“Aye. Not so much the Mighty behind these bloody bars. But I once was. Is that enough for you?”
More than enough. He had no idea. He released my hand, but I still stepped closer to his cell, afraid the surrounding prisoners would keep me from hearing everything he had to say. “You knew my parents.” It wasn’t a question. “And you were there the day they died.”
“Aye.”
“Who ordered you to take my sister to Barstus?”
“No one,” he answered easily. “It is why your uncle detests me. Or one of the reasons. I knew she wasn’t safe. I knew if she stayed, they would find her too. I... Maksim Zolotov owed me a favor, and I cashed in. He raised the girl in secret. And she stayed alive. If I had known you were alive too, I would have—”
“No, please, do not feel badly. I was safe. More than safe, I was happy. You have no need to worry over what happened to me.” I sucked in a deep breath and pressed on, “Were you afraid of my uncle? Who would have hurt Katrinka?”
“The same who killed your parents, my girl. There is a great desperation to end the Allisand bloodline.”
“But why? The Allisands have ruled for thousands of years. Why go to war against us now?”
He was silent for a long time, so long I thought he would refuse to answer me. But finally, voice dropping even lower, so I had to strain to hear, he said, “The magic was moved. Before you were born. Someone moved the magic elsewhere. And there are people out there who believe the magic must rule.”
“The magic?” I gasped. “What do you mean?”
“The Crown of Nine was bonded to a bloodline, not witchcraft. But there are... people out there who believe the Seat of Power must hold power too. Must hold the magic.”
“When? When did this happen?”
“A century ago,” he said, his words coming quickly. “There will not be official records. At least not detailing all of what happened. The Allisands sought to keep the magic to themselves, so the pagans intervened. There was war. Bloodshed. The rebellion was eventually squashed, but not before the damage was done. It was then that they banned magic throughout the realm. If the Allisands couldn’t have it, no one else could either.”
That was a history lesson I had never heard before. My mind reeled with possibilities, with different narratives than I had been taught.
“Was it pagans who killed my parents? My brothers?” I felt sick, and my head had started to spin. My mother had taught us to respect pagans. Or if not to respect them, to be empathetic toward them. My mother was different than my father in that. Where he had dutifully disregarded them, my mother had loved their ways. She had a soft spot for them and believed in their teachings, their healing, and their history. She’d wanted us to learn it, to be familiar with their ways. But she’d died before she could fully teach Katrinka and me what it meant to be pagan.
We’d been raised in the way of the Light. Separately, but similarly. And while I still held grace for pagans, I did not understand the importance of why.
“I do not know,” Brahm said plainly. “There was magic involved. I could smell it in the air when we found them. The air was thick with incense and sulfur. But we never found a trace of intruders. No one we interviewed had seen strangers in the village or even in the kingdom. It was as though they appeared out of thin air.”
His explanation made me think of the men last night. The arrows. The mystery behind their arrival. Had it been orchestrated by the same people?
Was it pagans after the throne?
Or someone worse?
A guard shouted down the dark corridor. Apparently, they’d contained the fire and wanted to know what had worked the prisoners up into such a frenzy. It was time to leave. By now, my guards would have alerted the army. And I needed to change shoes before I could get into a carriage with Ravanna. Lest I make everyone suffer all the way to Barstus.
I hoped my clothes didn’t reek of this dungeon once I was out of it.
“One more question,” I begged, leaning even closer to the cell. The stench was foul, and I caught glimpses of the shell of the man Brahm the Mighty had succumbed to. Even just months ago at the trial, he had been a robust, intimidating man, despite his age. Now he was nothing but skin and bones, his once manicured facial hair a scraggly, knotted mess.
“Quickly, girl,” he ordered.
“Was my mother friends with Queen Ravanna of Blackthorne?”
He had not been expecting that question. How could he have been? Even I felt foolish for asking. What did it matter anyway? Maybe Ravanna was a different person back then. Maybe my mother brought out the best in her.
Maybe my mother was just like her.
The thought made my body jerk with a ferocious shiver.
“Why would you think I know the answer to that? I worked for your father. I hardly knew anything of your mother’s personal friendships.”
Now I gripped the bars and pressed my face against them, meeting his eyes in the darkness. “Please, you must have seen something. Seen them interact? Noticed something about the way they talked to each other? Did they seem like particularly close friends?” Close enough to carve their initials side by side.
