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He nodded. “For her.”
“I know,” Keres said softly.
The binding officially began. Fordham tying himself to Keres. A Daijan bond. This time, Kerrigan could feel the air shift. Not a trick of Keres’s magic, but the reality of what was happening between them. Fordham stood stoic as the golden light in his hands held him in place. His eyes never left Keres as his world shifted. She wondered what he saw in her eyes as they’d gone the same precise color and shape of his thunderclouds. It was a few seconds as the world seemed to stop all around them, just in the way it had for Kerrigan, and then it was broken.
Fordham threw down the golden light onto the arena floor. He let the sand and wind kick up, as it had for her, but instead of him pretending to settle it, as Kerrigan had, she could feel the shift in him all at once. His shadows weren’t mere illusions. They didn’t wrap around him and threaten to take him from this space to another nearby. The immensity of it wafted off of him now. As if he had the full command of the shadows and the shadow world beyond.
The arena filled with shadows as darkness crept in wholly. They galloped across the sand and roared up to meet the crowd until there was only darkness and screams. Oh, the terrifying tyrant he would have been had he had this power when his father was in charge. Before he ever met Kerrigan or fell in love or realized the depths of the wrongness of his world.
Black flooded his irises until there was nothing but midnight from edge to edge. Until her Fordham disappeared entirely into the darkness.
“Good,” Keres said with pleasure. “Now stop.”
And just like that, the shadows were gone. Not sucked back into him, but simply gone. Because these powers came with a tether. He flexed for those powers, but the most he could do was the small amount of shadow magic he’d always had. They writhed around his body, aching to encompass the entire world again.
“Your victors!” Keres announced.
The crowd was still rumbling their approval as Keres took one unsteady look at Vulsan, who was pulsing with fury from his box, and then she strode across the sand with her two new Daijan in tow.
35
The Secret
Keres didn’t stop moving until they were through the arena, past the gladiators quarters, and into a private study that could only be accessed through a hidden staircase. She closed and locked the door behind them. Her face ashen as she did so.
“We only have a few minutes until he arrives,” she warned them.
“Who?”
But she didn’t respond. Tears came to her eyes, flowing freely down her cheeks. She scooped Kerrigan up into her arms and began to sob.
“My child. My baby. Oh, look at you. Just look at you.”
Kerrigan froze, remembering the reunion she’d so desperately wanted with a mother she’d feared dead for so long. Somehow, none of it was right. None of it how it should be.
Keres must have realized and pulled back, swiping at her eyes. “My apologies. You don’t know me for who I am. Your father likely never told you. I know how you ended up here. I saw what happened, but still only parts of it. I’m sure you never expected to find me like this.”
“No,” Kerrigan agreed. “But I hoped.”
Keres’s gaze shot to her. “You did?”
“I’d thought you were dead for eighteen years. When Kivrin told me you were alive …”
“Kivrin,” Keres said with a deep moan of agony. “And you don’t know if he lives.”
“I don’t.”
“He’s strong,” Keres said. She was speaking to herself, as if to justify something. And Kerrigan could see it all over her. “You loved him.”
“I did,” she said softly. “Do, to be honest. I’ve known no one like him in my life. It was why I had to release him to return home. It’s why I gave him you.” She shook her head. “We will have time for such discussions later. He’s coming, and he’s not going to be happy that I defied him. I have that power in public, but in private …”
A pounding began on the door. The handle rattled. Kerrigan glanced at Keres, and she saw real fright there.
“Keres, open the damn door.”
She shuddered at the sound of his voice. Her eyes slipped to Kerrigan. “I had to come when I heard that it might be you. I had to. Just know that.”
Kerrigan didn’t know what to say. Why did her mother seem so frightened of her husband when she had seemed so in control? Of course she’d hidden Kerrigan because Vulsan wanted her dead, but Kerrigan had never considered what that would be like for Keres. Not until the door burst open, Vulsan shattering the small lock that had given them their five minutes of privacy.
