Heads turn in my direction. My mother recovers first. “Kaelen?”
Clearing my throat, I glance at Eres. His eyes are bright. “Veyr should do it. It’s more reliable.”
“It relies on his word being true,” Nythen barks. “I strongly advise against it.”
“He’s still a member of this Council.” This fractured, broken Council. Fuck, I don’t even recognize the words coming out of my mouth. I don’t look at Darian. “If he’s not to be trusted, he shouldn’t be here.”
Trusting him has never been the issue, no matter what poison I spew at him.
“Quite right,” Eres murmurs. “This is an acceptable compromise.”
“Very well,” my mother inclines her head. “Darian. If you would be so kind.”
Lyra
My eyes flicker between the queen and the male who stands, offering a small smile in my direction. Darian straightens the cuffs of his linen shirt before approaching me, and I take a step back before steeling myself. “What do you intend to do?”
His head tilts to the side. “Does it matter?”
Yes.
Nythen, I could have coped with. By all accounts, the spymaster of the Darkwielders relies on delivering pain as a method of extracting information, and my training made sure that I could take whatever he attempted.
Darian is an unknown. I step back once more as his hands raise, only to come to a stop. Looking down, I take in the shadows that wind around my ankles. They thread in and out, creating a lock that continues up my body, pinning my hands to my sides until I cannot move.
Twisting my head, I take in the smirking gaze of Kaelen Duskbane. He raises a dark brow at me. “Going somewhere?”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Darian murmurs. My head whips back to him. His palms are raised in front of him, but he’s stopped. “Only if you fight it. I need to touch your face.”
My breathing stutters at the realization. “I didn’t think there were any of you left.”
Walker.
His face tightens, as if I’ve struck at some internal wound, but he only steps closer, not responding.
For a moment, fear floods my mouth, filling it with bile before I swallow it down and close my eyes. This is the first test, likely of many.
I just didn’t expect to face adreamwalker.Torture would have been easier. “Just… I need a moment.”
Darian pauses, the pads of his fingers hovering barely an inch from my temples. Closing my eyes, I take a breath, and then another. I force away the room I’m standing in, the shadow-carved faces watching me with hatred and suspicion burning in their dark eyes.
I force it all down. Every memory. Every piece of me gets shoved far, far down, into the box. Any thoughts of my father, of Reena, of anything that might identify me as a threat.
I was never very good at this. But now my life depends on it.
Reena’s life depends on it.
My breathing steadies. Keeping my eyes closed, I take a few more breaths and nod in silent permission.
Darian’s fingers are cool as they brush my temple before moving on. He cradles the back of my head, his thumbs presenting the barest pressure against my skin. Trapping me in a cage made of his hands. The pressure deepens, almost to the point of pain.
I have to give him something. Something that will stop him seeing the truth, something that will offer fractured evidence that the story I’ve told them is true.
It’s not all lies.
I start to tremble beneath the silence as I let those memories out, push them to the surface, spill them like oil across my mind for Darian to catch.
Cindral.
