Chapter 62
“Gregor—” My voice is too weak, it’s completely ignored, he doesn’t even glance my way. Doesn’t wait for an answer from Kaelis.
He bares his teeth and snarls, “I will kill you for hurting her!”
His cards are already in motion, magic sparking the air like flint against steel. The Ace of Wands flares with a flick of his wrist, glowing red. Fire bursts near Kaelis.
Kaelis doesn’t summon a card in defense—he doesn’t need to. He merely shifts to the side with effortless grace, dodging the fire before it can even singe his clothes. It’s like he knew exactly where Gregor’s attack would land before even Gregor did.
“I would die a thousand deaths before I hurt her,” Kaelis says smoothly, but his voice is pulled together by only a razor-thin thread of control, as if the mere idea of someone implying that he would hurt me is too much for him to abide.
“Lies,” Gregor snarls, another card already rising.
Kaelis had started toward me but finds himself stalled by another attack from Gregor. He dodges again, using it as an opportunity to step forward. He’s at the side of the altar now, only a few steps away. “Don’t make me fight you.”
I try to pull myself to my feet, my whole body trembling. My head feels as though it’s been split in two. What the fuck happened? I grab my temple, pulling myself together through sheer force of will.
“Let’s settle this once and for all. You and me. Draw your cards, you coward!” Gregor roars, fury unchecked. The mere idea of losing another person important to him has Gregor barreling over his better sense. “I always knew you were the worst among them, void-born.”
Kaelis tenses, his posture taking on an ominous pose. But he doesn’t move. Though I can tell it’s taking everything in him to hold back.
“Gregor, stop.” I step between them. I’m so weak from whatever just happened, but I can’t let things escalate further. “Please. Listen to—”
“He infiltrated the Worldkeepers’ sacred space and attacked you!” Gregor takes a step closer to me.
“I did not attack her.” Kaelis’s patience is thinning, I can tell from his voice.
The words are forced through gritted teeth.
If not for me, Gregor would already be in several pieces.
“In case you’ve forgotten, I was the one who helped get her out of Halazar.
Who’s kept her hidden and safe within my domain. Who’s spent years looking after her.”
“Yeah? Well, so have I!” Gregor’s voice raises. His hands ball into white-knuckled fists. “I knew her when she was fresh off the streets. You have known her barely a year and a half. Don’t think you can compare to me.”
“It’s not a competition!” I stagger, catching Gregor’s hand, stopping another card from rising from his deck.
Instead, it falls harmlessly to the ground.
“Gregor, stop, please—please listen. This isn’t what you think.
I don’t know what happened—I messed up somehow—but whatever it was, that magic wasn’t Kaelis’s. ”
“You never mess up, Clara.” He frowns at me and then glares again at Kaelis. “Why are you always defending him even when he’s clearly not good for you?”
“Gregor, I—it’s because I—” Love him. But I don’t get to finish. He talks over me.
“The man murdered children!”
Kaelis takes a step forward, snarling a curse under his breath at Gregor’s accusation. A card rises over his shoulder. Shadows lick at its edges.
The whole world freezes, starting with the blood in my veins. “What’re you talking about?”
“He destroyed Clan Hermit, top to bottom, annihilated not just their ancestral home but any who had a drop of blood in their veins from the clan. You didn’t honestly think there weren’t innocents, did you?”
“I…” I look between Gregor and Kaelis. The prince stands with movements that promise violence. I don’t dare move from between them. “Who told you that?”
Gregor’s hands close around my shoulders, and he shakes me. The throbbing in my head threatens to worsen. “Isn’t it obvious? You’re smart, Clara, too smart to be taken in by him. What has he done to make you overlook all the atrocities he’s committed? Is your mind even your own?”
“Those words aren’t yours.” I stand firm and lock eyes with him. “I’ve known you for years. You’ve known about Kaelis and me for months, and this never came up.”
Gregor glances away. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me.” My fingers close around his, still holding them to me, like a lifeline.
I take a deep breath, and, miraculously, he mirrors it.
When I speak again, it’s calm, little more than a whisper.
“You are like my brother. We have washed blood off our hands together.
I celebrated your birthdays into the small hours of the morning drinking way too fucking much of that cheap ale you like that tastes like piss and was just as warm, but it was the only damn thing we could afford.
“I know you, and this is not how you speak. You don’t say things like that about people I care about—people you’ve worked with—when you could come to me first.”
I draw a slow breath as guilt softens his gaze. But he doesn’t look away. He continues to meet my stare.
“So tell me, what have you heard, and from whom did you hear it?” I ask.
“Vaduin,” Gregor answers.
Kaelis curses under his breath. His magic spikes, and I glance over my shoulder. No cards have been summoned, but he is gripping the altar now as if physically holding himself back from running down the tunnel and finding Vaduin himself.
Gregor’s eyes shift over my shoulder, meeting Kaelis’s. “But Vaduin knows an awful fucking lot, especially about Clan Hermit, and he’s not wrong, is he?”
“Gregor—” I start to say.
Then an explosion rumbles the stone above us.
Distant screams pierce the tension in the air around us. We all look to the tunnel they echoed from.
We don’t wait. We don’t discuss. Gregor rips himself from my grasp, and I’m running as well. Kaelis races up to my side, slowing his pace, eyes darting to me.
“Are you all right?” he asks. Even after everything that just transpired, he’s worried for me.
“I’ll be fine.” I nod.
There’s no time for any other words. My boots slam against the stairs, and I nearly fall.
Kaelis helps keep me upright. My muscles burn, and my head still spins.
My magic feels strained, as though it were ripped from me and then smashed back into place.
But all I hear are screams. All I smell is smoke.
The moment we burst forth into the main chamber, heat pummels my face.
The serenity that welcomed us earlier has been shattered. Fire rages. Smoke curls over the broken buildings like a shroud. Magic scorches the air.
“What…” I can’t even form a sentence.
“How…” Gregor is also in horror.
In the distance, Stellis fight against Worldkeepers. I see a streak of platinum-gold hair leading them. Fucking Emilia. How did she find this place? It’s been kept secret for ages.
That’s when I see another running at her side—a woman wielding a massive blade as though it’s little more than a rapier.
Leigh Strongborn, Ravin’s wife. What she lacks in magic power she makes up for in brute strength and skill.
One of the only non-Arcanists who can go toe-to-toe with those with magic and hold her own, or even best them.
And that weapon, with all its heft, would be enough to nearly cleave a man’s head from his neck.
I stop. Eyes wide.
They followed Gregor into the academy, through the bridge. That was their way in. I realize it in an instant as the pieces click into place, but I can’t bring myself to say it. The truth would destroy him, and he needs to fight.
I can imagine Leigh tracking the two Stellis in secret, following just behind them as they followed Gregor after he freed Silas’s family. Gregor was none the wiser. He thought he’d killed them, but he hadn’t. Not both of them. Not entirely…
Leigh followed them into the tunnel, and one man saw her—that’s why he looked as if he were reaching out to someone.
Killing the man avoided suspicion. Leigh discovered the passageway into the academy, and then she led Emilia to it.
I’ve been aboveground for nearly a day while Emilia could have been searching through the tunnels, using all the knowledge she seems to have gathered from scouring the city’s depths in weeks past. I had heard mention of Emilia having knowledge of a mountain stronghold, but I thought it was nothing more than nonsense she was using to calm worried citizens.
The warm lantern I picked up on the way here. They scoped out the path. Maybe some were already here when Kaelis and I arrived. Fuck.
Kaelis grabs my elbow. “We need to run.”
“We have to fight.” I look at him defiantly. “Go, if you must. I understand you need to keep your cover. But I cannot.”
“What about your cover?” Kaelis counters.
Gregor looks our way, glancing between Kaelis and me. “He’s right, Clara. You need to keep yourself safe and—”
“All we have to do is fucking kill them all.” My voice sharpens to a dagger’s edge.
I look at them both with bloodlust dulling the pain that still courses within me from the failed induction.
There’s something wicked festering under my skin.
“I am done losing places and people I love. Done hiding. We will make a stand, we will fight, and together, we will win.”