Chapter Twenty-Two Siyala
“Why don’t you tell me about your magic.”
“You want to know about my magic?” I ask, leaning back and bracing my weight on my hands.
He watches the movement, fingers twitching between his knees. “Not without selfish reasons,” he says, something in my stomach fluttering under his attention. “It might help jog earlier memories.”
Right. I press my lips together, pretending to search for the words I need to explain how my magic works, as if I haven’t spent a damn lifetime wondering about the intricacies of it.
Of how it is affected by the blight. How we are beings of two worlds, forced to split time between them both.
“It is a strange thing to explain to someone who has never felt magic before. Generally, shifters transform for the first time when they are eight. It is a meaningful time for us, happy for the most part; unless of course, you are stuck with an animal you hate.”
“Do you not get a say in the matter?”
I snort, gesturing my chin towards him. “Did you get a say in the color of your hair? Your eyes or skin?” I smirk at the look he gives me. “Exactly. It is like opening a door and stepping blindly into the room. You have no idea until you do it.”
“What does shifting feel like?”
“Warm,” I answer, chewing on my lower lip.
“You might expect it to be painful, but the shift itself happens too quickly to feel anything. The first shift, however, can be intimidating.” I reach for those early memories, grateful that the first time I was introduced to my fox is still cemented in my mind.
“My parents kept saying I would know when it was time to shift. That my body would be ready before my mind could second-guess it, and I guess it is true in that sense. I felt it coming and was powerless to stop it.”
“Were you scared?” he asks, his voice sincere.
“No. Nervous, maybe, but there was no fear in it. Like I said, it is a part of ourselves that we yearn for.”
“So you shift and find out that you’re a fox. A white one, at that.”
I point to pale strands of my hair. “Again, not much of a choice.”
“Did it please you?”
I scour his face, the smile on my own slipping.
“That I was a fox? Yes. It made my parents happy too. I’ll never forget the first moment I set eyes on them in that form.
They were so much clearer, so much more in focus.
It was like I had been seeing them through a veil, and then, suddenly, they were brighter.
More vivid. And they were looking at me with such awe, as if this wasn’t just a normal part of being a shifter.
Like they hadn’t experienced the same thing with my older brother and sister.
” Thoughts of my family—and of what still awaits me in Honna—are not subjects I want to explore right now, so I change the topic, tipping my head to the side as I look back up at Xander. “What happened to your side?”
Eyebrows rising, he lays a hand over the wound. “How did you know?”
“I saw it when you first arrived. Your tunic lifted as you were taking off your satchel.” At the look he sends me, I roll my eyes.
“Do not flatter yourself. It was hard to look anywhere else when you take up so much space.” He makes a choked noise that somehow only manages to force heat to crawl up my neck, flaring in my cheeks as I huff an exasperated breath. “Just answer the damn question.”
Swallowing back his own smile, he sits up and lifts the edge of his tunic just high enough to show off the wound. I lean closer, noting the small amount of blood now dotting the gauze. “It was a training exercise,” he says, his heart rate increasing.
I study him, wondering how a man who clearly has become accustomed to lying just did such a poor job of it.
Though irritation briefly flares, I tamp it down as I lean backwards onto my hands again.
What right do I have to be annoyed at his lies when I am doing the same?
“I might suggest not training with them again if you can help it.”
He sighs, lowering his tunic as he shakes his head. “Not much of a choice there either.”
“Is that why you are so angry today?”
“Partially.” His brow furrows as he drops his gaze, like he didn’t mean to say that.
I hold my breath, watching him sift through whatever thoughts are firing off in his mind.
“There was a trial today, a test for candidates competing to be added to the king’s Trusted. It’s the group of guards closest—”
“I know who the Trusted are.” I had heard King Dolian refer to his guards countless times when he arrived with them in the tower. They were there while he beat Rhea. When he killed Alexi. Xander’s gaze feels heavy on me, and I find my chest grows tighter because of it.
“Right. Well, there was a test for the Trusted positions that were vacated by the princess and Flynn when they—when you all—escaped the tower. So the king held—”
“Wait,” I interrupt, sitting up as I cross my legs in front of me. “What do you mean the positions were vacated?”
“I was attempting to be coy over their deaths—”
“I understand that,” I say with a sigh. “I mean how did they die?”
“Did you not see?” he asks, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankles. At the quick shake of my head, he clarifies. “One died by Flynn’s blade, and the other two… It’s a bit more difficult to explain.”
“Try.”
His dark eyes stay locked on mine, his chest lifting with an inhale before he crosses his arms over it.
“I wasn’t on the field that night, as I’m sure you recall.
” I hadn’t at first, but at the mention of it, the memory of Xander tied up at the bottom of the tower comes back to me.
I smile, the gesture meant to be taunting.
But his eyes lock on my lips and linger, and that damn fluttering in my stomach returns.
“The guards who were there claim that as the princess and Flynn were running towards the woods, the latter collapsed in the meadow, blood seeping from a wound in his stomach.”
Parts of our escape that night are hard to recall.
I knew that the king had intercepted Rhea and Flynn, that I was temporarily separated from them.
Though I can’t exactly remember all that I saw, I remember how I felt.
How my instincts drove me right back into the fray.
So much of our time together over the past four years had been spent wishing I could become mortal again, but in that moment, I knew that I was meant to be a fox.
That I could better protect her in that form than in any other.
Xander continues, his eyes finally leaving my mouth.
“Two men came for them, but when one of them reached where Princess Rhea was huddled with Flynn, there was some kind of reaction or—” He pauses, rubbing at his jaw.
“Something propelled them backwards, as if they were thrown. Some say it was too dark to see what it was, but others claim it was shadows.” An incredulous laugh pushes past his lips.
“Whatever it was that killed them, it was instant.”
Something about his words invokes a feeling of familiarity. Like I’ve seen what he’s talking about before, but I can’t quite pull on the thread enough to bring the memory forward. With his eyes on me, I’m careful to keep my expression guarded.
“Regardless of what happened, it did vacate spots in the Trusted, and the trials are how the king sorts out the recruits. They are barbaric in the sense that no one is truly safe. Even though the men are vying to protect King Dolian, they are no less at risk from whatever mood he shows up in.”
The corners of my mouth dip as a thought sours my mood. “Were you testing to be one of the Trusted?”
“No, but I was there watching, forced to participate in a different capacity.” Maybe it is foolish to believe the despair is in his voice. To see the slight way his shoulders fall.
“I’m sorry, then. That you were made to do that.”
A shallow grin shapes his lips as he dips his chin. Without all the different armor he wears, Xander suddenly strikes me as… normal. Utterly mortal. Just a man abiding by a king. “King Dolian has done his best to create an environment where it feels impossible to take a stand. It’s done by design.”
A man’s voice trickles down the stairs from above, Xander’s head snapping to the side as he peers down the dungeon corridor. Annoyed at the interruption, I follow his lead when he stands, holding the book behind me in case another guard makes their way to us.
“The king wants us oppressed,” he continues, voice low. “But there are those of us who work in the dark, opposing those ideas quietly until—”
“Xander, are you down here?”
His eyes shut for one second, two, three, and when they open again, any of the vulnerability I saw before is gone.
His face is cold. Calculating. Detached.
“I’ll be up. Just finishing up my interrogation!
” he yells, the other man acknowledging him before disappearing back up the stairs.
“What I’m trying to say is that, for how hopeless it may seem, there are always those who will dream of a better world.
One where they have the freedoms that they are owed. ”
I trace the sharp outline of his jaw with my eyes. The tense way his brows draw low. Xander’s gaze paints its way over my own face, but he doesn’t elaborate farther. With a deep breath, he turns and strides away from my cell, disappearing into the dark as the echo of his steps rings out.
“Well, that was odd.” Immie’s voice is full of sleep still as she shuffles on her cot, the slide of her clothing against the canvas invoking the image of her sitting up. “What inspired that conversation?”
“I don’t know,” I reply, running my thumb over the soft leather of the book in my hands. But I replay Xander’s words as I move back to my own cot, tucking my legs to the side and leaning against the cold stone wall.
But there are those of us who work in the dark, opposing those ideas quietly until…
I swallow, something dangerously light taking flight in my stomach.
Us, he had said. There are those of us. Is it dangerous to think Xander might be working against the king?
Absolutely. Is it even more risky to assume I can use him to aid in my escape?
Definitely. But maybe Xander’s words held more purpose than just trying to mislead me.
He, like every guard, is bound to the king in a lot of ways he can’t help.
Alexi was a prime example of that. What would a man be willing to do to bend the rules in order to defy a king he hates?
I smile, flipping the book open to the first page.
Maybe escaping from this place will not be as difficult a task as I first thought.
“Did I hear that handsome man brought you a present?”
“I thought you were sleeping?” I quip, running my teeth over my bottom lip.
Immie chuckles before smacking her lips together. “Never too deep in my dreams to miss the opportunity to watch a man flirt.”
I choke out a laugh. “He was not flirting with me.”
“If you say so. But I can’t imagine it is normal for a guard to bring a prisoner a book, let alone to acquiesce to her requests.”
“It is because he wants the information he thinks I have. The only thing he is flirting with is the idea that I might provide him with something useful about Rhea.”
Immie grumbles out a response that seems suspiciously mocking but then changes the subject to ask when we might get our next meal.
Our conversation wanes as time passes, and our meals are eventually brought to our cells, the meager bread and broth barely edible.
That doesn’t stop either of us from finishing it.
Stomach mildly settled, I scoot to the edge of the cot to catch enough light to continue reading The Sword and The Swan.
Shadows dance from the way the torch’s flame flickers, and I’m reminded of what Xander said happened to those guards in the meadow the night of our escape.
Shadows.
I close my eyes, digging through the foggy contents of my mind, fragmented images of the tower flitting by as if they are butterflies on the wind.
Shadows. Why am I drawn to that word? Why— I see Rhea dropping to her knees, her head in her hands as she cries.
Squeezing my eyes shut harder, I follow that memory, grateful when more of it begins to form.
It is sunset, and my eyes bounce from the door to where Rhea is kneeling on the wood floor, her sobs cracking my chest open. I whimper, the soft sound going unheard by her. Inhaling, I smell her honey and lily scent, but something else lingers just beneath. Something masculine and familiar. Alexi.
I remember this moment. Alexi had just told Rhea that he would no longer be able to visit beyond his normal supply drop-offs.
That he was worried the king would catch him.
Rhea held it together long enough for Alexi to leave, but once the tower door closed, she collapsed in her grief.
He was her only lifeline to the outside world besides the king, and to lose that?
She was devastated. But what does this have to do with anything Xander said?
Gasping, my eyes shoot open as my fingers tighten around the book, scrunching the thin paper beneath them.
Rhea had fallen deep into her despair and released a harrowing sob that I felt in my bones that night.
But that wasn’t the only thing that clouded her.
That night, Rhea did something that I don’t think I ever saw her do before—or since.
That night, while curled over herself, glittering shadows rose into the space around her.
“Gods above,” I whisper, my hand moving to cover my mouth. Rhea had magic, that fact was undeniable. But it wasn’t just light that she wielded, as I previously thought. It was darkness too.