She’s wasting away …
Something fierce and feral rears up inside me.
I lean forward, forcing words past my gritted teeth. “How long?”
She blinks, releasing another tear she’s quick to dash away as she drops her stare to the tabletop. “I’m not certain. My nursemaids said I screamed nonstop the first few cycles after I was born, which they considered strange because the diadem was expected to weaken me. They suspected I could already hear the Creators and that I screamed to drown out their prattle, so they clipped an iron necklace on me. Said I immediately calmed.”
I swallow thickly.
I’d heard she was a restless youngling, but I put it down to the echo of trauma from her start in this world—a world I’ve grown to hate.
“But as I grew older, the silence itched at me in ways I can’t describe, and I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was missing something. When I was just shy of eighteen, I took the necklace off, and all I heard was … was wailing,” she rasps.
My throat dries.
“His fear, his sadness … It flowed through me like a stream. I felt like I was being ripped apart, piece by piece.” Her gaze flicks up to meet mine, and I think a spear through the heart might hurt less.
There’s so much pain in those big blue eyes …
“I put the necklace back on,” she says, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve. “Left it on for many, many phases. Because I was a coward.”
“You’re not a coward, Kyzari. Don’t ever speak about yourself like that.”
She cuts me a faux smile, then draws another drink of mead, almost draining the mug before she speaks again.
“I found courage eventually. Removed the necklace for the first time in over eighty phases. I listened to his sounds. Truly listened. I realized it wasn’t just screams and wails, but words,” she says, voice cracking as her wide eyes plead with me. “I began threading those words together, shaping his language in my mind, learning … too much.”
My gaze nips at the curtain, and I plant my arms on the table again.
There’s more, I know there is. She’s dancing around the fiery pip like she’s afraid to handle it.
“Keep going.”
There’s a moment of pause before she lifts her chin, and for the first time since she sat down at my table, I see her as someone with something to guard.
Something to lose.
“I’m telling you this not because I want your pity. Pity doesn’t help me any more than it helped him during those many phases I sat in silence.”
“Then why?”
“Because I want help to set him free.”
It’s like she reached across the table, swung her hand back and slapped me in the face.
“Impossible,” I growl. “It’ll kill you. The diadem can only be removed from a pulseless host.”
“I don’t intend to die, Uncle. There has to be another way. I just have to work it out.”
I’ve never wanted to shake someone so much in my life, my hands bunching into fists so tight my knuckles pop.
“And why do you want to do that?” I grind out. “The Aether Stone has been passed down for generations. Your mah wore it. Her mah before that. On and fucking on—”
“His name is Caelis,” she announces, her voice stained with a fierce imperial lilt. She pins me with a stare that cuts through flesh and bone. “And because I’ve fallen in love with him.”
A rumble boils deep inside my gut, scalding up my throat with such intense heat I swear my flesh peels off.
I know too well how malignant the roots of love can be. I’ve suffered from the same ailment for over an eon, and I’ll continue suffering until the dae I die.
Kyzari’s suffering, too—I can see it in her eyes. It’s taken her, and it won’t let go.
If my brother hadn’t kept her so sheltered from the world, perhaps she wouldn’t have fallen in love with a fucking stone. Perhaps she wouldn’t be trying to rid herself of a diadem that could very well take her life the moment it’s ripped free.
“There is no reality where this ends well,” I snarl through gritted teeth, and something shatters in her eyes.
“You can’t know that …”
“I know he’s in that thing for a reason. That your family line was blessed with the power to contain him for a reason.”
She rips her gaze from mine, stare plummeting to the table so fast she probably thinks I missed the stain of guilt clouding her eyes.
“What do you know?”