Chapter 50 #2
“Not the seelie high king,” I muttered as I studied that handwriting, as I reached for my satchel and the letters it contained. I pulled the bloodstained letter from among them and unfolded it, bringing it next to the book she held.
The handwriting was a perfect match.
“What is it?” She leaned closer, angling her head to peer at the page in the book and the letter I held. Her gaze leaped to me, eyes widening as she breathed, “Where did you get that?”
“Ereborne.” That single word contained a wealth of wrath that simmered in my veins as shadows stirred around me, seeping from the cracks in the stone walls to caress and await my command.
“I took this letter from Ereborne. This letter written in Sylvan’s hand.
Sylvan was not following orders from the seelie high king.
The journal does not mention which high king.
It only says high king. Sylvan was taking orders from Elduin. ”
She reared back, blinking at me. “Why? Why would Elduin want to aim the anger of the Summer Court at the Shadow Court? Kael… that doesn’t make any sense. Why would the unseelie high king work with a seelie general?”
I read the letters again, frantically scanning them, absorbing every drop of information from them and the journal, piecing it all together as I looked at it in a different light thanks to Saphira and the information she had courageously found for me.
I kept reading them in tense silence, every word, every letter, until it all clicked into place.
I could not believe what I was reading as I took the journal from her and began turning the pages, devouring the information it contained.
It matched what Oberon had told me—that my brother had never reached the Summer Court.
He had never left unseelie lands.
I stilled with my hand on the page, staring at the account, my ears ringing as my mind emptied and my chest grew cold and hollow.
“What’s wrong?” She looked from me to the page and back again, frowning as she read it. “Something about… Camp. Black. Punishment?”
I stared at that sentence she was trying to decipher.
A single string of words that stirred suspicion and anger in my heart.
“They made camp at the Black Pass,” I said, my words as hollow as my chest, devoid of feeling.
“In a cave. Holding the boy they took from Belkarthen there. They punished him, taking turns to… to abuse him… laughing at him whenever he broke down. Seven males including Sylvan against one boy. He was terrified.”
“Oh gods, Kael. That’s horrible. That’s… that’s awful.” She placed her hands on my arm, gripping it as she looked up at me.
I was not done.
I felt nothing beyond numbness as I continued.
“In that mindless state of fear, he unleashed a power that allowed him to escape his captors.”
“Shadows?” she whispered.
I swallowed hard, unable to believe what I was reading as Saphira stared at me in confusion, waiting for me to answer as I read it two more times, carefully speaking each word in my mind without haste so I could be sure I had not read them wrong or interpreted it incorrectly.
The truth remained the same.
“What is it?” Saphira squeezed my arm and gently rocked me. “Kael… you’re scaring me a little. What is it?”
I finally lifted my gaze from the pages and the letter and looked at her.
“The boy they took from the Shadow Court escaped his captors.”
“You said that… he escaped using his powers. Maybe that’s why he’s in the Stygian Isles… because he wants revenge on the Summer Court too?” She did not sound sure.
For good reason.
I whispered, “Captors he turned against each other. Until only one remained to tell the tale to Sylvan.”
She went as still as I had, her fingers pressing into my arm. “You don’t…”
I found it hard to bring myself to say it too, but I forced the words from my lips. “He sowed discord between them.”
She slowly shook her head, as if that could change the truth.
“Discord. Like Kalyn did to me. You don’t think he… oh… like Oberon did to Morden.” She warily watched me, her grip on me firm, as if she feared how I might react and wanted to keep me here with her, when all I felt was a strange, numbing sort of coldness creeping through me.
I had not realised before this moment that rage could feel cold.
That betrayal could feel like ice in my veins.
“You don’t think… Oberon… at the ball I teased him about being so protective of the Shadow Court and he told me…
Oh gods, Kael, I should have said something about it but I thought he was just being, you know, Oberon.
Teasing. Mischievous. Trying to provoke a reaction…
” She tailed off into silence when I looked at her.
“What did he tell you?” I pulled my hands from the book, somehow convincing them to release it, and to be gentle as I framed her face, keeping her eyes on me as I whispered, “What did he tell you, Saphira. I need to know.”
She nodded and swallowed, paling a little as she said, “He told me that your brother wasn’t fit to be the ruler of the Shadow Court.
He said something about… um… Elduin has been trying to figure out his lineage for a long time, and that when he finally manages it, they would be in for a most amusing confrontation. ”
“Oberon told me Elduin watches him too.” My brows lowered as I thought about that and what she had said, and it only deepened the feeling that my brother had been before me all this time.
And I had been blind to it.
So blinded by a need for vengeance that I had failed to see him standing there.
“He said something else too, Kael…” She lifted a hand and caught my cheek as my gaze roamed back to the book, shadows growing sharp as that cold rage in my veins began to burn hot.
Her soft look did nothing to blunt my shadows, but her words dulled their sharper edges.
“I asked him if you could become a wanderer, selfish I know, but I was hurting at the time and afraid I would lose you… I’m still afraid I’ll lose you…
Oberon said you love your court too deeply to wander and become forgotten.
He said the Shadow Court is more than just your home, Kael.
It’s your heart, and it had been from long before you lost your parents.
He told me that some feel a connection to the lands of Lucia more than others and can summon her power through it, and that you were such a person, and that’s why you were born to be a king. ”
Her words tempered the rage that flickered between hot and cold inside me, the truth in them hitting me hard together with the level of belief in me they revealed.
But she was not done.
“When I said your brother should have ruled… I should have told you this sooner. I thought it was just blunt Oberon being blunt Oberon.” She stroked my arm with her thumb.
“He said your brother had no right to sit on the throne, and when I mentioned your brother was eldest and heir, he said… he said that your brother was an heir for sure, but his connection to the lands of the Shadow Court was weak, while yours was unbreakable. He thought the Shadow Court would have crumbled under his rule rather than become as strong as what you have made it.”
I stared at her, reeling as I fought to take it all in and contain the fury and hurt that was building inside me, a terrible pressure that felt as if it might destroy me if I did not release it.
Oberon, who possessed powerful Nightmare Court powers but also the ability to turn my shadows into his own.
Oberon, who was so protective of the Shadow Court.
Oberon, who had happened to show up one day soon after I had settled as ruler of the Shadow Court, a mere handful of decades after what had happened in Belkarthen, and had swiftly befriended me.
A mere handful of decades that had allowed him to grow up and change enough that I might not recognise him for who he was.
The letters that spoke of the boy escaping and Elduin hunting a male who bore Nightmare Court powers.
It was Oberon.
“Oberon is my brother.”
Those words tumbled from my lips through the numbing haze as I fought to believe it.
A numbing haze that could not dampen the anger, the hurt, that blazed through me as cold as ice and as dark as night.
“Centuries I have been driven by a need to save my brother… a desire I am sure I did not keep secret,” I growled even when I was not exactly sure I had ever told Oberon of it either. “Centuries… and my brother has been right there, right in front of me, and I never knew. Vyr never knew.”
My voice broke as I spoke of my sister, as I thought of how she had mourned and spent all these centuries believing her beloved brother was dead.
For that pain alone, Oberon would pay.
“I don’t get it though. Why would Oberon do this?”
“When I asked Oberon what kept my brother from his home—his family—for so long, he told me it was the same thing that drove me towards vengeance.”
“Elduin?” She was clever, my little wolf. Grasped the answer to that riddle in the blink of an eye.
I nodded. “Elduin.”
“But what does Elduin want with Oberon?” Her fine eyebrows lowered, knitting as her eyes narrowed on the letter and the book.
I thought about what Oberon had said to me in Wanderer’s Keep and about the power he possessed, and a feeling crystalised inside me.
I knew why Elduin was obsessed with finding out more about Oberon.
I knew why Elduin had struck a deal with Sylvan, ordering him to kill my brother, only for the Summer Court general to capture him instead, which I now realised must have been a vain attempt to gain some kind of leverage over Elduin.
I knew why Elduin had been furious when Sylvan had then lost him.
I stared at the forest.
“Because my father is not Oberon’s father.”