Chapter 34 #2
Santhe threw up her hands. “Adder,” she urged, turning to Kal’s closest friend. “Please. Make him see reason.”
Adder studied Kal. When he spoke, his voice was careful. “What happens when she returns, mate?”
Kal had to clench his fists to keep from shifting. His tone was low, dangerous. “She’s not going back.”
Adder was undeterred. “Does she know that?”
An image of Kitty’s pleading gaze flashed in Kal’s memory.
After the hunters had been dealt with, she’d practically begged him to take her back to Asteros.
Then, he’d thought her a missing Fate. Thought her desire to return stemmed from a sense of duty to prevent more hunters from coming after their missing slave.
But she’d known Domitan’s assailants weren’t searching for a Fated Mother.
They would never stop seeking her. Not when the Prima was the cornerstone of the kingdom, of their faith.
And what about Kitty? Was she still determined to become a martyr for the Faithful Cursed? Had he ever considered what she wanted? Had he offered her the chance to explain? Fucking divine.
Adder sighed. “Kal…”
Resolution steeled him. “No.” Kal turned to Santhe. “I understand the concern, but it’s wasted. Her being here changes nothing. Our plans remain the same.”
“And what about her plans, Kal?”
He ground his molars. “I will not allow Asteros to claim her.”
“Then you’re a greater fool than I thought possible,” Santhe replied, stalking past him. “They already have.”
Santhe left. A lingering discordance filled the room in her absence.
Kal sank back into his chair, an ache blossoming behind his right eye.
So much for enlisting help. Where Santhe had gone, he didn’t know.
Then again, he didn’t much care. As pissed as she was, she’d keep Kitty’s secret.
He was confident in that much. Because it wasn’t just Kitty’s secret anymore; it was his.
And whatever Santhe’s faults, she would not betray him.
“You have anything to drink?”
Kal nodded to the kitchen behind him without looking at Adder and rubbed his throbbing temple. Adder disappeared from view. When he returned, he carried two mugs and a half-empty bottle.
“What’s the plan here, mate?”
Would that he had one. He wished someone else would come forward with a damned course of action instead of endlessly looking to him for solutions he didn’t have. “Same as I told Santhe. I don’t have a fucking clue.”
His burdens suddenly seemed too heavy. The sense of direction he’d maintained since his parents died now appeared uncertain.
He knew his goals hadn’t changed. But the conviction with which he’d planned to achieve them was unexpectedly wavering.
The truth was, Kitty’s presence altered nothing.
But his unanticipated feelings for her? They changed everything.
“You remember when we found Ophelia?” Adder asked, startling Kal out of his masochistic reverie.
“How could I forget?”
“This dirty little street urchin had been spying on us for weeks, eyeing our shiny new blades any time we went into the city, until finally she got the nerve to steal one.”
Kal smirked, nostalgia surfacing. “She gave you a glorious bruise.”
“Took my favorite knife, the little shit,” Adder recalled. “Vanished like the mist. I dragged you back into the city to help me hunt her for six days before I found her.”
“I found her,” Kal corrected.
Adder sipped his liquor and waved him off.
“Anyway, we found her cornered by a merchant and two of his crew, accusing her of pilfering supplies from their ship. I said we should leave her to her fate. Said her actions finally caught up to her. Divine justice, and all that.” He took another swallow. “You remember what you said?”
“That if you wanted your knife back, her fight was our fight.”
Adder hummed. “And fight we did, mate. Just a couple of kids, playing heroics.” He laughed. “Ophelia, the hellion. The look on her face when she realized her saviors were prior marks.”
“You let her keep your knife,” Kal pointed out.
“Yes, well.” Adder toyed with the mug. “Hard to demand it back when I learned she was using it to feed herself.”
Ophelia carried that knife to this day.
“Why remind me of this?”
“Because you always had a sense we lacked, Kal,” Adder explained.
“You saw something in Ophelia that I didn’t.
You knew we had to fight with her when I wanted to leave, the same way you knew Sett, Santhe, and Cinah would help in your rebellion.
You knew Grisham would prove a valuable business partner if leveraged appropriately.
” He pointed at Kal. “You’re a problem-solver, mate.
You’ve a knack for figuring shit out before the rest of us even realize we’re standing in it. ”
Kal sighed. Stared at his drink. “I don’t know this time, Dev. I’m in the dark here.”
Adder’s expression softened at Kal’s use of his given name. “What happened? At the Watch Post?”
Kal gazed numbly ahead, remembering the rage, the overwhelming urge to destroy—to kill.
He glanced down at his hands. “I just…reacted. I was powerless, and yet so fucking powerful at once. It felt like being…unleashed.” He looked up at his friend.
“I’ve never lost control like that. Not ever.
But when I saw her in that arena, saw the grim coiling for a kill, smelled her blood and fear… ”
Adder folded himself over his knees, elbows braced on either thigh. His thundercloud eyes were clear. “She calls to your second form.”
Kal didn’t even know what that meant, but it explained exactly how he’d felt. “Yes.”
His friend’s lips tugged up in a sad smile. “Your dad used to say that about your mom. ‘Find a woman who calls into you, lad,’ he’d say. ‘Your first form might not hear, but your second will. And then you’ll know.’”
Kal frowned. He couldn’t recall his father ever imparting those words to him.
“Kitty calls to you, mate. You couldn’t ignore her if you wanted.”
“I tried to,” Kal admitted. “I was so fucking angry.”
A rational man still would be. Kitty’s ilk was of the worst sort.
Her faith, her family, her blood was everything he wanted to purge from Ilistaar.
He should be trying to use her to achieve his aims. Should have malice to spare.
But instead of trying to hold onto an enmity he didn’t feel, he’d made peace with its absence.
“Am I compromised?” Kal asked. “Is my judgment impaired?”
Adder tilted his head. “Has your mission changed?”
“No,” Kal said. “The monarchs will pay for what they’ve done. For what they continue to do. Asteros must fall.”
“Then you’re steady as the tide, mate.”
Kal hummed. Adder watched him, an unreadable expression clouding his countenance. “Say it.”
Adder’s lips pressed into a thin line. Then, “Santhe wasn’t all wrong, you know. The prophecy still presents an issue.”
Kal’s glower returned. If ever there was a word he loathed, it was fucking prophecy.
“Hear me out. You know there’s truth in those texts, mate. Your mom and dad believed as much.”
“Yeah, well, look how faith repaid them.”
“You’ve got a damned archive of translations,” Adder persisted. “A treasure trove of forbidden texts. You’re better studied in the godscripts than a bloody priest.”
He wasn’t wrong. Kal had spent years collecting and poring over every copy he could get his hands on, trying to find a way to dismantle the Faithful Cursed, to find some shred of evidence that his parents had been mistaken about his uncle.
“She’s in those books, Kal. Every one. You can’t ignore her role in all this,” Adder said. He hesitated. “Or Karrick’s.”
Murder, white hot, pulsed through Kal’s blood at the thought of his uncle’s hands on Kitty. Devereux Santaire was close to him as a brother in blood and bone, but in that moment, he regretted telling him about his uncle all those years ago. Not even Santhe or Cinah knew.
“I told you. She’s not going back.”
Adder drained his whiskey and pushed up from his seat. He clapped Kal on the shoulder as he passed. “Then you had best start thinking up a workaround, mate. If ever a mortal could outwit a god, it’d be you.”