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“There’s nobody else,” I said carefully.
Jagaros’s eyes bled with pain. It was amazing how undeniably him he still was, even in a different form. The stillness, the stalking movements, the upward curl of his lip when he heard something that displeased him. Like right now.
“Get Rayna off this island, where she’ll be safe.”
“Haven’t you been listening to me?” My voice was rising against my will. “She’s not safe if she’s anywhere near me.”
“I have been listening, and she is. As for everyone else?” Jagaros shook his head. “I already failed at leading this island once. I will not risk the last of my people’s lives by failing again.”
It took several breaths before I convinced myself not to throttle him. I’d thought the knowledge that Rayna’s life was in danger would propel him into action, but apparently, he thought I could resist the command when it came to her.
But he was wrong. He overestimated me and underestimated himself.
“Alright,” I clipped. “So don’t fail again. Do it over and win this time.”
Not for the first time, my gaze dropped to the surface of that stone table between us, where various books and papers were scattered about. I didn’t have Barberro’s eyesight, but I caught certain unmistakable phrases that made my veins run cold. The northern realm of Asmod. Blood marks. An ancient curse.
Why was Jagaros researching the vampires?
It didn’t matter right now. If I couldn’t convince the bastard to join us…
“Listen,” I started. “How old are you again? Six hundred?”
Jagaros merely glared at me, but his outward thoughts betrayed him.
“Six hundred and forty-two,” I amended. “Respectfully, that’s way too fucking old to be putting on this reluctant hero act.”
Terrin and Dazmine swung their heads my way in alarm. The tiger blinked at me with a curious tilt of its head. Jagaros himself, on the other hand, didn’t move a muscle besides one twitching finger against his side.
“We get it,” I continued unashamedly, crossing my arms. “You think you’re a failure because of your empire’s demise, even though Dyonisia Reeve is the one who actually destroyed it. But there’s nobody else the magic would recognize as the one true king besides you. If you want to appoint someone else after you take back the throne, then feel free, but you have to take back the throne first. You have to fight.”
“I can’t,” Jagaros said, turning his face away.
“You have to.”
“I CAN’T.” Jagaros slammed a hand against the stone table before squeezing his eyes shut. After a deep breath, he said, more calmly, “See for yourself.”
With a single, wavering finger, he pointed at his head, and I understood. Lowering my blockade, I reached out and stepped into his mind.
Heat and cold blasted against my face instantly. When I opened my eyes, it was to find myself in that labyrinth of crackling ice, flames dancing along the gate crowns but never melting the walls themselves. Jagaros stood there, too, though his form blurred and shifted with every passing second.
“There.” He gestured blindly. “The last battle, where I gave up everything for all I had left.”
Up ahead, a storm of mist rolled to a stop in front of us like a giant wave, tendrils breaking apart and forming images with startling clarity—as if Jagaros had spent centuries revisiting this single memory over and over, making it real again.
A misty figure thudded to his knees on a frozen incline, the jungle smothered in ice. It was Jagaros, donning the form of his brother, a crown made of twisted bones and glinting jewels and dangling shells on the frosted ground before his bowed head.
Then somebody I’d recognize anywhere stepped forward to tower over him.
“You surrender?” Dyonisia Reeve asked.
She was younger in this memory, her pointed ears and canines on full display, not yet stifled by Shape Shifting magic. She wore a breastplate made of steel and a leather belt tied with pouches and pockets of weapons, while a shield of her own antipower encased her in shimmering, translucent white.
I expected her to look haughty, to simper down at Jagaros the way Queen Mydusia would have, but she appeared… disappointed instead. Like she’d been searching for something in the chaos off the battle and had yet to find it.
“You know I did not commit the crime you accuse me of,” Jagaros rasped, still on his knees. “I would never. You have slaughtered thousands of my people for nothing.”
What crime? My mind reeled, but I couldn’t pull any more information from the mist as the scene continued to play out.
