“Your plan,” he repeated. “I know better than to think you actually love the Venari brute, not to mention the display the past two days, your fraternizing with our eastern enemies… flirting and speaking to them as though you truly mean to be their allies. I do not dare to think you mean to truly bring the old Echelon together. And besides… You wouldn’t know what love was if it was thrown at your feet.”
“How would you know what love is? The only thing you’ve ever loved is yourself.”
“Wrong,” he argued upon his standing. “The only things I have ever loved are our giver mother and you. Everything I have ever done has been for you. Your safety.”
Aydra’s hands curled in on themselves. “Burning me is not love. Manipulating me is not love. You do not trust me. You sent an army after me because I went to help our allies to the south—”
“You betrayed me and all of your people to travel south for an orgy all because you thought I was being mean to you,” he mocked. A sarcastic smile rose on his face and he started crossing the space between them. “Ash told me about the two of you as soon as he and his company returned here. They told me of you with the Hunter, with the Honest commander… how you stuck so close to them throughout the battle, revealed your secrets, demanded the Dreamer company lay down their lives for a cause they’d been ordered to not have any part in.” He paused and towered over her. “So tell me, mydearsister. What is your plan?”
She stared at him, feeling the raven watching her from the top of one of the chairs, waiting on its orders to attack. But she didn’t give it.
She stood from the chair and walked deliberately around him, and she answered in the only way she knew might save her from war.
Lies.
“Patience, brother,” she replied slowly. “Allow them think they have a place at our table. Bide our time. And then eventually… once we have them where we want them, we strike. Hard. Take the southern realm as ours.” She started to pace around him. “Can you see it?” she whispered. “Hunters on their knees at our feet. A summer castle on Lovi’s shores. After we have the south, we can set our eyes on the eastern mountains. The Blackhands will never know our strength. They will not stand a chance. And when they are ours, we will only have one piece to conquer. Haerland’s own Martyrs would rather kill themselves than start a war. You will be king of all Haerland.” She rounded in front to him again and pressed her hands to his cheeks. “Arbina’s roots will freeze. The Nitesh will grant you immortality for your sparing her people. You, my brother, can be the King who never dies.”
“Immortality, you say?” he repeated, his gaze hazing over as he looked out the window.
“A gift for your generosity,” she whispered. “For the greatest and last King Haerland will ever know. Rhaifian Sunfire. Ruler of the Seven Realms. Conqueror of Ghosts. Defender of the Lost.” She pulled back and stared determinedly into his eyes.
“High King of Haerland.”
Her brother grasped her cheeks softly in his hands, smiling proudly, his pupils dilated with darkened glee. He leaned closer, his lips tickling hers, and she waited for the moment in which he would kiss her crudely as he’d done before.
And then he laughed under his breath.
“Lies.”
He yanked the roots of her hair and threw her backwards into the table. Her hip hit the edge of it, and she winced, her hair falling over her face.
“Why—whywould you lie to me? What are you up to that you would need to create such an elaborate false scheme?” he growled.
“Because I knew it was what you wanted to hear. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that you would actually believe me when I say I love him,” she blurted.
His brows raised. “You—” a chair flew away from his hand and crashed into the floor “you actually…lovehim?” he dared ask as he continued stepping towards her.
Aydra straightened herself up, her chest heaving. “I do.”
Blue fire pushed up from beneath his gambeson and onto his neck as his breaths became shorter and shorter. Black engulfed his fingertips and began splintering up his arms. Aydra felt her eyes fluttering back, and she heard the crows echoing in her ears.
“Stand down,” she warned him. “Don’t make me do this—”
“No, my sister,” he said as the black reached his eyes. “Don’t make me.”
And then he screamed.
Windows shattered. She flung herself to the floor into a ball and shielded her head in her hands. She heard the rapture of her crows dive into the room. She expected the flames to engulf her, to take her into their grasp and burn her alive.
But she never even felt the heat.
—The screech of her raven echoed in the room.
Her eyes opened just in time to see the blue flames consume its black body.
“NO!”
Black feathers fell in the air in front of her in slow motion. The flames recessed back into Rhaif’s body, but she barely heard him stepping backwards.
