“Why did you run, Odessa?” Gadriel asked quietly, watching me through the bars. His brow creased, like the question actually pained him. “How far did you get?”
I didn’t answer. I knew the questions weren’t real. Nothing I said would satisfy him.
Then Gadriel began to pace lazily.
“While I was traveling, word reached me from Hyrall. During the winter solstice, your squire reported you missing. Fear took hold of me then. Had someone hurt you?” He paused, letting the words hang. “I was on the verge of approving a memorandum. A cavalry, ready to ride out and bring you home. To save you from whatever had taken you.”
Then Gadriel turned to face me, disbelief in his eyes. “But then, something changed. I received a missive from Falhurst. News of a calamity.” His voice dipped. “At first, I was stunned. Were we being punished by the gods? What could cause such devastation?”
He shook his head, as if the answer still unnerved him. “Suddenly, the pieces began to fall into place. A break in clarity. It couldn’t be you. Not you. My favored. It had to be someone else, another woman who simply looked like you. You would never leave me. My loyal servant.”
Then Gadriel’s eyes darkened. Cold, stripped of anything soft.
“But ravens fly fast, and nothing stays hidden for long.”
There was a madness in his eyes, something feral and vile. He lunged toward the bars, slamming against the cage. I jerked back just in time. His hands hit hard against the iron, inches from where mine had been. The chill of the cage bit into my back. But I knew where Gadriel gripped, he could still feel the heat of where I’d touched. He stared at me, amber eyes locked.
A force hung in the air, heavy as iron, and I couldn’t tell if it came from him or the cage around me.
“I knew you were special, Odessa,” Gadriel uttered, voice low. “From the moment I saw you in that pathetic town.” His eyes searched my face. “You needed me. Someone to pull you out of the filth. And I did that.” A pause. “I gave you everything. Silk on your skin. Hyrall’s finest at your table. Wine that never ran dry. I let you forget where you came from.”
Gadriel’s voice darkened. “But you had secrets, didn’t you?”
He shook his head, jaw tight, and stepped back from the bars. Then, slowly, he began to pace again.
“You betrayed me.” He spoke calmly. “You kept truths from me. I was furious. Still, I did what was required of me in Torhiel. I fulfilled my duty. But you didn’t. You abandoned your post. You broke your oath. You betrayed the Crown. But that’s not what stung, not really.”
He stopped pacing, scoffing under his breath.
“No, what cut deepest was realizing I’d had a traitor under my roof. Adevil, hiding in plain sight. And still, I would have forgiven you. I could have broken it out of you. Peeled it away, piece by piece. Because you mattered that much, Odessa.”
Gadriel stepped closer. “And the truth is, I’ve had time to think. Do you want to know my little secret, Odessa?” He leaned in, voice almost a whisper. “I still can. I will break you. No matter what it costs.”
Gadriel had descended into a madness I hadn’t seen in him before. He knew I wasn’t like him. Knew I wasn’t of his world. A‘devil’, he said. But something in his voice told me he knew more than he let on. I saw it in his eyes.
He slipped a hand into his pocket and drew out a thin disc of obsidian. It was rough and unremarkable at first glance, but he turned it in his palm and the light caught on its surface. When it did, something in me went still.
I knew that shape. That texture. I’d seen it before. It surfaced fromthe depths of a memory like a body rising from water. It was Mag’s. The talisman she used on Raithe when we were just children. When I was still too young to understand what I was.
An stone strong enough to threaten a demigod.
And now Gadriel held it.
“Do you know what I had to do in order to get this?” he demanded quietly. “The covenants bound in blood? The bargains that I had to strike?”
He looked at me with something that resembled pity. It held a narcissistic righteousness. An obsessive affection.
“You haven’t learned what I’ve planned for us, Odessa. But when you do, something inside you will start to fracture.”
49
Oppressive.
It was the only word that fit, the only way to capture what I felt. I was oppressed in every possible sense. This cage was closing in on me. My lungs couldn’t quite fully expand. The position I was in was powerless. But worst of all, my divinity, my Wrath, had withdrawn to a place I couldn’t reach.
That stone, that talisman in Gadriel’s hand, was crushing it like a weight.
I understood now why Raithe ran.
