Lucian gives a short shake of his head, so jolting, it’s like a twitch more than a voluntary movement. He has so much of our father’s appearance with his pale skin and black hair and the same golden eyes. But he wears nothing of our father’s arrogance. Not anymore.
“I want to tell you.” He winces and his cheeks become even paler. “But I can’t…” He gasps for breath, pressing his hands to his temples, squeezing his eyes closed. “What I saw was dangerous. Opening my mind to it again is…”
What he saw?
Anarchy has leaned toward him, reacting as soon as he winced. “Lucian?”
His face is now turning gray, as if the life is bleaching out of him and his fingers are going white with the pressure he’s applying to his skull. “I can’t… I can’t…”
He shudders violently and rocks forward.
I don’t know what’s causing him so much pain, but I’m alarmed by it. Worried enough that I’m about to retract my question—despite how badly I need the answer.
That’s when Anarchy catches hold of him.
Slipping her slender arms around his broad chest in a firm hug, she nudges her cheek against his before she nips the backs of his fingers where they rest against his temple, her teeth sinking briefly into them.
His eyes fly wide, his focus suddenly on her, his indrawn breath parting his lips.
Without missing a beat, she changes direction, nipping his bottom lip, leaving two pinpricks of blood when she leans back.
“How about now?” she whispers.
The tension releases from his shoulders as he pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, sucking on the bite.
“Better,” he says, although his eyes are slightly glazed.
Yesterday, Anarchy explained that her teeth secrete a healing solution. When she mended Lucian’s wounds then, she didn’t bite him, but she must have felt it necessary to do so now.
It makes me concerned about the level of pain she must have sensed he was feeling.
I know I need to proceed carefully. “Lucian? Can you speak about it? Please tell me if you can’t.”
Even as I speak, Lucian is already talking. “Dad forced me to see what I saw,” he says. “He knew it could drive my mind into oblivion, but he didn’t care.”
Anarchy’s arms tighten around him, her lilac hair falling across his chest and arms.
“It was right after I brought you to him, Veda,” Lucian continues. “You were still unconscious. He strung me up and forced me to watch.” Lucian’s hands lower from his temple to his neck, as if he’s remembering the rope that his father must have put around it—the burn marks from which I saw when I woke up. “He needed me to confirm what he saw.”
My stomach swirls with fear, but I try to bring moisture to my lips to ask as gently as I can, “What did he make you see?”
“Read, actually,” Lucian says, in a low murmur. “He made me readTheBook of Dark Magic.”
Anarchy jolts, her gasp sounding a moment before the keeper looms dark and ominous over me.
“Your father hasTheBook of Dark Magic?” the keeper snarls, his features becoming more dragon-like, black scales flushing across his skin and his shoulders tensing as if he’s about to release his wings.
There are four books, one for each type of magic. Only a week ago, I held a page fromTheBook of Dark Magicin my hands.The woman who raised me told me where to find that piece of paper. At the time, I didn’t know that it had been torn fromTheBook of Dark Magic. I thought it was merely a picture on a piece of black paper.
It was only when the keeper caught a glimpse of it that I found out what it really was.
He reacted with the same alarm that’s written all over his face right now. His entire body was stiff with tension and the corners of his lips were turned down in a savage expression, just as they are now.
He told me not to let anyone else touch that piece of paper.
Not even himself.
He told me it could destroy me.
