“Look me in the eye,” King Altair demands.
I do.
“This halo is designed to show me if you are worthy of Nevaeh. Show me who you are, girl.”
Holding his stare, I think of my wall, my snowy field. His eyes narrow as the image takes over my mind.
I think of Draven’s warning.The seraph king wants to eradicate the Curse and annihilate the mortals.I try to fight the rage that burns through me. I can swallow it down to be with my father. Even if it’ll feel like a wildfire rages through my chest. Draven said there was no hiding anything within Nevaeh, not from the seraphs and certainly not their king. I lock that snowy image in place, the impenetrable fortress, the endless white field, and focus on one thought.I am good.
The halo makes a metallic noise, ashicktsound that raises the hair across my body, and it closes tighter around my neck. I lift my head, terrified to let it touch my skin. The fear laces anger through me, entwining through my marrow. I don’t know if I can keep it from burning through my eyes.
“There you are.” King Altair sneers as he looks down at me on my knees, trapped.
I realize too late how intense my gaze is, my nostrils flared, my mouth a snarl. Fuck.
He glowers at me. “Now let’s see if you’re capable of honesty. Where is the rest of your family?”
My father looks only at the ground. Eyes never lifting. He’s never been a coward … why the hells won’t he look at me? I focus on King Altair, confused why he’s even asking.
“My brother was taken by the elves. You have my father.”
“And your mother? Where is she?” King Altair presses.
My father meets my stare now. His head shakes ever so slightly. A warning maybe, not to lie. I don’t know for sure. Suddenly, he feels like a stranger, where once he was more familiar to me than my own face.
“The druids took her six years ago,” I reply honestly. “For avoiding Selection.”
The color blazing around my throat changes from white to gold. King Altair’s gaze goes a little slack.
So the halo gauges my ability to tell the truth.
“Where is she now?” King Altair’s question is not for me, but King Silas.
Silas’s brows narrow, clearly lost. “I’ve no idea.”
“She was sent to the Destarion.” Draven’s fists shake at his sides.
I’m too terrified to think straight, but even if I wasn’t, I doubt I could figure a way out of this noose of star fire.
Draven’s nostrils flare, veins straining. “Try that little trick on me if you don’t believe me.”
“The halo would likely burst into flame,” Altair snarls.
“Watch yourself when you speak to my son.” The back of Silas’s hand glows emerald along a tattoo of the Judgment Arcana. The ability to control both the living and the dead. He flexes it, silver eyes glinting with acidic green. “And let’s move past these dramatics. Do you agree to this trade or not? We won’t accept a delay.”
I lift my chin to look at Altair, trembling to my core. He sees too much, this halo knows every lie, sees straight through to the righteous anger woven in the fiber of my being. But Icanlet this fury go … for my father.
The halo’s light turns red and anothershicktsounds, my throat so dry I want to swallow, but the warmth of the halo halts me. If I breathe too deeply, I won’t have a head on my shoulders. It knew I was sitting here, lying to myself. My eyes flutter as the heat burns, but I force my expression to be neutral even though rage devours my heart, bile rising in my throat. An anger that’s built from the Selection, starting with the one when I was six, when I lost my brother, and realized the severity of what it was. Then when I lost my father and mother, slashing scars across my soul. Amping to this last one, burning it all up from the inside out.
Altair’s jaw tightens, as if he’s biting back his full judgment.
“What is your destiny, Rune Ryker?” King Altair’s light eyes draw up that field locked in my mind. But there’s something new in the image I’ve never seen, glinting gold. For a moment it overlays what’s in front of me, like a window into the past.
After the druids burned down our home and took my mother from me, I ran. Desperate and alone and terrified I sprinted as hard as I could. Until the breath stopped holding in my lungs, the winter winds no longer pushed at my back, and my legs simply gave out. I collapsed at the edge of that snow-strewn field. The tears ceased spilling down my face. It was then I left behind the soft girl I was. Like a serpent shedding its old skin, the former life went with it. I begged any mortal god listening to help me survive. I vowed that if they did that, one day I would make the immortals pay for their Selection. That I would not stop until I’d found my family and reunited us. It’d take years until I’d remember my promise, until I would snap at the Lord of Westfall’s side and come back to myself.
But now I see something in that memory that had not been there that day.
I dig at the object, a golden peak visible under the deep wet slush that burns my injured hands. It’s heavy, metallic, and its cold touch bites as I pull it from its half-buried spot. I lift it up in my mind, the sharp ridges of the crown both familiar and not. While I turn it around, inspecting it fully, I realize why. It’s mended, smoothly, with pieces from every immortal king’s crown.
