“I thought not.” He smoothed his hands down the front of his coat before addressing Collum. “Your cousin will begin teaching you tonight.” A glimmer of red passed from his hands to hers. “Then you will watch alongside him as he reads this green book. Once the green book is complete, I expect you to be able to read on your own.”
Collum nodded her head, keeping her gaze focused on the floor.
I wanted to speak up, to tell Adis that it had taken me years to learn the language of the Seid—years of struggle and pain. There was no way I could teach Collum everything in just seven days.
My throat was too dry, though, and my eyelids were still heavy.
I fell asleep as they carried me back to my room. The jolting, rocking motion becoming part of my fevered dreams.
CHAPTER 8
“Wake up.”
I jolted up in bed, my hand immediately going to the stabbing in my hips.
It took a moment, well, several moments, for me to gather my thoughts and come to terms with where I was. I was still in the cell, I was still injured, and Collum was still here with me.
“I think your fever has broken,” she whispered, and that’s when I realized her hand was pressed to my forehead, in the way it always was whenever I was sick.
“How long was I out?” My throat was sore, and Collum lifted the wooden cup to my lips. Where she had gotten it, I wasn’t sure. I usually had to consume all my food and drinks in the presence of Markus or Syrus, returning the cup the moment the “meal” was over.
“Nearly an entire day.” Collum’s words were barely above a whisper.
I nodded, my anger at her for lying to me for almost twenty years rearing its ugly head. Apparently, my mind wasn’t going to let the thought go until I addressed it, so I did. “If you’re not my cousin,” I hissed, “who the hell are you?”
Collum’s shoulders sunk. “Our parents were in the samecoven. We aren’t related by blood, but our parents were best friends, so we were raised as cousins.”
“Oh.” For some reason, I had expected the answer to be far more nefarious. Something more like my parents had stolen her as a child, or that she had been pretending to be our cousin all these years, even lying to our parents. But the truth left me more sad than anything.
“My parents were among the first killed in the Purge. Your parents had always hidden their heritage better, so my parents told me to run to them if something happened. So, when I came home from school to find our walls dripping with blood, that’s what I did.”
I didn’t flinch at her description, though my breathing did shallow. Too many of my classmates had similar stories.
My heart warmed, and I moved to pull my cousin to me as she had done for so many years. Though I wasn’t happy about being deceived, I knew what it was like to lose parents.
“You and Milo were so young, and your parents believed if you didn’t know, you could never be executed or betrayed, so they said I was your cousin.” The words just kept coming, and I could tell she had been wanting to get this off her chest for a long time. Something that now made me feel embarrassed because I had never asked.
“You can be my cousin,” I whispered into her ear as we embraced. “I wasn’t in my right mind earlier. I promise I don’t care that much.”
“I know.” She sniffed. “I still should have told you sooner, but . . . it didn’t seem to matter.”
She was right, it didn’t matter. Not with what we were facing now. Something which caused my anger to rise anew. Collum had been the one to press the book into my hand. She was the reason I was beaten.
But as quickly as the anger rose, it melted, though my desire to know the truth didn’t. “Why did you send me with the book? Did you know?”
She released me from our hold, moving away from me. I could feel shame rolling off of her, thanks to the red book.
“I knew Adis craved power.” She closed her eyes, tilting her head back. “And I knew you would never survive the war.” She let out a deep breath before continuing. “I knew he would find it, and I knew he would keep you for himself—I’d heard whispers.”
I arched an eyebrow, realizing there had to be so much more than she was telling me. Collum was never that interested in politics. How did she know?—
“Many of us are still alive.” Her voice became impossibly lower, and I could barely hear the next words as she uttered them. “The viscount killed our parents not because he was afraid of the Seid, but because he was jealous. The children, like myself, who are still old enough to remember, meet sometimes—always in secret.”
And just like that, the betrayal was back. Why had Milo and I never been invited to these meetings?
The hurt must’ve been evident on my face. “You two were already shouldering so much—sharing a life. I couldn’t add this burden.”
She had a point, but my anger still simmered, desperate to rise up again.
