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His clothes hung off him, so much so that I almost didn’t recognize the prince beneath the filth. But there was no mistaking the crown atop his head, purple and black and bristled with jagged edges. Pain’s crown.
“Are you a king now?” I asked coolly, while my thoughts raced to absorb the scene we’d walked into.
Blood streaked his pale face. But I didn’t care about him, or Queen Soleil, on her hands and knees, as though bowing to Razak. I cared only for Lark, standing behind his brother’s right shoulder, like his shadow.
Lark didn’t move, didn’t look up, didn’t acknowledge anyone. He stared at a point far away.
“Ah, of course they do not listen,” Razak tutted and gestured at the inconvenience of having us interrupt him. “I said they wouldn’t, brother.” He spared Lark a glance before his gaze snapped back to me.
I kept moving, kept reading everything we’d interrupted. A veil obscured the kneeling queen’s face, hiding her expression, but her shoulders heaved from sobbing. And the strange, bone-tremblingly deep hum grew louder now.
Razak pointed a finger at me. “You should not be here, Love’s prince.” He smirked, clearly delighted I was. “Let it be known, I did try and send you away, to save you. But now you’ve come, you may witness my rising.”
As I gave him a wide berth, the bench behind him slowly came into sight. On it, laid out in a neat row, sat the three remaining crowns, including War’s. Had Draven handed it over, after claiming he’d had it? I threw a glare back at the warlord, but he was too consumed with marching toward Razak.
“How?” Draven snarled. His face fell, and Razak’s grin grew.
“You’re entirely too predictable, Draven,” Razak said. “Keeping War’s crown under your bed? Really?”
Draven growled and lurched. I lunged and blocked him, holding him back, then shook my head. Something was very wrong here—more than the obvious—something I couldn’t explain. A bone-chilling cold misted our breath and the chill of it tightened my skin. And the noise, it went on, with no beat, no pause, just an endless drone.
The walls gave a shudder, and with it, Razak’s smile grew. “Yes.” Pain’s prince laughed. “Oh yes! I’m going to bring it all down.”
Lark remained unmoving, lifeless and empty, with his head bowed and his dark hair curtaining his eyes. He usually lit up every room he walked into. But his stillness didn’t seem real, as though my eyes lied, and he wasn’t here at all.
“Lark?” I asked.
He didn’t respond. “Lark?” Again, this time without hiding my fearful quiver.
Razak pretended to finally notice his brother and barked a startling laugh. “It seemsLarkis no longer with us.”
Vicious hate and fear muddied my mind, trying to unbalance me all over again. But I couldn’t lose here, not to Razak. “What have you done to him?”
“Saved him.” Razak rolled his hand. “He was lost in the dark. Dear Soleil and I found him, and with him, the seal he’d broken and the power my father sought. The font of all desire.”
Were we too late, after everything we’d been through? Was Razak about to become a god?
“You’re just a man in a crown, Razak.”
He laughed. “My father wished to bring my mother back from the dead. She hailed from your court, the wretched Court of Love.” Razak hiccupped a laugh. “Did you know?”
“What?” His mother wasn’t from Pain?
“You knew, you read the letters. He blamedmefor her death.Love,” he scoffed. “So tragically pathetic.”
But I hadn’t read all the letters, just the few Lark had grabbed. “I don’t understand.”
He snorted. “Of course you don’t. Nobodyunderstands. Everyone has it wrong. Except me. The dead are dead, as Zayan discovered when he plucked my crown from our father’s desiccated corpse.” Razak dipped his chin and pointed at the crown fixed on his head. “My mother’s sickness meant she was far beyond saving, but Father would not accept it. He believed he could bring her back using the secret Justice kept from us all. He found it, you see, knowledge of their secret, deep in our vault. The evidence is all around for those who know to look, despite Justice’s efforts to erase it.”
“Razak, stop this—”
“Had they not hidden this vital piece of history, he’d have known you can’t bring the living back from the clutches of death. Desire is not the same as resurrection.” He grinned. “But I know its truth… He left me with scraps of information, pieces of a puzzle it took years to solve.”
Razak stepped from the podium, enjoying his performance. Lark remained standing, unresponsive. I could feel his absence, even as I looked right at him. The man there was as empty as a reflection.
“Our souls, the parts of us that make us feel,” Razak continued, clutching his hand to his heart as though he had one. “The essence of desire, of hate, of all the things that make us living creatures—thatforce is eternal, and that is the power and the truth Justice tried to hide. Isn’t that right, Soleil?” Razak snatched a fistful of the kneeling queen’s hair and yanked her head up.
He tore the veil away and tossed it into the air, where it fluttered back down to the floor beside the pair. With the veil gone, he’d taken her mystique too, turning her from a faceless judge into a mere woman, on her knees and beaten.
