Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
LYVIA
Mind control… Pantheon… Roots…
– Hidden notes in Queen Antares’s secret alcove, Gilded Fortress.
Lyvia – Borva, Votruvia
My stomach pitched, my mind spinning as realization crashed through me, and at what this meant for the threat we faced.
“But that’s good, right?” Aeriden asked, pinching his brows.
Kellan’s braids swayed as he shook his head. “No,” Kellan answered, his dark eyes pinned on the names scarred into the hide. “Because the Starlings, the race I descended from, have the ability to transfer power.”
Kellan paused, his eyes flicking to Drystan’s to ensure he understood. My friend nodded and blinked once, his hand covering his mouth.
“My power, the Conduit ability,” Kellan continued, “was passed down through Sintarrak. My power is his power.”
“Meaning Sintarrak can also transfer power,” Drystan explained. “So if he’s killed these other Embodied, he’s also taken their power, which means…”
Bile rose to my throat, and my head began to shake.
“Not only is Sintarrak an Embodied,” Isla said quietly, her hand movements reserved. “But he holds the power of four other gods.”
The air in the room stilled as the gravity of the threat sank in. My powers bucked at the phantom blasts of magic streaming from Renova and Ganmira, their invisible wounds still festering. The Bellators’ powers were but a sliver of what the Embodied held…
We were outmatched.
Kellan’s hand appeared on my shoulder, and his finger drew a soft line against the back of my bare arm. My skin pebbled in its wake, but my heart calmed.
“So this Sintarrak can read people’s minds, transfer power, what else now?” Aeriden asked.
I wiped my hand over my face as I scanned the names once more.
“If we assume he’s killed these others,” I murmured. “Then he has the Soleia, the power of the sun, the Ramadiel, so he can heal or undo healing… He can transport place to place with the Advetis. The Aeterna, so he’s essentially immortal…”
“Wait,” Isla cut in, her head snapping up. “If he can transfer power, that explains where the Aeterna Bone went after the gate was opened. He had to have taken it after he took his power back from Olienna.”
I nodded. “That leaves one…” I trailed off, looking up at Kellan whose dark eyes had narrowed in on the power he’d been searching for his entire life.
“The Celestyn. He can move or break worlds.”
My brows furrowed, and something nagged at the back of my mind. Something didn’t seem right.
“If he had the Celestyn power…” I began, shaking my head. “Wouldn’t he have been able to break through the gate?”
Drystan pushed his spectacles further up his nose as he leaned forward. “Maybe he doesn’t. We know Lelyth used the power to close the last gate, but we also know the original Bellators locked it with a spell, so that only the gathering of the eight could open it,” he signed.
“Yes, but if Lelyth had just a small amount of the Celestyn power, don’t you think the full force could have broken it down from the other side?”
Silence stretched through the room when no one answered my question.
“Fuck,” Aeriden breathed, shaking his head and pointing back at the hide. “What about the others? Ganmira, Renova, and Tynan… We think they’re coming for us as well?”
“Ganmira and Renova, yes,” Kellan murmured. “Tynan?” He turned and looked at me, arching a dark brow.
“I don’t know what Tynan’s endgame is, other than to see Sintarrak defeated and be free of the death realm,” I replied. “But Sintarrak is after the other gods, not just the Bellators.”
“Doesn’t quite even the odds,” Aeriden murmured.
Isla rubbed her hands against her face before she tilted her head and drew our attention back to the hide.
“Look at this section here,” she said calmly, pointing to a paragraph of script. “This looks like an accounting of how the Starlings rebelled against the gods, about how they protected themselves.”
“Poison testers to combat the Ramadiel. Water whisperers to fight against Aelius. That makes sense… Rubelline weapons, we know this already…” She paused as her brows drew together.
Kellan leaned forward as he murmured, “Múritinne.”
“Mind armor,” I read the translated word below. “Like a mental shield?”
Isla’s head shook. “Something more than that, I think,” she replied as she scanned the text. “Bellators use a mental shield to block each other’s emotions. From my understanding, you could also block Olienna from speaking into your mind.”
I frowned, nodding, though I hadn’t had much success with that.
“This sounds more like a physical armor of some sort,” Isla continued. “Something that stops him from jumping into your mind, from taking over your body.”
“That’s how he’s been watching me.” I nodded. “He’s had enough power to watch from the minds of others but not take over completely.”
I shuddered as those eyes flashed in my memory, the living silver dancing in the irises of the people he spied from. The guard at Mount Telum and Stynguard… The mystic at the Awakening ceremony… The Bone Warrior in Rhashtai…
Kellan’s dark gaze was hard on mine as I looked up.
The marbled gray in his irises was the only clue he’d descended from the monster stalking me.
His brows pinched, a pained guilt slicing through his features as he spotted the recognition in my gaze.
My hand slipped along his rough calluses as I twined my fingers through his. He was not Sintarrak.
I squeezed, and Kellan’s gaze softened as he squeezed back, the rings on his fingers cooling my skin.
“Yes.” Isla’s voice turned grave. “But that says much about his power—that he was still able to watch from another world, even with the gate closed. Now, with the Vael Lacrima open, we can’t risk him completely taking over anyone’s body.
The result would be catastrophic. It says the Starlings created small, discrete items that could be worn to use as mind armor. ”
“Like a rubelline cuff.” Drystan nodded as he scanned the words.
“Yes, but smaller,” Isla agreed. “To create the múritinne, you must fuse the metal with the magical material.”
Kellan’s head began nodding. “There’s a forge here in Borva. We can start making them as soon as we have the ingredients.”
His fingers drummed against the hide, the silver of his ring sparkling against the early morning sunshine streaming through the window, casting dancing light against the wall.
“Rings,” I said quietly as I tracked the movement of his fingers. They paused, and my eyes drifted to Kellan’s.
His dark gaze slipped to my naked hands before landing on mine.
“What’s the key ingredient?” Aeriden asked.
“An organic material that bends light…” Isla paused, her brows pinching. “A prism plant?”
“Like a rainbow?” Drystan cocked his head.
Isla’s eyes widened. “Like the leaves of the Living Library,” she said with an air of finality.
Our eyes met, and I nodded. The long, iridescent leaves of the Living Library, the massive tree in Lotrennia containing thousands of years of knowledge, sparkled like a rainbow in the sun.
Nerves clogged my throat as I realized she was right, and I forced bravado into the words that left my lips. “We need to return to Lotrennia.”
I slumped into the velvety sitting chair in Kellan’s study, the revelations of the day exhausting me more than our trip to the Arx. I ran my hands over my face, scrubbing away the fatigue.
The mahogany door creaked open, and Kellan stepped inside the dimly lit room. His hands slipped to the buttons on his cream shirt, popping open the top few before rolling the sleeves over his muscled forearms.
“How is Ezrich?” I asked, a twinge of guilt tightening my stomach. I hadn’t spent much time with him since he’d awoken, too busy rereading the ancient hide with Isla and Drystan to ensure we hadn’t missed anything.
Kellan scanned me, and I patted the chair next to mine.
“He’s healing well,” he replied, striding across the room and sitting in the one across from me instead.
“Have you spoken about…” I paused, raising a brow and waiting, allowing him time to consider whether he wanted to talk about it.
“Have I told him I’m his uncle?” he clarified, raising a dark brow. “No. I wish I’d known when I met him. Wish I’d known when éitilte was living on my ship.”
My lips kicked up as he spoke Evony’s nickname, but Kellan’s brows furrowed and a shadow of regret passed over his face. My heart squeezed, and I leaned forward, clasping his hands in mine. He studied our joined hands for a moment, and I ran my thumb over the tops of his fingers.
“Ezrich is here. He’s safe. Evony…” He trailed off, turning his face to the side as if to hide his expression. “My niece may be safe inside the rubelline zone, but she is alone. And that is its own kind of danger.”
I squeezed his hand before reaching mine to cup the side of his face and gently turn it to me.
“Evony is strong,” I reminded him. “Ronan told me he’d look after her. I trust him to do that. And we’ll get back to her. She won’t be alone for long.”
Kellan nodded, and my thumb brushed a line down his cheekbone. He dropped my hand and scooted his chair closer, snatching my legs up. I leaned back as he tugged off my riding boots, slipping my stockings off and tossing them over his shoulder.
“Has your mother said anything to Ezrich?” I asked, concern squeezing my chest for the kind woman.
What would it be like? To find out the daughter you thought had died had actually lived a full, if not short life, had fallen in love and raised two beautiful children…
One of whom now rested and recovered in your home.
Kellan shook his head as he ran his thumbs down the center of the bottom of my foot.
I stifled a groan as my eyes fluttered closed.
My head fell back over the top of the velvety chair.
I blinked my eyes open after a moment to find Kellan’s lips kicked up into his cocky side smirk, but his eyes remained soft as he rubbed my feet.