Lierick turned away from the girl, his face disturbed, and I couldn’t imagine the darkness of her thoughts, or those of Powell. “Let’s go before the Dawn Army appears.”
We trudged toward the Vale Stairs, which loomed on the horizon like sentinels. It wasn’t a long walk, maybe an hour in the shadows of the cliffs, but Iker and Hayle swapped Celis between them. Our group was silent, the heaviness of the previous night weighing on us all.
I’dhatedbeing stuck on the boat, waiting for the three men who held my heart to return. Hated not being there, in case something went wrong; it had such potential to go wrong. Not even Quarry flying around the boat, keeping watch like a shadow in the dark of night, had made me feel better.
When Hayle had reappeared without Vox and Lierick, my heart had shuddered to a stop in my chest and didn’t feel like it started beating again until a tormented-looking Vox had floated them down to the deck of our boat. Even the memory was making the air burn in my lungs.
Vox drifted closer, threading his fingers through mine. He didn’t tell me it would all be okay, and I appreciated him not lying to me.
Finally, we stopped at the foot of the Vale Stairs, where Hayle gently lowered Celis from his back. “Let’s eat before we begin the climb. We’ll all need the energy.”
Lierick emptied some of the food from his pack, handing it out to us. It wasn’t much, but there was an extra mouth to feed, and you never knew what could happen. Once we reached the top of the Stairs, it would be another two-day walk to Rewill at this pace.
Hayle pulled paper and a pen from his pack and wrote a message to my brother, Kian. It was a carefully coded message, inviting him to hunt with the Third Line in the woods south of Rewill. It could have been from anyone in the Third Line really—the Baron right down to Hayle’s younger brother. Vague enough that anyone intercepting the Ninth Line’s messages would think it was just a frivolous activity of Heirs.
Kian would know, though. We’d decided that the best course of action for Powell—and now Celis—was to disappear into the North. Goddess knew there were a lot of places in the wild that had been abandoned for decades as the Ninth Line dwindled and failed under my father’s rule.
Hayle strapped the note to the leg of Quarry, and I could tell he was giving the raven strict instructions. I scratched my favorite bird on the head, before he burst into the air, wings strong and healed, flying north toward my home.
Stuffing the rest of his jerky in his mouth, chewing once and then swallowing in a way that reminded me way too much of his Spryrix, Hayle leaned forward and kissed me. “We should begin.”
I looked up at the mountain we had to conquer, and sighed. This was going to suck.
Sixteen
VOx
In solidarity with the rest of the group, I had physically climbed the Vale Stairs beside them. Even though it would have been far easier to float everyone to the top, I would take the penance of the hard climb for the sins of my family.
I couldn’t look at Powell or the girl, Celis. The fear they showed when they saw me, the way their heartbeats skittered every time I used my power, the signs of torture on their skin—it all made me want to scream into the nothingness.
IhatedYaron, but not as much as I hated myself right now. I’d known about those parties; everyone did. There wasn’t a single person in the First Line or beyond who didn’t know that Yaron had been a sadistic son of a bitch, who tortured people for fun. It was why the Heirs who came to events were usually the male Heirs; no one would take a chance that their female Heirs would catch the eye of Yaron Vylan.
No one had ever stopped him, though. Not the other Barons, nor the First Line. And never me. The guilt I would hold that I could have saved Powell and Celis their pain—as well as the countless victims before them—would haunt me for life.
Avalon looked over her shoulder at me, as if she could sense my darkening thoughts. I gave her a reassuring look, thoughgiven the way her frown deepened, it was a bit of a failure. We were almost to the top of the cliff face, and Iker still had the girl on his back. He’d insisted on climbing with her the whole way, so as not to risk dropping her. While I couldn’t use my power on Celis herself, I did wrap my air magic around Iker, giving him a bit of a boost as he climbed.
He hadn’t said anything about it, but I knew the feel of my magic was a bit confronting to the Second Line too. Maybe the two of them could bond over the evilness of the First Line.
“Vox,” Lierick said softly. “Stop.”
He couldn’t hear my thoughts, as I still wore thetalthat protected me against the Second Line’s magic. I just raised a brow at him.
“I’m not in your head, your face is just unusually open right now. Your thoughts are just there, written right across your face.” I worked at getting my expression under control, and he shook his head. “Your brother’s actions aren’t your own,” he continued, and I sighed.
“I could have stopped him years ago, though. This”—I waved a hand at Celis and Powell—“would never have happened, if I had grown some balls.”
Lierick rolled his eyes. “Let’s consider you’re right. What would you have done? Walked onto that boat and stood against all those First Line reprobates yourself? Smothered Yaron in his sleep?”
I would have ended up in the dungeons of Fortaare, and we all knew it. But at least I would have donesomething, rather than sit back while innocents were being tortured for my brother’s pleasure.
“Yaron had a twin, did you know that?”
I could see the shock on Lierick’s face. That information had obviously never made it to Ozryn, and honestly, why would it? I doubted much of my own Line even remembered him. Shay hadbeen a baby, and I had been little more than a toddler myself. Sometimes, I thought I must have imagined him.
“Dermat tried to stop him from pulling the wings off a bird. Yaron turned around and bludgeoned him in the head with a rock until he died. His own twin.” I cleared my throat. “My father pretended like it never happened. He still had his Heir and his spare, and probably half a dozen other backup Heirs around Fortaare. But the lesson of never coming between Yaron and what he wanted was firmly burned inside all our minds, along with the fact that we were all replaceable to our father. All except Yaron.” I shook my head. “If I wasn’t such a coward, I could have done something.”
Lierick shrugged, pushing himself up a particularly high column. Avalon was struggling up the one in front of us, and I wrapped her in air magic and lifted her easily. She smiled down at me, and it was like sunshine after a year of darkness.
