Page 25 of A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

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Bastian

I leant against the wall, waiting for Kat. The cold hard stone matched the sold tension in my body. Kat had known my father all this time and neither of them had told me. He must’ve lured her in somehow. But to what end?

I shot him a glance through the barred window. He waited, crouched, back against the side wall of his cell. It wasn’t a relaxed stance, but one I knew from war—from his war. The kind of stance that was ready.

Pinpricks of his other memories needled me. Innesol’s town square, empty save for a child’s shoe. Arguing with Sylen about the Horrors. Throwing up after feeling the thoughts of one of their victims.

Kaliban wasn’t meant for war. He should’ve had a peaceful life in a quiet cottage near the sea. No one around to make his magic overwhelming. No terrors to sear themselves on his mind so they ended up bursting from him when he slept, infecting others with his nightmares.

But he’d been born at the wrong time.

And now, a thousand years later, he was caught up in more strife. Arrested for involvement in an assassination.

This had to be Cyrus’s work.

In so many ways, Kaliban had chosen the wrong son. It was my fault he was alone. And it was my fault Cyrus had done this.

I rubbed my forehead, another tight headache closing in. I didn’t need this—the worry about him or the sensation of failure that he could instil in me with just a look.

What was worse—he didn’t even speak to me in that sharp way he usually did. It was like he thought he had to be nice so I would help him.

Whatever had happened before, he was my father . I would help him without his sudden act.

“Why did you call me here? And Kat?”

“It will become clear when she returns.”

We waited in silence for a long while. It was as uncomfortable as the stone, as uncomfortable, until I cleared my throat. “This is a mistake, you know. You’ll be released soon. I’ll make sure of it.”

He snorted and shook his head. “We didn’t raise you to be so na?ve. Dawn has chosen me as a scapegoat, and they chose well. My past makes me an easy target. And the fact I’m your athair makes me a prized one. Whatever they need to make stick to me, will.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but couldn’t. He was right. After Sura’s coup attempt, they hadn’t been able to prove anything against him, so they’d been forced to let him go. Still, he’d been marked as a traitor. Guilty by proxy. How couldn’t he know what his husband was up to?

And that made him very sticky for this.

I never understood why he hadn’t moved away after that. To the clifftop cottage I’d imagined for him. Away from the city, he would’ve had a better life.

For whatever reason, he didn’t. And now he was here, in the perfect place to become Cyrus’s scapegoat alongside the elusive Krae.

What better way to strike at the heart of Dusk? The only way it could’ve been better was if we still had a close relationship.

“Then,” he said, eyebrows rising, “it would only be a short leap towards accusing my son of involvement, too.”

I flinched, slamming shut the doors in my mind. I’d been away from him for too long, was too tired, too stressed to watch my barriers. “Sorry,” I muttered. Keeping my mind shut should’ve been second nature.

But he’d called me his son. He hadn’t acknowledged me as such in a long time. Not after what I’d done.

“Besides,” he went on, “I’m not entirely innocent.”

My head snapped up.

He held up his palms. “Not of that . But I was seen with shapechangers. I’ve been helping them get out of the city.”

“You mean you put yourself at risk? Now who’s the na?ve one?” He’d given them ammunition. “How could you be so foolish? Didn’t you always tell me?—”

“I have a lot to atone for.” He said it as matter-of-factly as you might say the sun rose in the morning.

I kept any more thoughts of Innesol squashed down, but I couldn’t argue with him.

At the end of the corridor, someone cleared their throat, and I looked back, expecting to find Katherine. But it was one of the guards.

She cocked her head. “Everything all right? Just… you’ve been a while. People don’t tend to want to hang around down here.”

I checked the watch in my pocket. Kat had been gone for over an hour. My heart sank. She should be back by now. Even if she wasn’t hurrying— she should be back .

I reassured the guard, who left, then I turned on my father, shadows rising. I gripped the bars, letting them sear, filling the air with the smell of burning flesh. My shadows stuttered and disappeared. My sense of magic in the world vanished. “What have you done to her? What trap did you leave for her?”

His eyes went wide. “A trap? Why the hells would I hurt her?”

“To do to me what I did to you.” The words choked out of me like water bubbling up through a spring. White hot pain screamed along my nerves, but it was nothing compared to the guilt inside me. “I took the one you loved most in all the world and now…”

I tore my hands from the bars and took two paces towards the stairs when I heard the approaching footsteps.

With a guard’s arm around her shoulders, Kat staggered in, eyes wide, hair wild like she’d been tearing at it.

“Kat?” I was already at her side, taking over helping her. She leant against me heavily, hugging herself like she was trying to hold parts of herself together. “What happened?”

The guard frowned. “She was like this when she came back. We tried to take her to the Hall of Healing, but she screamed until we turned around and started in this direction.”

“Thank you. I’ve got her now.” Something must’ve frightened her, and she wouldn’t reveal it until we were alone.

“Knew,” she whispered as the guard left. “Knew. He knew.”

“What did he know?” I smoothed hair from her face, gasping when I saw blood below her nose. My body went on alert, energy spiking through me. “Kat? What happened? What’s?—?”

“Bring her here,” Kaliban called from his cell.

As I walked her over, she muttered to herself, unintelligible. She wouldn’t meet my gaze and gave no answers to my coaxing questions.

A deep, dark dread crawled through my bones.

“The bridge.” She shook her head over and over, eyes glassy and distant. “Can’t… can’t think.”

What the hells had happened?

When I glanced at my father, I found him pale—as pale as he’d gone when I’d delivered the news that I had killed his husband. “Katherine,” he said slowly, “did you get it?”

“The truth,” she mumbled, more blood oozing from her nose. “I got it. Right in… right in my brain. I got it. The bridge. That night.”

“Kat?” I cupped her cheeks and tried to make eye contact. “You’re not making sense, love.”

Gently, I wiped her face clean as her eyes skipped left and right like she couldn’t keep still. I tried to anchor her—to be that stillness, even though my heart hammered. I’d never seen her like this, even when her uncle had terrified her so much.

“Slowly,” I murmured. “What’s happening? Where did this blood come from?” Her face didn’t look bruised or swollen, so I didn’t need to go and destroy someone for hurting her.

“The bridge. That night. What the queen did.” She pressed her lower lip and chewed it. “The bridge. That night. What the queen did. My head. My head .” A tear trickled from the corner of her eye. “I can’t.”

“It’s all right, love.” I prised her hand away and pulled her lip from between her teeth before she made herself bleed. “You’re safe now. I’m here.”

“The bridge. My head. They broke it.” She stopped hugging herself and held out a small package. “They broke it. I found it.”

“Oh shit,” he hissed. “ That’s what they hid.”

“They broke it.” Her breathing calmed as her lip trembled. “ I found it .”

There was something very wrong. A stroke? I’d heard of people’s minds changing after suffering one—words coming out wrong, not being able to speak.

“Come on, love.” I slid an arm around her shoulder, ready to usher her out. “I need to get her to the House of Healing.”

“No.” She yanked away. “ No .”

My father took a long breath before he inclined his head. “The item I sent her for. Seeing it has broken something in her mind. Not my intention, but it makes sense now.”

“ What makes sense?” I snapped, stomach tight and sickly seeing her like this. “Because none of?—”

“Quickly, give me her hand. Before more breaks.” The way his face crumpled as he looked at her stole my breath. He’d looked at me like that once. He loved her like a father. How had I missed that?

He reached out between the bars, careful not to touch them. “Kat, my dear, give him the package, then take my hand.”

She obeyed, trembling all the while.

Something hard bit into my fingers as I gripped the silk-wrapped parcel, watching my father close his eyes and reach for her mind.

I kept my walls in place, letting him soothe her. He didn’t need my worries crowding his work.

Something had broken in her. She sounded… I’d never heard her ramble like this. How much could he do? Could he fix her? Would she be like this forever?

Turned inward, the thoughts choked me, and I found myself squeezing the package to my chest. If it came to that, I would find her somewhere safe and quiet. Somewhere with a garden. Somewhere she wouldn’t be stared at, where I could look after her. I would leave my job. Leave the city. Whatever she needed.

A soul-deep sigh brought me back from contingency plans as Kat sagged against me. I caught her. “Love?”

“Bastian.” She nodded, leaning into me. “I’m… back.”

But she’d gone an unpleasant colour, and she held her head when I eased her into a sitting position.

“You need to tell him,” she whispered, massaging her temples. “I don’t know if I can.”

My father swallowed. His colour wasn’t much better than hers, but when he met my gaze, his was firm. “Open that.”

Frowning, I pulled back the bloodstained silk. A gold and silver astrolabe, beautifully wrought, perhaps the best I’d seen. Braea had one similar, just as intricate, though slightly larger. This was easily its match in quality.

“Look, you’re not going to die in here.” I held it out to him. “You don’t need to give me?—”

“Check the back.”

I turned it over. The royal insignia glinted back at me. “Did you steal this? Is it not enough to be arrested for?—”

“Read the note.”

Beneath the astrolabe, half hidden in the silk, I found a piece of paper. Its folded edges were tattered, like it had been read often.

The soft cream of the paper and its weight felt familiar, and when I unfolded it, I understood why. My father Sylen’s writing. This had been torn from the ledger he’d kept, tracking bloodlines and characteristics of the deer he bred. This page recorded that a fast hind had been bred with his strongest stag, both his most intelligent animals, though they’d failed to breed in the royal stables to date. His notes ended without recording whether they’d succeeded this time.

“What has this got to do with?—?”

“Turn it over.” His voice had gone very soft, little more than a whisper.

The writing wandered, so weak in places, ink barely registered on the page, and there were bloody fingerprints at the edges, but it was mostly legible.

These are the final wishes of Nyxis Nemesine Voltarin, the Night Princess, daughter of Queen Braea. To Kaliban and Sylen, I entrust my most precious one, my baby, heir to Dusk, born of love between seelie and unseelie. I name him Bastian.