“You.” She paused to look at me. Her silver eyes were biting and restless. “You are free to be together. Once this war starts, that’s one of the things these people will fight for. Freedom. Freedom to do what they please. Freedom to love who theywant. If we win, you two can be together for good. So don’t punish him because he didn’t fully open up to you. I would have thought that you of all people would understand him, could relate to the sheer terror it takes to reveal something so ingrained in you to keep locked away. He wanted to tell you he was from both kingdoms, but I convinced him to wait. I forced him not to open up until after he brought you here. I’m the reason he didn’t let you in.”
“Everyone makes their own choices in the end,” was all I could think to say, but my mind was whirling. I could understand the need to keep secrets hidden, how revealing something that big wasn’t done lightly. I never had the opportunity to open up to Tezya because he witnessed my entire life on the monitor screens when I was brought into Lux. Would I have been able to tell him all my secrets if he hadn’t already seen them, or would I have struggled to open up after so many years of forcing it down?
“What did I overhear that day when you were in his room?” I asked her, hoping her willingness to confess everything would last.
She sighed loudly, pausing long enough I thought she wouldn’t answer. “I have visions,” she admitted and even the wind stilled. I assumed that was her second power—she brought it up during the conversation I overheard in Lux and then again outside the trench—but I was so mad at the time, I never questioned it.
“My powers manifested at a young age,” she continued. “I was foolish and didn’t know how to interpret them yet. My father has always been cruel, and as you can imagine, our childhood wasn’t a pleasant one. Once he realized I possessed more than just an air ability, he started treating me differently. I no longer got punishedalongside my brothers. Instead, I got to sit in on his meetings. I was flaunted about, put on a pedestal. I yearned for his approval when I was younger so I told himeverything I saw. I couldn’t control the visions that came to me. I still can’t to this day. I randomly see flashes of images. Sometimes I can make sense of them, sometimes I can’t.
“I saw you decades before you were born. The girl with the unique back markings. At first that’s all I saw, just bits of your early life in Lux. I had no idea why you kept showing up, but I knew you were important. Something in my gut told me to never tell my father about the visions I had of you, so I kept you a secret. My visions are usually lone occurrences, small glimpses into the future before it happens, but you were the only thing I kept seeing over and over again. I spent years searching the library, trying to find the meaning of your back markings, looking through our records to see if you were born yet, but you weren’t.
“Then I started getting visions of my younger brother. I saw golden markings covering his skin. Tezya was only twenty-five when they started. I didn’t want to believe it. I loved my brother, but the images of him terrified me. What the prophecy showed me in my visions… I knew it was bad. So I went to our mother, who was kind and nothing like our father. She loved us, and I knew I could trust her with it.
“That’s when I learned the truth about him, that he was both Luxian and Tennebrisian. Only my mother wasn’t surprised. Tezya and her already knew what he was and what it meant. But we never told him about the bad visions, at least not at first. My brother never really believed in the prophecy, but I couldn’t shake this feeling that my visions of you were entwined with him somehow.”
Tears pooled down her face. “My mother, knowing what I saw, knowing the full truth, began to go insane. She loved us all dearly, but Tezya was special to her. She hated our father just as much as we did, if not more. Arcane and I arehisheirs, but Tezya was brought into this life with a male she once loved from Tennebris. She wanted to protect him.” She paused, stifling asob. “Then one day, she had some of my mind wiped by a compulsion user. She took away the visions I had of him and the prophecy.
“To this day, I still don’t know what I saw. The only thing I know now is whatever fate awaits him isn’t a good one. Our mother took her life a year later because of it, leaving only a letter behind, telling me to always protect him. She thought with her death, the prophecy would die with it. Only I had another vision. I saw her die. I watched it.” She inhaled. “In the vision, she came to Brighta first. Tezya and I didn’t even know the camp existed until after everything happened. Then, I watched her take her own life right before she sealed her grave in her blood. I made the mistake of telling Tezya that I believed the Goddesses were showing it to me for a reason. That I thought it meant the key to the prophecy was buried with her.”
Her glossy eyes found mine. “Then I had a vision of you again. I hadn’t had one in decades, and with everything going on with my family, I forgot about the girl I used to see. It was clear as day, exactly as I’m seeing you now. I saw you marry the Dark Prince, and I got an idea. I knew my father was restless. I knew he wanted to kill whoever the prophecy was about. He doesn’t like anything lingering that could threaten his rule. We all grew up knowing the bare details of it—that a boy born from both kingdoms would destroy the current systems.
“I knew if my father ever discovered who Tezya really was, he would chop him to bits and spread the remains of him until there was nothing left. I was so scared for his life. I couldn’t lose him. I just couldn’t… not after the death of our mother, so I lied. I finally told my father about the visions I had of you. Only I didn’t tell him the full truth. I made him believe you and Sie would conceive the chosen one, that he just wasn’t born yet. I told him about my visions of you two marrying, of a rank five coming to power on the Dark soil. I convinced him to send you there. I helped orchestrate everything.
“I knew what I saw would come to fruition. I knew you two would marry. That all I had to do was get you to the Dark Kingdom. I saw a vision of you two together in a bathroom. I thought you slept with him. The only thing was, I didn’t see everything that happened, only little glimpses of your life.
“I told my father the only way to gain control of Tennebris—which I knew he desperately wanted—was to wait and bide his time. I knew you would be captured eventually, but I thought you’d be pregnant with Sie’s child. I thought the King would kill you and the baby, and he’d never think about the prophecy again. But I read the visions wrong. I didn’t think you and Tezya would ever meet. I never thought you would survive.”
I didn’t know what to say or how to process what she was revealing to me. I just stood there, staring at her, listening to the words coming out of her mouth, but it wasn’t registering yet.
“I feel this guilt when I look at you,” she admitted. “I knew what you were going to face by going to Tennebris, but I sent you anyway. I’m sorry for your pain. I truly am. But by the time you were born, I’d spun so many lies I couldn’t take them back even if I wanted to. My father had your fate sealed the moment you took your first breath.” She paused for a moment, considering. “I am sorry, Scotlind, but I would do it again if it meant that my brother gets to live.”
“You… you planned everything?” I was still stunned, still trying to wrap my head around it.
“Yes.” She no longer had tears running down her face. “My father orchestrated your kidnap. The men that took you were hired assassins my father later had killed after you were in Tennebris. We informed only those who had to know and most that were involved would turn up dead after their task was completed. He would bribe them with gold, have them complete what he wanted, and then send more assassins to murder them after it was done.”
She took a breath as I held mine. “Your counselor was hiredtoo when you first arrived at LakeWood. She was specifically picked for her abilities. She had you compelled to never be able to speak about who you were until you left school. She worked under Synder. Since he was promised the Tennebrisian throne once everything was said and done, he orchestrated everything on their side. It’s why you were chosen for Sie. I told my father every painstaking detail of my visions, and I made them all come true. He listened to everything I told him because I promised him he’d be able to kill the boy the prophecy was about while also getting control of the Dark Throne if he waited long enough.”
“I was taken by Kole. They almost killed us in the warehouse…” I didn’t need to finish before she nodded.
“A vision,” she said as she swiped the snot from her nose again. “That was one I saw clearly. The Lux King had Synder set it up. I knew you two wouldn’t die, but it served as the catalyst to get you discovered. To move things forward. I thought I had the timeline right. I thought you had already slept together. I needed you to be pregnant so he would believe the prophecy was over.”
She knew. She knew I was going to be tortured and almost killed. She knew what haunted me. Shecausedit.
She caused it all.
“I’m sorry, Scotlind, for everything. But I would do it all again for Tez.”
“Doesheknow?” I whispered. I was terrified of her answer, terrified to know if the man I was falling for knew everything his sister had done. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think until she spoke next.
She shook her head. “No. Tezya doesn’t know all of that. I told him decades ago about a girl with your back markings. I used to tell my brother everything back then. I wanted to see if he could make sense as to why I was seeing you. I figured he forgot about it. It was nearly a century ago now, but after theday you were brought up from the dungeons, he suspected I had my hands in your fate. We all saw your markings on the monitors. Tezya was livid. He sought me out afterward.
“He only knows I told the King to send for you, but he suspects some of the rest. After your interrogation, my father was half furious you weren’t pregnant, but half elated it meant we could use you to get Sie off the throne. He punished me for not properly reading my visions, which was proof enough for Tezya that I was involved, because my father hadn’t brought me to the punishment cell for over three decades. Arcane probably goes once a year. It’s only Tezya that he regularly uses it on.”
“You had my parents killed,” I said, my voice was cold and toneless. Everything else she said washed away, and all I could focus on was that one single thing. My parents died the night I was taken.
“I didn’t,” she said as she looked at me with pity. “I didn’t tell them to do that. That was all my father’s doing. I had no idea he was going to kill everyone.”
Everything stilled. I wanted to hit her, to fight her, to scream, to cry, to do something, anything, but I just kept staring at her in disbelief, unsure which emotion was winning. She was the reason foreverything. If it wasn’t for her, my parents would still be alive. I would have grown up in Lux as Haevely Sirena. I never would have been Scotlind Rumor. None of this would have happened.
