Part One
Clotho
Chapter One
Ophelia
There wassomething to be said for standing up when, internally, you were shattered. When your flesh was a case for broken bones and your heart beat tainted blood, but you slipped a mask over your features and became what was expected of you. Only the strongest survived the wounds dug into their souls.
Walking into the Rapture Chamber, I’d imagined what I would face from the five chancellors of the minor clans. They would see me as too young, too brash for the role of Revered—the warrior who, as the leader of the Mystiques, singularly held the most power on the continent.
So, I’d entered with the confidence I’d seen from warriors before me and the pulsing reminder of the power in my own blood, using that to meld my broken pieces shoddily together for the duration of the meeting.
Twelve hours later, facing down a different battle entirely, my resolve was buckling. I squeezed my sister’s and Malakai’s hands on either side of me, seeking their strength.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
My cheeks flushed where Malakai’s stare burned into them, but it was nothing lustful. It was the third time he’d asked me, and I’d denied him for as many.
Instead of meeting his gaze, I tracked the shadows dancing across the marble floors. Night swept further over the mountains, orbs of mystlight popping into existence along the ceiling’s center. Buried as we were in the lower level of the palace, one wall built directly intorock, the stars and moon were hardly visible. Dull light shone through the arched windows, gold-trimmed panes peeking between thick velvet curtains.
The Revered’s Palace was nothing if not a center of opulence, despite the fact that only Lucidius—our corrupt former leader and Malakai’s father—had occupied it in recent years. Even this level, the holding cell, was built to symbolize power.
Ice filled my veins, curling around my stomach at the reminder of the lies Lucidius Blastwood had bathed in while his people suffered. How he’d schemed with Queen Kakias of the Engrossians for decades to ignite a false war between our two clans in order to place their bastard son in the Revered’s seat as a sign of peace. The revelation sent shock waves through the continent as strong as the Spirit Volcano erupting. Thousands of Mystiques had been devastated by those actions. Yet he had been here, hidden away in his marble tower, doing Damien knew what with his days.
“Ophelia?” Malakai asked, his whisper slithering down the stone walls.
Shaking my head and blinking back to reality, I dropped Malakai’s hand and met his worry-worn eyes. “We’ll be okay.”
“I won’t utter a word.” The crease between his dark brows deepened, mystlight casting shadows on the planes of his face.
I opened my mouth to argue but stopped at the bob of his throat. The fidgeting of his stare. Perhaps he didn’t want to accompany us to protect me, but to avoid his own ghosts and the memories drawn to the surface by these cells. After signing a treaty to end the war and handing himself over to his father and the queen, spending two years as their prisoner, it made sense why this would haunt him.
I’d seen the pale scars marring his chest and torso, contorting the skin across his back. Though my stomach turned, I’d committed them to memory. This new map of his body outlined my own path to vengeance.
Setting aside my frustration for him, I stretched onto my toes to kiss his cheek, hoping that gentle touch could siphon away his pain as it once had.
“We’ll be fine, Malakai.” My voice softened with the words I left unsaid.
He stiffened, hand fisting against the bare skin above the skirt of my leathers, nails grazing softly against my spine, longing to keep me there.
“Besides,” I added, stepping out of his hold. If I didn’t, neither of us would get through tonight. “You have your own matters to attend to.”
Bricks fortified a wall between us at the reminder.
“Good luck.” I brushed my thumb across the scar his father had left on his jaw.The father I killed, I thought, dropping my hand.
He recoiled. Turned.
I almost pulled him back to me, almost indulged the desperate need flaring around my ribs, expanding with every breath. But I stayed still.
Without responding, he strode down the corridor. Each echo of boots against stone inflated the bubble around my ribs until it popped. Silence ricocheted inside of me, cementing that wall between us. Shrouding me in its shadow.
He paused before the farthest door, collecting his breaths. An echo of a pulse flashed through the Bind, the North Star tattoo we’d illegally received before he disappeared. Our jolted emotions bounced back and forth haphazardly along that sliver of threaded soul.
Over time, the bond should’ve deepened until the ink formed a bridge between us. Our own personal reality, through which we could pass thought and feeling.
But it hadn’t.
