He ignored her. “The south needed a lesson after the all the north has suffered.”
“Please, you wanted to stick it to Kadra.” The replica of Aoran Tower, the assumption of Kadra’s position. This had always been revenge. “Anyone who gave ahavïdabout the country would have held every piece of theAequitas together as people escaped. What can your voice do beyond forceothersto do what you can’t?”
He stilled.
“It isn’t that you didn’t want war.” She watched the pallor of his face worsen, letting her tongue run untrammeled. “You can’t control it. That’s why you vanished after triggering the lightning strike on the Aequitas. Why should I tie my lot in with a man who can’t so much as shield himself from a single bolt without ordering someone else to protect him—” He slapped her hard enough to whip her head to one side.
Pain burst white-hot through her skull. Winded, she wordlessly touched her bleeding lips, exhaling through the ringing in her ears. When she turned to meet his eyes, he had never looked paler.
He might have drawn her blood, but the blow was hers.
He stared at his hands for a moment as though still comprehending that he had struck her. “His life should have been mine,” he whispered. “I’m taking it back. You’re the one clinging to a monster.”
Furious denial sprung to her lips. He laughed it off before it left.
“He didn’t single you out?” That unearthly voice wove around her like a vise. “Didn’t make you feel bared to your soul and entirely known? Didn’t praise you as beyond compare or give you what he vowed he gave no other? And then, you felt called to him despite what you saw of his evil until common sense vanished and all that was left was a desperation toplease,” he hissed with bitter vehemence.
“Not for the reasons youthink!”
“Really? As children, Drenevan and I were ordered to lure people into working for the Clan.” He stared at the horreum’s gates, weak of moonlight spilling over his delicate features. “Our targets were fellow children, though the difference in mental acuity was so wide as to be unfair. We’d encourage them to join our blazeleaf production warehouse for coin, and then lock them in with the rest of the workers. Once their families came crying and begging, Clevsin would force them all into servitude. We had a thriving workforce. But how did we get children to turn their skin to leather whilecuring and drying blazeleaf?” He turned back to her. “The same tricks. Lure them in. Make them feel seen. Promise them that you and only you can help with their struggles. Prove it with little things, and when they’re well and hooked, reel them in. No one was immune to Drenevan. Not you. Not Tetrarch Othus.”
She winced at the memory, staring at the sweat lining the grooves of his palm, and the pale, almost-ill waxy sheen of his skin. “Two things can be true. Taking away Othus’s free will was wrong, and you were desperate and didn’t have anyone to turn to.” Her heartbeat was a staccato of pity and anger. “You act like your motives are efficient, and Kadra’s were evil, but so many are dead. Because of envy.”
Noceo dropped his hand. “He goteverything, while I remained stuck in Komis withnothing, always slaving away, always afr—” He cut himself off with a shake of his head and a laugh.
Afraid?“You’re mad if you expect me to believe that Kadra heartlessly abandoned you. That man carries more guilt than the Chaboras River has water!”
“You barely know him. Helefteleven years ago without a backward glance,” he snarled.
“Gods, there isn’t a chance in any of the ten hells that it’s true, but it was up toyouto build a life of your own!” she said incredulously. Dalvia was one thing, but this silver-eyed snake could have made his home in the Xaromand Desert if he so chose.
“You don’t see it.” Noceo pricked his thumb and pressed it to the runes for Coercion on his armilla. Power roared to life, the seething press of magic a tangible weight over them. His skin turned a shade paler. “I could have forced you to join me at any point. But it has to be real. You have to see it as I have or I become the villain of the piece.”
She was inches from slapping him. “All Iseeis a pathetic piece of former nobility who’s spent eleven years wallowing over his life being hell when you had it easier than I ever did.”
“That’s what you believe?” His silver eyes glittered, something almost mad in their depths. “Then,look!” He seized her wrists, twisting them ruthlessly when she tried to escape. “Tell me that I didn’t suffer.” He wiped some of the blood from her bleeding mouth wound onto her armilla and pressed it intoherar, the rune for “Probing.” “Let’s see how long that high horse of yours stands.”
He touched her fingertips to his head. The world dissolved in a familiar rush.
She opened her eyes to a well-organized library, still able to feel the grip of his hands around hers. She had no hope of leaving his head until he let her go.
Cursing roundly, she took in the library. After months on the job, she’d learned that they were the most common unconscious structure that people chose for their memories. Endless oak shelves labeled by letter and topic stretched out ahead. Noceo had lived quite a life. Perusing the stacks of books, she walked toward a series of shelves of topics beginning with the letterW“Whitesleep.”
She opened the first volume.
Her surroundings reshaped and re-formed into a cramped but well-furnished bedroom. She was outside Noceo’s perspective in the memory just as she had been with the farmer. Whoever this god was, they seemed to affect the unconscious realms immensely, down to warping her abilities.
A large, austerely built bed of mahogany, pristine but for the carving of a wolf on one of the posts, occupied much of the space. Gray sunlight streamed through barred windows and spread fingers over an ebony writing desk, washbasin, and a wardrobe stocked with silver robes that would have fit an adolescent. Fire crackled in the hearth. Despite the decidedly grim stamp of the room’s layout and the cut of its furniture, everything was of the finest quality. Several pieces sported the geometric patterns that had been ubiquitous during the monarchy’s time.
A smile broke over her face at the adolescent boy hunched over a mortar and pestle, grinding the distinctive yellow venom sacs of boil beetles to dust. A series of vials and powders littered his desk. Behind Kadra, Noceo lounged on the bed and made notations on his scroll, spilling ink onto Kadra’s sheets. The scene was so wholly comfortable that it hurt.
“It won’t work,” Noceo insisted as Kadra continued to mash the beetles, adding small quantities of leaves to the mortar.
“Hmm,” was Kadra’s only response. Like his half brother, he hadn’t yet grown into his features. The strong nose and stern mouth that would harden as he matured gave him the look of a very serious hawk at this younger age.
His fingers slipped on the pestle. It clattered to the ground. He gave it a look of consternation before turning to the blazeleaf roll he’d left smoking on a nearby plate. Her jaw dropped when he took several deep draws, blowing a ring at the ceiling.So, it was blazeleaf before you turned to alcohol.
Noceo leaned over the edge of the bed and picked up the pestle. “Overdid it?”
