“Apparently not,” I muttered. The wound from my father’s disapproval was still too raw, too painful. I shot Teller a rueful smile. “I’ll be grateful for the day when you’re done with school and you can join my Council.”
He sat up straighter. “You would make me an advisor?”
Lily gasped and grabbed his arm. “Oh Teller, that would be perfect for you! You would be such a good advisor. You always know everything, and you never share secrets. Oh, and then you could come live here in the palace!” Her cheeks turned bright pink. “If… if you want to, that is.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. Our house in Mortal City… that’s my home.” Lily looked a little crestfallen, and Teller reached out to clasp her hand as a matching blush rose to his face. “It would be nice to not have to sneak in to see you, though.”
“How do you get him in here, anyway?” I asked Lily. “I should probably have my High General executed for his dreadful security.”
Lily grinned at my empty threat. “There’s an underground canal that runs to a boat dock under the palace. The door to it is just across the hall from the entrance to the dungeon.”
Memories of my failed Guardians mission sprang to mind. I had been attempting to sneak into that same secret dock when Luther had trapped me, effectively ending my tenure as palace healer.
“And there are no guards along this canal?” I asked.
“There’s two of them, but they’re easy to distract.”
“Too easy,” Teller agreed, shooting me a displeased look. “Half the time, they’re asleep.”
“But the door in the canal has a bloodlock,” Lily added. “It only opens for royal family blood.”
“Aren’t there hundreds of Corbois?” I asked. “If any of them can open it, that doesn’t seem very secure.”
“Not anymore. The Bellators are the real royal family now, so only you and Teller can unlock it.”
My gaze darted to Teller as a sudden realization punched the breath from my lungs.
“And that works?” I gasped. “You’re sure of it, Teller? Your blood opens that door?”
He nodded, and my heart felt as if it might claw its way right out of my chest. Ever since being revealed as a Descended, a tiny part of me had wondered if my mother was really my mother. We shared so many features and mannerisms, but her secrets had infected everything in my life with doubt, and my mind had succumbed to wild speculation about the real origin of my birth.
But if the bloodlocks opened for Teller, it could only mean one thing—my mother’s blood ran in both our veins.
And while I didn’t need that to consider Auralie my mother or Teller my brother—just like I didn’t need a blood tie to consider Andrei my father—the comfort of knowing that at least this one piece of my identity had not been a lie…
Gods, it meant everything to me.
I was moments away from tackling Teller to the floor in a weepy embrace when the door to the dungeon flew open with a heavy bang.
“Your Majesty?” a voice cried out from the top of the stairs. “Are you down there?”
“I’m here,” I answered.
Frenzied footsteps echoed through the cavernous space as Alixe rushed inside. Her eyes had grown too large, her face deathly pale.
“I need you to come with me, Your Majesty. There’s been a… an incident.”
I shot to my feet. “Where? What happened?”
“Come, I’ll take you there now.”
I glanced at my brother. “Teller, go home immediately.”
“No!” Alixe said.
Too quickly.
Too forcefully.
I stared at her as dread began to crystallize in my veins. My bones felt leaden and heavy, the heft of them holding me in place and begging me not to go with her. Not to learn anything more.
Muscles tightened on Alixe’s throat. “Your brother should stay at the palace. I can get him to your suite unseen.”
My mind and my body pulled at the rope that bound them sanely together, the cords unravelling and snapping under the strain. I watched numbly as Teller disappeared with the help of Alixe’s illusion magic, then felt my legs carry me up the stairs and through the palace to my chambers as if controlled by someone else.
“Where is Luther?” I choked out. “Is it… is he…？”
“He’s there now. He sent me to get you.”
For one singular heartbeat, the anvil on my chest lifted, and I could breathe again.
“What happened, Alixe?”
She looked across her shoulder at the empty air, where only the quiet breathing that followed us signaled Teller’s masked presence, then looked back at me.
The horrible pity in her eyes was the swing of an axe. It severed the last frayed thread that held me together. My last hope that my world had not just shifted in a way I could never put back.
Once we reached the royal chambers, Alixe gave orders for Lily and Teller to stay in my suite and for Perthe not to let anyone in or out until we returned. Lily nodded emphatically and clutched Teller’s hand to her chest, while Teller watched with a look of confusion.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his eyes jumping between Alixe and me. “Was there another attack?”
I knew if I opened my mouth, it wouldn’t be words that came out, so I only nodded.
I lied.
The truth would come soon enough.
Sorae was frantically pacing on her perch and letting out scratchy, pained sounds I had never heard from her before. She sounded as if she were being ripped apart from the inside out and holding herself together through sheer force of will.
Alixe put a gentle hand on my back and nudged me toward her. “We’ll get there faster if we take Sorae.”
I obeyed and mutely climbed onto my gryvern’s back. Alixe whispered something in Sorae’s ear, then mounted behind me and clutched me tight against her as we launched into the sky.
My heart was no longer racing. Instead, it had slowed to the pulse of Sorae’s flight, each wingbeat reverberating with an ominous thump in my chest. My blood was slowing, my thoughts were slowing, time was slowing.
I wanted it to stop.
I begged it to stop.
But when that beautiful, modest cottage on the marsh came into view—that home so full of laughter and memories, so rich with loyalty and unbreakable bonds, the one place in the world where I had always, always felt loved—something in me fissured wide open.
Sorae landed with a smooth gait on the front lawn, the same place where my father and I had spent hundreds of nights sparring.
Luther stood in the open front door. His dark hair had spilled free from its usual restraint, now shielding his face like a veil. His arms were quivering and soaked in blood to his elbows as he stared at a headless body that lay at his feet.
Scattered around the clearing, I spotted two more bodies, their heads resting too far from their necks.
“No,” I whimpered. “No, please, no…”
The word kept falling from my lips as I broke into a sprint toward the door, my eyes fixed on the body at Luther’s feet. But as I stumbled on the front steps and crashed to my knees, I saw that the corpse wore the uniform of the Royal Guard.
I scrambled to my feet and tried to force my way past Luther. He grabbed me by the shoulders.