The first few days, Ember asked repeatedly if I needed to talk about my father. His death. I honestly told her I didn’t. I’d mourned my father two hundred years ago, when the first adamas gem had flickered green with his envy. Of course, that was before we knew precisely what the green flash meant, but there had been a glint in his eye that I didn’t like. A lust for power, a need to dominate, that I couldn’t condone. I couldn’t have known how that drive would play out in the kingdom,but my father had ceased to be the man I’d known. I’d left shortly after, and my need to undermine him, while staying away from the throne, had only grown with each passing year.
Now, it wasn’t Father’s fate I had to worry about. While Reid, Alysa, and Nicholas helped with proposals for the new government of Kavios, the dark cloud of my brother’s future hung over my head.
“Visiting again, brother?” Elias said as I entered his room. Two guards stood sentry outside, but he hadn’t tried to leave.
I ran my fingers through my hair. Strands fell to my face with my frustration. I’d visited him every day since the battle, and I still didn’t know what to do with him. “Why did you tell me about the ritual? Why did you tell me it was possible?”
Ember had found the book Elias and Vaddon sought. She’d read it from cover to cover in a matter of days. Her conclusions weren’t reassuring. She wasn’t Elias’s biggest fan, but she took Vaddon’s interpretation of the requirements. The book didn’t say that they had to kill me. It just said they needed my blood. In Elias’s mind, we already shared blood, so for him to succeed, he didn’t even need an offering from me. Only me as a witness.
Did that make it any better?
“What do you want me to say, Sebastien?” Elias asked, throwing himself onto the chaise. “I thought you deserved a chance to claim your own place as Champion.”
I rolled my eyes. “The two hundred plus years of ignoring it wasn’t a good enough signal for you?”
Anger flashed in his eyes as he sat up. “You never told me why you ran. You never told me anything.”
He had a point there. I just … hadn’t known it needed to be said. While it didn’t help with my decision, I took the time to share what I could. Even if it made no difference.
“She demanded things of me. The throne demanded things I couldn’t condone. I admit, at first, I simply didn’tlike being told what to do, but it became so much more than that.” I sighed. What a mess.
“What a shock,” Elias quipped.
I sat in one of the wooden chairs at the table. “The more I denied her, though, the more I felt myself changing. She pushed harder when I pulled back. She required things I would never have done, even as the selfish prick I was when she summoned me.”
Elias clasped his hands together, his forearms draped over his legs as he listened. I couldn’t believe that, in two hundred plus years, we’d never had this conversation. That was most certainly on me.
“I know Father made it seem like the best thing in the Three Kingdoms,” I continued, “but Themis’s summons would have destroyed me if I let it. She claimed she chose me for my determination, my mind, but those were the very attributes that the whispers of the throne sought to stamp out. There was no room to share power in her reign. She only wanted someone to execute her vision.”
Elias leaned back. He looked thoughtful. For better or worse, my brother was a master of disguise. It struck me that he’d had to be, living with Father. Even the idea that he hadn’t been sure of Father’s choice of sacrifice struck me as incredibly sad.
“Don’t pity me, Sebastien. It’s not a good look.”
I grunted. “What was your plan?”
He searched the room, and I was once again sure I wouldn’t get a straight answer. “There is no answer I can give you that will make anything better, Seb. I gave you the information I thought you needed. I also planned for every alternative that could have happened in that room. Could Father have chosen me as his sacrifice?” He shrugged. “Undoubtedly.”
“Then whydid you stay?”
He waved off my question. “Be serious. Where else would I have gone? Kavios is my home. I know nothing else. I’m not adventurous like you. I am creative in my confines, but I’m unlikely to strike out to find something wholly new.”
My nostrils flared, and I sucked in a deep breath. I knew what we had to do. “I think it’s time to change that, Elias.”
Ember agreed with my assessment. Reid, Alysa, Nicholas, and the others didn’t object, either. We had yet to create a formal council, but I wanted to take care of this. And the decision felt right.
“He can’t stay,” Ember said.
I knew that. There was no way the people of Kavios would accept him wandering freely through the kingdom. It didn’t matter what information he’d shared. It didn’t matter that he’d felt trapped in his place here. Not even my personal bias mattered—that he’d offered the adamas stone that had ultimately saved Ember’s life. None of that would sway the people who had seen him ruling alongside Father for years.
“So we exile him,” I said.
I didn’t know where he would go, but I guessed that wasn’t my problem. As Ember had pointed out, he couldn’t stay here.
Elias took it remarkably well. “I understand. Honestly, it’s better than remaining under castle arrest for the remainder of my life. Who knows how long that will be without adamas?”
It was a sobering question. One that many of the ex-Blessed in the city had. No one knew how the removal of adamas would impact those who used it.
I couldn’t say that was a top concern.
