Rada lifted her head to look at me, her expression unreadable. “So, despite everything that happened,” she said softly, “you want to wield Chaos once more.”
Though her tone lacked accusation, I felt defensive. “It’s not about wanting to use it,” I replied, tensing against her. “Chaos is all around us. If I don’t find a way to control it, it will rage unchecked.”
Her silver eyes sharpened. “It was under control,” Rada said pointedly. “When the Ten created Yggdrasil and imprisoned you. Your actions allowed it to break free again.”
That’s what people said. But no matter how hard I tried, I could only recall fragments of that night so many years ago. One thing I knew for certain, though: Chaosbringer had never been in my hand. Whatever had transpired, it wasn’t as simple as the stories made it out to be.
“Did they?” I asked, searching Rada’s face for any hint of her true feelings. “Or did Chaos simply find a way to free itself once more? Like every time you and the others tried to shut it out before?”
A flash of fear crossed her features, quickly masked. What was she hiding so desperately? Had she lied about remembering little of the Tree’s destruction?
“However,” she began again, “the risk—”
I scoffed. “Existence is a risk.”
She continued, undeterred. “There were two thousand years of peace. While you were imprisoned.”
I knew better than to mention she hadn’t visited me once during the bleak years of my imprisonment beneath Yggdrasil’s roots. It was an old argument that led nowhere.
“Two thousand years in which nothing ever changed,” I remarked instead, meeting her gaze. “Those touched by Chaos were banished to the dark fringes of the realm, where the Tree’s light never reached.And the rest…” I shrugged, challenging her to disagree. “You’ve been Human for ten years now. Surely you’ve noticed. What does the life of a Human woman typically look like? Hard labor from a young age, bearing a dozen children of whom only half survive to adulthood, then dying in childbirth or from illness. It’s not much different for the other races, though they might live a few years longer.”
Rada looked away, pondering my words.
“How much easier could all those lives be if the same magic we always used without thinking was available to them?” I pressed on, a bitter edge creeping into my tone. “And not limited to a select few, whose greatest achievement is their loyalty to the Ten.”
That made her bristle. “You expect me to believe you only have everyone’s wellbeing in mind?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I want to give everyone the power to forge their own fate.”
“Ha!” Disbelief flashed across her face. “And let me guess. You will get the lion’s share of that power.”
I gave her my most innocent look. “Of course. I have the most brilliant ideas about what to do with it.”
Rada traced the swirls on the table. “If you hadn’t been so blinded by your own ambitions, you could have used the pardon your brother granted you to achieve all that,” she said, her eyes meeting mine with a sharp glint. “By working with me to influence the Council over time. Instead, you roped me into one of your schemes, destroying everything.”
Annoyance flared within me, and I stepped away. Why did she always return to the same tired accusations? I knew now that trying to manipulate her into opposing Aramaz by exploiting her feelings for me had been a grave mistake, but I had been desperate, and…
“They left me no choice!” I snapped. “You know what they asked of me. To destroy every being touched by Chaos in this world, everysingle one of my creations. That pardon was a poisoned offer, and I was damned no matter what choice I made.”
My hands clenched into fists as the memories resurfaced. I wasn’t too proud to admit that the years of imprisonment had worn me down, that I had been willing to promise anything just to feel the sun on my face once more, to see something other than the damp monotony of my prison. Regret followed my moment of weakness all too soon.
“The Father of Monsters I may be,” I told Rada, “but I will never forsake those I created.” She had saved my dragons from the scorn of the Council, had witnessed my frail hope when I brought the Rakash into being high in the north. She knew this.
Indeed, she did not contradict me. “You still think you would be a better king than Aramaz.”
Had my brother not proven time and time again that he was a bloody failure as a king?
“You never gave me a chance to prove it,” I retorted, unable to keep the bitterness from my tone. “You always chose him.”
To my surprise, she didn’t disagree, her eyes roaming over me. Why was it so fucking hard to read her without the use of our magic?
“Let’s assume I help you,” she said, her voice steady. “What do you want to do? Defeat Galator and the Chiasma to prove to the Ten you deserve your powers back?”
The thought of asking my brother or Sha’am for anything made me growl. “Hardly. I have a much better plan.”
“Of course you do.” Rada shook her head, unconvinced.
I stepped closer, taking her hand in mine, speaking more quickly now. “You help me regain my powers to deal with Galator and the Chiasma. Then I’ll prove to you there’s a way to achieve peace in Aron-Lyr without completely shutting out Chaos.”
