tripping over her skirts and falling toward the blazing campfire. A last-second burst of shadows from Luther’s palm extinguished the flames and left her toppling into the ashes.
The Guardians erupted. Some ran to help Lana, while others pulled their weapons to confront the Royal Guards, which spurred army soldiers to come running to their defense.
Alixe ordered everyone to stand down, and my mother did the same, though their voices were drowned out by Henri’s panicked yelling to make sure Lana wasn’t hurt.
Others eagerly edged forward to watch the commotion.
I could feel the burn of expectant eyes on me, watching and waiting for me to quell the unrest. For me to lead.
But I was still staring at the paper at my feet, trying to make sense of a world that no longer did.
“Diem?”
Luther’s voice was so painfully quiet. His hand hovered at my arm, not quite touching.
I stared at it and thought of how I’d found Luther that day, standing in the doorway of my family’s home, my father’s blood coating his arms to the elbows.
The guilt-ridden anguish on his face, so similar to the tortured expression he was wearing now.
“Did you know?” I rasped.
He didn’t respond. He grabbed the letter from the ground and skimmed its contents.
Behind him, Henri had managed to dislodge the knife from his shoulder and chuck it aside, but Teller had pinned him to the soil. My brother slammed his fist into Henri’s face over and over.
Henri wasn’t fighting back.
Alixe had her palms against Taran’s shield, pouring her magic into it in an effort to pierce through, but with Zalaric’s hand twitching at Taran’s side and lending his strength, she was making little progress.
The letter crinkled as Luther’s fist clenched around it.
“Did you know?” I demanded.
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I suspected. Descended kill with magic, not blades.”
A sound choked out of me—half laugh, half sob. Of course. What an obvious clue. My hatred of the Descended had blinded me to any explanation that didn’t place one of them at its center.
“I asked Evrim Benette about the knife’s design,” he went on.
“He swore he’d never seen it. I thought he was telling the truth.
I was sure he’d never pass up a chance to blame the rebels if he could.
Apparently, keeping his client list secret was a higher priority.
” He let out a heavy exhale. “I told myself my suspicions were wrong. The Guardians wouldn’t do that to their leader’s husband. And Henri would never do that to you.”
I stared through the smoky haze of the smothered fire at Henri, the man I’d called my closest friend for as long as I could remember.
“Stop.”
I didn’t need to speak the word. One thought, touched with Umbros magic, and every figure in camp went instantly still, turning the melee into a dark, macabre painting.
But it was more than a command. It was a plea to the gods for a different truth.
For mercy from their cruel, relentless games.
For a final end, whatever it may be, just so I could escape this suffocating pain.
As usual, they didn’t answer.
I walked through the fire, kicking the still-glowing embers into the air. Taran and Zalaric’s shield shattered at my touch, and I released my brother from my magic, gently guiding him to his feet.
His eyes were bloodshot and flooded with tears, though his features were twisted in wrath.
“He . . . he would have let them in.” His voice shuddered as violently as his blood-speckled fists.
“Father . . . he wouldn’t have grabbed a weapon.
He would have trusted them. Because of her .
. . and because of Henri . . . and . . . ”
And because of me.
“I know,” I said quietly.
“I want them dead. I want to kill them myself.”
How ironic, I thought with an empty detachment. Teller almost looks like Henri.
Not in his physical features. What lay behind his eyes—the seed of hate sown by a violent injustice.
I’d watched it cultivate in Henri for years, its roots digging deep, leeching all light from his soul to make its thorny branches grow.
I’d watched it turn my goofy, carefree best friend into a murderer.
The way it was turning my brother into one now.
The way it was doing the same to me.
“Soon,” I said.
I let Teller go and turned my focus to Henri. His body jerked as I released him from my magic’s hold.
“Stand up.”
I didn’t compel him, but he obeyed. He spat out a mouthful of blood and lurched to his feet. His nose was broken, his face painted in gashes and scarlet smears.
“Look at me.”
This order, he ignored. One eye struggled to open while the other stayed fixed on my feet. His shoulders hunched forward, his body trying to make itself small.
“Look at me and tell me you didn’t kill my father.”
“It’s not what you think,” he said.
Lie.
At the accusatory hiss of my Umbros magic, my hand shot for his throat. “Tell me the truth.”
“I—I didn’t know . . . I thought—it . . . it was only supposed to . . . if I’d known—Diem, please . . .”
Something cleaved open inside me, a break too deep to ever repair. If Henri would not give me answers by choice, I would take them by force.
My teeth bared as I pulled his face to mine.
“Show me.”