Hit after hit, he groaned but did nothing.
It took every ounce of control I had to not let my Shadows descend, rip and tear.
My vision blurred as I knelt over him, panting—all my anger spent and thoughts tumbling into despair.
My knuckles were bloodied. “Four centuries. You lied to me forfourfucking centuries.”
Ryn spat blood to the side and didn’t try to rise. “I have been loyal to you just as long. I deserve whatever beating you’d like to deal me—but know that there hasn’t been a day in these past four centuries that I haven’t spent trying to repent for what I did. She was as devoted to that prophecy as you, and I was trying to make it right in her place.”
I shook my hands out. They were cramped and bruised. Standing and looking down at my dearest friend, I knew the guards could easily lock him in with the two downstairs. He wouldn’t fight it. It was what any ruler in my place would have done to someone who’d so wholly broken their trust.
Now that I’d expended all of the violence in my veins, my thoughts felt clearer. There was no way Ryn would have cracked easily. The Phynnic methods of torture might have been enough for me to crack, too. His father was a fucking bastard.
“What did he do to you?” I asked through a tight jaw.
Ryn winced with each breath and held onto his ribs, which I’d undoubtedly broken. “I’d prefer not to relive that,” he answered. “But I broke. I didn’t believe he would kill her, only me—I still have a hard time believing it. It should have been me.” His hair was a tangled silver mess, bloodstained at the temples.
“Get up.”
Ryn did what I said and staggered to his feet, holding his side. It would take a day or two, but he’d heal.
“I should kill you,” I growled.
“You should,” he agreed.
I heaved out a ragged sigh. “But that isn’t what Freya would have wanted.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he said.
I shook my head. “She wouldn’t. She loved you. We were all foolish. One way or another, your father was going to find out. I’ve tried to stop blaming myself for his actions. You two were his children...and he brutalized you like you were war criminals.”
Only now did remorse start creeping into my veins, making my blood run cold.
What would I have done to him if he’d told me a century ago? Two? He’d been loyal to me for so long and imagining the friend before me dead in Freya’s place tugged at my heart.
“The one constant behind it all is Caym. He tore us all apart then, and he is trying to again.” I wiped my bloody knuckles on my breeches. “Go clean off your face...We are apparently expecting company.”
After a visit to the baths to rinse away the grime and betrayals of the day, I dressed in a formal silk tunic and dark linen breeches, and followed the loud hum of conversation into the dining room.
I avoided thinking of who was down in that dungeon, avoided thinking of the heartbreaking revelation I’d uncovered about my dear friend.
Focus would be needed to determine a path forward.
When I stepped inside the dining hall, our guests sat around the long oak table—all but Elsedora and Ryn. I suspected shewas helping to clean him up. My heart sank and my stomach soured a bit at the thought of what I’d done to him.
Wine bottles floated into the room, along with blown glass chalices. The tile shone, and a golden sunset glistened through the wall of windows on the opposite side of the room.
Since I’d awoken with that horrid list at my feet, everything had gone to shit.
Sybilla sat at the head of the table.
I’m afraid too.The sensation of her in my arms had felt more right than anything I’d experienced in centuries, but her willingness to open up, to trust me with her vulnerabilities? I’d work hard to hold on to that.
Sybilla looked so natural there as she passed a bottle of wine to Amara. My two worlds collided as I watched them chatter.
Amara and Freya had been friends. Long ago, for a short while, the enchantress and I had enjoyed each other’s company. Until a young cousin of the Toths’, the late Corric Mattock, had thoroughly distracted her. Feeling disheartened, I had snuck into a Phynnic masquerade ball one evening, looking for Amara. Instead, I’d found a young Princess hiding in the garden away from prying eyes. At that moment, I, too, had become thoroughly distracted.
I now found myself similarly preoccupied with a certain Queen, who I’d so recklessly underestimated. When Sybilla glanced up at me, the glimmer of her weak smile faded. A chair was left for me on the opposite side of the table.
