Shit.
We stepped apart as casually as possible. I desperately wanted to be alone with him, somewhere our proximity didn’t matter and I could hear exactly what he’d wanted to say.
I smoothed my hair back with jittery hands. “You mentioned you had something important to tell me, Felaf?”
Raithe’s head snapped in Felaf’s direction. Her eyes were overwhelmingly pleading as something unidentifiable passed between them. Whatever she’d wanted to tell me, Raithe seemed to already know what it was.
“She deserves to know,” Felaf implored him. “About Kole? And about?—”
“Kole?” I questioned. “MyKole?”
I could have sworn Raithe flinched.
“What about him?” I demanded. My calmness from before was entirely erased by the idea that they knew something I didn’t and had kept it from me. “We’re not leaving until one of you tells me what’s going on.”
Raithe swallowed once before meeting my eyes. The ground beneath my feet shifted as he finally revealed the truth.
Kole had been in that dungeon.
Kole was freed from said dungeon, a result of the apostai attack.
Kole was responsible for the explosion that killed my grandparents.
Kole was an apostate.
Mel was an apostate.
Basilwas an apostate. Jere hadn’t been a surprise, but the others…
Basileus, Melanie, Kolbyn—they were all liars, and I the foolish believer.
The reality of it all slammed into me. I had suspected, but to hear the truth of it tore apart my heart. The people I’d once trusted had all used me, used my ignorance, for their personalgain. I replayed every single moment with each of them, wondering how I could have possibly missed what was right in front of me. I was nothing more than a pawn in their apostate scheme.
And my brother…
My brotherwas one of them. Had he known what I was tasked to do all along? I wondered if he was even captured. If he was evendead.
My ears rang as Raithe detailed his ventures in Gemini on his quest to find me. How he’d known Kole was an apostateall alongand didn’t tell me.
“Rahzlyn?”
Tentative hands reached for me. I shoved them away as a cold, invisible wall steeled me from myself. It was as though I was there but watching from a distance. My words and actions were a hollow response to the world around me.
“Thank you for that enlightening information,” I intoned. I didn’t recognize my voice. “And for reminding me what an incompetent, gullible idiot I’ve been. I’d like to go home now.”
Neither Raithe nor Felaf said anything as I began the trek down the hill.
Chapter 46
Raithe
A sickness lingeredin my stomach.
It first seeped in the moment Alekko informed us of the attack in the observatory. Only for a few brief moments, when I could physically assure myself Rahzlyn was fine save for a nasty gash on the side of her head, the sickness had vanished.
It came roaring back with a vengeance the moment I told her the truth about Kole. I was pissed at Felaf for attempting to do so without me, but she’d been right. I shouldn’t have kept it from Rahzlyn to begin with. Seeing her devastation, my pelting words shattering what she thought she knew…
It wrecked me.
