“Your cousin?” He asked, brows raised in a shocked question.
“I didn’t know until last night. When Seren came to the palace, my father told me she was an enemy here to kill me. Another lie, as it turned out, because he eventually admitted that he disposed of heras a baby. He planned to steal her mágik—to gift it to me in some power transfer ritual. But they were all lies meant to manipulate me into being his puppet.” Ayla’s waterline welled with fresh tears.
Théo frowned. “The power transfer ritual is real. I have seen it. I was studying it for you before I was imprisoned. Claudian asked me to verify it would work.”
“Maybe there were some truths buried beneath the lies,” Seren suggested.
“The ritual would have led to Seren’s death,” Théo continued, “which would have been less concerning if she truly had wanted to murder you. But there was another ritual I came across during my research, one that would strengthen the both of you. I wonder why that was not the plan, all along?”
“It was my impression that I was never meant to survive at all, let alone be allowed to strengthen my mágik and my position in Acsilla,” Seren replied, to which they all nodded in morbid agreement.
“Do you still have this research?” Ayla asked, hopefully.
“I do not know what Tarquin or Claudian might have done with my personal effects, but I will do my best to track it down. You may have use for it, yet.” Théo grinned then grimaced, a hand coming up to clutch at his forehead.
Ayla touched her fingers to his temple. “Are you okay?”
“I am weak from my time here,” Théo admitted with a frown. “I will be fine.”
“You need a healer. I’ll take you right now,” Ayla insisted.
Seren stopped her with a raised hand. “We must speak with Prince Claudian.”
She hated to let Théo out of her sight, but she could not disagree.
“Harkin?” Seren looked to where he stood, still near the stairwell. His eyes were locked on Claudian as if he might escape at any moment and make a move toward them.
His gaze flickered to hers.
“Will you escort Théo to the healer? We will meet you there after.” She gave him a reassuring look, and he moved to Théo’s side, in answer.
“Harkin Aranti,” Théo noted. “The last time I saw you, you were threatening a nobleman in a darkened alley. Something about a trade agreement, if I remember correctly.”
“Councilman,” Harkin greeted him with a wry grin. “What an excellent memory you have. With Claudian behind bars, those days are behind me, and it is certainly for the better.”
“Quite,” Théo agreed with a small smile in return. They disappeared back up the ominous staircase, leaving Ayla and Seren to handle Prince Claudian on their own.
Chapter forty-three
Seren
Moments passed by, too quiet as not a single one of us moved to speak first. The only sound was the shifting of metal on metal, and metal on stone, as the guards shuffled their feet in discomfort. Claudian appraised me coldly and clinically, as a scientist might study an undesirable species of insect.
I hardened my features into a mask of impassivity, turning away from his calculating presence, but I thought of every time I had seen him in my dreams. I thought of every time I had seen Ayla and Théo and Safiya.
I wondered, not for the first time, how it was possible that my visions had granted me glimpses of every important person I had met, months before it had come to pass. Was it chance? A connection that tied us together? Images granted to me from the Goddesses themselves?
Ayla stood beside me, head downcast. Her hands wrung together nervously.
Prince Claudian’s stare was glacial, and gooseflesh rippled across my bare biceps.
“Did you really think your plan would work?” I brokethe uneasy silence.
Claudian answered with a satisfied look. One that said he had succeeded in something, if it was only not being the first to break.
He looked at Ayla, speaking to her instead of me. His expression turned from disgust to an approximation of love as his gaze moved from one cousin to the next. “I did this for you, Ayla. For the both of us. Didn’t your mother deserve to be avenged? Shouldn’t the crown rest upon your head?”
“You did this for you,” Ayla said in a voice thick with unspent tears. “You have admitted as much. You killed my mother. Maybe she was not the woman who carried me in her womb, but she raised me as a little girl. She read stories to me and held me close when I scraped my knees.I knew her. I had the time to love her, but not enough, because you took her from me.”
