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“You were never meant to know. Not before I could—”
“Oh, they were never meant to know?” Melany feigned surprise. “Yes, I suppose the Cleaver wouldn’t be inclined to say anything at all. It must have been hard to hold much of a conversation as he carved out his son’s back with a leather strap.”
“Kalen. You don’t understand. I was trying to find a way...” the words rose swiftly and then curdled in my mouth. I swallowed the sour taste. I must go on. “I was trying to make you immortal.”
Kalen’s ire melted, pulling himself from his shock just long enough to morph into a look of incredulity. It was impossible to him, and I could hear the thoughts racing behind his eyes.She is a liar.Stay mortal.The dagger was proof enough. You are meant to live and die and hate me for it.She never loved me.I killed my Father because she is a liar.
“Your mother’s magic,” I explained. “It comes from a line of power old enough to call upon the Arts. We were working on a way to separate the Light from myself, as Mother once did. I could not Yield you. I could not be the master of your soul. I wanted you to have your own will. I wanted to share the Light with you. Everything. I wanted to share everything with you, you must believe me.”
His stoic features twisted hideously then, all of the contempt and rage he had mustered against me turning in on himself.Whatever had led him to finally kill the Cleaver, he could have never understood the repercussions. Because I’d lied to him, I’d let him believe I would never choose him.
“She is his Yield.” My voice cracked. “I couldn’t do it without him.”
Melany giggled. “What did you promise the fool?”
I sniffed, straightening myself. “A place in my court. The Cleaver was to be General of Leoth.”
Melany smirked, not surprised in the least. She knew that I loved Kalen and she knew the lengths I would go to keep him by my side.
“You didn’t want to take Kalen’s life and make him a slave to you, so you sought out a loophole,” she surmised. “One that would make you a thief and a traitor to your own family.” Shelooked to Kalen with a smile that turned my insides cold. “We are alike, you know. Both of our fathers never loved us. My Faders have told me your brothers always treated you cruelly. My siblings were no better. If she’d succeeded you would have only been trading one crooked family in for another. Thank the Mother it was not so.”
Kalen said nothing. He just looked at the floor, hopeless, destroyed, ruined.
I had ruined him.
“I didn’t want to watch you die,” I choked. A tear slid down my face, scalding the skin beneath it.
“And instead, sister, you will watch what this treachery amounts to for me. Nothing.”
My twin’s eyes flickered then with an indisputable display of will. Immediately, I knew what she was making way to do. The muscle in my thighs bunched tightly preparing to spring forward and stop what only I knew was coming. But my body was halted by the warm strength of my father’s arms.
My head whipped around and I knew the look I gave him was every bit of hatred as it was betrayal. Thesion’s wrinkled brow folded in on itself in sorrow. He bowed his head, ashamed. I am sorry, my Light,he whispered into my mind.You must let him go.
I had a thought that Time was turning slowly, though I knew Gabriel lay crippled on the floor. A horrible, strangled gurgle sounded in my ear.
I didn’t want to watch you die.
When I turned back towards my sister and her bridegroom, it was too late. Kalen’s blue eyes were wide with shock and then empty by the time his kneecaps shattered against the volcanic floors. Sheer joy gleamed bright upon my sister’s face. Brighter than her blade, now sheathed in his mortal blood. The cup of poison that had been procured for the Rite clanged against theground, like a bell of death, slipping from the ceremonial table and spilling its unconsumed contents out into a pool of blood at Melany’s feet. I stared at the liquid, a swirl of garnet and gold. Death and Life. All of it was the same. All of it was for nothing.Nothing, Melany’s words echoed.
Then I looked up and wished I had not. The jagged wound at Kalen’s jaw gaped open wide. The cut was so deep that it had nearly beheaded him. No matter how much I wished to pull my eyes from the horror of it, I couldn’t. It was an endless chasm and it swallowed me whole. My worst fear lay in front of me, the fear I thought would surely be my undoing. Yet, I had to see it to know that it was real.
Kalen was dead.
In the dark of that moment, all I felt was immeasurable grief, and the unbridled heat of Light as it ruptured from my skin, cindering my father to ash.
Ione was wailing. Throughthe ringing in my ears, I could still hear it clearly. I turned to look at my sister, eyes puffed and blubbering, a never-ending scream streaming from her open mouth. She held my father’s ashes in her hands, tightly balled fists with dark smudges of a man once immortal. Some of that ash drifted in the air around us.
Gabriel was exactly where I’d left him when the Light overcame me, lying mutilated on the floor, unconscious and unable to heal himself. Dario was missing, and Melany sat upon her throne, the true Queen of Shadows, watching it all with a look of marvelous wonder gleaming in her smoked eyes.
I would have killed her then. I should have killed her then, but when I finally spotted Kalen lying on the Light-burned stone, everything else fell away.
I crawled to him, every one of my muscles still seared with white flame. Pulling his body to my lap, I held his head to his neck and sobbed. Blue eyes remained open. I couldn’t force myself to close them, no matter how it haunted me. I couldn’t do anything but hold him and cry.
The sounds of my grief put a stop to my sister’s. And as she hauled herself from the soot of our Father, and sprinted to kill me, I murmured into my love’s ear, “I will meet you in the shadows. Wherever you are, I will find you there.”
I felt the dark cloud roll in and nearly begged for the sweet relief of my death. Melany shrouded the three of us from Ione’s sight.
“Melany,” Ione screamed from outside the twisting winds ofshadow. “Melany, I will kill her for this. Do you hear me? She will die by my hand for this. By my hand!”
