Chapter 35 #2
“Vayna,” Caene says, his tone intended to calm. It doesn’t work. It only makes me angrier. I scream and struggle against Elex’s hold.
“You bastard! You took her from me! She was all I had! You destroyed my life!” My cries echo in the vast room.
“Vayna no. I can explain. I didn’t—” His voice is drowned out by my shriek.
I’ve never known pain like this. Physical pain I can take, but this feels like my heart is being ripped from my body and cut to pieces while still trying valiantly to pump.
I was furious with my mother for years for leaving me to rot in the Rookery. Now to find out it was never true.
The agony . . .
It breaks me.
I suck in a breath and freeze, my stomach plummeting as a thought hits me. “That’s why you helped me. Out of guilt! And I threw myself at you. Like an idiot! I fell for your fucking lies!” I start raging against my binds again. Elex grunts, struggling to keep hold of me.
“Vayna, please . . . it's not what you think. Please listen. I—.”
“Fuck you!” I spit in his face.
“Enough!” I barely hear Maziar’s hoarse voice. It’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough. I will make him hurt. I will make him suffer like I have suffered. There is nothing left in me but pain and fury. Anything good in me is burning away in the fire of my anger.
A loud slap echoes in the room and pain bursts behind my eye. Maziar lowers his hand as I turn my furious gaze on him. I spit blood on the floor at his feet.
“Now that everyone is all caught up, I have some questions for you girl.” Maziar shuffles over to Isi, who hasn’t moved more than an inch this entire time, dragging her to her feet again.
We make our way back into the large atrium, to an ostentatious throne-like chair sitting at the far end of the hall.
New king indeed.
He drops Isi at his feet. Elex kicks my legs, forcing me to my knees, Caene beside me. Hatred overrides everything else. Hatred for this whole damn family. I will end them if it’s the last thing I do. I will end all of them.
Maziar slowly lowers himself onto his throne, trying to look like the king he imagines himself to be.
We stay like this, watching each other while the minutes tick by.
Finally, he reaches into the collar of his shirt, pulling out a chain with two small golden medallions hanging from it.
Immediately, I feel a pull to them. Something in the very center of my chest is pulling me forward.
I don’t realize I’m rising to my feet until Elex fists my hair, yanking me back down to my knees.
Maziar slips the chain over his head, his hands shaking, and rises once again from his throne.
He approaches me, holding the necklace so I can see it.
One disk has a bright purple stone in the center of an engraved shield and overlapping lines.
The whole image is surrounded by odd symbols.
The other is the one calling to me. It contains an emerald as the iris of an eye, and symbols similar to the first pendant surround it.
I’ve seen this eye many times before. The gold and emerald eye from my dream.
The one that would always shift into Caene’s eyes.
I know in my soul this medallion belongs with me.
Belongs to my blood. Everything in me is screaming to take it, but Elex is still gripping my hair, holding me in place, my hands still bound behind my back.
“You feel it don’t you?” Maziar rasps, his eyes wide, watching my every reaction. “You feel the pull, the need to take and protect it.”
I don’t respond. It doesn’t matter. He already knows the truth.
“Fascinating.” Maziar turns and hobbles back to his throne, completely ignoring Isirae curled up by the leg.
“You started having visions about two months ago, correct?”
I clench my jaw.
“You see child, that’s when mine became weaker.
That’s how I knew Altair must have had an heir.
I knew it must have been with Medora, so I sent my sons to track you down.
When you were taken to my prison I thought you were deliberately taking the divination powers from me, but Zave never found anything, despite all his digging.
Then I thought it was possible the powers were drifting to you naturally and they would snap back to the talisman upon your death, like it did when your father died.
But you were clearly close to death in that cell, and the talisman was dying with you.
The fluctuation of magic did this to me.
” He waves his hand up and down his body.
“I was once the strongest man in Lyclaven. Now I’m a withered old man.
” Barely contained anger turns his face red as his hand clenches the chain with the talismans harder, deformed knuckles cracking and turning white.
I scoff. “Strong? You’re a coward. You couldn’t even kill my parents yourself.
You had your sons do it for you.” Elex yanks my hair farther back, putting a knife to my throat.
The look Maziar gives me would make lesser men tremble.
Not me. I’m too livid to feel anything but violence.
I won’t let myself. My anger is my fuel.
Maziar’s eyes flash. “Be careful girl. I have been kind up until now. I can be cruel.” He reaches down and runs his hand down Isirae’s hair, telling me he knows precisely how to hurt me, how to get to me.
I close my mouth, doing what I can to protect her.
Her betrayal runs deep, but I hold on to my new hope that there’s an explanation.
A reason she didn’t tell me. She’s my family. And I won’t let them take her too.
“Now. Here is what we’re going to do.” Maziar steeples his hands in front of his mouth.
“The talisman won’t transfer its power back to me now that it has found you.
And if I kill you, I will be killing the talisman.
So you will stay with me. You will work for me, as my personal seer.
You will use your visions, your abilities, to help me become the king this land needs.
The king I was meant to be.” He stands up straighter and lifts his chin.
“Fuck. You.”
Maziar sighs and once again surprises me with his agility, grabbing Isirae by the hair and pulling her up, a blade to her throat. “It’s a pity you feel that way.” He presses the dagger into her throat, making a trail of blood stream down her neck and chest, soaking into her corset. She whimpers.
“Stop!” I yell. “Don’t hurt her.” He knows he has me. He knows I’ll do whatever he wants as long as she’s alive. My one weakness. “I’ll do what you want. Just, please. Let her go.” I droop, knowing he’s won.
“Much better.” His gummy grin lifts his lips.
“Now, as for you my boy.” He turns on Caene.
“You are my greatest disappointment. You are weak. We cannot have weakness in this family. You are no longer of use to me.” He nods at Osper, the movement barely distinguishable.
Osper produces a glowing purple crystalline axe from the air and raises it over his head, bringing it down on Caene’s neck.