39. THIRTY-NINE #3
Avelius huffed before reseating himself in his armchair. He sipped his drink and motioned for her to take the sofa across from him. “You’re a lot like your father. He too had second sight, but even he couldn’t see more than a minute into the void—at most.” His eyes returned to the painting.
Fankalo didn’t move. “I don’t speak my blood father’s name. My father was Captain Alberous Keane.”
The reprimand in Avelius’s eyes filled her with immediate regret.
“Not everything is as you might think.” He pursed his lips and then sighed.
“That said, let’s address your desire to”—he stopped to raise his eyebrows at her, as if to tell her how far from reach her dreams truly were—“take back what’s yours.
There are others. Two, supposedly. Even with your abilities, you wouldn’t be the logical choice.
Neither for Methu’su nor the oligarchy. Conduit or not, you’re no bloodline heir. ”
Her heart picked up speed. She and Calver weren’t alone?
Even if Avelius considered Calver to be one of the two, that still meant there was still another conduit.
She kept an edge of command in her voice, despite feeling like she was slipping down a slope.
“What does it mean that I used to feel another conduit’s presence? Like a spark in my head?”
“I take it you are referring to Calverous.”
She hesitated before nodding.
“Your brother was a Destruction conduit. The first recorded in a century. Had he been a fully-fledged Ruxian, our program would have been a tremendous success. Destruction pulls energy in, see. What you sensed within the void was his potential. The pull of Destruction is infinite. It’s enough to seem star-like. ”
Was. So the two Avelius referred to did not include Calver. “Only I ever noticed it.”
“No. Your father would have as well. And anyone close to him who possessed the second sight.”
“Not my mother?”
“Not according to our records.”
At least that made sense. “What records?”
“The ones you’re absent from.”
“May I see them?”
“They no longer exist.”
Or so he said. “So… if the spark—the star—disappears?”
Avelius’s eyes returned to the painting. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Fankalo pretended to look disappointed. It was good if Calver was believed dead. At least that granted him immunity from the oligarchy’s spies. But Avelius’s explanation still left more questions than answers. Calver was alive. What had those Tera’thians done to him to make his spark disappear?
She tried shifting the subject. Avelius had entertained her this long; there was no loss in continuing to try. “If there are others, is Methu’su training them?”
“The truth is that we—we have lost the battle for our inheritance. We’ve given up. Methu’su wishes to live out the rest of his life quietly and without further heartbreak.”
We? Did that make Avelius and Methu’su the “others”? Were they also conduits, or…? The thought disintegrated as something caught flame inside of her.
This was not the home of a man who had lost.
How dare he.
How dare he say they’d lost, while living in a shratten palace. How dare he give up from any residence that didn’t require him to stare up at Seraphinden’s tropical root system.
Avelius had sold out. He was a coward. That was why he had no power to help her. No hope for their existence. She would not be like him. Never. She wouldn’t stop fighting just because there was a risk of losing her pretty castle. She would take the world down with her if that’s what it took.
The old Green Wing captain gave her a sad look. “You should leave, girl. I don’t know where he is. It’s been three years since I last heard from him. He’s stopped responding to my letters.”
She’d been so sure this man would embrace her with open arms. That he’d tell her she was what they’d been waiting for. All the resources she’d wasted tracking him, the years spent following clues and hearsay, for him to be a spineless gatekeeper.
“Here’s the only advice I can offer you: stop asking about Methu’su. Stop seeing Fate, and keep your gift to yourself. Stay safe. Stay smart. And, young Curtaim?”
Preservation, she wanted to bite back her anger, her frustration—a legend would not wield emotion like a dull blade—but she could no sooner bite back the sun. “That is no longer my name.”
The corner of his mouth rose again, but not enough to remove the sorrow in his eyes. “Young rogue?” he corrected.
Fankalo searched his face as she listened to her Luck for the right words to change his mind. There were none. She bit into her lip, wondering if tears might make a difference, but she answered the question for herself only a moment later: they never did.
“Stay alive.”
Fankalo tried to quash the burning in her throat as Kotar Avelius escorted her to the stairwell to leave in the way allies did, as thieves did not. With his parting, she was more utterly alone in her journey than she had ever been.
She mentally kicked herself. How could she have expected anything different? A person who sought uncharted waters as she did would always be an island.
Now, she could choose to sink beneath the waves.
Or she could choose to rise.