I huffed out a laugh. “All of my detractors wouldlovethat. It would help their arguments that I’m unstable and unfit to rule any part of this realm.”
“…Something less potentially damning, then,” he conceded, lifting a shoulder and letting it drop. “Loser buys the other drinks.”
“Challenge accepted.” I held out my hand, which he shook with all the seriousness of a king agreeing to a major trade deal. “After you talk, try to get him to actuallyrest.”
“No promises. I couldn’t get him to listen to me when I had the manipulative powers of the aforementioned cursed demon on my side. Doubt I’ll manage to persuade him of anything on my own.”
“Well, just give it your all.”
“I’ll give it my some,” he replied, getting to his feet and cracking his knuckles.
I rolled my eyes, but truthfully, I was grateful for his humor; it felt good to laugh about something again, even if our jokes were grim.
But that laughter was a distant memory by the time I made my way to my brother’s office and knocked on his door.
ELEVEN
Nova
Iwas relieved to find that Eamon and Thalia were already with Bastian—which meant explainingeverythingwouldn’t fall to me, at least.
A good thing, given the current state of my thoughts.
From the look on my brother’s face, it seemed Eamon and Thalia had already told him the worst of it. I approached slowly, still trying to find a way to put the events of the past hours into something like a coherent speech.
Bastian spoke first. “So. Aleksander is here.”
I looked between him and the other two. “They’ve already explained everything?”
“As much as we could,” Eamon said, frowning. “There are still too many questions, though; it doesn’t feel like we’ve really made sense of anything.”
My brother massaged the space between his eyes—eyes that were bloodshot and accented by dark circles from lack of sleep. “It all sounds like another dangerous trick Lorien is attempting to pull. Are we really going to play right into his hands?”
“What do you think is the alternative?” I asked. “Ignoring him is just as dangerous.”
“I didn’t suggest weignorehim.”
“Then whatareyou suggesting?”
He didn’t reply.
“The world would be better off if we could just kill him,” Thalia muttered. “But nothing can ever be that easy, can it?”
We fell silent, thinking.
Eamon ran a hand through his hair, occasionally, absently clenching the wavy strands and tugging them, as he often did when his mind was racing. Cautiously, he said, “There’s a chance that taking up this quest is also our only way of truly killing him.”
Bastian looked more awake all of a sudden. “What are you talking about?”
“…Well, according to the memory Nova saw, Calista told Lorien that she didn’t intend to end him with this curse. It seems to me that it was the opposite—she made him immortal by scattering his essence. Dooming him to wander in pieces, to suffer indefinitely…weakening him, but not completelyendinghim.”
“So, if we gather him completely, we can end him completely?” Thalia theorized.
Eamon gave a barely perceptible nod of agreement; his gaze was troubled, though, as if he knew this theory was far too simple.
But I couldn’t help seizing on any and all hope, however precarious it might have been. “This might reset the Vaeloran Cycle, too,” I pointed out. “He said something to me after I witnessed that memory:And thus the balance of the realms was forever altered. I don’t think Calista meant for it to happen, but it’s a side-effect of him being broken and unable to pass on: TheVaeloran Cycle broke as well. There should have been another Light Vaelora by now.”
“Putting him back together will also put all of his power back together,” Bastian pointed out. “And there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to control that power, or finish him off before he does something cataclysmic with it.”
