“Do you not need us any longer, Caemorn?” Sana asked.
Caemorn shook his head. “No, we are going to enter the Kaly Palace another way that does not require teleportation. We need all the Wyvern out here.”
“Understood.” Sana nodded and went back to speaking with Lisette.
“You want to use the secret passage entrance?” Ryder guessed.
His stomach clenched even as adrenaline urged him towards the secret passage he had not lived long enough last time to use. The Zradum were all dead as Demos and Siban had said. Their bodies lay strewn everywhere.
They really are pus-filled monsters.
“I don’t know exactly where it is,” Ryder admitted as he started to pick his way through the Zradum. “I didn’t make it that far.”
“I know where it is and how to access it,” Caemorn assured him.
“You remember it?” Ryder asked.
Caemorn gave a curt nod.
“Do you remember… no, I suppose you wouldn’t since you didn’t absorb… it doesn’t matter,” Ryder said abruptly.
“I absorbed only a slice of Roan Tithe, which is why I thought I had gotten all of them,” Caemorn responded. “I did not consider that a Slice would slice themselves. The sheer foolishness of it made it seem impossible. But I was wrong.”
“Roan does not have your intellect, Caemorn. He might have your ego, but not the smarts to back it up,” Balthazar said loyally.
Balthazar and Elgar were following after the two of them.
“He has a slyness that surprises me,” Caemorn admitted. “He knew I would not look carefully at his memories to ascertain what he had done, that I would shy away from them even though…”
Here Caemorn stopped as if what he would say next was so heavy that he could not push the words out.
“Even though?” Ryder found himself pressing.
Caemorn tensed slightly, but he did answer, “Seeyr showed Eyros and Kaly a moment of Balthazar and my current lives when she was trying to convince them that we could be better.”
“She did?” Balthazar sounded a little worried, but Ryder realized it was not for himself, but for Caemorn.
“It was the night of Julian’s first lesson with his Kaly gift,” Caemorn answered. “Kaly could not believe that I was them. Nor that you were Eyros, Balthazar, because we were clearly…”
“Master is loved,” Elgar said softly.
“Yes, exactly.” Caemorn adjusted his coat even though it needed no adjusting.
Balthazar blinked. “You know love isn’t a one-way street here?” The Eyros Vampire was being very precise rather than voluble. “I love… love you, too. That’s why this… well, it works, doesn’t it? The two of us. It’s rather great.”
Tension that had been in Caemorn seemed to bleed away at that moment. “Yes, it is… rather great.”
“But if Seeyr could see so clearly so far then…” Balthazar stopped. “She really can make things happen, can’t she?”
“I believe so. As I’ve said, she creates futures, but the cost is high for all involved,” Caemorn said. “You wish to know if I remember the moment I took your soul, don’t you, Ryder?”
“I… I remember it so that’s likely enough,” Ryder said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, I do not remember it. That moment is not in my head at all. That should have alerted me that something was wrong,” Caemorn said.
“No one knew how Weryn was taken off the board,” Balthazar said. “It wasn’t even clear that you had killed him.”
“I was the one to kill most of the other Immortals. Not you, Caemorn,” Ryder told him. “I earned myself plenty of other enemies than Kaly.”
