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“I would have talked toyou.I wanted to talk to you, to know you. I thought you were my family.”
“Oh Honor, I am.”
“How can you say that you love me when you tried to manipulate me and control me?” I yanked at his pendant, now disarmed.
His answering smile was gentle. “You don’t have much experience with family if you truly think those two things are mutually exclusive.”
His relaxed attitude in response to my fury made me want to strangle him. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. you just wish you did.” He tilted his head to one side. “Because it would make what you’re going to do next so much easier, wouldn’t it?”
“I came to talk to you.”
“No, you came to kill me.”
“The night’s young,” I said. “But I know you want something besides the Isle. Tell me what it is. Let me help you.”
He gave me a long look. “I need power, Honor.”
His quiet, resigned tone sent a chill sweeping through my body.
“Don’t you have enough of that already? You’ve lived so long.”
“You know I stole my power from the chaos god.”
I didn’t want to reveal anything I knew to him, but after some debate, I nodded. I needed for him to talk.
“Ebba’s power is fading from me,” he said. “And when it’s gone, he’ll claim me, and I’ll be his creature. That was always the deal… though it seemed worth it a long time ago, when the years stretched before me.”
“I can defeat Ebba.” The words sounded reckless even to me.
Kallus smiled. “I appreciate that you came here ready to kill me, and yet your first impulse is to save me. You are truly a wonderful woman, Honor. Amily would have been delighted.”
The mention of my mother should have made me mad all over again, but now I couldn’t summon anger.
“But for you to defeat Ebba…” He spread his hands. “You’ll have to regain your powers. And where are they?”
“I lost them when you tricked me into breaking the Scourge curse. I made my people weak… I left my kingdom primed for your taking.”
He shrugged unapologetically. “You needed to break the curse. I helped you along. You seem… ungrateful.”
I wasn’t going to be baited. “So what do you want, Kallus?”
“I came to the Isle hunting for something, and those Elder Royals were supposed to help me. Thank you, by the way, by going into the Poison Kingdom and bringing back the payment they required. But they couldn’t find it either. They couldn’t buy me another two hundred years.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Now,” he continued, “I need you to be powerful. Because Ebba will destroy us both if he can. You can be his savior, or you can defeat him and be mine. But you can’t do either while you are…” He waved a hand at me, implying that I was nothing at the moment.
“You tricked me into giving up my magic!”
He scoffed. “Are you going to continue to argue with me? Or are you going to draw your kingdom’s magic?”
He was echoing what Zehr had said before.
“If I could, I would,” I promised him. “I would have already ended this war.”
He shook his head, looking disappointed.
