28. L（over） #3
My head throbbed, fingers burning, because the magic was everywhere. I sank deeper into the pressure that had been steadily building inside of my skull since the rainstorm back in Westmere.
Ocean water rose up behind Aleksander in a towering tsunami, a churning endless mass of silvery blue. I brought my hands down roughly, just like I’d practiced thousands of times with the Marshal. It slammed across the ship.
Pirates screamed, crunching as they were thrown against the mast. Dead on impact.
“That was for my mom!”
As water exploded across the deck, Aleksander raised his hands. Wind spun around his body protectively, forming a shield. I sent another wave crashing across the ship, and it dragged the bodies out to sea. Aleksander stood stoic and remained perfectly dry.
The metal on his wrists glowed with bright white light, and there was no mistaking his expression. He stared at me with blatant hunger.
“Thou,” he said with awe, “should NOT be able to wield storm magic, let alone the rarest and strongest power. Thou art my made vassal . . .”
In Mom’s old book, the five ancient symbols must have been listed in ascending order of strength: snowflake, fire, lightning, wind, water. His power was also near the bottom.
Aleksander gasped loudly like he’d realized something. His eyelids lowered. “Unless . . . No . . . Art thou sure Ravenal is your mother’s name and not your sire’s?”
Razor blades twisted deep in my gut, because Mom had never been able to hold my gaze when she talked about my missing father.
He laughed, head thrown back, ocean water spraying around him. “Ravenal, my darling, brilliant huntress—tell me who your sire is, and I’ll tell thee everything thou want to know.” He visibly shuddered. “This is a delightful turn of events. I had my suspicions, but this, this is a triumph.”
He gestured to the ocean and clapped mockingly, the shredded pieces of his shirt falling off as wind whipped around him. Half naked, he was a carved statue of a perfect man.
He bared his canines like a sly dire fox.
I bared mine back.
“My triumphs are not yours to celebrate, Aleksander.” I raised my hands higher, pressure mounting behind my eyes, vision blurring as I sent the full force of the ocean barreling toward him.
He cocked his head to the side, unbothered by the deadly wall of water pummeling against his shield. “Have thou heard of the dangerous criminal Marx Ravenal?”
“No,” I said. “You don’t know anything about my father—”
“He’s a wicked Royal Mage—”
“—because he was a Commonwealth man of great esteem—”
“—with an ouroboros tattoo here?” He held his fingers up to his right eye. “If memory serves correctly, he wore a platinum mask tinted bronze.”
I stumbled backward, unable to disguise my horror. Breathing became impossible. His name is Ravenal? That cold-looking man with the snake tattoo couldn’t be my father. Mom would never fall in love with the enemy . . . She’s too kind and romantic for her own good.
I bent over, hands on my knees, gasping.
Mom would.
The missing pieces behind recent events clicked into place.
Marx was looking for her, and he saw Mom’s portrait in the newspaper.
I bet she never told him she was pregnant.
She was in hiding, and the papers blew her cover.
It was why she always refused to leave the walls of the North.
Marx struck a deal with the Marshal. He was her “interested player,” and she sacrificed Mom for the cause.
A horrible sound wrenched from my throat.
Mom was probably so afraid, and I wasn’t there to protect her.
I screamed.
“Ah—I see,” Aleksandar said. “That is why the Iron Ritual did not make thee into a Knight. What a violent, royal lineage. Now everything makes sense. Thou were never my vassal, but it has been centuries since a halfling was born . . . They must have loved each other very much.”
Halfling? He was speaking nonsense.
Standing up with an angry shriek, I waved my arms and threw more ocean his way. Silvery wind directed it straight back to the sea.
Straining, head aching, I sent more.
He flicked it away.
I did it again.
He deflected it.
I pummeled him with everything I had. Wood splintered, the ship cracking between us, breaking apart into two separate pieces.
We each balanced on our halves of the deck.
I panted. Sweat poured down my face as fiery coals filled my chest.
“What did you give to the Marshal?” I asked. “What did you trade that convinced her of your allegiance?”
He arched a single eyebrow, casually leaning against the mast as the ship disintegrated around him. “ ’Tis too bad,” he shouted over the destruction, “that thou do not know everything!”
A metallic haze blurred his features as magic gushed off him.
The shock collar around his neck cracked. It fell off, revealing his gruesome scars, the ones he’d given himself to hide my dagger mark.
Diamonds tumbled across the deck.
Aleksander rolled his head and shoulders, sighing with relief.
It can’t be.
The collar had never actually contained him.
The entire time, he’d been pretending to be constrained.
The breadth of his deceit—unfathomable.