Her blade was positioned ready to slice through his armpit.
Aeriden ripped his gaze away from me as he met Kresida with a growl and a blade of his own.
“DISARM!” I bellowed at Kresida, my voice coming out strange and distant. “Disarm only!”
She shot me a look that would have wilted me a year ago, but I held my gaze on her, eyes hard. She snarled as she finally swung her leg out behind Aeriden and knocked the longsword from his hands with a swipe of her blade. She grabbed hold of his other arm, twisting it before he let out a grunt, yielding to the elf towering above him.
“Lyvi—” he began as he craned his neck to look up at me.
Kresida shot a look at me before removing his helmet, and it took everything in me not to crash to my knees and weep.
Aeriden.Aer.
Aeriden was alive. He wasn’t dead. He was here, in Sultira. He was here. He was…protecting the king… He was akingsguard… And in his eyes… That was…Oh gods…
That washorror.
Fear and disgust, even, at who, orwhat, he saw standing before him.
My thoughts spun in the wild flurry of impossibilities as my heart cracked at the look he gave me. What did he see in me now? A monster?
A soft chuckle rasped from Saros’s lips. I snapped my attention to the king, hanging in the serpents of darkness, my magic remarkably still flowing, cutting through my shock. Theheart-shaped heads of the snakes sent me back years to a certain solstice festival… Aeriden’s fear…
The Transcindiel reacted to the thought, dissolving the snakes and spinning them into thick, unbreakable fortissa chains instead.
Saros’s withered lips tilted in a slight grin as his eyes slid from mine to Aeriden’s, and his expression turned mocking. My powers reacted without me thinking, tightening their grip, the thin fortissa chains slithering over his body.
“You’ve made a grave mistake, Lyvia,” he gasped, his breath constricted through his closing throat.
I gazed upon the old King Saros. The man who had traded thousands of his own people, had sold them into a life of misery to the dark king in the north, and I felt only one thing.Hate.
Hatefor manipulating me, for thinking he could manipulate my father.
Hatefor arresting me. Arresting Drystan and Father Marcus.
Hatefor sending his forces to Rivaner. For killing Morwyn.
Hatefor allowing High Priest Helmar to conduct his sick experiments with the Obscura Bone, the power that belonged to me.
Hatefor sending his forces to Odessa.
Hatefor torturing Bear, for killing him.
Hatefor what he did to Enya all those years ago.
My eyes snapped to his three-fingered hand, now hanging limp at his side.
I fed my powers that hate, urging them on, urging them to somehow burn darker and brighter at the same time. They twisted and writhed around him in hundreds of tiny chains as they spun a web of power. A growing sense of unease reached me, and though I couldn’t see him through the window in the back of the room, I knew Aquila approached.
“Lyvia,” Kresida warned from the corner of the room.
She had Aeriden on his knees, her fist in his black hair. Longer, shaggier than I’d ever seen it. Unruly and wild, like when we were children.
“What are you doing?Why are you doing this, Lyvia?” Aeriden’s disgust and outrage boomed in his challenge.
“Are you going to kill me, Lady Lyvia?” the king whispered.
I stared at him as he let out another soft, vicious chuckle.
