“I have made sacrifices in the name of the kingdom that your father never could,” Galen says, righting himself enough to sit back on his heels. “Do you know what it is like to turn in a family member because you’ve found out they arehurtingthe kingdom?”
“Do you?” Nox asks, far too quietly.
“Yes. Years ago, my sister’s beloved husband, Simon, a renowned anatomist, was found to bekillingmages in order to experiment on their dead bodies. It wasIwho led the guards to his house when I discovered what he was doing.Iwho helped raise his son as if he was my own. Though Simon managed to disappear before he could be held accountable for his crimes, the fact remains that I took a husband away from my sister and a father away from my nephew in the name of doing what was right.You”—his gaze leaves mine to look at Nox—“could not make that choice. Neither could your father.”
“Are you comparing the woman I love to a murderer?”
“While the intent may be different, Your Majesty, the crime against the kingdom remains the same. Kallin understood this, and that is why he did what he did.”
“And what is that?” I ask, battling the urge to throw my knife at his head.
He sighs, the sound exaggerated. “When word came that King Dolian threatened to attack our border towns if the girl was not returned, Kallin knew he had to act. I do not know the details of the exchange, but in return for getting her back—for righting the wrongyoubrought on our people when you stole her from the Mortal Kingdom—the king promised to leave our most vulnerable townsalone.”
“And you believed him?” Nox asks, his voice raising with the question. “You returned one of your own back to a monster!”
“But she wasn’t one of our own!” he volleys back in a rare show of anger. “She had never steppedfootin this kingdom until you. That is not someoneworthy—”
“Worthy?Worthy? She is ten fucking times more worthy than anyone in this kingdom!”
“Galen, when you treated her, felt her magical signature, did youknowthat you were looking at the next Void queen?” I ask, pathetically hoping that his answer at least buys him a small amount of grace. Kallin has been convincing in his campaign against every perceived threat against our people, enough so that I could almost understand Galen’s betrayal.
Unfortunately, he all but guarantees that there is no coming back from this with his answer.
“I suspected,” he says slowly, no remorse showing on his face. “And I will tell you what Kallin told me when I brought my suspicions to him. Who is more dangerous: the enemy who proudly proclaims themselves as such or the one who hides behind pretty lies and manipulation, waiting for the right moment to strike?”
Nox growls as he leans forward, preparing to jump off the table, but I stop him with a hand at his arm.
“I believe you genuinely cared about her, Your Majesty. And I think that it blinded you to what the rest of us saw. She is not a queen of our people. Only a threat to the Crown.”
I shut my eyes as I squeeze Nox’s bicep, willing him not to act on the murderous thoughts I know must be dancing in his head. “What is actually on Nox’s back?” I ask, once again pointing my blade at him when he looks ready to protest. “The truth, Galen. It is your only saving grace now.”
“It is a lock,” he answers hesitantly, twisting his hands in front of him. “How do you control the man with the single strongest source of power besides the Continent itself? You smother their access to said power, and then you make it so that they don’t care that they’ve lost it.”
The shock of his confession is enough to draw a curse from me. Galen says nothing more, ushering in a silence that feels like a fuse waiting to be lit.Gods above, this hasn’t been about Nox healing. They’ve purposefully been blocking him from his magic this entire time.And then you make it so that they don’t care.The medicine—it really had been numbing his mind. His emotions and feelings.
“Bahira.”
The plea in Nox’s voice as he says my namegutsme. I nod as he stiffly turns back around, and I press my hand to his back while I angle the blade over that rough bump beneath his skin, right at the center of those dark lines. All this time.All this fucking time.
“If you do this, there is no going back,” Galen rasps, sadness and fear mingling in the threat. “The council will see to it that you will never remain king. They will turn our people against you.”
With the tip of my blade against Nox’s skin, I cut into it.
“Then so be it,” Nox responds, body tensing as the light gray skin over the hard mass splits beneath my knife, blood dripping as I cut through layers of skin and even muscle to reveal somethingblack. Carefully, with my brother’s labored breaths filling the room, I tilt the knife back, forcing the item to the surface where I grab it with my other hand.
And then Nox begins to scream.
Chapter One Hundred and Ten: Nox
MybackburnsasBahira digs into it with her small blade, but I keep my eyes pinned on the man I thought was a friend. Who I exposed Rhea to because I assumed he could be trusted. Galen had betrayed more than just my trust; he betrayed everything he ever promised to our family as our chosen healer. And despite his poor attempts at excusing his behavior, there is nothing that can change the fact that he had a hand in throwing Rhea back into a cage.
It’s an unforgivable act.
“I’m sorry,” Bahira whispers, my jaw clenching tightly as she pushes the blade in deeper, the pressure building until whatever is inside of me—thislockas Galen called it—begins to move. The pain morphs into something all-consuming, an unbearable force that explodes throughout my body, radiating into my muscles and bones and blood until I’m knocked off-kilter, falling into a familiar place as black rolls in along the edges of my vision.
My chest rises with the heave of a strained breath, and I find myself standing in the Middle.
Goosebumps break out over my arms, a phantom wind carrying glittering stardust winds along my skin and weaving into my hair. Lifting my hands in front of me, I stare at the deep purple that pulses within me, changing me from a man to somethingmoreagain. Magic rushes from that deep well, a lid blown off after weeks and weeks of suffocation. And as it fills me with everything I’ve been missing, everything I’ve yearned to have again, it also wipes away the pain I’ve been shackled to. I’m stripped bare of it, and in a brief flash of panic, I forget what it is to be without that pain. What it is to beme.
