Ellowyn nodded her head curtly. “Yes. Creation and Destruction”—tendrils snaked down her arms with her words before absorbing into her skin effortlessly—“but also Pain and Pleasure.” The same effect did not repeat.
“You will need to train those magics. Learn to access them until it’s as easy as breathing. You rely too heavily on your Destruction Magic. It’s a weakness my sister will exploit, especially because you do not hold full control of the power.”
“Then who does?” The question was innocent enough, but it was clear there was an underlying demand for that information.
“Kaos,” I hummed quietly and watched as Ellowyn seemed to put together a puzzle in her head.
“Interesting,” she mused. I waited for her to elaborate, but it was clear she was keeping some of her encounter with my brother to herself.
A predictable, harried knock on the door followed by the jiggling of the doorknob broke our conversation.
“Fuck, it’s locked. Why is the door locked?” a muffled, decidedly male voice groused from the other side of the door.
“Seems our time is up, godling,” I said, rising fluidly from my chair.
“Bondsmith,” Ellowyn called to my retreating back. I paused and turned to face her once more.
“Godling?”
“Are you . . .” She took a deep, fortifying breath before continuing. “I need toknow whose side you are on—if you will become a problem as we . . . deal with the gods.”
There was a second string of curses from beyond the door as the knob jiggled once more.
“I am on no one’s side, Ellowyn.”
“Everyone is on a side, Bondsmith. Everyone wants something,” she said tiredly.
A smile pulled at my lips. “I never said I didn’t want anything. In answer to your question, I do not think Elyria would be best kept in the hands of my siblings. Once, the gods walked peacefully here. Cared for humanity, blessed them with magic and technology. Even fucked them to create descendants.”
Ellowyn raised a pale blonde eyebrow. “But?”
“But the time for peace is long past.” Metal scraped metal as tumblers clicked with the turn of a key. “Now . . . now is the time for blood.”
Chapter Ten
Peytor
The door reverberated against the stone wall, revealing the Bondsmith’s statuesque figure as Torin and I practically fell into the bedroom. Clad in an ivory tunic and deep-brown pants, she resembled any of the thousands of followers we’d amassed over the past months. But there was something sootherabout her, it was impossible to mistake her for a simple rebel.
Despite the otherworldliness, my gaze was pulled to the stricken look on Ellowyn’s face. The color had drained completely, leaving her skin sallow and waxy, even as her eyes sharpened into something fierce. It was the first time I’d seen my sister in the flesh since that fateful day in Hestin when she ripped Finian’s soul from this plane. Even after months of dissecting my emotions and separating Ellowyn from the event that changed my life, I still expected the rush of hot, vitriolic anger that would run rampant through my veins, turning me into a person I no longer recognized.
Instead, there was only soul-deep, heart-wrenching pain. Some from the loss of my lover and best friend. But the harder I looked, the more I realized that the agony radiating through every atom of my being was now caused by the time that had been taken from me and my sister.
We were no longer the same people. Siblings still, but any of the innocence we once possessed was long gone, destroyed by a singular man with a god complex and the unending thirst to see humanity burn if it meant fulfilling his own prophecies.
What would our lives have been like if Lord d’Refan had never taken an interest in my sister? If his shadow never darkened our halls? Would we still be inHestin, living out our lives, oblivious to the suffering and malcontent that plagued Elyria?
Blood and other dried bodily fluids matted her once brilliant blonde hair to her skull. The same matter was ingrained in every fiber of her stiff black tunic, causing it to nearly shine in the low light of the oil lamps lit by Fire Magic. There was the faint outline of a rune tattoo on her inner right forearm and thin, small white scars along both her arms and hands.
While the physical differences between the sister I once knew and the woman sitting in Torin’s bed were stark, the greatest change came in the set of her jaw and the hardness of her eyes.
Gone was the naive girl I grew up with—the one who loved dresses and was always too focused on others’ opinions.
That girl was long dead. All that remained in her steel-grey eyes that were so like my own—like our father’s—was a steely determination and a thirst for vengeance.
Lord d’Refan took a despondent girl and created a weapon of a woman.
“Hello, Peytor,” Ellowyn called softly from the bed, her eyes trained solely on me. Torin huffed in evident irritation at being ignored, and my lips twitched at my friend’s petulance.
