Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
The tension was thick enough to cut. Alongside it was an undercurrent in the conversation that Fedra didn’t understand. Though Eurielle’s glances were making her uncomfortable.
Fedra wanted answers, but could she live with Marcus yielding to Eurielle?
There was a hidden meaning to the Star Person’s words that Fedra suspected had to do with Marcus’s magic, something that would get such a powerful being’s attention.
And as far as she knew, the only thing the Star People cared about was the dragons.
She looked at Marcus as she thought about the stories he had shared about the dragons and even the Kings. Not to mention how he never wavered from his devotion to the dragons. He’d taken their side at every turn, spoke of their accomplishments, and even attempted to get her to empathize with them.
Could it be…?
Was he…?
“Hmm,” Eurielle said, tapping the side of her mouth. “I wonder what your little human is thinking right now.”
Marcus met Fedra’s gaze before turning back to Eurielle. “What happened to you? You were once our ally.”
“I think the better question is who is she?” Eurielle stated, pointing a finger at Fedra.
Fedra’s heart clutched in her chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Enough with the riddles,” Marcus told Eurielle. “Say what you intend.”
Eurielle flashed a bright smile. “I think it would be better coming from another.”
As if summoned by her words, a figure strolled into the room from the terrace.
Every step was precise, controlled. Dangerous.
The top portion of his long, black hair was pulled back with a silver clasp and a straight, silver hairpin shaped like a blade, leaving the rest to fall down his back, contrasting with the frost-white of his robes.
There was nothing soft about his silhouette.
Everything was clean, with structured lines through the torso that gave him a broad, unyielding frame.
His sleeves fell straight and remained unmoving in the wind as if waiting for his command.
A wide, silver belt encircled his waist. The brushed metal looked plain, but there was something authoritative about the simple piece.
His outer robe was long, but heavy enough that it didn’t even ripple as he walked.
Yet with each step, the fabric parted deliberately.
As he drew near, Fedra noticed the silver accents on his collar and wrists. And the longer she looked at them, the more unsettled she felt—almost as if the patterns meant something ancient and perilous.
He stopped slightly behind Eurielle and clasped his hands behind his back. As cold as it was, his arrival made the room temperature plummet. Fedra couldn’t stop her body from shaking, but she didn’t know if it was because of the chill—or him.
His cold, measuring gaze swept the room as if he were deciding which part no longer needed to exist. Then he turned his brown eyes to Marcus. The two stared at each other for an agonizing minute before she became his target. Marcus’s hand tightened on her.
“Surely, you remember Sevrion,” Eurielle said, smiling.
“You…” Fedra began as she looked at his familiar angular face that was almost too pretty to belong to a man.
Eurielle chuckled as she glanced at her brother.
Marcus had been right. The Star People were involved, but that didn’t mean they meant harm. She was alive because of Sevrion.
“You helped my people,” she finally said.
Sevrion lifted one black brow in response.
“That’s the conclusion small minds come to,” Eurielle stated as she walked around Sevrion.
Fedra shook her head. She didn’t want to believe she had been deceived, because if she did, it meant she would have to accept the rest of what Marcus said as true. And if it was, then everything she had done, and all the hate she had lived with, had been directed at the wrong species.
“Oh, I do think she’s starting to piece everything together,” Eurielle said and clapped her hands excitedly.
Marcus adjusted his grip on Fedra’s arm and shifted so he hid her almost completely. It had Sevrion’s glacial gaze returning to him. “What do you want?” Marcus asked.
“He wants to see the rest of this play out,” Eurielle replied.
Fedra couldn’t allow Marcus to shield her forever.
Sooner or later, she would have to face the Star People and the past. She started to step out from behind Marcus, but he held her in place with a firm grip.
She used her other hand to pry at his fingers.
He turned his head to the side, unable to look at her since he didn’t want to take his attention off the other two.
She purposefully pulled her arm from his grasp and moved to stand beside him.
“You want someone to kneel, then I will,” she told Eurielle.
Eurielle snorted. “I don’t have any need of you.” She pointed to Marcus. “Him, on the other hand…”
Fedra didn’t want to hear the rest of that sentence. Her feelings for Marcus were complicated, and while he considered him and her enemies, she didn’t. No matter what, she couldn’t allow him to fall into Eurielle’s trap.
“You can’t have him,” Fedra stated.
A ghost of a smile curved Sevrion’s lips while Eurielle’s expression turned deadly. “That isn’t up to you, human.”
Marcus had wanted her to use her ability to subdue Eurielle. Fedra had never imagined she’d get Sevrion, too. With both of them, she could learn every detail of what had happened to her realm and why.
“Actually, it is,” Fedra said as she took a step toward Eurielle. Worry began to churn in her gut when Eurielle seemed unfazed by her approach.
“Fedra,” Marcus murmured.
She had come this far. She couldn’t stop now. Eurielle and Sevrion were just putting on a show. They both knew what she could do to their magic.
Marcus wrapped his fingers around Fedra’s arm again, refusing to let her get any closer to the pair. Nothing about this encounter felt right. From the moment Eurielle showed up, he had been on edge. It wasn’t until Sevrion’s arrival that he realized he hadn’t set a trap—they had.
And he had fallen right into it.
He and Fedra weren’t alone. His friends were watching everything unfold, and they would wait until necessary to show themselves.
“Have you ever wondered about that scar on the back of your neck?” Eurielle asked her.
Marcus found himself looking at Fedra’s neck, recalling the small scar he had seen when he put up her hair. He gently tugged her back to his side.
“What about it?” Fedra asked.
Eurielle turned in a circle, her head tilted to the side with a malicious smile. “Have you ever wondered about your family? Or lack thereof.”
The longer this went on, the more incensed Fedra would be, but Marcus couldn’t think of a way to end it. Eurielle and Sevrion wanted something, and no one was leaving until they got it. The thing was, he and Fedra wanted something, too.
“Why no’ just tell her all of it?” Marcus stated. “How it was Sevrion who took dragons and made them crazed before releasing them on Tyren.” He locked eyes with Sevrion. “I bet you sat back and watched it all with a smile on your face.”
Sevrion’s chest expanded as he inhaled and slowly released the breath. Still, he refused to speak.
“Why?” Fedra asked in disbelief. “Why would you do that to innocent people?”
“You’re ants meant to be stomped on,” Eurielle replied.
Marcus nodded to Sevrion. “You doona have to answer, but it isna hard to figure out your game.”
“You’ll never figure it all out,” Sevrion replied.
It had taken a lot longer for him to respond than Marcus had expected. The delay had allowed him to observe Sevrion’s and Eurielle’s relationship. The distance the two kept from each other told him they were using each other. He needed to find a way to use that to his benefit.
“You and your siblings might have hidden in the shadows, but your sins and your crimes always come into the light eventually,” Marcus retorted.
Sevrion’s eyes narrowed on him. “You think because your little band of friends took down Miena that you can come after any of us? How…absurd.”
“Let’s test it,” Marcus said. “Are you brave enough to see what we can do?”
“That’s a big boast, considering who’s next to you,” Eurielle replied.
For a moment, he had forgotten about Fedra. “I might be hindered, but so are you.”
Sevrion inhaled sharply, his lips curving into a calculating smile. “You think so?”
Disquiet curled around Marcus’s chest and tightened painfully. Sevrion was too confident for Marcus to dismiss his words easily.
“Do you know how long I looked for someone like her?” Sevrion asked as he pointed at Fedra.
Marcus hoped his friends would hold off on making an appearance, because he really wanted to hear this, and he knew Fedra did, too.
“Unfathomable eons.” Sevrion lowered his arm to his side as his dark gaze slid to Fedra. “No matter where I looked, I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. In all the vast worlds, with all the numerous varieties of magic, not one embodied everything I needed.”
Eurielle twirled in a circle with her arms out, humming.
“You might think it’s uncommon to find those that magic doesn’t work on, but you’d be wrong.
There are many more of them than you would think.
” Sevrion clasped his hands behind his back again.
“There are those who can use their magic to counter another’s.
But to find someone who can actually cancel all magic?
That person didn’t exist. One, however, came close. ”
Marcus slowly turned his head to Fedra. Her eyes were wide, and her lips parted as her chest rose and fell rapidly.
Sevrion’s cold smile was filled with malice. “I felt you the instant you were conceived. I tried to change your DNA while you were still in the womb, but your mother didn’t survive the effects. You’re alive because I deemed it to be so.”
“What did you do to her?” Marcus asked.
“What the mother couldn’t withstand, I made sure she did. It was relatively easy,” he remarked offhandedly.
Fedra blinked rapidly as her face went pale. “You killed my mother?”
“Do you think if she had lived that you would’ve had a life with her?” Eurielle asked, laughing.
Each time Marcus thought he had heard the worst of what the Star People could do, he learned how wrong he was. He cut his gaze to Sevrion. “So, you manipulated Fedra’s DNA.”
“Not myself, of course. I had others do it. It took visiting six different realms over a thousand years before we were successful.”
“Was I in another stasis pod?” Fedra demanded angrily.
Sevrion shot her a brief glance. “You were still an embryo. It took nothing to contain you and halt your development until I was ready to proceed.”
“You had no right.” Fedra’s voice shook with outrage as her eyes shot daggers at him.
Marcus snorted as he dipped his chin. “Resourceful as ever, I see.”
“You got what you wanted by changing me, but it doesn’t alter the fact that you can’t use magic around me,” Fedra stated as she walked toward him.
Marcus tried to grab her, but she sidestepped to avoid him.
Sevrion’s brows shot up. “Do you think I would go to that much trouble and not leave myself a way out?”
“You kept away from me on my world,” she said with a smile. “You aren’t completely immune.”
Marcus realized her intent just as Fedra lunged for Sevrion.