Chapter 13 #2
Bernadea measured him with a neutral expression, her eyes glinting in the low light. “You heard me.”
The meaning of it settled slowly within him—a revelation he was not yet ready to comprehend.
Alethea stirred, and Nakir took her hand in both of his, waiting impatiently as her eyes fluttered open. “Nakir,” she breathed, his world coming to a halt at the way in which she spoke the word—with relief.
“I’m here. You’re all right,” he promised, his voice tender as he held her hand gently in his.
Her smile, fragile yet filled with resilience, tore open his heart and laid it bare on the table.
“I have to step away,” Nakir explained, his voice steady despite the storm of feelings.
He held her palm as tightly as he dared, attempting to convey his unspoken devotion.
“But I’ll be back. I need you to get some rest. We’re leaving for Meseira in the morning.
” He leaned down and placed a kiss on her head. “I’ll come back for you soon.”
Alethea squeezed his hand weakly, and he had to swallow hard to fight the oncoming wave of emotion.
“I’ll be back.”
With great effort, he managed to pry himself away from her, his steps unsteady as he nearly stumbled out of the tent. His feet carried him across the camp to where he knew he could find his spymaster.
“Bal!” he called out as he approached the Empath’s tent. The night was heavy with the echoes of battle, and Nakir’s heart pounded in his chest, a relentless drumbeat of fear and uncertainty. “Balthasar.”
Nakir shoved his way in through the tent flap to see the older man reclined on his cot, eyes closed. The air inside the tent was thick with the scent of sweat and blood.
“Bal...” Nakir’s breath caught in his throat as he sank against the center pole of the tent.
“What is it?” his spymaster asked, voice low as if he’d just awoken. He didn’t stir from the cot.
“Truth-Teller,” Nakir uttered, the weight of the name heavy on his tongue.
Balthasar’s eyes narrowed, a shadow passing over his face. “You said we were never to speak of that again.”
Nakir’s laugh was bitter, the sound carrying the weight of years of fruitless searching and shattered hope.
Of blood on his hands. “It was never a weapon... not like we imagined. We searched every library in Rai’Sharr, Azmarin, and Wolfecrest. We broke into the fucking Crystalline Academy, for gods’ sake.
” His voice cracked with the strain of his confession, a raw edge of desperation cutting through.
“We thought it was a weapon, something so powerful it was hidden from the world by divine means. We consulted Augurs and scholars across the Realm, and not one of them knew where to find the Truth-Teller or what it even was. Because it was never a blade or a scythe or a scepter. Or a tome, or anything...”
Balthasar’s eyes were open now as he stared at his future king, his expression as measured as it always was, but he didn’t speak.
“It’s Alethea,” Nakir said, the enormity of the revelation breaking his voice. “She’s the Truth-Teller. ‘Only with the power of the Truth-Teller will you finally take back what is yours, the Kingdom of Lenorea, bought and paid for and promised to you with the blood of your ancestors.’”
He knew the prophecy by heart, as if it were tattooed there by some ancient magic. But Balthasar’s expression remained blank. Gods forbid he give away his own emotions while reading everyone else’s.
Silence passed for several beats. Nakir’s head fell back against the center pole. After several minutes of tension, he let go a long sigh.
“How long have you known?” he finally asked in a hoarse whisper.
“I... suspected.”
“Since?” Nakir pressed, a sense of impatience coloring his tone.
“Since I carried her from the dungeons to her tower.” A long pause.
“Goran knew,” he added quietly, his voice carrying the weight of a heavy burden—a burden Nakir was now forced to share.
“He must have seen her powers when the queen forced Alethea to extract information and figured it out. When I spoke to him before he was executed, he commanded me to leave him behind and find a way to get her out instead. I was coming to tell you when you found her.”
Nakir wanted to rage, his muscles aching from the battle, his mind reeling from the newfound knowledge. But he was too exhausted, both physically and emotionally, to summon the energy for anger.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
Balthasar didn’t answer right away, which confirmed that answer was a resounding “no.”
“There are some things you need to figure out for yourself, Nakir. You’ve spent every moment you’ve known her reminding her she’s more than her power. Now it’s time for you to understand that too.”
He fell silent. A part of him wanted to scream at Balthasar for keeping something so important from him, but he couldn’t deny the quiet voice in the back of his mind that reminded him of the kind of man he was when he was searching for the Truth-Teller.
That man wouldn’t have hesitated to use Alethea for what she could do for him.
Nakir had sworn to kill off that part of him.
He’d vowed it a hundred times in the different bars and taverns he and Emi had haunted, at the bottom of thousands of bottles, the pledge escaping his lips in whispers of determination.
But here it was: the answer to everything.
The Oracle he had never known to look for. His salvation.
“Nakir.” It was a warning, a cautionary note in Balthasar’s voice, that spoke of the complexities of the path Nakir was contemplating.
“I promised them I would do everything I could to restore the Hasan family.” His face heated with shame as the words left him, reminding them both of a very different Nakir from a very different time. “And... she’s offered her powers—”
“You’re really considering it?”
Nakir lifted his gaze to Balthasar, but the answer lodged in his throat. Too many truths collided there—duty and want, fury and hope. The idea had already taken root, unwelcome and undeniable: Alethea’s power, wielded with care, could change everything.
He told himself it would be different. That he would never force her. That consent made all the difference.
He said nothing.
Balthasar rose.
Nakir found himself standing too, heart hammering, forced to meet the full force of the man who’d carried him through fire and blood and loss. He’d seen Balthasar angry before, but never like this—so still, so coldly focused.
“I’m going to assume this is exhaustion talking,” Balthasar said, his voice low and lethal.
“Because I know how you feel about her. I know the rage that claws at you every time you remember what her mother did—what she was allowed to do—because of that gift.” His eyes did not leave Nakir’s.
“And I remember,” he continued, quieter now, “what you said when you held Mika’s body. ”
The name landed like a blade.
“I have stood beside you and your family for thirty years,” Balthasar said. “Through exile. Through ruin. Even when it cost me everything I had left.” He stepped closer—close enough that Nakir could feel the heat of him. “You, Nakir Hasan, made a bargain.”
Balthasar closed the remaining distance, his presence filling the space between them. Anyone else would have yielded instinctively, but Nakir did not move. His jaw tightened as he met Balthasar’s gaze head-on, refusing to retreat.
“Here is my vow to you,” Balthasar said quietly. “If you choose that path, you will lose more than Alethea.” His voice did not rise. It did not need to. “You will lose the moral high ground. You will lose your honor. And you will lose your spymaster.”
The words settled, final, an ultimatum that left no room for misunderstanding.
Then, for the first time, Balthasar turned his back on Nakir and walked away.
Morning came slowly, as though the light itself was reluctant to touch what the night had left behind.
The camp was already waking.
Bedrolls were shaken free of dew. Harness buckles were tightened. Voices moved in low murmurs, pitched carefully, as though anything louder might crack the fragile quiet holding the morning together.
The sun edged up behind the low hills in a thin, bleary wash of gold. It was the kind of light that made everything look older than it was—canvas dulled to parchment, armor to tired pewter, faces to something worn and sleepless.
Alethea woke to it.
Or perhaps she hadn’t fully slept.
The Healer’s tent smelled faintly of bitterroot and old smoke. Someone had left the flap tied open to the dawn air, and the cool breeze stirred the edge of the blanket over her legs.
Her borrowed clothes waited where they’d been folded for her—Emi’s, she remembered dimly.
The trousers were too long, cinched twice at the waist. The tunic hung from her shoulders like it belonged to someone sturdier, the sleeves threatening to swallow her hands if she let them.
The fabric still smelled faintly of Emi.
She was startled to realize she knew what Emi smelled like now.
The movement of pulling the clothes over her frame tugged at the wound in her side. A sharp flare ricocheted up her ribs, a clean, punishing reminder of what had transpired.
The bandaging beneath the tunic pulled tight as she shifted, the linen already stiff where the Healer had bound it firmly. The wound sat low along her ribs, just shy of her hip—a place that moved with every breath, every step, every attempt at standing.
She glanced around the tent. A few others remained within, all sleeping—the ones deemed lucky.
But it did not feel like luck.
It felt like fire.
Even now, as she straightened, heat flared along her side, her body curling instinctively around it before she forced herself upright again.
The light drew her.
She stepped out of the tent before she’d quite decided to.