Chapter Forty Five #2
Kyra’s breath caught at the sight of him. Since the trial, she’d avoided him even more than Naal. She’d forced herself not to even think of him. But his sallow skin, the strange, exhausted depth to his black eyes…
She couldn’t help but stare. His brow gleamed with sweat, and each step he took seemed arduous, as though he were pained by something she couldn’t see. She’d seen him look worse, when he’d been a prisoner.
But this was worse, somehow. He looked… broken.
Pausing at the threshold, his eyes locked on Naal’s as though asking for approval to dine with them. She gave a curt nod, and slowly, conversation returned to some sense of normality, if not tinged now with an air of caution with the Fire Warden in their midst.
Sunsi’s smile was warm as Gedeon settled beside her. Their arms brushed, and they talked with an ease and synchronicity that had Kyra wondering about the history between them.
As though sensing her gaze, Gedeon’s head lifted, and his eyes found hers.
Silver fire blazed in their shadowed depths. Was that real? Or a trick of the light? His lips quirked upwards as though some secret had just passed between them.
There was a secret, though. She hadn’t told a single soul of their connection. Not Kawai. Not Mankar. Not even Naal.
Hastily averting her attention to the potatoes at hand, she inelegantly shoved more into her mouth just for something to do, pretending to listen to Kawai’s rambling so as not to notice Gedeon again.
???
Gedeon.
The Air Warden approached him sometime during the after-dinner merriment, where many of the Eternals lingered in the hall, finishing their wine, laughing and chattering softly whilst lounging on the armchairs and ottomans by a great, flaming hearth.
It was a great deal more tame than the scenes Gedeon had been privy to in the Black Castle, where after dark, the lord and lady nobles indulged in substances that did much more than the buzz of wine, often enjoyed licked or inhaled from the bodies of others.
Sekun had, of course, been the centre of attention on those frivolous (to say the least) nights.
Even with Ysabell, his faithful wife, watching from the sidelines.
Gedeon had joined them occasionally in his younger years, when he had been too impressionable and arrogant to think for himself.
Often when under the influence of those powdered roots did he find himself in the arms of females he ordinarily despised, thoughtlessly sharing his body in a hazy chase for pleasure.
He’d already made his way through half the nobles in his mother’s court before deciding that life was not for him.
Naal Westerra filled his goblet with wine before occupying the space next to him. ‘I have been stubborn and entitled enough to believe that I may understand the Empress’ plans by myself. Alas, I admit, I cannot.’
Gedeon took a sip of wine. ‘You are unwilling to trust me, as is your prerogative to do so. Yet you forget I cannot betray you.’
‘Yes, well. Old habits die hard.’ She watched him carefully, as though marking every move, every micro-expression. ‘But your being here lends a certain advantage I could not have foreseen.’
‘What do you need to know?’
She leaned in, voice lowering. ‘We know there is an army. We know it grows in numbers this Order cannot comprehend or hope to match. Should our armies meet on the battlefield, I fear a swift end is in store for us all.’ She paused.
‘And yet no one has seen this infamous army. Even Orro Myrso could not infiltrate the barracks to find the information we need. The numbers. The skillset. Why does she keep them a secret?’
‘Even I was not privy to that,’ Gedeon told her regretfully.
‘Up until very recently, I believed I was training fledgling soldiers how to wield their magic. That was my position in the Black Castle. I was a Master of Magic for her army. But those fledglings are cattle, bred solely for the magic they possess.’
‘Cattle?’ Naal repeated sharply. ‘How do you mean?’
Gedeon revealed to the Air Warden then the true nature of his mother’s army, still begrudging that he’d learned of it through Sunsi, and not his own intelligence. When he was done, he could not read the expression on Naal’s face.
‘Stolen magic,’ she mumbled, more to herself than him. ‘It is far worse than I imagined.’
‘She calls them the High Wielders,’ Gedeon said grimly. ‘The army is smaller than you would think, but they are elite. Fae warriors enhanced with the magic stolen from powerful acolytes. It has never been done before. I cannot comment on the bounds of their power.’
‘Stolen magic,’ Naal said again, with a slight, disbelieving shake of her head. ‘What confines of evil will she not go to?’
That would have been Amala’s fate, had Sunsi not given them refuge at the Base. Had his sword struck her down, would they have taken the fledgling’s lifeless body and stripped her of her magic there and then, before her skin turned cold?
The thought was detestable.
A grounded, cinnamon spiced scent passed by him, and he knew who it was without needing to look. But there was something else interlaced in its earthy strands-
No. Someone else.
The pent up fire swilling within him was suddenly charged by a potent, primal rage.
He looked upon her, a lady of darkness in devastating black, as though hand painted by Xados himself. Her twisting hair was wild and free about her shoulders, framing a soft yet fierce face-
The rage ebbed as he let the sight of her wash over him.
But then the Lorosi man was at her side, his hand grazing her waist as he whispered something in her ear, earning him a brazen grin in response, and the fury snapped back with a vengeance.
Gedeon stood so suddenly his goblet overturned, red liquid spilling from the cup. The pressure in his spine was building, barely masked by the tonic as it intensified, threatening oblivion.
Eyes of deepest forest green bore into his, questions begging in the depths of them as the waterling man angled himself protectively in front of her.
Protecting her from him.
He had to get out. Before the power within made him rip the boy to shreds.
It was happening.
The curse was making him lose control. Not just of his magic. But of himself completely.
Stumbling through the dinner-hall, he ignored the glares of the onlookers, ignored his name on Maida’s distant, concerned voice.
Footsteps swiftly followed him from the hall, and they echoed in his ears alongside his name being called over and over and over-
He was running now. He had to get out.
Fire exploded at his hands and he almost stopped, almost stumbled as the pain in his spine intensified tenfold. It was a wonder he could still walk, let alone run.
But he did not stop.
Would not stop.
Flames licked hungrily up his arms, his chest, his neck, relishing their release. Through a blurred, streaming vision of orange-red light, he burst through the front doors of Gallena’s Temple, and no longer able to keep himself upright, he fell to his knees.
And as a white hot poker of pain drove through his spine, he erupted in a blazing inferno.