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Chapter Seventy-Two

Jasce

After holding Annora for a while, a shadow falls across the entrance of the tent, and Reeve’s deep voice carries through the canvas. “Jasce, I need to speak with you.”

I kiss Annora’s forehead before rising from the bed.

The moment I step outside into the cool night air, Reeve speaks. “Aleksander is alive. He didn’t die when Annora...”

White-hot rage floods my veins at the mention of my traitorous brother. I storm back into the tent, grab my sword from where it lies near our bed, and march with single-minded fury toward the tent where we’re keeping the bastard tied up.

As I rip back the tent flap and step inside, I find Aleksander sitting upright, ropes tightly binding him to the chair. His blindfold and gag lie discarded on the ground.

His cold eyes meet mine, still defiant even now after everything he’s done.

I raise my sword, ready to separate his lying head from his shoulders in one clean stroke when a shimmering glow materializes between us.

My mother’s ghostly form stands there, radiant even in death. “You cannot kill your brother, Jasce,” she says, her voice carrying the same quiet steel I remember from childhood.

My grip tightens on the leather-wrapped hilt until my knuckles turn white. “Get out of my way.”

“No, I will not allow this,” she says firmly.

“He betrayed us all.”

“You cannot kill your brother. The ring has chosen life for Annora and Aleksander,” she says in that same steel-like voice.

How I hate it. How I hate that she is trying to save him, even after everything he did.

Ice spreads through my chest. “So, he’s still controlling her?”

Torchlight catches off my mother’s raven hair as she shakes her head. “No, that bond has been severed, but you cannot kill him. Not when you will need him, Jasce.”

“I don’t need anything from that fucking bastard!”

Her response is simple, final. “You will.”

She disappears, leaving only emptiness where she stood.

I whirl around, searching the shadows, but she’s vanished. Only Aleksander remains, watching me with empty eyes—eyes I want to stab out.

Something snaps inside me, and I reverse my grip on the sword and smash the pommel into his face. Blood sprays as the chair tips, and he crashes to the ground in a tangle of ropes and limbs.

I storm out of the tent, my breath coming in harsh gasps, my hands trembling with barely contained fury. The cool night air does nothing to calm the inferno raging in my chest.

Why did my mother choose this moment to return? After all these summers of silence, of absence, of desperate prayers whispered into my pillow as a child. Or when Jerrod’s cruelty left welts across my back—where was she then?

Yet she appears for Aleksander, a bastard who doesn’t even share her blood.

The rage burns hotter as I tighten my grip on the hilt of my sword. I want to go back in there, finish what I started, but her words echo in my mind, holding me back like invisible chains.

You will need him.

Fuck that!

I’ll never ask that bastard for anything. I’d rather watch him rot like the maggot he is.