“Who’s with you?” Athler stated the question to Kole, who repeated it with compulsion.
“Sie, Kallon, Dovelyn, and Tezya,” I replied automatically. I only told them what they already saw. They’d seen Sie and the princess, and I knew it wouldn’t be believable if I said Tezya wasn’t with us. They also had to assume we had Kallon since she’d been missing, and her portals were the only feasible way we were coming and going.
Kole froze for a moment, and I was worried I gave something away. “You left here with Peter. If Sie’s with you, there’s no way he would have abandoned him.”
Crap. Crap. Crap.
I willed myself to stay calm, to think rationally, but my heart was jackhammering in my chest. “Peter didn’t make it,” I lied, half choking on the words. The sorrow that filled my voicewasn’t hard to fake. Thinking back to the state Tezya and I found him in, it wouldn’t be hard to believe he was dead.
“What were you doing in Lux?” Kole repeated Athler’s question as he stared at me. I held my breath, praying my face wasn’t giving anything away.
“We came back for Brock,” I answered. Simple truths, nothing to condemn Brighta’s goals.
“What are Dovelyn and Tezya planning?”
“Nothing.”
Athler’s eyes narrowed. “She’s lying. Tezya and Dovelyn possess too much ambition and pride to sit back and do nothing.”
“They just wanted to get away from you and the King,” I spat back. “Seeing how cruel you are to them, I’m sure you won’t find it that hard to imagine why.”
Athler smiled at me, his thin lips cracking as he stepped forward, bending down at the waist until his eyes were level with mine. I stiffened as his fingers traced over my upper thigh, the same spot Tezya was forced to stab.
Kole kept my chains pulled taut so I couldn’t pull away. I could barely lift my hands off the floor. “What you saw that day,” Athler breathed as his long fingernails dug into my flesh, “was nothing. The punishment we gave to Tezya was child’s play. So trust me when I say the boy has lived through a century of my lessons and one little dagger in the thigh isn’t enough to make him crawl to the mortals and hide. He knows how to live in pain. In fact, I recall a marvelous memory when Tezya almost had his face cut in half from one of my lessons. Do you remember that, Arcane?”
Arcane’s fists tightened at his sides, but he replied with a simple, “Yes.” Knowing Athler was the reason Tezya had his scar made me want to rip through my chains and claw his throat out.
Athler chuckled. “So I’ll ask you one more time, what are they planning?”
“I’m telling you the truth. They aren’t planning anything. They just wanted to get away fromyou.” My breathing hitched as Athler inhaled, and I flinched.
“If they aren’t planning anything, why would they bother rescuing Sie? I don’t believe the princes were ever friendly toward one another. In fact, I might even go as far to say they hate each other.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how.
“And while you’re stewing over your answer, let me tell you Dovelyn was spotted in the prison the day he escaped, so if you try to claim she had nothing to do with it, I’ll know.”
An unsettling silence filled the room. Athler withdrew his fingernails from my thigh and proceeded to smear the lingering blood over my skin. Without looking down, I could feel the four letters he was tracing onto me.
L
I
A
R
“She’s not lying,” Arcane said. “She was compelled to answer. If she says my siblings aren’t planning anything, then they aren’t.”
“Make her prove it.” Athler turned to Kole. He rose and took a few steps back, allowing Kole the freedom and creativity to test me. I waited to see what he’d do.
Kole looked from Athler to me, before compelling, “Stop breathing.”
I held my breath, willing my pulse to steady and my chest to still.
My lungs started to become heavy. A slow, growing agony flowing through them, making me feel like I was catching on fire from the inside out.
A minute passed, and the burning wasn’t stopping. It was morphing, becoming unbearable. I told myself over and over I was fine. I could do this. For Tezya, for Brighta, I could do this, even if it felt exactly like being drowned in that bath again. Even as I saw Kole’s two brown eyes, the only difference now was he wasn’t laughing. He was staring right at me, like he could see through it all, like he knew something I didn’t.
