Chapter Twelve #2
I turn on my side, propping up my head with my hand.
“That doesn’t explain how those who enter from the outside can overcome being savage.
Or how you or any of the original draconem here were able to do that, for that matter.
” In part, I’m looking for a lie. Some gap between what he’s already told me and what he’s telling me now to uncover any deceit.
I want him to trust me, but I need to trust him.
Ozias casts his gaze down. There’s a heaviness to the air as I wait for his reply.
“There’s another barrier I cast over the Realm.
One that happened days after I made the first. Those days…
they were so dark. We found any way we could to restrain ourselves, to keep ourselves in the Realm.
To keep us from attacking one another. Then, there was someone Zhoric reversed the curse on. ”
My blood stills in my veins. “He reversed the curse on someone? Why would he do that?”
“The question you should ask is for whom he would do that.”
I wait a beat for the answer, my mind spinning. A bond perhaps? “And?”
“It was his sister.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “She wasn’t on his side?” A pang in my chest hits me hard, remembering when Kalixta and I were at odds after her selection and all the ways we did and didn’t support each other during those times.
“Their relationship was complicated, but they loved each other. He couldn’t stand to see her like that, so he lifted the curse from her.
When she made it here, I replicated it as well as I could.
But I couldn’t replicate on every individual, over and over.
I was only strong enough to expand the magic across the Realm like a net and give the draconem who trigger the curse the ability to find the opening to the light beyond the savagery. ”
Scanning his face, an idea bubbles in my mind.
“I don’t understand. If Zhoric has a god’s power, couldn’t he have stopped you? Then? Now?” I don’t have the courage to say the word kill.
“That was his intention, once.” A shadow settles across his face and I suddenly have the sense that I’m looking at the real man behind the swaggering front I’m accustomed to.
I lay my hand over his, my thumb pressing the inside of his wrist. “What happened?”
The muscles along the side of Ozias’s neck tighten and I slowly run the pad of my thumb against his pulse point.
“His sister was killed by someone close to him soon after he took power. Following that, he wasn’t much inclined to eradicate us lest he ever needed to use us against the draconem who follow him. ”
My mouth tightens at the notion. Things must have gone according to the Sar Dyēus’s plans if he didn’t go forward with that. Although, the fact Ozias could meet with him safely suggests the Sar Dyēus is still keeping the rogues in his back pocket.
“Then the draconem who followed him found us more useful alive than dead by using us to influence the Nevobans, so they no longer called for our deaths. To the Sar Dyēus, that meant everything was under his control.”
I work my teeth over my lower lip. “How did we end up like this? What happened to the women back when the Sar Dyēus took control? Why didn’t we fight back?”
Ozias sighs, his shoulders sagging. “Anyone who defied Zhoric and his followers in that first divide of our people was cursed, one way or another. His power was like a dust storm; wholly consuming and unstoppable. Everyone who followed him, or didn’t choose a side at all, fell to his whims. The women who were lucky, if you could call it that, fled here.
The others who weren’t so lucky had the mark placed upon them, suppressing their dragons.
That first generation of your people were cursed so they couldn’t speak of the past and what you are.
So when the second generation came and stories were passed down, truths were told as well as they could through fables and legends, but even those changed with time.
We became the monsters, and eventually the dragons of Dyēus donned the shepherd’s skin to make you feel safe and secure for nearly a century. ”
My throat is thick as I swallow. A hundred years seems like both an eternity and no time at all for such a significant shift, but Ozias lived through it.
Atlanta experienced an early phase of that new world.
A deep valley of sorrow carves its way across my heart.
So much lost. So many women who came before me living abbreviated lives.
The ones who knew what they were supposed to be, silenced, their wings clipped from ever reaching the full extent of who they were again.
That valley in my chest fills with heat and hate.
I clench my teeth so tight they could crack. “I want him dead,” I say, so low that I wonder if Ozias hears me, but of course he does. His next words stun me.
“We can take his power. We can reverse the curse and mend things back to the way they ought to be, but he needs to live, at least for a while yet. He has too many threads of magic woven into the world. We don’t know what would happen if he were to depart from this plane too soon.
He has much left to do before he can pass.
Things he needs to answer for.” Ozias’s words hold a tenderness, but his face is severe, leaving not an ounce of space for argument.
So I don’t. I also won’t let his words control my ultimate decision when it comes time to do what he asks me to do.
I vow to myself that the last dragon I kill will be the Sar Dyēus.
I search his expression, seeing something familiar.
Protective. I pull my hand from his wrist and press my fingers to my lips, then tuck them under my chin.
“He’s your friend,” I guess, as if that both settles the matter and accuses him of something. “Or once was.”
Ozias doesn’t dispute my claim, causing me to wonder over their relationship.
His face has turned cold and distant, his mind elsewhere.
“I said I would answer your questions. The answer to that is…it doesn’t matter what he once was.
He’s the enemy, now.” He juts out his chin.
“Back on the floor. We’ll do these exercises every day until you can focus for at least an hour. ”
I lie back down and try to settle into my skin that feels like it could burst at any moment. “And when I master this? How will I get close to the Sar Dyēus to enact the bond?” I tilt my head back to see him.
Ozias holds my gaze, but I feel as if he’s watching me through fogged glass. “I’m still working on that.”
My jaw clenches, nerves firing along my bones. “I’m continually inspired by your confidence,” I say, hoping to bring back some levity.
His mouth quirks into an easy smile, some of the clouds disappearing from his expression. “One step at a time. With how slowly this is going, though, we’ll have plenty of time together to come up with an inspiring idea.”
The longer this takes, the riskier it is for Ninon and all the others. What if Kalixta doesn’t have an elahi? My mother? Who else is at risk that I know? I adjust my septum piercing and shake my hands, trying not to linger on his words. “Your selfless dedication might outshine your confidence.”
He picks up where he left off pacing my form. “I do what I have to.”
I think that’s the sincerest statement I’ve heard from him yet, and I’d do well to remember it.
When Ozias releases me, I rest in the room I’ve been given until it’s early evening, the dusk near enough I can smell it on the air—a cool moisture, a shifting wind bringing in the salt from the distant sea.
The Alcazar is quiet. By now, most people have gathered for supper or else are off preparing for the night.
I’m passing the staircase that leads up to Alcazar’s highest rooms when I hear low conversation travel down the steps.
I slow as I recognize the voices. I press against a wall and make myself small as I hear my name on Ozias’s lips.
“Have you spoken with Kaisa?”
“No, she was still resting. I didn’t want to disturb her before it was absolutely necessary,” Atlanta answers.
Ozias hums and silence follows. I dare not breathe. I’m not foolish enough to believe I’m not spoken of when my presence is absent. Still, it sets me on edge to hear it all the same.
“I’m worried, Ozias,” Atlanta says. Their words are soft now, at complete odds with how they spoke with one another when I last saw them together.
“Why am I not surprised,” Ozias replies, a tease in his tone.
“You said yourself, their bond potential is powerful. I worry, especially with her inexperience, that it might be easy for her to be…swayed by it.”
“She won’t.”
I don’t blame Atlanta for worrying, but it’s unfounded. I’m only glad Ozias believes in me.
“You can’t know that,” Atlanta shoots back.
“She already despises him. There’s no getting around that after she’s learned all that he’s done to her and her people.”
“Zhoric isn’t only what he’s done. She has a good heart, Ozias. She will see that.”
I tense and cast my gaze up the stairs, even though I know I can’t see anything. What more can there be to the man they claim has done such horrors to my people?
“I’m aware,” he says, voice deepening.
An inhale, soft and steady. Atlanta’s, I think. “It’s too much of a risk to have that happen.”
“I realize that,” Ozias retorts.
“Has there been any indication she’s seen him?”
A pause, then, “No.”
“Ozias.” His name comes out terse and knowing.
“She mentioned a bad dream.”
My heart skips a beat and I bite the side of my cheek.
“Did you ask her about it?”
“I didn’t want to pry.”
“Pry. If she’s mind walking, we have to know. We can always go back to the original plan.”
“There is always that,” Ozias says, but it’s clear from the weariness in his words he doesn’t like the idea.
Atlanta doesn’t immediately reply and when she does, her own tone takes on an edge of annoyance. “You’re certain she’s strong enough to force the bond?”
“Of that much I’m certain.”