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“No?” His head tilted to the side. “Wanting to rebuild this world into something better isn’t healthy?”
“Not when you trick me into methods I wouldn’t normally agree with.”
“And yet you sought me out when you were defeated by your father,” Cirel said, his liquid silver eye shimmering with loathing. “Why do you think you ended up in that Void temple—ourmeeting place? It wasn’t a coincidence. It wasn’tmydoing. It was because you wanted my help. It was because youneededme. That has always been the case.”
Her magic exploded, the detonation shattering a vase on the mantel of the fireplace. Ceramic pieces rained down on the stone floor. “I am tired of your blatant lies!”
Cirel rose in a too-quick movement. “As to be expected from a Vozarian. You are quick to discard truths. What’s next, Tenah? You going to murder my followers too? Join in with your mad father and slaughter innocents?”
Her clenched knuckles turned bone white as her entire body quaked with hatred.
The door to the sitting room burst open. A Scourge warrior clad in heavy, black armor entered. “My king. The rift is waning. It won’t hold for our armies much longer.”
Cirel kept his eyes on her. He spun his winged ring around his index finger. “It will be dealt with. Won’t it, Tenah?”
Chapter40
Tenah
Tenah walked the barren halls in union with the King of Adra.
When they reached a set of black doors from which she could hear strange music and a murmur of indecipherable voices, Cirel spun around to face her, invading her space. Momentarily shocked by his intensity, she licked her lips. Her eyes flitted around the hall for an escape. A window. Something she could use as a weapon.Anything.
Cirel had always been captivating in a way that wasn’t normal. He didn’t just draw attention—he enslaved it. Even now, she wrestled to avoid the magnetism of his beauty and dull the terror his haunting eyes summoned within her.
She had been caught up in him years ago, that much she could admit. But she no longer wanted to play these warped games with him.
His hand touched her jaw softly, guiding her back to meet his gaze. “We dreamed of a kingdom reborn from ashes. Does that really mean nothing to you?”
His mood swings were giving her whiplash. An effect of his toxins? Or had he always been difficult to predict?
“They were dreams of troubled children. Nothing more,” Tenah whispered, sadness welling in her hollowed chest.
Ire flashed over his face. Cirel righted this with a tight smile and drew back. “Dreams. Of course.”
He pushed open a door, waving her into a grand, windowless room wallpapered in dark blue with silver whorls like a frothing ocean. Hundreds of shadows and humanoids unfamiliar to her bowed when she entered.
It was unsettling to say the least.
From one kingdom where her reputation was tarnished to another, where they seemed to worship her as if she belonged here. Intheirrebellion. With her marked hands and wild appearance, she did fit in.
She looked back at Cirel. “What have you told them?”
He smiled, dipping his head to a ring of shadows with twisted branches for limbs. “That you are the bringer of a new world order. A goddess.”
Tenah bit down on her tongue, eager for the pain to distract her from the desire to lash out at him in public.
Years ago, this might have been her path. Before fear had consumed her. It wasn’t so farfetched to imagine she would have sided with her only friend.
But Chaos had driven Cirel too far off the edge of reason. And now, witnessing the reverence in the gazes of the beings surrounding them, winged and horned and taloned alike, she knew there was no killing him. For if he died, his kingdom would avenge him, just as they sought to avenge his perished mother.
Tenah stalked him through the crowds. “You wage wars and host parties simultaneously?”
Cirel ignored the scathing look she bored into him. He was too busy drinking in the respect his subjects offered him. Only when he ushered her through another door into a cramped stairwell did he shed his kingly duties.
She followed him up and up the spiral stairs, high enough that the wind howled like an eidolon through the gaps in the stones. They reached a landing where a giant hole had been punched out, revealing the churning, endless storm that blanketed Adra. A wave of coppery toxins struck her, and Tenah scrunched her nose.
“How do you live among it?” she asked.
