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At the top of her vision, the slightest movement caught her attention. A dip of Graeson's chin, then the air shifting behind her.
She swung her head around, following his gaze.
Terin stood behind her, his face scrunched with pity. The air she breathed turned hot, thick. At some point, it had stopped raining and now the stable felt too small, too quiet. Her eardrums echoed with the silence that threatened to consume her.
Terin was too close. She needed to move, to run, to fight. But the legs she had trained and strengthened for over a decade betrayed her as they grew weak beneath her weight.
Terin reached toward her and when he spoke, his voice was melodic, like a lullaby, and dulled her raging thoughts. "Sorry, Kals, but it's for the best."
Before she could process what was happening, her mind lost focus as the fog began to take over.
Then realization struck. But it was too late.
Her limbs felt lighter. The ground stopped shaking and disappeared beneath her feet. A pair of arms wrapped around her from behind, encasing her with their heat and the scent of home. But even as a blanket of serenity enveloped her, a tick in the back of her mind began to sound. It commanded her not to fall into the fog but to remain standing, alert.
The promise of sleep came. A moment of reprieve where she did not have to think about false relationships, broken promises, half-told truths, or convoluted plans. And it was too tempting.
The arms around her tightened, preventing her from smacking into the ground as the ghost of sleep coated her skin.
Graeson's voice floated toward her, "Your mother will explain everything, I promise."
As Graeson lifted her, she finally understood what had been happening to her for the past week. She understood why she had drifted in and out of sleep against her will. Why she had grown tired out of nowhere, time and time again.
No one had drugged her, for Terin had a gift too.
Chapter15
Kallie wokeup with her head pounding and her body bruised. A bright light streamed into her room, increasing her headache.
"Rise and shine," Dani shouted.
"Go away," Kallie mumbled. She threw the warm blankets—a comfort she had forgotten about after sleeping on the ground for the past week—over her head, shielding herself from the light and Dani's chipper voice.
"No can do, Princess. Fynn insists on sticking to the schedule."
Her eyes sprung open.
Fynn.
The events of last night came crashing down upon her with those four letters. Fynn who could read minds. Terin who had the ability to put her to sleep against her will. Fynn who shestabbed. The twins who were supposedly her brothers.
And her parents—
No. She would not think about them now. She couldn't. It was too much to handle. She first needed to figure out how this changed her plans. If they were her family, could she kill them? Manipulate them? She didn't know.
She had no allegiances to them, yet a part of her wanted to know more. She had always felt like a piece of her was missing, and perhaps this was why. Perhaps, she had somehow known intrinsically that she didn't belong in Ardentol. But at the same time, Ardentol was herhome.
She needed to think this through, but maybe when her head wasn't throbbing. She wasn't in the right mindset to make any rash decisions.
Right now, one night would not change her whole world.
Right now, all she wanted to do was forget and pretend as if it all had been one terrible nightmare. If it was a nightmare, it would make everything less complicated. Kallie had planned on killing the Pontians, enacting revenge against them for abducting her and threatening her father's rule. But did sharing her blood change that?
It should.
Still, an invisible thread tugged in her mind reminding her the Pontians were strangers. Only her relatives by blood, not by love. Not by time. They were not her family.
The two people who she had deemed family had been ripped from her. And bythem.
