AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But if Finley’s magic is pure, sweet sunlight, thenthisaura is heat from the molten core that lurks deep beneath the surface of the earth.
As we reach the bottom of the stairs, Ansar stumbles. He utters a vicious Lukirian street-curse and presses his hand against the wall, steadying himself.
Whendid my sheltered-in-the-palace little brother learn to speak like that?
As the thought drifts through my mind, I’m already at Ansar’s side, my blade at his neck. His curious scent—incense and metal and blood—fills my nostrils. “What’s happening, little brother?”
Ansar grits his teeth. “A minor disturbance. It’snothing.You want to see the dryad, or not?”
I sheath my blade. “Lead the way.”
His right hand hangs by his side, entangled in glowing crimson threads. His left is tucked inside his robes.
Howcurious.
I can’t help but wonder if half his gambit has already failed.
Ansar shoots me a baleful look and pads down the steps, reaching the bottom, where a large, circular chamber with walls of roughly hewn stone leads to a dark tunnel beyond.
A thought occurs to me.
What if I just cut off his hand at the wrist and severed those red threads?
Would it free her, or harm her?
It’s tempting.
It would be so easy.
Tooeasy.
I can’t risk it.
So I continue to follow him as he heads down a pitch-black tunnel, and he must have the same ability to see in the dark as I do, for there are no gas lamps or torches down here, and he doesn’t seem perturbed in the slightest.
The aura I felt before; molten heat, as eternal as the world itself, yet dampened and suppressed, grows ever stronger.
Can Ansar feel it too?
If he does, he gives no indication.
How can he act so arrogant; so indifferent? And yet I sense nothing from him—not anger, nor malevolence.
No remorse.
“What’s wrong with you?” I growl, unable to contain my dark thoughts any longer.
“Me?” My half-brother lets out a bitter chuckle. “You, the Golden Child in Shining Armor, are wondering why I, the second son that father barely acknowledged, would lower myself to the corruption of necromancy? You have no idea how the world is forordinarypeople, Corvan.”
No idea?I resist a sudden urge to yank him backwards by his hair and wrap my hands around his neck. “Ordinary? You’re a Duthriss, Ansar.”Raised in privilege and wealth. Wanting for nothing.
He thinks I’ve been handed everything on a golden platter.
He has no fucking idea.
“I’m more Talavarra than Duthriss,” Ansar hisses. “Father was never interested in me. Never wanted me to get within striking distance ofhisthrone, because he feared grandfather would use me as a proxy. The only reason he married my mother was to appease grandfather in the first place—so he would never try and take the throne. No,Valdonwasn’t interested me at all. He might have been, had he known that the dead have spoken to me for as long as I can remember.”
This is news to me. “Just because you have a talent, it doesn’t mean you should use it likethis.”
