Chapter 26
“This is a fucking terrible idea.”
“For the love of the gods,” Gabriel hissed over his shoulder, a small orb of golden flame suspended above his hand, “would you please stop whining and just trust me?”
Andrian ground his teeth. He wasn’t whining.
Just being honest.
Gabriel halted at the end of the corridor, peering around the corner. With a wave of his wrist the flame vanished, plunging them into near darkness. The allume lanterns on the walls were turned down to their lowest level, leaving the only light source the stairwell at the other end of the hall.
“Okay.” Gabriel took a deep breath. “Remember. The lords and Kol are occupied in the study; unless an alarm is raised, they won’t leave until much later tonight.
That means the only concern is the guards.
Thankfully,” Gabriel said with a wild grin, “I’m a young drunk lordling who just wants to chuck some fireballs off the roof. ”
Andrian shook his head. “There is no way this works,” he said. “But I guess I’m desperate enough to try.”
It was true. When Gabriel had told him his plan to get him out of Khento, it was like some fire had been reignited in him. A tug had started low in his gut, some inexplicable pull and urge.
Get out. Go. Run. Flee.
His instincts had so often led him astray, but for some reason this felt different.
So, he listened to them. And now here he was, agreeing to Gabriel’s ridiculous plan.
North, he’d decided. He would go north. He suspected Mariah was in the west, in Kreah—he’d managed to keep that from Kol, but Kiira and Rylla had family there. It made sense that she would seek refuge in the desert country.
That was enough for him. He couldn’t allow himself to seek her out, so to his mother’s homeland he would go.
He only hoped Mariah wouldn’t come for him. Yet those last words she’d roared at him still burned in the back of his mind.
I will come back for you.
“Andrian,” Gabriel snapped. “Are you ready?”
“Sorry. Yes.” He cleared his throat, straightening his shoulders. Gabriel gave him a tight nod and leaned forward, taking a step toward the stairwell.
“Wait.” Andrian grabbed his brother’s arm. Gabriel halted and turned, eyes wide. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Yes, Andrian. I know it sounds stupid, but trust me, it’ll work—”
“Not with this plan,” Andrian hissed. “With helping me.”
Gabriel fell silent and blinked.
“You have a family, Gabriel.” Andrian didn’t know why this was all suddenly hitting him.
But he wasn’t sure he could watch his brother throw himself to the wolves when he arguably had so much more to lose.
“Don’t do this if it will hurt your wife and son.
I’m not—” Andrian swallowed thickly. “I’m not worth that. ”
Gabriel’s expression softened.
“My wife and son are in Leuxrith already, Andrian. They left a week ago.” He glanced around.
“I never trusted this place. The moment I got here and saw what was going on, I sent word back to them—in a code, don’t give me that look.
She knew to take our son and get themselves safely north if they received that from me. ”
Andrian’s mouth dropped open in shock. “You…they’re…”
“Yes. They’re safe.” Tears lined Gabriel’s golden eyes. “Would you do me a favor? Can you find them in Leuxrith and make sure they’re safe and provided for? Tell them I’m fine and that I’ll join all of you as soon as I can.”
Fuck. Pain squeezed through Andrian’s chest, filling in all his hollow cracks. He stepped forward, wrapping a hand around the back of Gabriel’s head and drawing his brother’s forehead to his own.
“I would be honored to find your family, Gabriel. They’re my family, too. They will stay safe and away from this nightmare.”
Gabriel nodded, taking a deep, shaky inhale. He pushed back, clearing his throat.
“Right. Thank you.” He gave Andrian a weak smile before turning back to the stairwell.
“Travel safe, brother. I will see you when the darkness clears.” With that, the golden-haired lord bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time as he summoned flame to his palms. His raucous calls echoed off the walls, the perfect mimicry of a drunk petulant lordling having a wild night.
Andrian smiled. “When the darkness clears, brother.” He pushed through the door on his right, vanishing into the Khento gardens.
The moonlight danced around him in welcome.
The once-resplendent foliage that had adorned the sprawling gardens outside Khento was still burned and destroyed from the conflict that spring. Hedges were reduced to ash, trees ripped from their roots, flora burned by dragonfire.
On the walls behind him, where guards usually patrolled, Andrian heard jeering laughs. The occasional burst of red-gold light illuminated the sky as Gabriel launched fire into the air.
An idiotic plan, and one Andrian couldn’t believe was working.
He quickened his pace. Light flared again, and he cringed when his boots crunched on the ash and wreckage spotting the gardens.
“Andrian Laurent.”
The familiar voice said his name softly, hardly more than a whisper. He froze. Shadows unspooled around his wrists, dread and fear sliding through his gut.
He turned slowly to meet the wan face of Anniliese Hareth. Her white priestess robes hung loosely around her gaunt frame.
“Anniliese,” he said quietly. His shadows grew more solid, a coil of rope forming around his arm. “What are you doing out here?”
She cocked her head. “I could ask you the same thing.” Her soft brown gaze scanned him, seeing everything he wished she didn’t: the pack slung across his shoulders with enough provisions to last a few days on the road, tightly laced boots, a broadsword sheathed down his back.
He remembered what Mariah had told him. About what had happened between him and Anniliese back when he hadn’t been himself.
Slimy sickness crawled up his throat. They’d both been used by Kol and these lords. No more than mere puppets in some cruel master’s game.
“Why do you stay here, Anniliese?”
She adjusted her shoulders. “Because there’s nowhere else for me to go.”
He understood. He truly did. To feel so trapped by where you were that you gave up all hope of ever being free.
“I’m leaving,” he murmured. “I can get you off the castle grounds. From there, you could go anywhere. South. North.” He paused. “West.”
He prayed to whatever god would listen that she wouldn’t hear the tremble of nervous fear in that last word.
Anniliese was quiet for a long moment before tilting her head up to the sky.
“I thought about convincing you not to go,” she said.
“But I think that would be pointless.” She sighed, a long, sad sound.
“It’s curious. In my time here, I’ve seen true horrors.
Kol is twisted and broken and corrupted, but…
I don’t think he was always evil. And I think he’ll remember that before the end.
” She lowered her gaze, and Andrian was surprised to see her eyes lined with tears.
“Why?” he asked. “Why do you stay and endure it? After everything…why?”
Anniliese smiled, but it didn’t meet her eyes.
“Because the sun is too beautiful to be bad. Too warm to cast so much darkness. Whatever has taken root in him is not natural, and what’s worse is he knows it, too.
We can all feel a change coming, but I don’t think it’s the kind he’s after.
” Something dark glinted in her eyes, flames bobbing in her irises, something broken and angry and vengeful peeking through in the gentle lift of her lips.
“I want to witness it when the change strikes him down.”
Andrian tightened his jaw. He felt it, too; a shifting at the very core of the world. He told himself it was Mariah, that it was the grace and essence of two goddesses contained within one mortal body causing a change in the world.
A quieter part of himself whispered that it wasn’t that simple, and he knew it.
He turned to go. There was another crunch on the destroyed bushes behind him. “Wait.”
Andrian glanced back. Anniliese held out a hand. Something small and circular glinted in her palm.
“I spend a lot of time in these gardens. I found this one night amongst the ashes.” She swallowed, a shadow passing over her face. “It belonged to Lisabel Salis. I think you should have it.”
The world beneath Andrian tilted, his shadows recoiling within his skin.
He slowly stalked to Anniliese, hardly daring to breathe. He took the delicate band from her with an unsteady hand, holding it up in the moonlight.
The silver metal gleamed, twisting together like woven vines. It was simple and elegant. But what stole the air from his lungs and settled like a punch to his gut was not the band or the two small diamonds in the set.
It was the brutally familiar purple-blue stone they framed, shaped like a falling star.
“Tanzanite,” Anniliese whispered, a knowing smile on her lips. “I asked the blacksmith. The Salis wedding band is set with tanzanite.”
Mariah had to have known, all this time, and she’d never said anything? Never mentioned that his eyes didn’t just remind her of a stone her father told her about from his travels to the Everheim Mountains, but that very stone was set into her mother’s wedding band?
Gods, what the fuck kind of curse had he called upon himself to deserve this? To know this love, but know he could never be anything but her most dangerous threat?
With a tremor to his hands that he couldn’t hide even if he tried, Andrian carefully slipped the ring into his shirt pocket, the weight resting above his heart. He met Anniliese’s gaze with a ragged breath.
“Thank you.”
She simply nodded, gathering her robes in her hands. “Tell Mariah good luck. If anyone can beat Kol, it’s going to be her.”
“I’m not going to Mariah—”
But Anniliese was gone, vanishing like a wraith back into the darkness.
Andrian steadied his breathing, turning back to the looming forest beyond the gardens.
With a final, longing glance up at the moon, a single fleeting moment to mourn all he’d lost before he’d even had the chance to truly know it, Andrian slipped away from the darkness of Khento and toward the mountains of his mother’s homeland.