Chapter 26

N aya placed her forehead to her son's as she gripped his hands. "Kellen, you don't have to say anything in front of anyone. We can talk about this later."

Torin watched his mother brush his brother's hair with her hand again. Arlo moved to stand beside Rhea, and Breighly and Artem took a step back, giving the family space.

Kellen's rare eyes flashed with something that Torin knew all too well before he said, "I fear that if I don't say something now, I will be responsible for the bloodshed that is going to happen in this kingdom. I cannot bear that alone, Mother. You must understand that."

His mother's face turned pale before she lowered her hand from his hair. "Please, baby, I know you are scared—"

"What are you talking about? What happened in the entertainment hall, Kellen? I thought you had been attacked by the Dark Army or some sort of underworld magic." Torin's skin prickled as he found himself walking a few steps forward. "But there was nothing to be seen. Why do I get the feeling that I am the only one who doesn't know what is going on here?"

Kellen's eyes, one blue and one green, looked up at him from where he lay soaked in his own sweat. He drew in a breath, his eyes shutting briefly. "I need to tell you something, not only as my brother, but as my commander."

"You don't," Naya cut in. "You don't need to say a word, Kellen."

Emara nervously shifted near the fireplace, and Gideon also took a step forward.

Rhea lingered respectfully at the end of his bed. "Kellen, listen to your mother's words carefully."

Torin shifted and placed a hand to his head. "What in the underworld is going on?"

"Kellen, give it some thought," his mother whispered desperately. "Please give it more thought."

He reached out for her hand as he lay back on the pillow. "I have had years to think it through, Mother. I stood on Torin's side at dawn because he is not our father. I trust him and so should you."

The words hit Torin like a boulder, sweeping away his breath and crushing his heart.

I trust him.

With what?

"I do, my love," his mother whispered back, unable to look Torin's way.

"Then there should be no fear."

"I will protect you, Kellen," Emara's lyrical voice said. "I support your choice."

Torin turned to see her standing with hands clasped nervously together, her eyes a dark shimmer under the dim light of night. Torin glanced across to Gideon, whose face was wholly blank. His brother's emerald eyes met his own and he frowned a little. It told Torin all he needed to know.

He wasn't in on this secret either.

Fucking secrets.

"You need to answer me, and quickly," Torin said firmly. "What do I need to hear?"

Was it so bad that the room had flooded with silence to prepare him for what was to come? Even his mother had stopped begging Kellen not to speak, and her trembling hands clenched her skirt.

He hadn't thought much about what the first day of being the commander would bring, but this outdid any expectation.

A battle at dawn, an engagement, and now a secret that threatened bloodshed. What next, Veles knocking on the door of the Tower for a visit?

Shit, he better not wish that into existence.

Kellen sat up a little. "Once I tell you, if you command me to step out of the hunting team and into another role, I will understand. Or even if you have to exile me—"

"Exile you?" Torin was in disbelief at his words. "I can assure you, I will never exile you unless you are a threat to me, Emara, or the clan."

"Well, it is for you to decide if I am a threat to the clan or not." Kellen swallowed, and bravery took up residence in his eyes. "But I cannot keep this secret to myself any longer, not when we are all in danger." His gaze scanned the room before it found Torin again. "I am a True Dreamer, Commander."

"A what?" Torin asked, not sure if his hearing was playing up. He had been punched in the head a few times today, and hearing someone address him as commander was still overwhelming.

"I am a True Dreamer, Commander Blacksteel." Kellen's words lay like concrete in the room.

Emara's shoes could be heard on the wooden floorboards as she walked forward and stood by his youngest brother. It was clear she was in support of his secret. Somehow, she already knew.

A True Dreamer.

He had always admired that about Emara; she was unafraid to stand in adversity or on a side that felt right to her. And it seemed like her action gave his brother the courage to continue.

"I see things," he said tiredly. "I dream of events that come true. Well, most of them, anyway. And I normally see my visions in my sleep—until now."

A True Dreamer.

Torin had thought them to be nothing more than an old folktale or something that had disappeared with time. But as long as magical factions produced children, their enchanted blood would create all sorts of wonders. The problem came from the fact that the clans saw them as an abomination, a curse.

Torin sucked in a breath. He had no idea how to comprehend what his brother had just declared.

"A True Dreamer? As in a seer?" Gideon asked, and his voice sounded a little strangled.

"Yes." Naya defended him quickly, pushing her shoulders back. "I have tried to protect him from your father for as long as we have known. You know what kind of reaction he would have had knowing one of his sons had more of my blood than his, more blood of Rhiannon than of Thorin. He would never accept it." Naya shot a look at Torin.

But Torin was still trying to process it all. It felt like minutes ago he was just fighting for his life, battling his father's fists.

This day was…unthinkable.

"What happened to you in the entertainment room was a vision? " Torin asked. "You looked…tortured."

"Yes. It was a dream." Kellen panted slightly.

"Why were you screaming?" Gideon asked. "Do they hurt?"

Kellen moved up in the bed so that he was sitting upright, his mother's hand still intertwined with his own. "They don't always hurt. Sometimes I can feel, smell, or taste things, but that is only if it's really strong. When I was younger, they started off as dreams, but then the despicable things that started to creep into my head would come true. I would hear of it happening somewhere in the city or whispers would come from other parts of the kingdom. I tried for so long to write them off as mere coincidences, terrible accidents. I started to write them in a journal and draw what had happened, and the details were too accurate for them to be a coincidence." He took a breath, looking at his mother's pained face as he did. Kellen's eyes then flickered to Torin.

"When I was little, I used to sit outside your briefings before the Selection," he said, "so that I could hear of the tragedies that I had dreamt of just to confirm that I was some sort of freak. I was different, and I knew it. There would be nights where I would try to stay awake so that my dreams couldn't happen just in case I was the reason bad things were happening to people. I would beg Thorin to stop them, plead with the Three-Faced God to listen, but they never did. My dreams only increased with time. It was like they wanted me to suffer. I believed the Gods hated me. They turned a blind eye on me like my own clan eventually would." He looked down at his mother's hand as she stroked a thumb over his own. Tears streamed down his mother's face, and Torin choked down the buildup of emotion in his throat.

"Mother found out about my abilities after my eighth birthday. One night when I screamed and screamed and I couldn't stop, I had to tell her my secret. I told her that the Dark Army had washed up on Tolsah Bay and slaughtered witches who belonged to the House Water. I tasted the sulphur and I felt their blood on my skin. I described every detail to her and she was convinced that I was just having a bad dream." Emara wiped a tear from her cheek, her lip trembling. Torin found himself struggling to hold back his own tears. His baby brother had suffered all these years and he had never known a thing. Guilt ripped through him and he distributed his weight to shake it off, still trying to focus on what Kellen was saying. There would be time later for the guilt to eat him alive.

"The next day, word came from the east that what I had dreamt was no nightmare, but reality. Witches had been butchered on the beach during a summer solstice ritual; demons had killed them for sport." Kellen shook his head. "I couldn't tell anyone about it. Mother didn't want anyone knowing, especially Father." He looked at Gideon and then Torin. "She didn't know how you would react. You might deem me unworthy of the Blacksteel name and shun me even now. My blood caused me this affliction; I did not ask for it."

"It is not an affliction" Naya's tears streamed from her eyes as she held her youngest son's hand, and the lump in Torin's throat only magnified. He shoved it down.

"It's an incredible gift," Emara said from beside him. "The power of Rhiannon runs in your veins, and that is not by accident." Emara brushed back a strand of long black hair from her face. "I have been looking for someone to mentor you, but it's hard to find someone who knows anything about seer's magic because it is so unspoken of. But I will not give up on you. I will keep looking. We will find someone."

"It doesn't feel like a gift. Not when your own blood will not recognise it as a skill. True Dreamers are shamed in the hunting community and you all know it." He looked at every hunter in the room, even Artem, who had barely moved an inch. Breighly said nothing as her eyes began to glow with a sadness he had not seen in a while. "We are deemed as cursed, bringers of bad fortune. They see it as a demobilisation of the hunting spirit, a bad omen, a weakness."

"I do not see how you are anything but an advantage for hunters," Emara said. "You could change how the clans hunt." Her beautiful eyes found Torin's face, and like always, his heart quickened. "It could change how hunters plan. If they knew where and when the darkness would strike, they could always be ahead. They could always be in a position to win against the underworld."

She has a point, Torin thought. Her strategy for deconstructing archaic views was rather refreshing. She had an eye for change. Torin loved her rebellious streak. His smart little empress could help his clan be utterly brilliant under his watch.

"You saw what became of me when I had a vision," Kellen cut in. "I am disoriented, I sometimes cannot see or wake myself up. I often cannot hear the world around me until the vision is through with me and I am released from its claws. And I certainly wouldn't be able to fight should I have one whilst hunting. I would be the perfect target, the weakest of the clan."

"And you do not know when these visions will occur?" Torin asked after pulling a hand through his hair and taking a deep breath. He had to gather himself together and think like a leader, but his mind was a whirling vortex, every emotion smashing against the inside of his head.

He was dizzy, and the thoughts of his brother hiding who he was under Viktir's reign was even more maddening than he could have ever thought.

"I don't." Kellen's head shook and he looked down at his hands. "They are normally stronger when the moon is coming into her new phase or when she is full, but I cannot know when I will see for certain."

"Can they be controlled?" Gideon asked.

"Not really," Naya said, giving Kellen a reprieve. "But we have been giving him an elixir that slows them since he was a child, hoping that only one or two would sneak past the enchantment every so often. We knew it was possible for him to have a Dream when awake, we just didn't know if it would ever happen."

"Mother's elixirs are how I made it through the Selection," Kellen admitted.

"You did the best you could to control them," Arlo agreed, offering him a small smile.

A thought struck Torin hard. "What did you see in your vision that had you on your knees?"

Silence filled the room again.

Kellen took a long breath. "It's hard to explain. It sometimes comes clearly to me and other times it's murkier. Like when I had the vision of the darkness taking Emara at the Amethyst Palace, I was compelled to tell her about it, but we couldn't work out what the darkness actually was. I just knew something had a plan for her to be taken. And then she was taken by our own kind—"

"Wait, hold on." Torin threw up a hand, squeezing his eyes shut. He reopened them slowly, already seeing red. "You knew that Emara was going to be taken, that her life was in danger, and didn't tell anyone?"

He must be mistaken.

"I warned her—"

"You warned her?" Violence stirred in his soul.

"It was my idea not to tell anyone. Do not blame him," Emara interjected. "I couldn't tell anyone without exposing Kellen's secret and I refused to do that. I should be the one that gets your wrath, Torin. Not him."

Sweet fucking underworld. Was today going to kick his dick in any more? "Well, I suppose that makes it okay then, since it was your idea." Torin could feel the vein bulging in his neck. He turned and walked to the mantle, placing a hand on it and feeling like his world was exploding. "Fuck," he hissed before swinging back to face them all. "You were almost transported to the fucking underworld, Emara. Kellen, she could have died. People did die. Fuck!" He kicked over the wooden chair that sat close to the fireplace, splintering it. "And you are telling me we could have prevented that? You're telling me that I could have prevented you from being tortured and almost dying? Are you kidding?"

"Hey!" Emara yelled, her eyes scarily dark. "You do not get to raise your voice and shout about something that I decided was best for me." Emara pointed at him. "You can't be angry at us for something that didn't even happen. What's done is done. I made the choice to keep it from you. Let it go."

Torin grunted, his eyes widening in rage. "Oh, I can be angry if I want, angel. But I am not just angry, I am pissed. I am furious. You should not be hiding things like that from me. Things that endanger your life—any one of you. What you two did was utterly reckless and absolutely senseless."

"Senseless?" A spark of fire burned in her dark irises. "Don't you talk to me about senseless, Torin Blacksteel. Not when you have been fighting in the pits of the underground for no reason."

Naya gasped. "You haven't." Her eyes lit with concern and rage.

Torin ignored her, his eyes still locked with Emara's.

Artem Stryker cleared his throat, reminding everyone he was in the room. "I must agree with Torin on this one. You cannot expect us to think that we shouldn't have known that information, Emara. I am your guard. We were placed in our positions to avoid that happening to you. Our job is to protect you."

"Well, it wasn't your decision to make." Emara's jaw locked. "It was mine."

Torin let out a breath and took a step back as anger and fear coursed through every muscle. Shaking his head, he had the urge to wreck something. When his eyes met hers, he saw her on the floor in that room in the Amethyst Palace with a chain around her neck, screaming. Tears on her face. No hope left. Fear and blood.

Anger turned his bones into steel that melted as he took in the beauty of her face. "I almost lost you. I could have done something to protect you, to stop how they—" His voice broke off as flashes of what they did to her pushed past the barriers in his mind.

Silas had slammed her head into a mirror and beaten her. She had fought, but she had struggled. He remembered the blood on the floor, the ring he was supposed to have given to her lying with Magin as his soul left this world. It could have been her. It could have been Emara who had died that night.

Torin felt that beast that often awoke when memories of her screams invaded his mind. It burst out of his cage, and he let out a roar.

Everyone flinched.

Emara's eyes softened after hearing his voice break, and she moved towards him. A cool breeze skated over his face, cheeks, and chest as she walked closer. "I know that night was hard for you too, and I am sorry, but you didn't lose me. Can you focus on that? Focus on the fact that I made the right call."

"That was not the right call and I don't care what kind of glitter you sprinkle over it to shine it up," Torin seethed, but the cool air soothed him again. "You were taken, Emara! Taken! Almost killed—or worse, sent to the underworld. I wouldn't…I couldn't even—"

Breath escaped him, his words lost to the hurt and rage that swirled into one huge mess in his mind.

"Brother," Gideon's voice pulled him out of his mind, "we are digressing from the true matter at hand here. I know you are pissed, but we can work that out later in the training room, yeah? Right now, if Kellen saw something that was worse than the vision before, I think we ought to listen to it. Don't you?"

He was always so level headed. That was why he needed Gideon to be his second-in-command—when he could get a minute to fucking ask him. His brother was calm, reasonable, and not a fucking hothead with murderous tendencies. He was probably the better man for commandership, but the Gods just had to go ahead and make Torin the first born.

He blew out a breath and relaxed his clenched fists.

Torin nodded at Gideon and then turned his gaze to his youngest brother. "What have you seen, Kellen? It's important that we know."

He hesitated for a few seconds, his eyes fluttering closed. "It was dark at first, but then I saw water, a gorgeous blue lake. I am certain it was the Lake of Rhiannon. But that's where it gets murky."

"What does?" Torin encouraged him.

"My visions. They don't always come in order; it's more like frames of what will happen. That's why I have trouble communicating or connecting them. Can you always make sense of your dreams?"

"Not always," Torin agreed.

Kellen's gaze flickered over everyone. "In the vision, I saw the Dark Army obtain the knowledge on where an ancient relic of the Gods is—a stone—and they are going to go after it. They are ready. I saw them break through a portal near a huge temple. I think it could be the Temple of the Gods. But blood ran through the rivers and the sky darkened like the magic of the underworld had swallowed us whole. There was screaming and death…"

Emara walked towards the window where moonlight glimmered in her hair. "Which stone is it?" She turned, looking over her shoulder, and the fear in her eyes sent Torin's blood into a quickened thrum.

"I am unsure, but it was smoother than the Resurrection Stone, almost whimsical."

Emara's gaze swept to Torin. "It has to be the Protection Stone."

He nodded. "That's what my bets would be on."

"How would you know that?" Gideon asked.

Artem said, "Think about it, if you have the Resurrection Stone here and Veles has the Immortality Stone, that leaves the Dark Crystal and the Protection Stone." His eyebrows rose. "And everyone knows the Dark Crystal is lost to the Broken Sea of Thorin."

"Unless the Dark Crystal has been plucked from the seabed, it has to be the Protection Stone," Emara agreed. "Its whereabouts are unknown, but it makes sense for it to still be on land. And it makes even more sense for the stone to be at the Temple of the Gods."

Kellen leaned forward. "If you are going to get there before the Dark Army, if you want to stop them retrieving Light Gods' Stones, you must leave tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Torin repeated.

"Tomorrow?" Emara exclaimed.

"If Kellen has no way to know when the Dark Army worked out where the Protection Stone is, it means that they could have a head start." Naya finally stood; her face stony. "And whatever we do, we cannot let them get another stone. They already have one; Gods know what they could do with two."

"When is the next full moon?" Torin asked, unable to think clearly.

"A few days from now," Naya said. "It's the Wolf Moon and she is a supermoon. She is so extremely powerful. It would make sense for the Dark Army to travel then."

"Great," Artem huffed.

"Demons always strike when the moon is at her fullest," Breighly added, her voice soft but wise. "But we have been tricked before. It is not their armies that are weaker when the moon isn't at her fullest, just their portals. It might not be as obvious as it seems for when they will move; they could be on their way there now."

"For a mission like this, it is too dangerous for them to do anything otherwise," Gideon argued. "They will be readying to portal when the moon is at its fullest. They have too much at stake if they are going to the Temple of the Gods. They need full power to get as many of them through the portal as possible to find the stone. The grounds are massive and the temple is protected. There's no way they would risk that."

"What if they are already there?" Arlo asked.

Torin let out a huge breath, and everyone looked at him.

This was what it was going to be like for the rest of his life, wasn't it? Everyone watching him, analysing how well he was coping and looking to see if he could make the decisions. "Gideon." He finally glanced up, his head still fuzzy with information and his blood still thrumming at the thought of a hunt. Damn Thorin's blood. "Round up the clan and let them know that the celebrations are over. They have to be ready at dawn for a mission. Artem, Arlo, if you are staying under my roof, you are abiding by my orders. I am giving you the choice to be in or out of this mission."

"I'm in." Artem grinned. "I am your soon-to-be wife's guard, after all."

Torin walked a little closer. "If you ask to be the best man at all during this mission, I will remove you from that position." He gave Artem his showtime grin. "Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal." Artem's smirk was so feral it reminded Torin of who his next point of call was.

He switched his gaze to the other Stryker. "Are you in or out, Stryker Number Two?"

Arlo nodded once. "You know I am in. Any chance to beat the Dark Army is a chance I will take."

Torin stepped to the side. "Breighly, can you take the information of the mission back to the pack? I want the alpha to know about this development and decide if they will join the hunt or not. We have always had an unofficial alliance with the Baxgrolls; let's hope it continues."

She nodded. "Of course."

Torin looked down at his littlest brother and said, "You better get these infirmary blankets off of you. If you have Blacksteel blood in your veins, you will be there. You are a key part in all of this, and I won't leave a brother behind."

Delight and relief shone in Kellen's eyes, and Torin wasn't sure which outweighed heaviness in his heart.

A seer. A True Dreamer.

Emara's words drifted through his head.

It's an incredible gift.

I do not see how that is anything but an advantage when you are a hunter.

Thorin only knew how this evening would have gone if it had been his father who had found out the truth. But Torin had vowed that he would be better than his father ever was. If he could do that, it would mean more to him than winning any fight or hunt.

"Wait," Kellen said, jolting up as everyone moved. "I have one more detail to share."

Everyone turned to him.

"It wasn't all horror that I saw in my vision. When I mentioned the Lake of Rhiannon before, it was because that's where I saw the both of you bind your souls to each other." He looked at Torin and then the empress. "That's the place where Torin and Emara will get married. That part is set in stone."