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I’d delivered Anaria into a life of hell.
I was responsible for every cruelty she’d endured, every lash she’d taken as a slave. I should have stayed to make sure she was safe, I should have…I should have fucking protected her.
And I didn’t.
The revelation left me reeling, while I watched Anaria gently lead the girl away, when I should have driven my knife straight through the Reaper’s heart and been done with it.
But the Oracle’s warning was a gift, if we played this right.
We could use the Reaper against Solok, against the Fae King.
Use her to set a trap, to mislead Solok’s spies on our plan of attack, to confuse the Fae King’s forces and create chaos on the battle field. Yes, the Reaper was something I intended to exploit, before I killed the foul thing.
“What in the name of fuck is that?” Tavion’s nostrils flared as he scented Ember, staring after her like a two headed desert serpent.
“A Soul Reaper, wearing the skin of Anaria’s best friend.” I concentrated on this new threat, instead of the fact I’d somehow developed feelings for that slip of a girl I’d been determined to hate.
“I was just getting ready to explain our newest problem, when Raz lost his fucking mind.”
Not that I blamed him.
I wanted to beat myself to a pulp, knowing what Anaria’s fate had been all these years. And now I’d have to get him out of prison.Again.
Have to grovel to the king and endure Crux and Lyrae’s snide bullshite remarks, but I’d do it. Then I’d fucking make him understand it hadn’t been me, or even Julian who’d condemned Anaria to eighteen years of misery.
Fucking Oracle.
To make Anaria a slave, just to show her how unfair the world was…even I didn’t think the old crone was that cruel.
Once Raz was free and we’d fought this out between us, we’d protect her. I sure a fuck hadn’t been around then…but I was here now, and I’d shield her from every horror this place threw at her.
“Is it true?” Tavion whirled to me, his fine coat threaded with gold, the ruby at the end of his pommel glittering. From the looks of it, Tavion was spending his reward as fast as he could, which was no surprise, given his lack of self-control. It wouldn’t be long before he was back in debt and at the end of a hangman’s noose.
Only this time, his brother wouldn’t be there to save him.
“Was she really a slave?”
I’d known Tavion a long time. Not as long as Julian, but long enough to know the bastard didn’t give a good godsdamn about anyone but himself, now that his brother was gone. As for me, I hadn’t given a shite what he believed. All I’d wanted Tavion to do was smuggle Anaria safely out of Tempeste, but now…
Now I wondered if I could trust the Oracle’s vision, the one I’d clung to for a hundred years without question. She hadn’t foreseen the Reaper, hadn’t told us Anaria was raised a slave and I wondered what else she’d withheld.
I wondered, because this was not our first rebellion.
It was our second.
A hundred years ago, tired of millennia of war, tired of famine and hunger, some of us rose up against the Shadow King. It didn’t last long before we were put down quickly and brutally.
After our failed coup, while Raz was waiting to have his head spiked on the front of the Keep, Julian was given a choice for his role in the rebellion.
Kill the Fae King, or die with the rest of the traitors.
He’d left for Tempeste that night and returned with a staggeringly absurd story.
The Oracle, he claimed, had revealed a prophecy.
That while our initial coup failed, in another hundred years, our second rebellion would succeed. With her help.
She’d explained that as long as the Fae King controlled the ancestral magic and the Shadow King controlled his vast armies, the two brothers would be locked in an eternal battle that no mortal could ever change the course of.
