Chapter 23

Evie

Two weeks earlier…

It had been a mere handful of hours since Trystan was taken. Lyssa was happily settled into a suite in the west wing of the manor, a place Evie couldn't bring herself to linger—not without him. She watched Otto Warsen's head sway gently with the draft coming in from the front door with a morbid satisfaction. She didn't know how long she'd been staring. She should've been disgusted with what she'd done. She should've been appalled and frightened by her brutal actions. But instead—

She smiled.

A plan was brewing in her mind, like chemicals melding together to create something lethal, a poison so toxic and pungent it could kill in seconds. But the malevolence was burying something, and as soon as she glanced to the gilded ink ring around her pinkie finger, she choked on it.

Loss.

Trystan lived in every inch of the walls, in the kitchens, in the offices, in the decaying heads above, in everything. The manor was him. But he was gone, and she couldn't breathe. Stumbling out the front door, she ran past the manor's barriers, past the safety and protection, past any reminders of him, and dropped to her knees on a keening cry. Fisting wet grass in her palms, she stared at a flower she wanted to tear from the ground. She pinched her eyes shut instead.

Too much loss, too much heartache, too much pain.

"Please no, please no," she chanted. The scar on her back no longer stung, but it tingled as if sensing her distress. The dagger at her thigh warmed in answer. "I'll get him back. I will."

"I'd like to assist with that, if I could?"

The unknown voice mixed with the wounded ache in her heart, and the combination proved lethal when her eyes darted upward and saw the glinting silver. Saw the king's insignia. Whatever was left of her reason snapped like a rotting branch.

"Aaaaah!" She screamed, dagger unsheathed, and ran for the knight, swiping through the air like she was chopping flying vegetables.

"Hold on!" the knight shouted, stumbling back. "Just let me explain."

But Evie didn't. She kept coming, and when she finally got close enough, she brought her booted foot up between his legs as hard as she could manage. The knight went down with a howl, his helmet rolling off his head into a puddle of mud. Evie blinked.

Because she knew that mop of hair. She knew that chin, the nose, the green eyes. So like her father's…

The knight before her was Gideon.

Her older brother, who she'd believed dead for the past decade, was laying before her, clutching his groin and moaning into the grass. "I deserved that, I suppose," he rasped, breathing deeply through his mouth. His skin was red and tanned and…not corpse-like at all.

She blinked. "You are dead."

"Eve," Gideon said, climbing to his feet—because he had feet. They moved and everything—they weren't decayed or rotting; they moved quite efficiently as he slowly edged closer.

"No!" She held up the dagger. "Stay there."

Gideon halted, his throat bobbing as he rolled his lips and rocked back on his heels. "I, um. I know this is probably very confusing, but if you'd just give me a moment?"

"Are you a demon?" she blurted, then almost covered her mouth to hold the embarrassment in. But what in the deadlands did she have to be embarrassed about? She was not the one who had come back from the dead. Although…her plans weren't veering so far away from that.

Irony was funny sometimes, and other times it was like someone had slapped you with an umbrella.

"I am a Valiant Guard, so…you're close!" Gideon said with a smile, and a beat of recognition ran through her as the shock began to wear off. She stepped closer, her hand drifting up toward his face, brushing over a faded white scar on his cheek. He'd gotten it from a fall he took while climbing a tree to retrieve her favorite kite. Her fingertips brushed over it, and tears burned her eyes.

"Gideon?"

He nodded, tears brimming, too, and Evie brought her other hand up.

And knocked him square in the jaw.

"What. In. The. Deadlands!" she screamed, pulling her fist back to hit him again, but he was already on his feet.

Her brother stumbled away, deeper into the trees, and she ridiculously followed him.

"We thought you were dead for ten years! Ten years! "

He kept stumbling, trying to keep his eyes on her as he moved back and away from her swinging hands. "I know, Eve, I know! Please let me explain! Did you just throw a rock? Villainous work has really hardened you, huh?"

She picked up another rock.

"I'm sorry!" he cried. "I practiced this a million times, and I'm already mucking it up. Just let me say my piece, and then you can hit me with whatever you want."

"How about an anvil?" she grumbled. The sun was sinking through the trees in a display of muted greens and golds, nearing its descent beyond the horizon. Like it didn't want to stick around for this horrendous display.

"Years ago, in the field, when the light hit me. It didn't actually…hit me."

Her brows shot up, and she was ready to protest, but he kept talking—likely knowing his time to do so was limited. "Remember that fever I got at school? When I was in bed for a week?"

She remembered. She'd had to console her mother and play nursemaid at his bedside, but she hadn't complained. They needed her, and she'd needed that. "I remember."

"The trauma of the sickness woke up my magic. Father didn't want to alarm any of you until we knew what sort of magic it was, so he called for a specialist while you were at school. It's a magic that sort of, um…suppresses other kinds of magic."

Dots were connecting in a very ugly way. "You're the knight who messed with his magic, aren't you?" They both knew who she was talking about.

"I had to, Eve. I was following orders. Several of those knights have magic of their own. Should I have fought back, even if I'd wanted to, we would've been outnumbered. He would've been taken anyway." Gideon cleared his throat and pulled at his silver armor, which was caked in blood. Blood from the knight he'd felled to save her after she killed Otto. "I was always going to step in, I swear it. I knew Mr. Warsen was a creep—by the gods, I would've liked a shot at murdering him myself, but you beat me to it."

It wasn't that her knees were weak; it was just that her body was tired of holding the weight of all the realizations. The whiplash of her father's betrayal, her boss's capture, and her brother's revival, all within a twenty-four-hour period. She knew she was chaotic, but this was a bit much, even for her.

She sank to her knees in the grass, then sighed when Gideon sat beside her, maintaining a careful distance. "I want to help you. I didn't know about Father, or I would've—"

"Don't." She cut him a look so mired in hatred that he flinched.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Regardless, the crux of it all is that I was able to save myself that day in the fields, but Mother's magic was unstable and strong. I was knocked practically into another dimension—like actually another dimension, for a second—but then I landed somewhere in the vicinity of the Gleaming Palace with practically burned-off clothing and no memory of who I was or what I was doing there. Someone pointed me toward Valiant Guard recruiters, and it all sort of spiraled after that."

"Memory loss? You expect me to believe nobody in the Valiant Guard barracks recognized you? When Father worked so closely with the king?"

"The king did."

This caused her to go silent.

"He called me Gideon the first time he met me. My memory started coming back around five years later, in jagged bits. Even when it had all returned, I never revealed that it had—and the king didn't reveal anything about my past to me, either."

She glared at him, trying to kick her sympathies away. He didn't deserve them. "Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?" she asked while pulling soft pieces of grass between her fingers. "You never came back! We mourned you! This is the most heinous act I've ever seen anyone pull, and I've watched my boss cut someone's tongue out for eating all the vanilla candies."

Her boss. Trystan .

"He's gone because of you," she whispered. A tear slid down her cheek.

Gideon nodded, eyes getting red as he rubbed at them. "I know. But I've come to make it right. I've come to help you get him back."

She sneered. "Why should I trust anything you say? You've been working for the king for ten years. "

"I killed one of my own to save you. You think I would not betray the man who stole so many years of my life without a care for the one I had before?" He looked so sincere, so serious. So unlike the Gideon she remembered. "All I ask is sanctuary when we get him out. When the deed is done, all I ask is a safe place to go."

She shook her head and pulled a hand through her hair before looking at him, more tears falling. "Why should I give you a safe place, when you stole mine from me?"

And like that, Evie watched her brother's heart break.

She wanted to lock him away with her father, wanted him to suffer alongside him. The two men in her life destroying her trust and discarding her feelings like they were flimsy, inconsequential things. But there was a difference between Gideon's eyes and her father's, and it wasn't the color. It was the hope.

Pure and honest and pleading. It grounded her; it pulled at her and rooted her like a tree.

And despite all her anger and hurt, she felt a little grateful for the brother who had abandoned them reappearing now. She needed a way into the Gleaming Palace—someone on the inside—and if he said he could do it…she'd allow him to help. With the knowledge that at any moment, she could have the Malevolent Guard tear him apart.

Gideon was slumped back against a tree trunk, his shoulders bunched. "I suppose there's nothing I can say to make this right. But I hope to show you—"

"Can you get me into the Gleaming Palace undetected?"

The hope in his eyes had gone from a torch to a catching bonfire. "I can. I'll do whatever you need me to do. But I will tell you that the king instructed me to retrieve Mother's letters and your, uh…dead body."

She smiled. Perfect.

Gideon frowned. "I don't remember you being this scary… Why is that making you smile?"

"Because I plan to give the king exactly that. And so much more."