For the first time in a while, Carver’s throat ached for the burn of cheap wine and the emotional dullness enough of it eventually brought. He swallowed, not sure if he found the imagined taste in his mouth comforting or revolting. Resisting a grimace, he walked straight ahead, his measured pace unchanged despite the turmoil inside him. Was it his destiny to choose women who didn’t choose him back? The idea filled him with such dread that his next step felt like he dragged an anchor from his boot.
Dex broke into his spiraling thoughts, still musing about what-ifs and potential issues that could only come with the end of Punishment. “You’re probably right about learning how to wield magic, at least somewhat. It’s probably part instinctual and part training. If I have the gift, I’ll bet healing people easily and quickly takes practice. Maybe years of it.” He sounded as if he counted on becoming a real Magoi in his lifetime and not just an ancestral one.
“We might find out soon enough.” Silas tipped his head toward Eryx, his brow lowering. “Seems like he’s on to something.”
Carver looked across the throne room. Shock halted him midstep. His eyes widened. Eryx held Cleito by the neck. She stood on her toes, her head forced back at a hard angle. Gasping for air, she frantically pulled at Eryx’s wrists, her small feet scrabbling for purchase. Her golden eyes got impossibly bigger, and a frightened, pleading sound slipped from her mouth.
Razor-sharp anger sliced through Carver. He’d seen too many helpless people abused by powerful ones to stand there and not try to help. There had to be something he could do—now,today—without signing his own death sentence.
“Four.” Eryx shook Cleito roughly. Her clumpy hair swayed around her like seaweed on the tide. “You said there werefourparts. Ceremonial knife. Chalice. Virgin blood.” He lifted Cleito right off her feet, and Carver took an instinctive step toward her. “What’s the final part?” he growled at the oracle.
Silas grabbed Carver’s arm, gripping with enough force to make him stop. Carver turned, his jaw hardening. Their eyes met, and the older man gave him a stiff shake of the head. “Don’t.”
Dex gaped at them both. Then he snapped his mouth shut and focused on Carver. “She’s not your problem. Just guard the room.” He glanced at Cleito, a wince denting his forehead. He looked away just as fast.
Carver demoted them both off the friend list. “He’s hurting her,” he snarled.
Cleito gasped. The rip of fabric slashed across the room, and Carver pivoted again, his eyes narrowing. Eryx forced the top of Cleito’s dress down her arms, baring her upper body to everyone. He spun her around and shoved her to the floor. With a slap of skin, Cleito landed on her hands and knees in front of Eryx’s throne. Her gown hung in shreds from her belt, and her limp red hair swung down, hiding her face and dragging on the floor.
Carver sucked in a breath at the sight of Cleito’s scarred back. Eryx was a monster, and Carver was done standing by and watching this. He tried to pull away, and Silas’s hand tightened on his arm.
One of Eryx’s advisors put a whip in the king’s hand, and fury exploded inside Carver almost violently enough to make him forget that running Eryx through right now would also mean his own death.
Silas yanked him back a step, bringing Carver close enough to whisper, “She’s the only seer in generations. He won’t kill her.He needs her visions. You, though…” The other man looked at him hard, trying to convey a message of self-preservation that Carver rejected outright.
“What’s the point of living if you can’t live withyourself?” he hissed, trying to shake free of Silas’s steely grip.
Silas flinched but didn’t let go. Carver finally ripped his half-numb arm from the other man’s hand and lurched back a step.
Dex slid sideways to block Carver’s path. “This is how it is,” he urgently said. “The king does what he wants. We can’t do anything about it.”
Carver shook his head, seeing the rot of Atlantis tainting them both. Cleito would live as long as she was useful—a life full of fear and pain and abuse. And Eryxwouldkill a woman today, maybe even a child, as long as she was ashe. A new family plunged into mourning every day. Why didn’t anyone resist? “‘Can’t do anything’ is a luxury for the young, the old, and the sick.” Carver gave them both a scathing look. “For anyone else, it means you’re a coward.”
Shock stamped across their features as he turned with a low curse and bypassed Dex. To the Underworld with the consequences. This wasn’t part of any plan, and he didn’t know what might happen next, but he was not a man who stood by andwatched.
Cleito tried to crawl away from Eryx, her head low and her tangled mane sweeping the floor. She was reed thin, her skin almost translucent and whiter than the stone. She didn’t get far. She shuddered, too weak to crawl. Eryx yanked on her leash, pulling her back. Whimpering, she curled into a ball.
The certainty that he had to help Cleitonowrose inside Carver like an ocean squall. “Your Highness!” he called. His footsteps echoed in the huge stone hall. Eryx turned, eyes seething, his hand back and the whip already poised. The blood-darkcord trailed to the marble floor. Carver’s pulse pounded. “Surely there are other ways to encourage your oracle’s visions?” he said in the smoothest voice he could manage around the rage and disgust roughening every word. He spread his hands, even dredging up a smile. He’d spent enough time in the throne room in Castle Thalyria to know how negotiations started.
How they ended… That was unclear, especially right now.
Eryx sneered the cold, humorless, confident smile of a man who didn’t understand his days were numbered and that Carver would help bring them to an end. “Thefarm boydares to counsel a king?” He looked back and forth between his advisors, his dark eyebrows lifting in scorn. “Shall we invite him to join your ranks?” The advisors all chortled. Cleito trembled at their feet.
Carver swallowed his loathing and produced what he hoped was a neutral expression and not one that blared his desire to kill the bastard with the blunt end of a sword. “Not advise, Your Highness. Merely suggest.”
“Merely,” Eryx mocked in an exaggeratedly refined voice. He looked Carver up and down with a contemptuous smirk. “Listen to how the farm boy talks. You’d think he wasn’t raised with sheep and goats.”
Livestock was a step up compared to Eryx and his entourage. Carver simply waited, using everything inside him to maintain that neutral expression and not draw his mediocre, guard-issued sword and run the son of a Cyclops through. His family might’ve been farmers before they were royalty, but they’d always been warriors. He could sow, harvest, and slaughter. Royal life had just perfected his fake smile.
Carver stayed silent. The king would talk first. He was sure of it.
A muscle feathered in Eryx’s jaw. “I know how to tame my oracle’s visions.”
“Is that so?” Carver arched his brows. “If that were the case, you’d have the information you want instead of a terrified girl.”
Turning stone-faced, Eryx looked at his advisors. “Thisis what wanders in from the countryside? What imbecile is hiring my soldiers?”
They snickered again, this time uncomfortably. None of them answered.
