Page 99 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

“The cost of what is his soul?” Hallie asked, not understanding what this had to do with his adamance that Kase not operate the Cerl hover. Was he somehow alluding to what King Filip’s Essence power could do?

“Kase does look extraordinarily like him,” Jove said quietly.

Both Hallie and Kase turned. “What do you mean?” Kase demanded.

She wanted to know, too. Kase looked far more like Jove than he had Zeke.

A sad smile flickered across Jove’s face, but he didn’t look at Kase; he still looked at Harlan. “That’s why you’re so hard on Kase, isn’t it?”

Harlan finally looked up at his eldest son, his eyes hard. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jove’s stare stayed level. “I know everything. I’ve seen the files.”

Harlan’s jaw clenched. He looked away again. “Then you know I did what I had to do.”

“Will one of you please explain what the blazes is going on?” Kase asked, his voice shaky.

“I barely remember him as it is, so I hadn’t made the connection until now,” Jove said, placing his hands behind his back. He looked right at Kase. “You’re the spitting image of Uncle Ezekiel.”

Ezekiel Fairchild. The man who betrayed all of Jayde.

Hallie sucked in a small breath. Oh. Oh stars, this is…not where I need to be .

Whatever was going on between the Shackley men, she didn’t factor into it. But Kase’s stance and the clench of his jaw told her if she left, he might lose it. She slipped her hand into his. It was cold, opposite to her heat.

“Explain.” That was all Kase said. He tightened his hold on her hand.

The Stradat Lord Kapitan opened his mouth, then closed it again. Like he had to work to dredge up the words.

It’d been nearly fifteen years since the war ended, twenty since it’d begun. It was a long time to keep a secret.

“Tell us,” Jove said quietly.

The Stradat Lord Kapitan crossed his arms and stared into the stone beneath his feet.

“I met Ezekiel in the army. We were both medics, and we became friends…he even opened his home to me once or twice during the rare times we got leave together. That’s how I met your mother.

” Harlan smoothed a hand over his mustache.

“But near the end of his tenure, his wife gave birth to a baby girl. Both his wife and daughter died shortly after the birth. Complications stemming from the pregnancy. He joined the engineering corps, determined to stop the endless war no one would admit we were part of. He not only discovered a way to infuse Zuprium with electricity, giving us an advantage on the battlefield, but he…sold everything that made him human to do it. Even his sons joined, but they went too far.”

Hallie’s heart broke for a man she didn’t know.

What Hallie had been through in her short life had been bad, but it wasn’t nearly as terrible as what had happened to Kase’s uncle.

She also had a feeling the Stradat Lord Kapitan couldn’t tell the entire story.

Grief could make you do horrible things, and with the amount of trauma Ezekiel Fairchild had experienced, it made sense he’d been lost to it.

But what went further than infusing Zuprium with electricity? That discovery alone changed the tide of the war. The electropistols and electrobombs allowed Jayde to gain an advantage and push Cerulene out of Jayde.

But what else was there? The Yalvs had their own powers, but she didn’t think Ezekiel was Yalven, though she guessed it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility—but no, that would have made Les part Yalven, which would have made Kase part Yalven, and nothing that had responded to Hallie’s Yalven blood had never done the same for him.

What else was there? Was it another secret that had been buried with him?

Motion caught her attention, and she caught Fely playing with her locket, the one that held the Soul she took.

Soul.

Kase said only moments ago it felt like the Cerl hover was part of him.

What if they didn’t run on electricity and Yalvar fuel like she’d assumed?

What if they ran on something else? The Cerl pistols had still worked in Myrrai when the electropistols had not.

Kase’s new hover worked despite the electricity not working in Kyvena.

What if the secret Ezekiel sold the Cerls wasn’t about electricity at all?

“The Cerl weapons,” Hallie whispered. “They work using Soul?”

Harlan simply nodded. Kase, still pale and perplexed, asked, “What do you mean?”

Jove said, “Uncle Ezekiel created Soul Technology, which is what the Cerl weapons and hovers use.” Jove walked to the other side of the space, as if to leave. He paused and turned. “And in the end, he begged for death.”

Hallie’s heart thrummed in her ears. “So the story about him being a traitor?”

Surely it wasn’t what she thought. Surely, there was another explanation, but Kase’s father didn’t offer much of one. “He wasn’t in his right mind.”

Hallie blinked. “Kind of like what happens to Zuprium miners?”

The Stradat Lord Kapitan cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“So why sell the story that he committed treason?” Kase asked.

Hallie couldn’t tell what his exact thoughts were, but he was still clutching her hand like he’d crumble if she let go.

She leaned closer. The story of Ezekiel Fairchild was one of tragedy, certainly, but to beg for death…

what exactly had he done to discover that you could use Soul, your very spirit, to fuel weapons? Hovers?

“He did commit treason.” The Stradat Lord Kapitan pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes. “And we tried to cover up his tracks.”

“The Queen.” Hallie knew she was right even before she said it. It just made sense. Why else would the Jaydian government assassinate her? Whether or not they knew she was an Essence wielder, she had been the leader of the Cerl engineering corps, but that was it.

Harlan let out a shaky breath. “The war needed to end quickly, and the easiest way to do it was to kill the only Cerl who knew about Soul Tech.”

“Why her? Was it because she was the Essence of Souls?” Hallie asked.

Harlan shook his head. If Hallie were to describe the moment she stood there, clinging to Kase as much as he did to her, it would be the breath one held before taking a plunge into a lake of ice.

The air was no longer laden with the truth; it thinned as if they stood atop the highest peak in the Nardens. The world narrowed to a point.

“Because they were lovers. Killing her ended the war, but it also ended Ezekiel.” Unsteadily, the Stradat Lord Kapitan straightened his uniform and arranged his features back into his mask of indifference tinged with what Hallie had always figured was anger.

But it wasn’t, not this time. This time, it was defeat.

“And I have spent the last fifteen years trying to make up for his mistakes.”

And then he left, leaving the rest of the group in stunned silence.

Kase

KASE DIDN’T REALLY KNOW WHAT to think. Everything he’d learned from his father in that tunnel was in the past, and it shouldn’t have mattered any longer, but it was still a part of Kase. It was still his history; still his burden to bear, even fifteen years later.

Vaguely, Kase had known he resembled his Fairchild ancestors.

He had gained nothing from the Shackley side except maybe his temper, which Hallie had pointed out.

Funny the only thing he’d gotten from his father was the worst thing about him.

Funny wasn’t the right word at all, but when you lived the life he had, well, funny was the only word you could use.

Kase crushed Hallie’s hand in his, but she didn’t seem to mind. He dreaded the moment he’d have to let go.

He needed to get out of this tunnel.

Kase and Jove had demanded an answer, and for once, Harlan had given it; yet it made Kase feel even worse than before.

It didn’t solve anything at all. It only made him feel bitter.

Bitter that it was his uncle’s choices that had ruined Kase’s life.

It wasn’t his fault. Ezekiel Fairchild had set him on this path, and Kase never had a chance to do anything to fix it.

Jove left shortly after. All he got from his eldest brother was, “Sorry, Kase.”

Shocks, he needed to be up in the air. Immediately.

Hallie whispered something to Saldr and Fely before dragging Kase down the tunnel after his brother. He barely paid attention to where she led him. All he could think about was the hover.

It was siphoning off his soul to fly. He’d known something was different about it, he’d known it ran on something other than Yalvar fuel, but this…he hadn’t imagined this.

To think the Cerls only had this technology because his uncle had discovered it and told his lover about it.

Now, it was Jayde’s only defense—just Kase and a hover that his uncle had created and been executed for; an uncle who Kase took after in more ways than one. An uncle who had been drowning in grief; an uncle whose betrayal and death had changed his father for the worse.

The further he and Hallie traveled through the corridors, the more people they passed. Not everyone had been cleared to return to the surface yet—only those with essential jobs like clean up, which ended up being mostly lower-class folks.

While there hadn’t been a full counterattack to Kase’s feat days ago, they weren’t safe.

The flyovers weren’t harmless; they merely confirmed that fact.

After he’d destroyed all the hovers chasing him, they might be hesitant to send in more unless they were certain of what had occurred, but he doubted it.

They were probably planning something even worse.

“Kase!”

He froze and half-turned. Hallie still looked pale as she tugged on his arm. She’d nearly blacked out with whatever happened in the tunnel, and that was after their wretched fight. He would never forget the desperation in her eyes as she pleaded with him, begging him to let her save him.

What a horrible day it had been.

He slowed down. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think. Are you all right?”