Isobel’s hand slipped away, and the burn receded.
“Lhynion was none too keen to own his title,” Nish said. “I should have expected you’d be the same. It’s only that we have been waiting for you.” Sean wanted to reply with something scathing, something that made his disbelief clear, but Nish continued, “We are expecting a great deal from you,Ashanta. You will make terrible sacrifices for the good of us all. This small concession we make gladly as a token of our goodwill. Your Sovereign crown will wait for you.”
Sean’s stomach disappeared at the wordsacrifice, but Nish’s gaze was so earnest that he merely dipped his head in thanks, trying to swallow down the sensation of drowning in a slowly rising flood.
“We meet weekly, with our next session four days hence. We look forward to your contributions to this Council, Savior.”
Sean’s smile faded, and with that, the Council departed, many of them kissing his temple goodbye.
“Come,” Kywyn said once they were alone with Isobel.
The three of them wandered to the balcony. Standing at the railing, Sean watched the people meandering far below through a thin curtain of Luster.
Isobel stood at his side, rubbing a hand up and down his back. “Does everyone always fall for your smile that way?”
He laughed. “Yeah, actually. I’m pretty good at winning people over.”
The fond roll of her eyes had him grinning.
Kywyn rested his elbows on the railing. “I wasn’t expecting them to agree, but you made a good argument.”
“I’m only delaying the inevitable,” Sean said.
His father smiled into the middle distance. “You still don’t want this.”
Bel’s hand paused in the center of Sean’s back. “None of us want this, Kywyn. Imagine being us. How would you feel?”
Kywyn’s mouth flattened into a line.
“That Sending,” Sean said. “I should probably read it.”
“Yes,” Kywyn said. “But reading the words won’t change as much as you think it will. You are still you, and you will have to make decisions based on what you think is right. Don’t read it if you’re not ready. And when you are, I’ll be there to talk you through it.”
Sean stared at his father, who continued to peer into the forest, and wished he’d had Kywyn from the beginning. How different would his life have been if he’d had a dad to help weather the storms, to pull him through his grief, to walk him through the mist?
Had his mother believed the Sending so horrible that sacrificing Kywyn was worth thwarting it?
Bitterness rose, the bleak sensation of having been cheated of something he deserved. In a moment of vulnerability, Sean gripped Kywyn’s shoulder. The older man glanced back, rising to his full height to place a hand over Sean’s. The pixie familiarity sparked, a warm current of affection spreading between them, stronger than any other pixie he’d yet touched.
“It will get better, Sean,” Isobel said, voice soft. “Give it some time.”
“I will. Now that it’s been given to me, I don’t plan to squander it.”
CHAPTER 22
DAVID
Morning training, afternoon library, and lots of insults and staring in between meant time passed swiftly. It wasn’t terrible, this new life. Wasn’t great, either, but he’d had worse. Within a week, David had learned more than he needed to know about Morgan and her bleak magic—empath meets mind control, but make it vampire. Nauseating. He couldn’t keep reading about the good old days, when Morgan had roamed free, feeding on mortal blood and carousing through the realm without consequence.
At least she’d been exiled and forbidden to feed from thelavanié. David briefly wondered whether she still lived but quickly decided he didn’t care. He progressed instead to other pursuits—history tomes, instructional books, detailed encyclopedias. Strangely, Anna Ainslan continued to meet him every afternoon, proving that, all evidence to the contrary, some people were still capable of surprising him.
He suspected her presence had more to do with stubbornness than anything. She’d made her annoyance at the prejudice againsthim clear as the blue in her eyes, even going so far as to shove a guy when he’d yelled the familiarGo back where you came from!at training one day. Watching someone come to his defense was both novel and thrilling. Anna’s brand of loyalty mystified him, and he spent a great deal of time attempting demystification with little success. She’d extracted a keen curiosity from the depths of his apathy, one that tiptoed right to the edge of fascination.
Needless to say, he didn’t hate her company. He sort of hated her on the training grounds, though that was another matter entirely. The woman reveled in pain, as did her idiot pixie comrades.
Pain leads to power, they said again and again, as if it made any sense at all. How had he gotten saddled with a trio of sadists as training partners?
He was glad to finally be rid of them after they’d forced him through a painful knife-play lesson earlier that morning. Settled into his usual table in the library, David pored over his latest—a slim volume describing the nature of Luster as well as ways to manipulate and transfer it.
