Page 32

Chapter 29

ASPEN

The splash of freezing water across my face jarred me from a fitful sleep.

“You look like shit.” Red hair flashed across my vision.

Fair.

“Get up.” The thin blanket I’d crashed under was ripped away.

“And you’re covered in blood,” Iris sighed, rifling through the chest where I’d hung my clothes. She was fully dressed already, back in purple. “Even more than when I saw you last. You can hate me all you’d like, Gavalon, but we have work to do—and you’re filthy.”

Dark circles rimmed her eyes.

A glass of water and a pastry sat on the table before me. They weren’t the kind she liked.

Look at me.

“I can go alone.” My throat ached. My eyes burned. Why was it so damn bright?

“You will not be shackled playing pretend with a woman you cannot stand much longer,” she said, pacing the room, gathering items. “But we are too close to achieving what we need. Compose yourself. We both need to be there.”

Yes. I could not stand her. That’s exactly what it was.

Look at me.

I needed to know. Know more. Know why. I’d fought it at first, told myself there was no reason. That she was exactly who I believed her to be, and I’d been a fool to think otherwise.

She saved my life , Nadya had said.

I wanted to know why.

Look at me.

The night felt impossibly long. Unable to face sleep, I’d stood at the door between our rooms, pondering knocking for longer than I cared to admit.

Instead, I’d walked into the city proper, back to a place I used to know well. The underground pit unchanged from memories. Fighting drowned out every voice in my head. And after taking several punches to the gut—and landing a few myself—it was finally quiet. The blood escaping my veins invoked a blissful reprieve.

But when I returned to the chambers outside her room, all I could see was her smile. Framed by brown hair at twelve, red at twenty-eight.

I knew my anger had gone too far. Because if I was honest with myself…it wasn’t for her. Not really. Not then, at least.

I was a child .

It was the first time I'd really examined it in that way. I’d held so much hate. For so long. For her. For me. We had been children, all of us. I’d needed that anger, had latched onto it with a vice grip to keep from drowning in my own guilt. Had let it consume me so deeply that letting it go now left a chasm I wasn’t sure how to close.

Except…lately, I’d been fighting to find a reason to stay angry at all. Using her last name every time I forgot, to remind myself who she was. What she’d done.

How had I looked at her that first day in the woods, and not seen the fiery girl who had been a source of my anger for over a decade? How had I continued to see her, talk to her, learn her, and not once think they could be the same person?

Because I hadn’t been thinking about that anger at all.

I pushed the thought away.

We weren’t children anymore.

“No.” I sat up fully on the hard settee.

She stopped pacing.

Look at me.

“We are not going anywhere until you explain why you keep illegal poisons on your person at all times.”

“They aren’t for you.” She placed her hands on her hips. Damn it if it didn’t tug at the corner of my lips.

Fuck.

“Who are they for?” I chilled my voice into neutrality, dropping into the cold and allowing it to numb me.

“Or your family, or your friends, or?—”

“Who are they for?” I growled, patience fraying. I let the ice crawl over my skin, colder and colder.

“Why does it matter?” she sighed.

“Why does it matter?” I strained to keep my voice level. “It matters because I knew who you were. What you were capable of. Not at first, no. But once I saw you with my mother…I reminded myself every day after what you had done, what your last name was. And I still can’t stop.” I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. “I can’t stop .”

I couldn’t stop trying to figure her out.

I couldn’t stop making excuses to be around her.

To rile her up.

The worst fucking idea.

The closer I got to her, the more I forgot about that day.

I couldn’t forget.

Because what would I fucking do if she looked at me?

What blissful decadence would torture me, if she gave me permission to really look at her?

“I’m tired of lies.” I wasn’t sure if I’d said it to her or myself.

Her mouth was a fine line, every muscle tense.

Wordlessly, she strode into the bedchamber, returning moments later with her bloodstained bag in hand.

Her eyes were murderous.

I leaned back slightly. A paradox. She was the gentleness of a spring breeze, and the tumult of a windstorm. Also, slightly terrifying.

“This.” She slammed a purple bottle onto the table, the green writing faded with time. “Is what I give to the young woman who thought she married someone kind. Who arrives at the apothecary every few days for a new tin of salve to dissolve her bruises.” Her brown eyes were wild, the golden flecks glinting. “Do you know, with Ethera healing, how hard you’d have to hit someone to leave that many bruises? To need to treat them that often?”

Yes.

She dug into the bag again, and the table shook with the presence of a clear vial, navy blue liquid swirling inside. “This one, is for the girl who was sold by her parents,” she seethed. “Who has stopped sleeping for fear of what will happen in the night. Who is traded around like a doll and no one, no one , cares to help her.”

Another bottle, gold.

“For the boy who needs his broken bones healed every day because his father can’t keep his hands to himself.”

Another, red.

“For the woman who has had every sense of bodily autonomy stolen from her.”

She dropped the last one in front of me, turning the label so I could see it. Aconite .

“This was what I used when an assassin came to kill me when I was fourteen.”

The Nightshade.

Nadya Rhevan.

“When I saw the hopelessness in her eyes. When I realized she was not much older than me, sixteen maybe seventeen. Yet I watched her ‘husband’ bring her within an inch of life—only to heal her with Medikai magic so slowly it was nothing short of agony. When she didn’t scream once. When he held her by the throat until she passed out, just to revive her so she could ‘do what he bought her for .’”

She spat the last words. The despicable things she could be implying flashed through my mind, each more sickening than the last.

“When she held a blade to my throat with tears in her eyes. When it dropped to the floor as soon as I told her I could get her out.”

I sucked in a breath.

“Broken bones.”

“Bloody lips.”

“Bruised ribs.”

“Scars I couldn’t prevent.”

Each phrase was punctuated by the sharp clatter of glass against wood. Bottles littered the table—vials of poisons, illegal potions, banned tonics.

Fucking Divine.

Of course, she would.

I’d hold them still for her while she poured it down their throats.

“Some are lethal. Some induce sleep, allowing time for escape. Some weaken the body enough that they can’t hurt anyone anymore.” She leaned down, leveling her gaze with mine as the table rocked beneath her grip. “It’s up to the ones who show up on my doorstep to decide. Because they don’t have a choice. They have no choice in anything . So, I give them one.”

Her face was so close now. Wild strands of red flared in every direction—a halo of crimson.

Yes.

Absolutely terrifying.

Tears streaked her freckled cheeks, but she made no move to wipe them away, nor did she turn to conceal them. Iris Virlana wore her emotions openly, unflinchingly, as if daring the world to find them weak or foolish or unwarranted.

I knew because I looked for them.

Each one accentuated her beauty in a way that was wholly distinct.

The crease between her brows, the glow from the flecks in her eyes, the hint of that evasive dimple.

I wanted to catalogue them. Examine why they made that odd feeling in my chest return—why her beauty felt...harrowing.

Currently, the emotion was unbridled wrath.

Frost crept from under my palms, spreading across the settee.

She picked up the bottle of aconite, dropped it into my lap, then straightened to her full height. We were still nearly eye to eye, but her stature had never lessened her ferocity.

“And this one?” she snarled. “This one I did myself. I watched the life leave his eyes and return to hers.”

I didn’t blame her. Not for a single moment.

I nodded, unwilling to interrupt. Trying to fit this new piece of her into the catalogue.

It was exceptionally difficult to kill an Ethera with any organic substance. Beheading, bleeding out, the destruction or removal of vital organs—those worked. Death was no evasive concept—but it was nearly always by magic or brute force.

For her to have created that many ways to override our innate healing?

She was brilliant.

“I give them a choice,” she repeated. “To decide how their story ends. I thought you, of all people, would understand that.”

Her words struck like a physical blow.

She was far braver than I.

I should tell her that.

“I—”

“So, believe me when I tell you, Prince,” she cut me off, “I do not condone what was done to your family. I wish I could tell you why. I can’t fix that.” Her voice trembled—so slightly, I almost missed it. “I am sorry I was a part of it. I will carry that shame.”

“I—”

“But I will not be ashamed of what I do now,” she interrupted again.

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. My fingers twitched with the urge to tuck the curl that had fallen behind her ear. Sunlight streamed through the large windows now, and I wondered how much time we had until we needed to find the Linguistic.

We’d be late if we needed to be. I wouldn’t stop her.

“And I don’t fucking care what you think about it.”

I was an ass. An absolute, witless ass.

“I—”

The door slammed before I could tell her.

Before I could say I believed her.

That I respected her choice to save them.

That her conviction, her vehemence—all of it—was exceptional.

She was exceptional.

* * *

“You’ll lay the dial on top of a text you’d like to translate.”

Lenys’s long fingers traced the metal disc on the worktable before us. “My magic is imbued into a Phoenix ash beacon. Your Threader will pull at the barrier to release what I’ve imbued into the core.” They stepped aside, motioning for Iris to demonstrate. “It only needs to be open for a moment or two to work.”

“Are its uses limited?” I asked, curious how such a small object could hold a substantial amount of their power. Iris transferred the disc onto the text Lenys had supplied. Her hands stretched, glowing faintly as she searched for the barrier.

I had no idea when she’d found time to make it.

“It won’t last forever, but it should be sufficient for several dozen uses.”

The ward illuminated, golden latticework forming a dome over the center of the device. Gentle chords—like those of a stringed instrument—echoed through the room as Iris’s nimble fingers plucked at the Threads, pulling apart the careful weave of her handiwork. I could have sworn I heard her voice mingling with the notes, but the sound faded as she tucked the strands back in, the visible ward fading with it.

We watched in silence as the inner circle of the device, connected to an arrow, began to spin. As it moved, etchings appeared on the smaller ring—the common Etheran alphabet. On the outer ring, symbols matching those in the book below the decoder surfaced, aligning with their corresponding letters.

“It won’t work with every language,” Lenys explained, lifting the disc from the pages. “Only those with a one-to-one character translation. It is not nearly as complex as the one in the archives. Glyphic languages are out of the question. For your purposes, however, it should suffice.”

We’d have to translate each page by hand, down to the letter. It would take ages, but this was the first real lead in the new direction Iris was taking the research.

A spark of certainty lit inside me.

“As promised.” I handed over the text we’d prepared for the Linguistic, its aged pages sticking out at odd angles. “The gold we owe you is with the queen, but I assume this is of more interest.”

Iris and Theon were already fiddling with the device, speaking in hushed tones.

“Kacidon thanks you,” I told Lenys before stepping out of the workshop. I didn’t miss the way Iris slipped Lenys a vessel of amber liquid as we left. Her whispering was abysmal, leaving me able to catch the tail end of her message.

“For the eye strain.”