Page 21 of A Spell of Bones and Madness (Nostos #2)

Chapter Sixteen

Kohl

C ompetition between rulers had always been a plague on civility in the isles, especially since the war.

It was no different between Kohl and Alexander, but this hatred, this need to win, stemmed from so much more than the idea of power.

Kohl never knew where his father’s hatred of the Kirassos family came from, but it had been instilled in him since he could remember.

Nexos was not to be trusted. Not its current king and queen, and certainly not the offspring they’d born.

Dimitris and Chloe were stealthy and conniving, supposedly taking after their mother’s powers if what Kohl’s father had told him was true.

More dangerous was the fact that no one had seen the young princess before; she could be among them and no one would know.

But those two children only took after their mother.

Alexander was a clone of his father. Shielded in fog and shadow.

Manipulative. Aggressive. Took what was not his.

It was disgusting, hearing the man he hated most in this world speak her name with such passion in his voice.

Kohl never liked torture, thought it a poor way of making people do or say what you wanted, but in this case he had decided to make an exception.

For days he sat idly by as his father and Edmund peeled away Alexander piece by piece, recoiling from every scream, every trickle of blood.

Then the words got too much to bear, the lies he spewed about her.

Because Katrin was not Alexander’s. She was Kohl’s.

By laws binding them, by what he claimed from her months before, from the vows they shared.

Something Alexander did not, and would never have, even if the tortured man muttered her name as he was ripped apart and barely breathing.

Even if he claimed to love the very woman he’d once captured and stripped of home.

Even if he denied that he hurt her, said he would make it back to her.

It was driving Kohl madder than his damned headaches.

This time he would do something about it—teach the prince what it meant to lie to a king.

Pacing back and forth outside the dungeons, charred flesh and vomit stung Kohl's nose. Edmund must have been here recently. His kind of torture differed from Khalid’s.

The northern king preferred branding, and this strange form of something he did not quite have a name for.

One time Kohl had wandered down during that particular bout of torture, seeing Ander kneeling on the ground before the king, screaming as he bent forward, cupping his ears, even though the King did not touch him.

The entire time, Edmund only whispered ancient words Kohl did not understand under his breath, the black veins of the skilled pharmakos covering all of his exposed skin.

When the chanting stopped, Ander’s eyes had shot open right before he heaved the contents of his stomach onto the floor.

Screams were nonexistent tonight, only a shallow panting of breath reverberated off the walls.

Ander sat propped up, head hung low. Sweat and blood and salt water from the leak in the ceiling dripped down his paled skin.

Even when Kohl approached the dungeon, Ander did not look up.

Instead, he kept repeating the same word over and over with a raspy voice.

Starling.

Ander often repeated that word, a bird foreign to these isles.

Maybe he thought if he chirped out the word enough he’d somehow transform into the chattering creature and fly away.

Kohl would not let him, not after everything he did.

He would be bound to this iron prison until the day he died—and Kohl hoped he was the one that was given the honor of killing him.

Thick stubble covered Ander’s jaw, his hair stringy and crusted together in tight patches.

Burn marks lined his forearms, accompanied by deep lacerations that even a healing tonic and the blood of a god could not heal.

Those golden cuffs were working, draining the very will from the bastard's soul.

Every marking was deserved, every lash, every scream that Kohl delighted in.

He would need to remember to thank Edmund for crafting such a unique and useful imprisonment.

Though in the back of his mind, he wondered what kind of sacrifice had to be made to create such a powerful tool that could stifle the power of a god.

Kohl knelt on the other side of the dungeons bars, taking in the man he’d envied and hated for so long. After all these years, Kohl had finally won. And it would stay that way.

“You look awful,” Kohl hissed from outside the cell.

“I still look better than you,” Ander chuckled, but the noise was mostly rattled with coughs and spit. The prince would not meet Kohl’s stare, continuing to peer down into his own lap.

“You mock me now? While your hands are bound and your body lie broken?” Kohl growled, his shaven teeth bared.

“Unbind me then and I’ll mock you with both my words and my fists.” Ander blew a puff of air out, and a swoop of his hair moved from covering his lifeless stare. There was little to nothing left of the man before him.

“Even your mind appears broken, if you think I would ever unbind you.” Kohl could easily beat the man in a fight.

He almost wanted to unlock the shackles and see the look on Ander’s face as Kohl bested the cocky prince, but he didn’t know how to.

It was as if the gold cuffs were melded to Ander’s very hands and feet, no lock nor hinge to snap them off.

“My mind is as clear as it ever has been, despite your father and Edmund’s games.”

Kohl snorted. “Is that why you mutter in your sleep? Spew false realities? Ramble on about a bird you’ll never see again?”

Even with Ander’s head hung low, that sickening smile of his still burned right into Kohl. “A bird?”

“If I counted the number of times you muttered of starlings in your sleep it would match the coffers of Alentus and Morentius combined. Not to mention how you were just speaking it like a mad man when I walked in. ”

“It’s amusing that you think I’ve been moaning the name of a bird and not the woman I long to return to. But why would I expect you to know the endearments of the Elliniká Glóssa ?”

Kohl leaned his face closer to the bars in the center of the splintering wooden door. “Tell me why. Why her? Why my Katrin?”

Now Ander’s lifeless tidal gaze met Kohl’s. But they were not lifeless at all, filled with the silver glare of the midnight full moon. “She was never yours, Kohl. She never loved you.”

“You're lying!” Kohl screamed, the blood in his veins burning with an icy venom.

He sliced his dagger across his palm, using the blood that bubbled up to unlock the door.

Kohl stalked up to where Ander was chained, staring at those muted blue-green eyes coated in a silver film.

“She was always mine. From the time I stepped on these sands as a child, to the time we recited those ancient vows in front of all the isles.”

The Prince of Nexos wheezed once more, his fists tightened beside him. “I am not lying, and you know it to be true. Those vows meant nothing to her.”

Kohl could not help himself. He flung his fist across Ander's already battered jaw, knocking him out on contact.

“The unyielding power of a god. How pathetic.” He spit on the bloodied traitor that lay before him, shaking his now bruised knuckles.

They would heal quickly now, with the inkling of power the blood oath had given him.

The sacrifice was worth it, just to see the broken man in front of him.

See him bound in chains, this close to death.

Yet Kohl could not help but remember the words Dolion had spoken to him that night on The Hydra when he watched his men succumb to the siren’s song . Could not help but remember he had not heard Katrin's voice call out from the deep.