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The art on the walls, the people with hollow eyes… I backed away, admiring my masterpiece, and handed the eye to Arin. “Now he can’t focus on us, so he can’t direct the power.”
Arin snatched Razak’s eye from my fingers, dropped it in the mud, and crushed it like a grape under his heel.
Draven gave Razak an experimental shake. “He’s out cold. I stabbed him in the back, only shallow, but there’s a chance he might bleed out.”
“We’re not that lucky,” Arin said.
“We need him alive. There’s a carriage waiting down the hill. Let’s get him inside.” I had to get the crown unlatched from his head somehow and take it to the others. With the crowns together, we’d know if we had a chance of ending this nightmare. We also needed Razak to reveal the whereabouts of Draven’s son.
Draven threw Razak over his shoulder, carried him down the track, then we unceremoniously shoved him into the carriage. I instructed the driver to take us back to the tower. He didn’t say a word about our royal cargo.
Arin sat beside me, glowering. I’d betrayed him and then set him up. Although having him hang from the tree had been Razak’s plan, mine had been the same. Kidnap Arin, bring him to the tree, and in the last moment, with Razak’s guard down, Draven would save us. He’d been more than willing to prove his loyalty. It had worked but may have cost me Arin’s love.
“You both knew?” Arin asked so quietly, I wasn’t sure if I’d dreamed it.
Draven glanced at me, seeking answers too. I closed my eyes and sighed. “I told Draven to watch for your disappearance. And when it happened, to visit the tree. He didn’t know why, or that you’d be… hanged.”
Arin turned his face away. “Damn you.”
“I don’t expect forgiveness.” There could be no forgiveness for the things I’d done.
Nobody replied, not with words. Draven gave me his sorry-eyes while Arin stared out of the window and dabbed at his red, raw neck, occasionally glancing down at Razak.
When we arrived back at the tower, Draven and I carried Razak up the steps. In the rain and darkness, nobody noticed. “The basement. Take the stairs, that way. He told me the crowns are there.”
Bendrik’s chambers hadn’t changed. The fireplaces were cold, which meant the room was cold too, and the pool had been emptied, with no sign of the bloody water or the man’s body I’d left behind. Arin didn’t know what I’d done here, and now was not the time to remind him of how vicious I could be.
Perhaps Arin’s cold shoulder was for the best. We were close to finishing this. We’d had our moment, our happy ending, and now it was time for him to prevail, survive, and make a new life.
Razak groaned, and Draven dropped his head, smacking it on the floor. “Gods damn,” the warlord grunted. “He startled me.”
I set my brother’s boots down and crouched beside his head, ignoring his groans. When Draven had dropped Razak, the crown had struck the tiled floor first and rung a note, almost as though the sound were deliberate. The musical note was familiar; I’d heard it before. In Justice.
The other crowns were here, placed on each corner of the empty pool—the black and red of War, the sapphire and silver of Justice, and the gold and pearl of Love. And Razak’s crown of Pain, fixed to his head like a stubborn limpet to a rock.
Arin approached behind me. “How do we get it off?” he said. “How do we unattach it?”
“Unattach his head?” Draven suggested.
“Not yet, we need him alive.”
I hovered my hands on either side of the crown, not yet grasping it. As soon as I did, its razor-like edges would cut into my hands. I could feel its thrum, the same as the note it had chimed, the same as the reverberating humming in Justice, when the crowns had been close.
“What happens after we have it?” Draven asked, circling around behind me too.
“We place them close together, touching, I think. Something like that.”
“You don’t know?” Arin asked.
“I saw some things below Justice—images, like those in War’s pyramid. The crowns, when they come together, unlock something. Their proximity opened the seal, and here, now, I think if we place them even closer, they may undo the damage, somehow. Perhaps?”
“That’s a great deal of unknowns, Lark,” Arin said. “What if it does the opposite? What if it makes him stronger?”
“That’s why I have to get it off him.”
My brother’s remaining eye twitched.
“He’s waking up,” Draven warned.
