Chapter Fifty Six
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Ousca, Vrethian.
Kyra.
A quivering had begun within her that had nothing to do with the sea spray that clung to both of them from vengeful, crashing waves.
Gedeon had tried to steer her away from the cove. She’d only gotten as far as the jagged jumble of rocks lining the bay before she was retching again. Nothing but bile was coming up now. And the slaughterhouse was still at their backs.
She hadn’t been able to tell Gedeon what she had seen. The words wouldn’t come to her lips. If she uttered them, it made it true. So, she opened her mind to him instead, and let him witness what had broken her all over again.
The rock was cold beneath her. Gedeon was at her side. A silent, warm presence.
Nothing in the world made sense anymore. Had she ever really known her brother? Had she risked everything to set him free only for him to do the bidding of their greatest enemy?
Nothing made sense.
I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.
Gedeon shifted beside her. The wind whistled between them. ‘Is your brother a cruel male? Did he ever show signs of such brutality when you were children?’
With the slightest movement, she shook her head. ‘Never,’ she whispered. A colossal lump in her throat was making her voice sound thick with mucus. ‘He was the best of all of us. The kindest. The artist. He saw the beauty in everything. I always envied him that.’
‘Sometimes, those closest to us are the ones we know the least about. Everyone harbours shadows they want no one else to see.’
Kyra was not really listening to him. ‘I never knew him. Not really.’
Silence fell between them again. Kyra shivered harder. Heat caressed her skin, and she knew it had come from Gedeon. The kindness might have lightened the heaviness of her heart, had it not been for the roaring in her mind.
She’d been blind. Blind to fucking everything. How long had Oslan been under Azar’s wing? Had his mind been warped? Had he truly hated his own family that much to go to lengths as great as this?
‘None of it adds up,’ Gedeon muttered. ‘After you freed your brother from his enslavement, what happened? Did he seem strange? Or perhaps as though he was hiding something?’
‘No.’ A tear leaked from her eye. ‘He was… relieved. After ten years, he was finally free.’ A realisation struck her like a dagger to the gut. ‘He even told me he was going to Taru. And I… I told him to find Rosary.’
‘You could not have known what he was going to do, Kyra.’
Kyra’s bottom lip trembled tenfold with the effort of holding back a sob. ‘She’d be alive, Gedeon. If I hadn’t told him about her, she’d still be alive.’
‘If it hadn’t been him, it would have been another,’ he said bluntly. ‘Listen, do you truly believe your brother to be capable of this? To have acted of his own accord? If the answer is yes, then we have another enemy to add to our list.’
Her nails scraped the rock. ‘I saw it, as if it were happening in front of my own eyes.’
‘You saw your brother, yes. But what if there was another?’ When she could only frown at him, he continued, ‘There was a woman. Everyone else was dead. Your brother had Rosary. And there was a woman in the doorway. Very much alive.’
The woman in black. Kyra had seen, but hadn’t truly taken any notice of her. The sight of Oslan dragging Rosary through the taproom had stolen all her attention.
Kyra squeezed her eyes shut.
Gloved hands. Night-kissed, tightly wound hair.
A woman in all black, face hidden, lurking like a shadow.
Shadow.
A deadly stillness slithered over Kyra’s bones. ‘Lilion.’
Gedeon stared at her. ‘You know who the woman is?’
There was no tremor to her voice now. ‘Lady Lilion Perdy was my employer in Avaldale’s Arc. She was the one who sponsored me to fight in the pits. She enslaved Oslan as a whore. The blood-bargain I made was to her. To free him.’
‘But that bargain was fulfilled? Oslan could not have been a slave to her anymore. The blood-bargain between you would have taken her life if she hadn’t released him from his enslavement when you upheld your end.’
Oslan’s changing face flashed before her. Lying in bed next to Rosary, features soft and finally free from strife. Then contorting with rancour before his blade had sliced her ear off. As though he were being driven by something outside of himself.
Kyra had seen him look like that before. Only then, his barbarity had been directed at her. Striking to kill his own sister.
But before then, he had pleaded with her. Please, kill me now. Do it now before she makes me-
‘Mother above,’ Kyra breathed softly. ‘She’s imperi. She’s fucking imperi.’
‘Imperi,’ Gedeon repeated. ‘A rare gift. And one my mother would prize.’
Kyra was talking without really thinking then.
It was better to talk, the words just falling like cascading water, than to think.
‘Lilion has always followed power and glory to whatever end. The Empress poses both. I’m willing to bet that Lilion offered up her services in exchange for a place of high status in the new world the prophecy speaks of.
I bet your mother jumped at the chance to have Lilion on her side.
Just as I suspect Lilion fucking soiled herself with excitement at the prospect of being considered important to the mighty Empress. ’
‘A private puppeteer pulling the strings at her command,’ Gedeon murmured.
Thoughts began spilling from Kyra’s mouth: ‘Lilion controlled Rosary too. In the cells, Rose kept saying she knows. Through Rosary’s eyes, Lilion must have seen that we were there. That’s why there were no sentries. Rose was a sentry for the Empress herself. And that High Wielder-’
‘Hossean.’
‘Lilion must have forced Rosary to obey his every word. She couldn’t disobey him.
’ Kyra screwed her face up. ‘But Rose was still in there. She was aware of what she was doing. She spoke to me. She looked me in the eye. When Oslan was forced to fight me in the pits, he was completely gone. He didn’t even know who I was. ’
Breath was etching higher and higher in her lungs.
‘Even with Oslan’s enslavement broken, Lilion still had him wrapped around her finger,’ she hissed in a rush.
‘She let him go. She let me think he had been freed. She told him to go to Taru. To follow Rosary. And Oslan… Oslan never knew he was being controlled. He must have thought her hold over him broke when the bargain was fulfilled. He didn’t know what he was doing when… when he-’
She couldn’t say it. Her throat closed up. The trembling began once more.
After a moment of silence, Gedeon said, ‘I think your brother broke free of her, Kyra.’
She croaked, ‘How?’
‘In the Throne Room, the Empress screamed at Hossean to continue the search for the boy. She said-’
‘He will be our next ultimatum,’ Kyra finished for him. ‘I remember. She was talking about Oslan.’
Gedeon nodded. ‘If Lilion still controlled him, he would have been in Dracyg.’
A small relief, to know that Oslan had somehow broken Lilion’s control of his mind and escaped Zarynth. Though imagining what lengths he had gone to do so was terrifying. Imagining him alone somewhere in the world with wolves prowling after him was even more so.
A bright white light was shining on the past now, illuminating all that had been cast in shadow.
‘Lilion was working for Azar the whole time,’ Kyra said quietly.
‘She must have known of the prophecy long before I even knew her. Everything was contrived. When I was seventeen she changed the rules in the pits from first to fall to fight to kill. But years went by and it still didn’t trigger my magic.
So, she made Oslan fight me. But I submitted to death that day, rather than kill him, and still my magic remained dormant.
’ She forced herself to take a steadying breath.
‘So she sent the mercenaries after me. They were the ones that killed my parents.’ Tears sprang in her eyes.
‘I have no doubt now that even that was on Lilion’s order.
That she is the reason they’re dead. Perhaps she thought that in killing them, the grief would trigger my magic.
I was only ten. And… she would have known that once I found that out, once I knew who had killed them, that I never would have left a single one of them alive.
The whole time she was trying to propel the prophecy along.
And that’s what did it. That fury is what finally unlocked my magic. ’
Gedeon was frowning. ‘Why did Lilion never try to control you? We know Wardens can be controlled, the Water Warden was under the Lorish King’s influence for most of his life. Why did Lilion not just force you to relinquish your power the moment she met you?’
Kyra had no answer. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps she tried and couldn’t? I’ve read that those with a strong will are harder, if not impossible for imperis to control.’
Kyra didn’t care. Not as another realisation rocked thunderously through her. ‘Gedeon, I bargained for Oslan’s freedom with the Eye of the Fifth. I gave it to Lilion, thinking she only wanted it as a fucking trophy. But it was for her. It was for Azar.’
Gedeon glowered at the horizon. ‘And the Fifth shall watch as it is undone.’ He exhaled. ‘She means to use the Eye in the wars to come. To set Dohra free as vengeance on the Four is exacted.’
A stunned quiet fell, static between them.
Then, Kyra said in little more than a whisper, ‘She still can’t do that without us.’
Up until this point, neither of them had mentioned the bond. As though the very thought of it had awakened something within her, she felt a tug behind her navel. Felt the inexplicable cord that tethered her to him, waiting to be ignited.