Chapter Fifteen – Scarlett #2
Colour slowly returned to Aric’s cheeks. The colder and more distant I became, the healthier he seemed, until his sleep was no longer troubled but peaceful. I watched the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, knowing that he was well again. Yet the knowledge didn’t carry the relief it should have.
‘Your death magic won’t hurt you physically,’ the seer said. ‘But it skews your perceptions. After all, what does death want? What does a destructive power like this crave?’
More death . More destruction . I watched the black veins snake across my skin. Then I glanced up – into the seer’s steady gaze.
He was a threat to me. A single touch, a single brush of my finger, and he would never be a threat to me again.
We watched each other in silence, only Aric’s body separating us. And I knew that my eyes were wholly black.
How many people could I kill with this power? It occurred to me that perhaps I hadn’t needed to siphon so much death into Cade. Perhaps I had only needed to use a fraction. In which case, I could murder this seer and the warriors guarding Lillian–
Fast as a viper, I grasped his hand with mine. Blackness surged, wrapping around our joined hands like inky ribbons.
The seer didn’t even flinch. ‘You said that you came in peace.’
I stared at the young man’s ebony hair and strong face, swallowing past a sudden lump in my throat. He reminded me so much of Severin.
Suddenly, all I wanted was to make him pay. To destroy the man in front of me – just like I had destroyed the greenhouse back in Ravalia, smashing the glass and tearing down the plants with bloodied hands.
How dare you leave me . The thoughts surfaced in a familiar haze of rage and hurt. How dare you turn your back on me as though I meant nothing.
‘I’ve Seen you kill me,’ the seer continued steadily. ‘Only the killing doesn’t end with me. Your death magic spreads through the tribes like a contagion. It doesn’t spare the children or the elderly, and it doesn’t spare the two friends you came here with.’
‘Lies,’ I breathed, but I didn’t release my control over the magic. ‘You would say anything to save yourself.’
‘It’s the truth.’ Something in his gaze made me believe him.
A bottomless grief I had only seen in the eyes of people who had known true loss, and yet there was strength there too.
The strength of a survivor and a leader.
‘Your actions break you,’ he told me. ‘You give in to the magic – you decimate the Western Lands, kill Kasmira and y our brothers and claim your father’s empire.
But your mind and body become as poisonous as the death you wield. ’
I forced myself to look into his face – into that bottomless well of loss. And at last I felt the true horror of what he described.
I released him. The black veins swarmed back through my body like pinpricks of ice. But my hands remained cold and numb.
‘Why didn’t you try to stop me?’ I asked through clenched teeth.
His voice was soft but not gentle. ‘You needed to stop yourself.’
I climbed to my feet, trying to hide how shaken I was. I hadn’t allowed my death magic to move into the seer, but it had taken all of my very tenuous control. If that control slipped, even for a second, and my skin brushed against Lillian’s, or Aric’s–
I stopped the thought before it could fully form. I would control it, and that was all that mattered.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said at last, turning back to the seer. ‘If you knew all this, why didn’t you order your warriors to kill us when we first arrived? Why bother to meet with me in the first place?’
‘Because of a promise I made our mutual friend.’ He smiled faintly, waiting for me to put it together.
‘Severin,’ I said through bloodless lips.
The seer inclined his head. ‘Severin helped me stay free from the Ravalian Court – as he did for others. Zandri sent him to track any seers that had been hidden from the Orders, and Severin found them and hid them when he could, even knowing that he would be punished for his failure.’
‘That sounds like something he would do.’ Tears welled in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. ‘What else did he say to you? Where is he ?’
I advanced on the seer, but his expression remained unaffected. Not even a flicker of fear shadowed his handsome face. ‘Close your eyes,’ he instructed, ‘and I’ll show you.’
The moment I did, a vision rose up, crystal clear and relentless and terrible. Severin, silhouetted by the glowing lights of a city far below. Severin, so beautiful that the sight of him hurt, like trying to inhale with a punctured lung.
Time seemed to slow as I watched him fall from the Ravalian battlements, his clothes and hair buffeted by a vicious wind, his arms outstretched – as though he was reaching for me.
And even though this was a vision, I could have sworn that his eyes stared straight into mine.
With his last breath, he smiled. A small, sad smile–
The vision disintegrated with a sickening crunch. The crunch of breaking bone and shattering limbs.
I opened my eyes, but even as I returned to reality, I knew a part of me had been forever left behind on those battlements. And this – this was the reason I had never wanted to fall in love. Because this pain would destroy me. It would destroy anyone.
But I had to ask. I had to force myself to say the words, to finish this, to make the pain complete.
‘How?’ I demanded. ‘How did he die?’
The moment I said the words, I wished I could take them back. Some truths were too terrible to face.
Some truths were enough to shatter people in two.
Don’t say it , I wanted to tell him. Don’t .
But I couldn’t make my lips move. I couldn’t even breathe.
‘Zandri,’ he told me–
And I shattered.