33. Chapter 33
Chapter thirty-three
Iran straight to the library. Delicate fae lights lit its beautiful, towering structure. It rose like a beacon of truth into the sky. I had to at least try to help. This was my fault.
Eryk was the last person Kaed would want to be indebted to, but he was also likely his only option.
Eryk had been kind to me since I’d arrived. And if I were completely honest with myself, I knew he was being more than kind. Eryk had made no secret about his feelings for Kaed. And more than once, he’d asked if I was happy. If I were all right.
He cared about me. That much was obvious. And I knew that what I was about to ask of him was taking advantage of that.
The question was, could I convince him to care about Kaed? For me.
Papers fluttered to the floor as I stirred the air in the still sanctuary, racing through the library past the Silent Servants.
I didn’t know where Eryk would be. If he’d be here at all. So I tried all the places I’d seen him before. The desks I’d been reading at, the balcony, the booths.
Each was empty save for a few late-night scholars. Eryk was not here.
My heart sank as I realised this might be the end of it for my plan. I didn’t know where he lived in the city. I didn’t even know his last name.
I slumped down in a heap alongside one of the stacks.
Cold despair reached for me in my chest, and I tucked my knees up around me.
I wasn’t sure why I cared so much. Kaed had come tonight to bring me back, physically. He’d picked me up and thrown me on his godsdamned horse. And I was here, trying to save him.
Because I cared. I cared what happened to him.
And I didn’t know how that made me feel.
But I knew feeling helpless was not what I wanted.
Watching them put the manacles on him again. Hearing his skin sizzle as the faebane began burning the magic in him, stripping him of his powers.
And he’d managed to resist it. Celeste had said they were demonstrably more potent than they should have been. And Kaed had been able to push himself to stand, to move under their force.
The hard shell of what I had felt before was being corroded by everything new I saw Kaed do. He had protected me. Even though he had just been raging at me for breaking his rules. He had been trying to shield me. He’d surrendered for me.
It wasn’t just for Hayden and his Crown or his father that he’d surrendered. Even though it made him entirely vulnerable to the council.
Kaed was strong.
And I cared seeing him stripped of that.
I couldn’t recognise that part of me that did.
It wasn’t pity I felt. But rage at the injustice of doing that to someone, to bind someone so tightly that they lost a piece of themselves.
A wave of frustration surged in me—that urge to kick and break and fight back at an invisible enemy.
I had an enemy. And it was the council. It was Varris. But I had nothing to fight them with.
I threw my head back and stared at the books all around me. Books upon books. Thousands. And all of them were useless because all I needed was for someone else to care about Kaed—just one other person.
But he wasn’t here.
I didn’t cry. I wouldn’t let myself. But I did have a very strong urge to wield some sort of magic to set this place ablaze and watch the pages float as ashes over the city. If magic flowed in me like water, I’d drown the useless pages around me like a lost city beneath the waves of my anguish.
But no magic flowed. And no one was here.
So I just sat in the dimming light of the fae orbs that bobbed softly in the stacks and aisles and into the night-shrouded hanging forest. And in the pale fae light of a male standing over me.
“Does the reading get more interesting from down there?” Eryk’s smooth voice washed over me. He stood above me, tall and slender, his icy blue and grey tunic lit by the fae light in his hand. He was here.
“Eryk …” I breathed as I scrambled to stand.
He offered me a hand, and I found it without hesitation.
“You’re here!” I beamed.
He looked around as if to check whether anyone had heard my outburst, then chuckled.
“I am. But I don’t know why that matters.
” A smile gathered at the corner of his lips.
It was charming. Refined. Practiced. There was something perhaps boring about it that it didn’t have a hint of wickedness to it.
But that was unfair. He was just Eryk. And he was here.
“It does to me.” I smiled, perhaps a little coy.
His eyes brightened, and a twinge of guilt snared inside of me.
“That is to say …” I paused, chewing on my lip.
How did I say this without sounding incredibly desperate?
“I need your help. A favour, actually. A big one.” And it was a huge ask.
To lay his reputation at Kaed’s feet. To vouch for him was to put himself at the battlefront should Kaed slip up.
It was monumental to ask a friend to do that, let alone ask someone who hated Kaed.
“I’m intrigued.” His voice was deep, and it trembled through me like fingers tickling the spines of the books. “Though I am likely going to say yes. I’m not sure I could refuse a request from you.” He smiled, and he stepped into my space.
“You might not say that when you know what I’m asking.” A flicker of a weak smile twitched on my lips.
“Oh?” So much resonance filled that single word.
I took a ragged breath. Which I think Eryk mistook for nerves around him, not the gravity of the request.
“Kaed has been arrested.”
“Again?” He laughed.
I nodded. Not interested in the humour he saw in it.
“They—the council—have him held in the Cage, and they won’t let him out until someone vouches for him.”
Eryk had definitely not been expecting that.
He stood with his mouth open a little, his body still like a winter tree.
“You’re joking?” He stood back on his hip.
“Me? Of all people, I am the last person anyone would expect to speak on Kaedian’s behalf.
Well, besides his brother. Few males hate Kaedian as much as Hart. ”
“I’m not joking,” I said. Steady. Even.
“I believe you’re a good person, Imogen. But I also believe you deserve better than a male like Kaedian, and I don’t think I can be the person you need me to be. You deserve better than me, also.”
Eryk turned to leave, but my hand shot out to his wrist. “Wait. Please.” I let the desperation I felt flood my words. What did it matter if he knew he was my only option?
“Imogen—” He sighed. “I’m not the person for this job. Get one of his friends. His sentinel. Someone else.” He pulled from my hold.
I shook my head vehemently as my lip threatened to wobble. “No. The council has excluded them from doing this. They can’t.”
Eryk didn’t say anything for a long time, and I let him spin the choice around in his head.
“I’m not able to do this,” he finally said. “I’m sorry. I wish to better this city and do what is right for her and the Four Corners.” He paused. “And this is not that.” With a final, solemn look, he said, “I can’t do this. I’m sorry. Goodnight, Lady Imogen.”
He gave a tight bow and turned.
“Eryk …” I didn’t know what I would even say, but his name on my lips made him pause.
“You deserve better than Kaedian. We all do.” Eryk looked like he was debating saying more, but he squared his shoulders and turned to me. “Crowns don’t make kings, power does.” His voice filled the hollow halls around me. “And when the wrong hands hold that power, it becomes a devouring force.”
I shifted my feet and clutched my arms under his words. It felt as though he were talking about something else entirely.
“I need your help. Please,” I said, ignoring whatever he hid behind his words. I didn’t know the king. But Kaed was not him. Eryk couldn’t blame Kaed for his father’s actions. “I know it’s too much to ask. But I need to know you’ll help me.”
“Do you even know what you’re asking?”
The air was heavy, charged with unspoken, tethered anger.
“What happened?” I reached for his arm, but he stiffened before I could touch him again, and my fingers recoiled. “I know Kaed’s father—”
“No.” Eryk’s voice cut through me. “Not the king. Not Tir.”
The stillness of the library swallowed my voice as I waited for Eryk to speak. Silence and heartbeats were all that passed between us for a long moment.
“Kaedian tore through my town like we were nothing but tinder to his fire.” Eryk’s voice was far away and floating over me.
“Aurorans had stationed themselves in our town. We had no way to force them out. My home was a farming region at the tip of the Southern Corner, and the first in a long line of conquests for the Northern Crown as the king’s forces pushed to control the South.
“He killed hundreds of Aurorans that night.” A solemn look filled his eyes. “And not just Aurorans. My parents … I am the last of my family.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, but it did nothing to ease the spasm in my chest.
Eryk’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“That can’t be true.” I knew it was true. Somehow. I just didn’t want to believe it.
The Auroran book Eryk gave me now held a different meaning.
A book he enjoyed.
One he wanted me to read. To see the beauty of a city and people that had been destroyed by the male who would hold my hand in marriage.
Or at least that’s what Eryk believed. Regardless of what Eryk thought I was to Kaed, or he to me, he had wanted me to see the truth of the Aurorans before their destruction by the Northern Crown.
“I wish it weren’t.” I knew Eryk was speaking of the people who had been lost that night and not about Kaed.
“The fires burned my people in their homes along with the Auroran soldiers. Your prince knelt in the ashes and mud and watched it all.”
My head moved as my eyes swam.
No. No. No …
But it wasn’t fear of Kaed that filled me as Eryk’s eyes fell heavy as he turned to leave again. It was sorrow. To take that much life, to carry it with you …
It didn’t change what I felt about Kaed, even if I wasn’t sure what that was. It just felt like a weight I now carried too. Kaed carried burdens he never spoke about. He carried the burden of his father and his crown.
He carried the burden of everyone’s hate.
And he had carried the burden of my actions today. If I hadn’t left, he wouldn’t be in this mess. He wouldn’t be caged.
Even if Kaed had been acting under his father’s orders, he had been the blade that Eryk saw landing on his home, his people.
An unusual look passed over Eryk’s eyes at my reaction to Kaed’s bloody history.
But instead of spilling every other dark secret Kaed had, he composed his features and twitched a smile into existence on his face.
“Believe me when I say, I am not the person you want for this task.”
Eryk’s honesty was something I couldn’t argue with. He wasn’t pretending he had other, more important duties. He hated him.
And I didn’t know how to navigate his feelings towards Kaed.
But I knew how he felt towards me.
Eryk was nearly to the far hall that was seething with darkness from beyond.
“Wait. Please,” I said again. “I … I will be in your debt. Or Kaed will be. Whatever you prefer.”
Maybe that was too far. To offer Kaed’s debt. I knew he’d be raging over that. But he’d be out of the Cage.
Eryk paused mid-stride. I had his attention.
The pale stone steps of the council chambers fanned out in front of us.
“Before we go in there,” Eryk said, turning to me, “I need to know. Why are you doing this?”
I hesitated. He believed me to be Kaed’s betrothed, and that was the answer I should have given. “I can’t see him suffer for my failings.” Raw honesty coated my throat.
Eryk didn’t seem to care about the layers in my own words; even I couldn’t divine all of them.
There was no point in explaining the complexities of how I felt for Kaed—the tangle of emotional turmoil.
I hated him for abducting me. I cursed him for it, and in the same beat, I enjoyed not being in Shadowfall.
Not being able to think straight at the sight of him.
Worry shadowed my thoughts always, of being alone with him …
for fear of what I might do. Of what he might do.
And there was an ache inside me. I was unable to walk away when he was in pain.
And even after everything Eryk had just said, I couldn’t find a way to shake all of those feelings from my bones.
Kaed had stood there, in my place. I had been pinned beneath the magic of the soldiers outside the gates.
I had felt the weight of their push, their intent to crush me into submission.
And I had seen Kaed surrender to them so they would stop.
Whether because of the goodness others saw in him or his own central core to protect what he believed was his, he’d saved me from the agony of their magic.
So I would now do what I could to save him from whatever the council might force him to endure.
“You don’t belong here,” Eryk said, breaking my thoughts.
“Of course, I …” I didn’t bother elucidating that I didn’t know where I belonged.
“There are other options for you. Other paths you might take.”
“Why are you saying this?” I had never had friends, and perhaps I’d missed out on the subtleties of friendships and connections. Bray had always been in my life, but these people didn’t know me. Eryk didn’t owe me his counsel or his kindness.
“Because this isn’t your place. Not by his side.
He’s the antithesis of you. Where you are light, he is dark.
I’ve watched him over many years, and he is the product of his actions.
He might have experienced loss. But he dealt so much more than he ever endured.
” Eryk’s voice was as hard and sharp as slate.
“He is the son of a tyrant and is no better.”
I stared at the male before me.
“Everything has a price, Imogen. And you’ve agreed to pay mine. I’m just trying to tell you, Kaedian will cost you. And I just hope you’re ready to pay that price.”
Eryk ascended the worn-out steps to the domed chamber building.
He was probably right. This would cost me. Somehow.
I followed, and we entered the council chambers together.