Just like the hilt of the assassin’s knife resting beneath my hand onthe grass.
“Stanimir gave this amulet to me,” Hadrian says. “It was cut from a tree in the east. A very special tree. Its wood protects me from an Oracle’s power.” A smile plucks at the corners of his mouth. “AnyOracle. Even Thyra.”
“What do you mean protects you?”
“It disrupts her Oracle power. She can’t foresee my actions. Or the actions of anyone carrying a piece of this wood. Friend or foe.” Hadrian leans forward again, a conspiratorial whisper on his lips. “Stanimir has gone to great lengths to ensure that everyone who is part of his plan carries a piece of this wood in some form or another. His followers are so devoted to him, they’ve sacrificed their lives to deliver this wood to those who need it.”
The assassin’s knife. Her father’s death. The knife I’m now holding…
How much has Thyra not foreseen?
How much danger is she in because I carried this fucking knife around with me?
And then I ask myself another question: Does this wood somehow impact her blade visions? But I don’t think so. She had her first blade vision while she guarded her father’s body. The blade vision clearly wasn’t restricted by her nearness to this wood.
No, her blade visions are connected with the curse on the Dragonstone Blade, and the curse is another power altogether.
I shove the assassin’s knife away from myself while Hadrian draws himself slowly upward.
He steps back and back, watching me closely, putting distance between himself and me. “You have another choice to make now, brother.”
I raise my head, ready to tell him where to put his fucking choices, but a guttural snarl is the only sound I make.
My poisoned heart has begun defying me.
Soon, I will no longer be myself.
“I prepared a cage,” Hadrian says, sweeping his hand toward the temple as he continues to increase the distance between us. “You can choose to cage yourself. Shackle yourself. Eventually die. Or you can go to Thyra. Follow her into the bloodlands, where you will…well, let’s be honest…you’ll perish there, too. Which will it be?”
Clawing my hands in the grass, I vent my fury, pushing it into a roar of rage. A useless fucking sound as I try to drown out the memory of Thyra’s kindness. Her voice, telling me I’m not such a monster as I claim to be. Telling me I won’t hurt her.
But I could.
I will.
If it weren’t for this fucking assassin’s knife, I’m certain she would have seen it.
Even as I know this, fear this, I calculate how long I have before the poison does its work. Maybe minutes. Maybe an hour.
She’ll die in the bloodlands if I don’t get to her.
I convince myself I have time.
Time to get her out of the bloodlands and to safety and then get myself the fuck away from her, and maybe… Time to tell her the most important truth of my life.
I love her.
As deeply as someone like me can love.
Covered in blood, I rise to my feet, accepting what will certainly be one of my last conscious decisions, answering the final desire of a heart filling with the dark poison that an iron dagger kept at bay all these years.
“I choose Thyra.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
Thyra
The bloodlands encase me in shadows.
