I scream it. Blast it loud.
Hear it ricochet off faraway walls.
Arkyn lowers, pinches my chin so hard I feel the bloom of a future bruise, and turns me to face him—his answer a smooth whisper blown against my face. “No.”
Against my better judgment, I hold his merciless stare like our swords are crossed.
Hetsksand lets go.
I gasp, chest heaving as he averts his attention to the diary again, flips forward a few pages, then stabs the tip of his ravaged finger against a line of script. “Ahh, yes, then she meetshim,” he seethes, and recites straight from the parchment: “‘Kaan Vaegor—the eldest son of the King, only recently back from the Boltanic Plains to watch over Dhomm while his pah helps Tyroth secure his foothold in Arithia.’”Arkyn lifts his head, attention homed on Kaan jerking against his chains with renewed might, blood dribbling from where they’ve worn through the skin in places. “She’s wrong there. Eldest son, you are not.”
Kaan stills.
Arkyn hums, looks down, and brushes the page aside. “You know, had Pah not disowned me and ordered his dragon to chase me across the plains for being such a greatdisappointment, Elluin would’ve fallen in love with me.Not you.”
Kaan jerks so hard his heavy stone chair grinds across the ground, his flickering chains seeming tosqueeze. Not that Arkyn so much as looks up, his attention wholly on the page he just landed on. “Ahh, yes. Here you gave her a trinket of your love. Then she fucked you.” He clicks his tongue three times, shaking his head. “Disgraceful, given she was promised to our brother.”
The words clang in my ears.
With quiet violence, things begin slotting into place. Building something too painful to look at.
Toodevastating.
“To think he bound with her thinking she wasuntouched.”
I jerk from the sunken memories of a male moving inside me. Not Kaan.
Someone else.
Somewhere cold. Familiar.Regally ornamented, the sky beyond the window heavy with luminous moons—
A sound slips up my throat.
“I know,” Arkyn drawls, shaking his head. “So much for family values.” Again, he flicks the page. “Believe it or not, it gets even more interesting. Here, our dear pah discovered your affair.” His attention spears at Kaan, now parchment pale as he stares into the shadows of his brother’s hood.
All the confirmation I need to know this is new to him. That he wasn’t aware.
Arkyn shrugs, looking down again. “Seems you weren’t careful enough, brother.”
Kaan sits statue still, a haunted look in his eyes that won’t meet mine.
Never have I wanted them on me more. Have I wanted to surge forward, wrap my arms around him, and hold tight. Tell him we’re in this together. That we’llget through this together.Because we have to.
Because—
Something small, soft, and wet is tucked snug against my chest, squirming, nuzzling my breast.
I drop my head and kiss a sodden tuft of white hair. White, like—
Someone’s.
Someone I loved. Except this love is different. A love that eclipses all the rest, blazing in my chest like a wild flame—
“Blah, blah, ‘he told me Kaan is not fit to rule a kingdom and unworthy of a crown,’” Arkyn drones, ripping me from the memory like pulling a bone from its socket. “To which Elluin spat in his face and spoke some trop about choosing her own king or nothing at all. Things escalated, he tortured her, threatened our sister. Threatenedyou, yada, yada. ‘I felt fear like I’ve never felt before—’ Ahh, yes. Here we are.” Arkyn clears his throat, like he’s preparing to pass a speech to a crowd.
Part of me already knows what he’s going to say. As though the words are etched on my heart and soul. Threaded through the marrow of my bones.
Have been for a long time—since I woke in my cell beneath this mountain so many phases ago—just waiting for the dust to be blown free.
