“A little,” Kadra admitted.
His half brother cautiously sniffed the pestle. “What kind of drug is it for to you to pound away at it for so long? Hallucinogen?”
“Analgesic.” Kadra took a puff of blazeleaf. “Thought it might help with my back but it isn’t strong enough yet.”
She stilled.That’s why you made it?He had been in pain.
“So, you’re concentrating it?” Noceo swung his legs over the bed and peered over Kadra’s shoulder. “That’ll take hours.”
The tight lines around Kadra’s mouth said he was aware and didn’t give a damn. She watched him in dawning understanding. She had always thought that he drank to numb himself from the weight of what he did, but it had been to numb hisbodyas much as his mind. Recalling how often he’d reached for a glass after they’d made love, she resolved to swat him at her next available opportunity.His spine must have been in agony.
“I’ll never understand Father’s preoccupation with drugs,” Noceo muttered. “What good is an empire from the shadows? I need a better weapon, Drenevan. Something that’ll bring the world to its knees.”
“Your voice already does that.”
“But it’s so fucking limited!” Noceo flopped back against the bed. His jaw tightened. “I can barely take on a crowd, and even then, I’m drained after a one-word command. Not all of us can weave lightning.” He stretched his hands in front of him and splayed his fingers. “I wish I were a Twelfth-Tier too. Parvine might like that. I could aim a word into a crowd and watch it dance.”
Kadra blinked. “Don’t aim one at me,” he said with a strange seriousness, before he began grinding away again.
Sarai caught a flash of resentment in Noceo’s eyes. Had he thought that Kadra was looking down on him?
“I’d make the world mine.” He scowled. “Maybe then, Clevsin’ll finally be pleased. I’m sick of getting my legs broken.”
A fissure of sadness tunneled through her chest as everything clicked.
Broken legs in one son. A broken back in another. Kadra had left his spine in agony as penitence for what he had done, because pain was all he understood. Noceo’s agony had steered him into megalomania. How bitter it was that he had grown to subject others to the same hell that he had lived through. Seeing him young and hurt andscaredfelt like looking in a mirror.No wonder he saw through me.
“You’d be starting a war,” Kadra noted.
“Life is war.” Noceo propped himself up on an elbow. “Take you. That’s what you were molded for. You’d be lost without a knife in your hand. You’ll never be normal.”
An ache spread behind her eyes when Kadra considered that gravely. “True,” he said without inflection.
True.The crack in her chest grew. The crucible that had formed him had burnt off too much of his morality for that. Clevsin had boiled him inblood and violence until he had conquered both and gained an enjoyment for their simplicity and familiarity.
The world Kadra lived in was a world at war. He was one of the rare few who could see the battlelines that people had queued up at before the fighting began. It was part of what made him such a brilliant politician, because the games of one-upmanship he had learned young had easily translated to politics. She had always wondered which parts of him had been innate and which ones had been a byproduct of experience. It was a miracle he’d turned out as honorable as he had when he’d traded one abusive home with Clevsin for another one with Othus.
No wonder he had hidden so much. How did anyone explain such a childhood?
The memory devolved to Kadra walking in on Clevsin bringing a poker on Noceo’s legs. Noceo had given Kadra such a desolate look that she had choked.
The jerk of her body outside his memories told her that he had pulled her hands away from his head. The world reemerged in flashes of light and sound.
“Well?” His voice was dim. “I had it easy, did I?”
Her lips parted on a soundless exhalation before she found the words. “I’m sorry. You didn’t.”
Every muscle in his pallid face stilled. He let her hands go. “Will you join me then?”
She looked at him then. Truly looked at his too-pale features and the imprint his clammy hands had left on hers. “The baker’s girl you cared for, how did Parvine Poxtan die?”
Noceo’s eyes darkened. “She’s none of your concern.”
On the contrary, she’s in every one of your memories.“You were fond of her. If you want me to understand you, then—”
“I never asked forunderstanding, Death-Summoner.”
“Why else would you show me your mind?” she asked quietly.
