Chapter Forty-Five
I can’t breathe as I watch Larus clutch at his chest with his bound hands, his body collapsing beneath him.
I rush to him, barely noticing the movement of the others, barely hearing Octavia’s screams. “Larus. Larus listen to me. It’s going to be alright.” I lift his head into my lap so he can see me. Blood drips down his chin as he coughs.
Oh, gods. I need my magic. Not my shadows, but Ronan’s magic, or the new power we awoke in Avaris. I beg it to come back to me. I tug on the thread between me and the phoenix, but the phoenix is still trapped, its magic of no use to me now.
I dig deeper, searching for my bond with Ronan. I know it must be down here, buried somewhere inside of me. I know it must be as eternal as the bond I made with the phoenix. I can deny it. I can suppress it. But I know I can’t sever it.
And yet it won’t answer me. The distance is too great—not physically, but emotionally. On a spiritual level. I pushed it away, and now, at the moment when I need it the most, I can’t call on it.
This is the price I must pay for my choice. I turned my back on destiny, and this is the price that destiny has demanded.
Gods, it’s too much to bear.
“Sylvie,” Larus chokes out. His breathing is ragged and shallow, the blood pouring from his wound soaking my hands, my sleeves, as I desperately try to stop it. As I fruitlessly call to magic that won’t come. That can’t come.
That I’ve killed.
I look up at my mother. She’s watching this dispassionately, frowning with vague disappointment. This is a test, I realize. She’s testing my magic, testing to find out if I have some power beyond her control.
They never intended to let him live.
I turn back to Larus. There will be time for my anger at my mother and sister. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Larus. You shouldn’t have saved me.”
Larus gasps, his lungs gurgling with blood. I sob, barely able to look at him. “Sylvie,” he says one final time, his voice barely a whisper. I look at him, and his eyes are filled with love, not fear. “You were worth it.”
Then his body stills. His shaking gasps end, and the light fades from his deep brown eyes.
He’s gone.
I stay there for a long while looking at him, my mind knowing he isn’t there, but my heart refusing to let go. Seth comes over and puts his hand on my shoulder, and then he kneels down to me, holding me while I cry.
I turn to wipe my eyes on my sleeve, and I see Adria backed against the library shelves, her face drained of color, her eyes far away.
I want to scream at her. I want to punch her and kick her and stab her right through the heart. Because Mother may have done this, but she would have too. She tried herself in the throne room.
Mother may be here helping her now, but this is all her doing.
How dare she stand there looking at Larus like she regrets it? How dare she pity me?
My blood boils with anger, but I don’t lash out. Octavia is still here, still alive, and I intend to keep it that way.
Instead, I look at my sister, the illegitimate God-Queen, the woman who bears the responsibility for everything that has torn this family apart, and I ask her, “Is this what you wanted?”
Because I know deep down that it isn’t. And I hope it haunts her until the day she dies.
We’re brought into the dungeons beneath the palace, the same dungeons where I was held after they believed I tried to assassinate Ronan.
I expect them to separate us and to place Seth in a fire-born cell, but they can’t. The dungeons are far too full. Instead, the three of us are tossed in with an older man who looks to have been tortured, repeatedly, judging by the scars that cover much of his frail body.
“Welcome back,” he says with a familiar annoyed tone when he sees us, and my stomach drops as I realize that it’s Cyrus.
“My God. Isn’t that the Grand Vizier?” asks Octavia.
“Not anymore,” he says, standing slowly, his body creaking and snapping as he moves. “They found me outside the city about a month after you left. Believe me when I say I tried not to tell them anything.”
“I believe you,” I say, and I do. It’s clear that whatever information he gave them—likely everything about the Guild and the anti-magic suppression, everything he remembered from Zara’s research—he didn’t give it to them willingly.
“Where is Ronan? I thought you’d be together. I told you to stay together.”
I sink to my knees. Thinking of being apart from Ronan is just too painful right now when I’m feeling this raw.
“He’s with the legions,” Seth says for me. “He’ll be here soon.” I know he says this for my benefit, and I appreciate the effort, but it just makes me sob.
“Did you find the prophecy? Did you go to the tomb like I asked you?”
I tilt my head up to look at him. “Did you know? What the prophecy said, did you know it?”
“I—no, it was struck from the records—”
“Did you know?” I spring to my feet and grab him by his collar.
“Sylvie!” shouts Octavia. “Let him go. He’s barely even alive. This isn’t who you’re angry with.”
But it is. It’s another person who knew something and didn’t tell me. Another person with a plan that involved hurting me. Hurting Ronan. “Did you know?”
“You found it then. The power. Oh, thank the gods. The Viziers have been trying to bring this about for generations. Hundreds of years. But the church has always been there ahead of us.”
The way he’s smiling, a smile that is missing several teeth, I realize in horror, I know he doesn’t know what the prophecy says. “The Shadowbound Prophecy is the end of the world. That’s what the power is. The Viziers have been trying to end the world?”
Cyrus stutters, his eyes darting around our cell.
“I—that is to say, I don’t know about that.
But I’m certain it’s what is meant to happen.
I’m just one of a long line of Grand Viziers from House Horatio.
It’s an honor I hoped to pass to my son one day.
The story has been passed down in our family for generations.
I never thought that I would be the one to see it come true. ”
“It isn’t coming true.” I slump back down to the floor. There are only two beds in this cell, so I guess this is where I’ll be sleeping.
“What? But you must. You must see that it’s the only way to fix all of this—”
“Let her be,” says Seth. He bends down and picks me up off of the floor, and I don’t have the energy to fight him. “It’s been a tough day.”
Seth lays me down in one of the beds, and he slumps down on the ground next to me. After everything that happened today, I’m grateful he’s still with me.
“Stay with me?” I ask him.
“Always,” he whispers back.
We settle into a routine that isn’t unlike the one Seth imposed on us himself when he held Taran and me captive.
First, we’re drugged. Then we’re questioned: about legion capabilities, battle tactics, rough estimates of each magic type, Orsan training, our understanding of Brakkari weapons and warfare, and on and on.
I give away what I must to keep the others alive, but I conceal anything I can, anything that could seriously endanger Ronan.
We rarely see our mother or Adria, and when we do, it doesn’t last long before I’m screaming at them about what they did, what they took from me.
And then we’re returned to the cell to sit and wait until it happens again the next day.
We’re given next to no information, but I can guess when the siege begins about two weeks after our arrival. The number of guards greatly reduces, and they all move with an urgency that was absent during the wait.
Another two weeks go by. Seth’s beard has filled in completely, and Octavia’s head is covered in a thin layer of tight coils.
We wait long enough that the sting of Larus’s loss begins to dull for Seth, who was never as close to him as I was.
He returns to his normal routine of complaining about the conditions, going on about the lack of bedding and inadequate bathing supplies for so long that a guard drags in two more utilitarian cots, a washbasin, and some soap just to shut him up.
Then one day, the cell next to ours is emptied.
Its inhabitants, Selaran refugees caught trying to smuggle elixirs out to others in an encampment south of Faros, are moved to a cell down the hall.
We don’t think much of it. Many of the prisoners disappear each day, most of them given the chance to fight for Adria in exchange for their freedom.
She declines to offer us the same.
And then, a few hours later, I wake to the sound of the guards leading in a pair of men in Selaran tunics and breeches, their chains jangling as they approach the empty cell beside ours.
My heart stops when I see them.
The man nearer to the bars has blood caked into his blond hair, but the tattoo on his neck is unmistakable.
Taran.
And if that’s Taran…
The man walking beside him is tall, though he’s walking with a hunch. His skin is a darker tan after a month fighting under the Selaran sun, and his hair has been cut shorter for battle.
But it’s him. Ronan.
He’s here.
Oh, gods. I can’t believe it. What are they doing here? How did they catch them?
“Don’t get too comfortable,” says one of the guards as they open the cell. “The God-Queen is on her way.”
Fuck. We have to get out of here.
Ronan takes a seat on a cot near the back of the cell, body slumped in exhaustion, eyes distant and lifeless.
Did he come here to save me again? Is this a plan, like the one before with Larus to break me out of Seth’s camp?
If it was, it looks like it’s gone horribly wrong.
“Ronan,” I whisper, reaching my arm through the bars in his direction. “It’s me.”
His head lifts slightly at my voice. The hair on the back of my neck stands up as I wait for his response, the air between us charged.
Ronan’s lips purse, and he swallows hard, blinking back some emotion I can no longer recognize. Then finally, he turns to look at me. “You’re safe,” he says, a deep breath relaxing his shoulders. Then he tilts his head back down, sinking back into himself like he did after we lost Faros.