Chapter 13
Andrian paced a worn track through his rooms, frustration and restlessness clawing down his spine.
His brother had arrived in Khento two days ago, and things had been painfully mundane.
No nightmares, no whispers, no summons to the throne room for public displays of dominance.
For a reason Andrian didn’t want to understand, Kol had all but retreated, content to watch the goings-on of court in silence with Ksee stationed ever-dutifully at his side.
Andrian wondered if Gabriel’s arrival had caused the shift—wondered if the dark god desired to keep his image pristine and untainted in order to buy the loyalty of a great house that had already failed him so much.
He halted, crossing his arms over his chest. The rooms he’d been given were nice enough—a typical castle guest suite.
It had a large bed, a sitting area around the crackling fire, and an attached bathroom.
He was thankful that, at least, he’d never been made a true prisoner here.
While he couldn’t leave the grounds, he wasn’t confined to a cell and could wander as he pleased.
Not that there were many places to wander. A heaviness hung about the castle, as if the atrocities committed here hardly more than a week ago had tainted the very earth beneath it.
Andrian drummed his fingers on his arm, brow pinching. His shadows writhed beneath his skin, unwound without Kol’s looming presence, just as restless as he was.
The lack of action was driving him to madness. But there was one subject his mind kept circling around, kept returning to.
His father. Or, rather, the man who’d raised him as such.
He still found what his brother had said bewilderingly curious.
Gabriel still didn’t know Julian Laurent was imprisoned in this castle because he’d dared to defy the very god they all now kneeled to.
Andrian couldn’t understand why Julian had told Gabriel that should Kol ever summon him, Gabriel was to obey without question.
If he ordered his heir to obey the god, then why choose to defy Kol himself?
It felt like everything about Julian Laurent was a contradiction.
How could someone who hated Andrian so much—who despised Mariah so much—end up making decisions that, in a twisted, fucked up, and unsuccessful way, protected them both?
While at the same time issue threat after threat on Mariah’s life?
Andrian raked a hand through his hair. It had grown a little; not long enough to need a haircut yet, but still noticeable.
Just the thought of a haircut sent a pang of desperate, aching longing through him, enough to almost send him to his knees.
Even with the darkness of this place and the despair surrounding it, every little thing reminded him of her.
Mariah was a constant echo in his mind, a drumbeat in his heart, a lighthouse in his soul.
Their bond was still quiet—too terrifyingly, maddeningly quiet—but he held her memory close.
His personal glow in the darkness, the prayer he whispered to himself at night.
Andrian rolled his shoulders and sighed, shaking off the familiar ache. A resolve was slowly filling him. He knew what he had to do to get the answers he sought. The answers he needed.
He might as well accomplish something useful while he was trapped here.
He turned toward the door, but a rustle and flurry of movement at his window made him pause.
What he saw had him blinking in shock, dumbfounded.
The windows of Khento’s castle were all the same: lined in gray stone, with a foot-long ledge on either side. They couldn’t be opened, locking the occupants in, making the only entrances and exits the few doors on the ground floor.
Perched on the outside ledge, staring into the clouded glass with gleaming golden eyes, was an Attlehon eagle.
Andrian blinked again. Surely, he was imagining this.
Hardly anyone saw the eagles now; they were invisible when they flew, and they were smart enough to not land where people could see them.
They certainly didn’t fly this far north, preferring to remain in their nesting grounds deep in the Attlehons.
But when he moved closer to the window, the eagle didn’t disappear. It cocked its head inquisitively, as if assessing him.
It was a too-intelligent movement. Far more than he was comfortable with. Despite his shock and awe at the bird, Andrian crossed his arms again, giving it his best glare. He loosened his shadows around his shoulders, and they drifted down his arms, reaching threateningly toward the window.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here,” he growled, low and quiet, “but this is not a place for you. You need to leave.”
The eagle only watched him, unperturbed.
They remained like that for a long, stretched moment.
Beast and man, trapped in a strange struggle of wills.
Finally, as if snapping the tension with its shimmering feathers, the eagle broke its gaze, shaking out its neck.
Its feathers rumpled in the breeze, and it spread its great wings, the light already catching in those remarkable feathers.
The eagle let out a low whistle that reverberated through the glass. It set off from the ledge in a furious downbeat of its wings and disappeared from view.
Andrian shook his head. Of all the things on his mind, the travel patterns of an Attlehon eagle was not one that he could let consume him.
Pulling his shadows back beneath his skin, he marched toward the door, slamming it behind him as he stormed into the dark, cool hallway.
Andrian didn’t remember ever visiting the Khento dungeons, but somehow his feet knew the way.
It filled him with a cold, sick sense of dread. He knew why his body could find these dark tunnels, even when his mind didn’t remember.
This was where they’d kept Mariah when she was imprisoned. When he’d been a prisoner in his own mind, forced to mark her and torment her and cursed to forget it all.
He supposed he should be thankful he couldn’t remember. Those memories would torture him far more than the simple knowledge he’d done those things ever could. Still, she had endured it. It wasn’t fair that he was somehow relieved of that burden.
As he rounded a dark corner, lifting the allume lamp, his dread was replaced by twisted justice.
Yes, they’d kept Mariah here. Something his father had helped organize. And now, Julian Laurent was in a cell of his own.
What a beautiful circle of vengeance it made.
“I was wondering when you would finally come to gloat.”
The pale gold lamplight sifted through the rusted iron bars of the cell, casting light over a haggard form seated on a threadbare cot. A scraggly gray beard had grown on his once cruelly handsome face, but his golden eyes were still just as sharp and burning with cold fire as ever.
“Who said I was here to gloat?”
Julian scoffed. “You may not be my blood, but I still raised you. I know you. You’d never miss the chance.”
Ire danced beneath Andrian’s skin, but he held his tongue. He’d have his chance to ask questions, but he knew Julian wouldn’t simply tell him what he wanted to know. He first needed to play this game, this mental chess match.
If there was one thing he’d learned from this man, it was that knowledge always had to be earned.
There was a stool in the dark corridor, just out of arm's reach from the bars of Julian’s cell. Andrian pulled it forward, balancing himself atop it as he set down the lamp and folded his arms across his chest.
They stared at each other for a long moment, assessing, before Andrian broke the silence.
“Gabriel is here.”
Just like that, Andrian had the advantage. Julian went rigid, sitting up straight, hands clenching around his knees.
He’d always had a soft spot—a vulnerability—for Andrian’s little brother. And Andrian had no qualms exploiting it.
“Gabriel? Here?” Despite the hoarseness of disuse in Julian’s voice, there was a panic layered in. A desperation that gave away far more than his words ever could.
Andrian smiled darkly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “He still thinks you’re simply indisposed. He doesn’t know of your recent fall from grace.”
“And what of your own fall?” Julian snarled. “You may not live in a cell like me, but I know your life is not brimming with happiness in this castle.”
Andrian stiffened. “Kol has kept that from him, too. As far as Gabriel knows, we are all on the same side. After all, you did tell him to listen to the god if he ever came calling.” He couldn’t keep the bitter disbelief from creeping into his voice.
Julian narrowed his eyes, the tension growing thick and viscous.
“Why are you really here, Andrian? Why seek me out?”
Andrian leaned back on the stool, bracing against the cool stone behind him. He stared down his nose at the man he’d spent his life believing to be his father, wondering why he despised him so.
Not that the truth was any better.
“Why?” Andrian finally asked, voice no more than a soft murmur. “Why agree to it, all those years ago? Why bring this upon yourself—upon me—if you were just going to defy it all in the end?”
Julian’s brow furrowed. He looked away, glaring at the stone across from his cot. It was silent but for the steady drip of water down the damp stone, the only sign that the air above was no longer as cold as it remained in these decrepit dungeons.
“Kol first appeared to me when I was no older than twenty,” Julian finally said, still staring at the wall.
“He would visit me in my dreams. Whisper things about my greatness, about the hidden potential of my house.
My father, the previous Lord Laurent, had died suddenly only a year before, and I was given the title and castle and all the responsibilities of a Royal Lord before I felt I was ready.