Page 31

CHAPTER

THIRTY

Oralia

“Whom do you serve?” Aelestor snarled, his blade pressing into Caston’s belly on his other side.

The Prince of Aethera did not tense at the threats, merely raised his hands in surrender, attention fixed on me. A groan slid through the room and the guard whose belly I’d slashed curled in on himself.

“We need to get Khale to a healer,” Caston said to me as Aelestor removed weapon after weapon from his baldric. “Please, Oralia.”

I turned toward the man in question bleeding out across the dirt floor. Something white caught my eye as he curled tighter in on himself, hands pressing his innards back into the wound. “Where were you taking this piece of Ren?”

Caston knew I was not talking to the one dying on the ground. His sigh was heavy with grief he would carry for the man as he lowered to his knees. “To you. Oralia, please . I am not above begging.”

When I looked, his eyes were wide, flicking between me and the man, Khale, in the dirt. I did not know why I waited, why this man’s suffering did not move me. But I searched Caston’s face, recalling his time spent in Infernis and the friendships he had formed.

It was Drystan who cut through my contemplation, whose hands wrapped around my upper arms, leveling me with a stern gaze. He said nothing, but his look was quelling. For a moment, I was a young girl scolded within the orchards. This man on the ground used to be his brother in arms, as the god at his back used to be one of his commanders.

Where is your heart, Sister? Caston had asked, and the truth was…I did not know.

So I tried to find it again. I knelt beside the dying man, turning him onto his back to better assess the wound. My shadows had sliced cleanly through his stomach, forcing blood up through his esophagus to trickle out of the corner of his mouth. I had done this without question and without hesitation, and yet, I could not find the twisting confusion I’d had the first time I’d taken a man’s life.

Magic tapped on the corner of my attention. If there was one thing I’d learned since I first left Aethera, it was to bend an ear to the power churning within me growing more expansive with each day.

“Show me,” I commanded my magic.

My palms tingled, a shimmering gold light seeping from beneath the edge of my gloves. Slowly, I removed them, pressing my hands over his wound.

“Oralia, please, take him to Thorne. Do not kill—”

I took a deep breath, allowing my power to flow through me as I had in the maze, surrendering to it. A hum floated up my throat, the melody familiar yet different to the song I sang to grow the crops and bolster the trees. This was haunting, and even with the light trickling through my veins, tangling with my power of life. Shadows hung heavy around my shoulders like a shroud.

The skin beneath my hand tensed, the magic pulling, knitting, until merely a gash remained. Khale gave a soft exhale, shoulders relaxing not in death but relief, as his head thumped to the ground. I stared in shock at the healed wound and drew back my gloved hands before skittering away as if burned.

Caston bolted forward and slid across the dirt to pull Khale into his arms, the other man following as they checked over his wounds. A lock of hair fell across Caston’s brow as he looked up, freckles bright against his flushed skin.

“You healed him…”

I pulled my gloves back over my hands, flexing my fingers. The tingling warmth was gone as if it had never been and a tiredness was left in its wake.

“Oralia,” Caston pushed.

I nodded, throat clicking with a dry swallow as I stood. “It appears so.”

He blew out a breath, head heavy before he reached out to grasp my hand, kissing the back of it before pressing his forehead to my gloved knuckles. “Hail the Queen of Infernis.”

My stomach twisted, and I shook my head. “You do not mean that.”

The demigod I’d held at knifepoint followed beside him, dropped to his knees, and reached for my other hand, pressing his lips and then forehead to my knuckles.

“Hail the Queen of Infernis,” the demigod repeated, though there was wariness in his gaze.

Movement rustled behind me, and I looked over my shoulder to see Samarah kneeling beside me, lips pressed to the hem of my dusty cloak. Aelestor and Drystan on either side.

“Hail the Queen of Infernis,” they said together.

“The keeper of all the power of the universe,” Samarah finished, violet eyes flashing up to mine. “The one who carries our fate in the palm of her hand.”

Samarah rose first, cradling my face, and pressed her forehead to mine. She breathed deep as if she could scent the magic roiling within me. “Do not fear it, latska lathira .”

But it was not the power I feared. No, as they rose to their feet and Caston used his cloak to prop up Khale’s head, it was the regret I could not find in my heart. I had not spared an ounce of compassion for the men I saw as my enemies. And I knew I would have gladly killed them all and slept easily after.

“Tell me what has happened,” I said to Caston as he rose, running a hand over his tired face.

“You almost killed him.” The words were not harsh, but there was a question there. He was assessing in his gaze as if I was a stranger.

Ice crept through my belly, crawling up my throat to curl around my lips. “I was wrapped in unearthly chains and forced to watch my mate be strung up the same. Forced to watch them wrench him limb from limb and then learn he was scattered across the world. I have faced things you could not fathom in order to retrieve him—to revive him.” Stepping closer, I lifted my chin. “You have no idea the things I would do if it means returning Ren to this realm. Now tell me what has happened.”

Caston stared at me for a long moment before he turned to the demigod beside him, nodding. “Gather the others.”

“Aelestor, join him,” I instructed, tipping my head toward the demigod.

I hated that I did not trust my adopted brother, that I was too wounded to welcome him with open arms and not expect Aetheran soldiers to stream into the room with their weapons raised. Samarah gave a hum of approval and settled herself at my left side. Caston’s attention flicked between us, but I did not offer introductions. After a moment, he cleared his throat.

“Typhon sent me to retrieve my soldiers stationed here and bring them back to Aethera. On the way, he gave me another task, one he entrusted to few within his circle.” His throat bobbed with a swallow, disgust twisting his features. “I endured two days of…questioning…to see where my loyalties lay before he gave me the task.”

Acid burned the back of my tongue at the thought of what sort of questioning would have been enough to prove his loyalty. Typhon’s own son, his heir . And yet it had been the same before. He had readily shot an arrow through his child’s chest in an attempt to pull me from Infernis and then place the blame on Ren.

Typhon’s games knew no end.

“Others had been sent before me, I knew, but their identities were not shared. However, Typhon sent you Ren’s heart. He knows you are gathering the pieces, intent on resurrecting him. No one can tell him how you have found the pieces so easily, but it drives him mad. He is restless, dangerous .” Caston stepped forward. “I received a message from Typhon only days ago. He bade me move the piece he’d given me—to hide it elsewhere.”

“You were moving this piece?” I asked, gesturing to the bundle Drystan lifted from the ground.

Caston shook his head. He took another breath, shoulders rounding, and the door was suddenly occupied. The demigod and Aelestor stood side by side, twenty-some-odd humans and demigods in similar traveling cloaks and leathers behind them. Caston extended an arm out, and a statuesque woman shouldered her way through the crowd, shrugging a pack off her shoulders and into his grasp.

“No, I was tasked with another, told to hide it on my journey in a remote cave to the southwest and then gather my troops to return home. The area is infested with daemoni.” He offered me the pack, nodding toward the soldier behind me. “Khale is my second-in-command and was given the piece in your hands.”

I weighed the pack. It was not as heavy as I expected, yet not particularly light. But I understood what Caston was saying: within this pack was another piece of Ren. Two more pieces here in this place. And the men I’d nearly killed had gone against the orders of Typhon to bring Caston the piece instead.

These men was not my enemy, yet I had almost slaughtered him like an animal.

“But why…why did he bring it here and not to its intended hiding spot?”

A grimace turned down the corners of Caston’s mouth. But it was the woman who spoke, not Caston.

“Because we are not loyal to a king who sits idly on a throne and moves lives like a player on a game board.” Her reddish-brown skin flushed when her green-flecked eyes met mine. “And we trust our prince’s intuition, his magic. Many of us have seen him through his prime. You and your king saved the prince, offered him shelter, and Typhon slaughtered you for it.”

They knew then… Somehow word had reached this far of what had taken place. Caston’s hand covered the pack, drawing my attention back to him.

“It is you I swear my allegiance to, Oralia, not him.”

I closed my eyes, shaking my head. “But he is your father.”

A knuckle touched my chin. “And you are my sister. I was too young to see the horror creeping through those halls, and by the time I did, I was sent away. It was foolish of me to believe you were anything more than a prisoner.” His breath caught, eyes glittering in the sunlight streaming through the cracks in the boards. “I stood by while you were tortured, while your mate was destroyed, and I will not stand silent any longer. Let me serve you, Oralia.”

I licked my lips, pushing away the memories of aching knees upon marble while acidic pain tore through my bones. The countless healers who had attempted to strip me of my dark magic—the agony, the fear. Typhon’s gilded cage I had called home.

Caston took another deep breath, the next words sounding less like a statement and more like a vow:

“I could do nothing to stop his terror then, but I can do something to stop it now.”