Page 24

Thea

I barely felt Hector’s arm winding around my waist before we were tearing through the Castle faster than sea nymphs dashed over Sandrea’s waves.

After a few whirling seconds, he put me down by the entrance and caught my wrist in his hand, stealing a moment of peace in this tiny universe of chaos. “I did not kill her,” he choked out. “After I left last night, I went hunting—”

“I know,” I reassured him. “They know it too. They’re just too scared to admit there is a traitor amongst them.”

He gave me a look as if he wasn’t so sure anymore. Then his face changed, hardened like lakes at winter’s frost. Wrapping a hand around my nape, he brought my forehead to his. “No matter what happens to me, don ’ t let them see you cry. Don’t gift them your despair. Keep your head high, Lady Aventine.”

The words felt like a prophecy. It reminded me of the first time I visited the Academy’s temple, when the high priestess touched her warm fingers to my forehead and called me a seer. A surrender-to-fate feeling.

Before I could utter the myriad of pleas and protests that flooded my mouth, Hector turned from me and flung the Castle’s door open.

The night outside was unlike any other. Moonless. Starless. A vast expanse of dark sky draping over the sloping mass of the mountains. The Valkhars in their all-black livery were mere faces floating in the air, their bodies inseparable from the gloom.

Sybella and Kaladin were just as I remembered them. She was cool and slim as a river fairy, her hair, long and fair, curling around her forehead. Her eyes were the color of moss, narrow and intelligent. She did not appear to be a day older than twenty, but I knew she was as old as the curse itself. He was no younger, but his face revealed his ancientness more generously. He had a shiny, greyish complexion that made him look more like a spirit than a vampire, a soul stuck in-between realms.

But Dain? Dain looked nothing like the boy from my childhood memories. His eyes were still his mother’s, calm and green, and his hair was the same jumble of dark locks that caught upon his long lashes. And although he’d always been big-boned and severe-looking, now he was enormous, as tall as Hector but double his size. His shoulders were as broad as a ship’s deck, his arms and thighs roped with muscles. I could see the unmatched power in them, for he was clad in skin-tight leather armor. He has come prepared , I realized, my breath trapped in the siphon of my throat.

As they stepped inside the Castle, I found myself retreating. I’d heard stories of mortals who’d been visited by gods. I felt the same awestruck dread now.

Kaladin’s dark eyes crawled over us, assessing us from the arch of our brows to the gold bands around our wrists. I could not read his face. It was carved in granite, the statue of an indifferent immortal.

When his calculating gaze flickered far behind us, I followed it nervously. The Ravenors had gathered on the landing of the staircase. Tieran stood like a beacon among them, sticky red smudges marring the noble lines of his face. I wondered if the Valkhars could smell the blood from this distance, if they knew exactly who it belonged to.

The door shut with a tremendous, reverberating thud . A beat passed—nervous and rapid like the flutter of a dragonfly.

Then Kaladin thundered, “What has happened here?” I had never heard such a voice. Vast and persevering, it was the night itself.

As Hector failed to respond, Kaladin’s eyes darted to Espen again. This time, his question held the sharpness of a threat: “Where is Camilla?”

“Dead,” Espen announced with a vengeful gleam in his eyes, knowing well the kind of fire he’d just lit.

I noticed the way Dain clutched his mother’s hand as if to keep her from reacting. But Sybella did not react. Her face was written in a different language, one of clear, smooth waters. In the cold terror of it all, I could not understand why Dain felt the need to console her first, considering Kaladin’s severer reaction.

His eyes had grown huge with shock, his fists clenching at his sides. The backs of his hands were gnawed with veins and had a pearlescent sheen around the knuckles. I remembered them from my vision. I remembered them curling into Hector’s shirt, dangerously close to his neck.

I shuddered, fresh horror washing over me. Hector, as though he sensed my fear, broke his solid stance to thread his fingers through mine.

“Is this a joke?” Kaladin snarled.

Sybella put a hand on the back of his shoulder. The light from the sconces streamed directly into her face, and the gold glimmer blended into her hair, giving her a spine-chilling glow. Her voice was death-cold and cutting. “Kaladin, let’s not—”

“Is this a fucking joke?” seethed Kaladin, his face so contorted with rage he looked more monster than creature now.

I’d known exactly what was going to happen, and yet I heard myself scream all the same as Kaladin pierced the distance and grabbed Hector by the collar of his shirt. They staggered through the air and came crashing against the wall, their fangs jutting from their snarling mouths.

I barely felt myself move. In a blink, I was on Kaladin, screaming and clawing at his back. I doubted he even felt the drag of my nails on the leather of his vest. But I did not stop, not until Arawn came and forced me off him. In a sick panic, my eyes flew to Roan, quietly beseeching, and within seconds he and Alexandria rushed to split Hector and Kaladin apart.

“We don’t know that he did it,” Roan panted, holding Kaladin back with an arm across his collarbone.

“Of course we do!” roared Kaladin. “We all know human treachery has no bounds. And there are two of them here.”

Hector pushed past Alexandria and faced Kaladin with his unwavering self-command. “If you didn’t come here to give me your oath, then you are no longer welcome in this Castle.”

“My oath?” spat Kaladin. “I came here to challenge you.”

The words were a hollow clang in the room.

For a solid minute, no one moved; no one even dared to breathe in anticipation of the Castle’s reaction. But the Castle was just a cemetery of beautiful things. Paintings and rugs and crystals and gold, inanimate vanities that had no real meaning or value without the Castle’s pulse and star-bright energy.

Inwardly, I prayed to it as if it were a god and I a priestess fallen out of its favor. Please, please, please do something. Throw them all out. Can’t you see? Hector is too proud to give the command.

Nothing happened, and Kaladin, reassured by the Castle’s lack of intervention, sauntered around the room. In the echoey silence, his heavy steps were like peals of thunder, his voice like a judge’s verdict: “When, a century ago, we vowed to follow the woman who ruled this sacred place, we did it proudly and in trust. No one is denying that Esperida Aventine was a great leader. But I think we can all agree her greatness was marred the moment she refused to turn her human companion. Now here we are, in a time of great uncertainty, having to rely on a human to defend our interests, our welfare. We are expected to give our oath to this boy , knowing that our loyalty will be mistreated and misused in order to further the human agenda—”

“There is no human agenda,” said Hector through clenched teeth. “We all want to live in peace.”

“For now,” clipped Kaladin, squinting at Hector like he was a bright flare of sunlight, something deadly he needed to extinguish. “What happens when a vampire goes rogue, commits a crime against a human, and then our entire species gets prosecuted for it? Whose side are you going to take, then?”

“There will be no sides,” said Hector in a controlled, pacifying manner that didn’t match the intensity of his expression. “I will follow the procedures of justice that my mother—”

“Justice?” hissed Espen, sailing down the stairs in a mad fury. “A few hours ago, you threatened to kill us all. You turned against us—”

“Because you poisoned my wife!” Hector snapped—snapped like never before.

His rage was incandescent, a flame trembling under his skin. The veins along his neck and temples stood out, harsh like scars, his eyes burning purest red as if all his blood pulsed right beneath his dilated pupils. Even the bow of his mouth was pulled in lines unfamiliar to me. “You come here, to Aventine Castle, dare to harm my family, and then call me a traitor?” A swift ringing sound echoed in the distance, drawing nearer with preternatural speed. In a silver flash, Hector’s sword came to float by his side, glorious and deadly. Hector didn’t bother to take it in his fist. He didn’t have to. The insinuation was clear. “You want to fight me? You want to know what it is to fall under the wrath of an Aventine?” He gave them all a mocking bow, his hand above his heart. “Well, be my guests. Your pretty heads will make for great decorations.”

As the room spun into a web of horrified sighs and wrathful snarls, Arawn released me from his hold and threw himself before Hector, covering him like a shield. “This is getting out of hand,” he gritted out. “No one is going to challenge Hector for the Castle—”

“I will,” said a clear, resonant voice that made my skin prickle.

I would have thought it a figment of my imagination had Dahlia not let out such a bloodcurdling cry. “No!”

She started toward Dain, tears in her charcoal eyes, but Collette came up behind her and snatched her arm in a punishing grip. “This is not your place, Dahlia,” she seethed.

Dahlia’s huge eyes darted to me. Do something , she seemed to plead. But I had no idea what I should or could do but pray for disasters. I prayed for cataclysms and cyclones. I prayed for the land to crack in two, the whole world to split down the middle. Anything to stop this madness. Anything.

“Let her go,” Alexandria growled, looking more exasperated than frightened as she glared at us all. From the top of the stairs, her children watched, keen as unsheathed blades. “Have you all lost your minds? This is nothing that can’t be resolved with reason. We should all work together to find out who killed Camilla and poisoned Thea, give Hector our oath, and get out of his family home before it literally crushes us.”

Dain took another step forward, his piercing eyes fixed on Hector alone. I’d seen wolves prowling like that around our farm at night. Poised and hungry, soundless as they moved. “These walls won’t harm you, Alexandria,” he said. “For I will win. And the Castle will be mine.”

Hector stiffened but showed no signs of relenting.

I would recognize the look on his face anywhere, in a hundred years from now, in an entirely different body. He would not surrender. He did not know how. He was the same as always: strong and proud and fearless when it came to defending the things and people he loved.

For the life of me, I could not understand how they could all be so blind. Hector was the best of them. That was why the Castle obeyed him, not because of his Aventine blood. He was made of all the better parts of two incredibly flawed worlds, and he had worked his whole life to make himself someone truly and unquestionably worthy of the Castle.

I tried to find my voice and tell them all of this, but in the face of what was about to happen, I had no breath to speak. My mind was a void of denial. This isn’t happening, I kept humming to myself. This can’t be happening.

“Are you going to resist?” sputtered Kaladin. “Will you turn the Castle against us? Or will you fight with honor, Aventine?”

They all shared a look I didn’t understand, and another wave of sickening dread assailed me.

Hector bowed his head, black locks tumbling over his eyes, obscuring them from me. “Of course I’ll fight with honor.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, my heart striking at my temples.

I was ignored.

Arawn charged toward Hector, yelling something I couldn’t register over the continuous roar in my head. The room around me swiveled, their quick-darting shapes whirling into light and shadow.

“What does that mean!” This time I screamed, and everyone turned to me at once. Everyone except Hector.

I reeled past Arawn and stood before the boy I’d loved ever since I was a little girl in so many different ways that I hardly knew what to make of this feeling anymore. “Hector?” I whispered.

Slowly, he lifted his head and looked at me with his watercolor eyes. There was no rage in them now. No panic. No fear of what was to come. Only an ocean of longing and a drop of resignation. The resignation was what scared me the most.

He knows he will not win, I realized. He knows this is a death sentence.

Hector didn’t release me from his gaze as he called out harshly, “Arawn.”

Before I knew it, Arawn was pulling me away, his arms winding around my midriff.

I thrashed like a madwoman, howling at the top of my lungs, “What are you doing? Let go of me!”

Enough madness coursed through my veins that I managed to escape him and ran back to Hector. He did not push me away this time. Instead, he seized the back of my neck, pulled me to him, and touched his warm lips to my forehead. “You know I was dreaming about you, right?” he said. The words were quiet, meant only for my ears.

“What?”

“I only ever dream about you.”

Kaladin came and grabbed Hector by the shoulders just as Arawn snatched me from behind again. We were torn apart from each other with such swift violence that I felt as though I’d lost a limb. I was bleeding. I had to be bleeding. But when I looked down, I saw nothing, felt nothing but a pressure, sharp and instantaneous, expanding from the side of my neck.

Then the world closed over me, shapes fading to black.