“But Aggie’s prophecy…”
Cullen smiles a self-satisfied smile and I want to claw it from his face. “Another small trick of blood magic to fool the witch into believing what she saw. A small leak of information to a certain Boundary hunter and my son was as good as mine. I would bring him home to rule beside me, to mete out my judgement in fire and fury.”
By the Covinus.Could Cullen really have orchestrated everything? How he must have raged when he discovered how close he’d been to having his son when we were in his camp.
“What does any of this have to do with Mirren?” Shaw barks impatiently.
Cullen’s eyes light with zeal. Dread coils heavily in my stomach. “Have you not yet guessed?” His lips curl in a snarl. “The man you’ve sworn your allegiance to is nothing but a weak-minded fool. He begged for his life and then he begged me to end it. It’s pathetic that you’ve shackled yourself to such a coward. Do you think he thought of you at all, Anrai, when he sang his secrets?”
Anrai blanches. My look of horror is mirrored on Cal’s face and Max gasps audibly.
Cullen’s flat gaze falls on me. “He most certainly cared nothing for you, Mirren,when he gave me the first line of the prophecy.” He laughs humorlessly. “Eyes of sea and heart of light will ford the Darkness. So simple and yet, the old gods do play, do they not? The girl of the first line is none other than the first Similian to willingly cross the Boundary. The girl my son was now unknowingly bringing to me. The girl who is none other than the daughter of my enemy.”
“Bow before me, Ocean-heart, and I will let you live. I will allow you to stay with my son. To rule my kingdom beside me.”
“I will never bend before you,” I spit. Pain, bright and sharp like lightning digs under my skin as I scrape the deepest parts of myself. There is always water running beneath the earth, if I can just fight further down.
“Grovel on your knees before me, Anrai, and I will let them all live. Those youlove,” he sneers.
Anrai flinches for the first time and Cullen’s lips curve in victory. “Do not insult me by assuming I don’t know all. I know the weakness that lives inside you and how you feed it with those most precious to you. And if you do not surrender to me, I will bathe in their blood and relish every moment of it.”
My throat is like sandpaper. I want to scream at the loss of my power, at my inability to defend my friends from the evil that has caused us all so much hurt. Anrai’s hand slowly comes to the pommel of his dagger. Beside me, Cal and Max do the same. My friends, so brave and good, will never give in without a fight. I feel for the dagger still strapped to my thigh and shove myself to sitting with a cry of anguish. I may have lost the strength of the sea, but I am not weak.
“Ah, ah, Calloway,” Cullen says, his calculating gaze sliding to where Cal has strung his bow. Before I can blink, Cullen flicks his wrist and a dagger sprouts from Cal’s chest. He stumbles backward, eyes wide, mouth moving in a silent scream.
I scream in time with Anrai’s roar, dragging myself to Calloway’s side. I circle my hands around the dagger and press down, desperate to staunch the blood that flows too quickly from him. Max lets out an angry snarl, rising with her sword. A vengeful goddess, face full of fury, she makes for the Praeceptor, but he only regards her calmly. “Don’t move unless you wish for more of the same, Maxwell.”
Max’s eyes widen and her lips part in shock. Cullen smiles, tilting his head. “Did you not think I would bother to learn the name of the slave who beguiled my son into betraying me?Jovehshave always been plentiful in my war camps. I’ve often wondered what it was about you in particular that made him willing to throw his entire life away.”
Max freezes, sword still thrust in front of her. Cullen palms another dagger, grinning madly. Anrai lunges toward her, but still mired by Cullen’s spell, he isn’t fast enough. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out as Max staggers. The dagger protrudes from her stomach, blood splashing across the whorls of her tattoos.
Anrai’s eyes flare, anger and agony mingling on his face. I reach for him, tears and blood staining my cheeks, but he doesn’t come. The steel mask slices down over his features, and he turns to Cullen, the unaffected assassin once more. When he last faced his father, he left with a dagger in his chest. The irony of his friends’ fate has to be unbearable, but his voice is flat and bored as if they don’t lie dying feet away from him. As if his beloved mentor’s breaths aren’t becoming less and less frequent. “I will come.”
“NO!” I cry. Anguish pools in the holes my power left, the cracks in my soul taken by Shivhai.
Anrai won’t look at me as he says, “but there are conditions.”
Cullen raises an amused brow. “Have I not taught you better than this? You are in no position to negotiate. Accept my terms or meet my vengeance.”
Anrai grins humorlessly at Cullen, tilting his head with that haughty arrogance I know so well. The disguise, to shield what he loves. “You’ve taught me there’s always something to bargain with,Praeceptor.”
Cullen’s lips flatten, his eyes on the dagger Anrai now spins idly in his palm. As if he remembers the feel of the blade in his heart.
“You will agree to take only me. You will leave the girl. You will not harm any of them, nor order anyone under your command to do so.”
Cullen’s jaw twitches. “Two of them are bleeding out as we speak. And the third betrayed you and won’t make it alive from this cavern.”
Anrai doesn’t waver. He’s mastered the pain of Cullen’s curse and his body no longer trembles. I try to drag myself toward him, my heart crying for the man who loves so fiercely being forced to hide everything he is under a guise of heartlessness once more. For the man who so willingly pays in blood over and over because he thinks he deserves it.
I try to catch his gaze, to remind him that I know his heart, that he isn’t a monster, but he has eyes only for Cullen.
“You will agree to my terms, and I will come willingly.”
“And if I don’t?”
Anrai smirks. “Then I’ll kill us all.”
My heart jumps to my throat and I stare at him.
