Chapter 72

Chapter 72

T he gardens were silent as Andrian watched his soul fly into the sky. Her roar tore through the heavens, their bond pulling taut in his chest before fading with her disappearing form.

“Don’t come back for me.”

He kept repeating those words, over and over, even after he was sure she could no longer hear them. But only because he had to be sure.

She had to listen. She’d never been good at listening, but by all the gods, he hoped she would now.

He wasn’t worth her rescue. This one act may have bought him true redemption for the pain he caused her, and he hoped she would let him have it.

“I think we both know she will come back for you, son of shadows.”

The rays of the setting sun gilded the edges of the great black and gold dragon, aureate eyes glowing like twin suns. Shadows danced between the membranes of his wings, just as light had twined through Mariah’s.

And to Andrian’s bitter disgust, he felt his own shadows reaching. Desperate to leak from the dark place in his soul, curious to investigate this being who was so much like him in so many ways.

But Andrian had known for many months now: his shadows might have been cast by the sun, but they’d grown stronger beneath the silver-gold light of the moons.

“You know nothing about her.”

Kol chuckled. “Maybe not the woman she is. But I know her. The grace she carries is a part of her. It will never allow her to leave you behind. Not forever.”

His words grated against Andrian. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. She is not her magic.”

“Are you so sure about that?” Kol lowered his massive head. “All people are nothing more than their power. Power determines their place in this world. And magic is but a manifestation of power.”

Andrian gritted his teeth, holding Kol’s gaze with a defiant glare, but said nothing.

The dragon chuffed, snaking his head back to the sky. The shadows around his wings wove thicker, caressing his onyx scales. They leaked from his body, soon shrouding him in a rush of darkness, opaque clouds billowing around his form. The air crackled and the shadows snapped together, condensing into a size a fraction of the beast.

Into the size and shape of a man.

They peeled away slowly, revealing the figure beneath.

Andrian’s breath left him in a rush. He staggered backwards, knees buckling, almost sinking to the blood-stained grass.

The man—Kol—wore a dark, fitted jacket, black pants tailored to a powerful and imposing frame. His skin was warm and tanned, his hair black and shimmering with traces of gold.

But his face … his face was Andrian’s. Only his flaming red-gold eyes and their slightly more upturned shape set the two men apart.

They could have been brothers. Far more alike than Andrian was to his actual brother, Gabriel, whose absence from Khento was something a part of him noted and stored in the darker corners of his mind.

Kol looked enough like him to shred through Andrian’s wall of ice, fear and confusion slipping past his careful mask.

The dark god brushed a hand across his shoulder. His face lifted into a familiar, cocky smirk. “Surprised by something, reykr? ”

Murmured gasps washed through the gardens as the court members reemerged from where they’d hid amongst the rubble and behind the castle walls. But Andrian couldn’t tear his gaze from Kol.

From the face that might as well have been his own.

His words failed him, so his mouth stayed closed, all his resolve pouring into his limbs to keep his body standing and steady.

Kol laughed. “There is so much you do not know. Which reminds me …” His laughter died as he shifted his attention behind Andrian.

To the dais with its six mock thrones that somehow still stood. To the six lords who were hunched and hiding behind their chairs, just now emerging, eyes wide at the carnage.

Kol’s smirk morphed into a hungry grin. “My Lord Laurent!”

Andrian wavered as his father hesitantly stepped around his chair, an uncharacteristic panic visible in his golden eyes.

“It is so very good to see you! And in the flesh, this time. I always knew we’d see the day.” Kol was the image of courtly charm, yet something dangerous danced in his eyes. “All of our carefully laid plans, executed almost to perfection. But tell me …” Kol tapped a finger to his chin. “Why was I not told that my dear reykr was unbonded? I lost a perfectly good vessel—and soldier—all because that little bitch of a moon goddess could burn me out.” He snarled his last words, the suns in his eyes flashing.

But Andrian’s world felt colder than ice.

Colder than it had been as he’d watched Mariah fly away from him. Colder than those weeks when she’d refused to be near him because of the trauma and pain his body caused her. When he’d been imprisoned in his mind, unable to recall any memories beyond flashes of nightmares woven with his past.

Imprisoned, by …

Julian Laurent sank to his knee and bowed his head. “Your Holiness,” he began. “I—I did not realize whether he had bonded to the whore queen was important to you?—”

“ Important to me?” Kol snarled. Shadows lashed out, gripping Julian by the throat. The lord’s eyes bulged in terror, clawing at the rope of darkness.

“If you had given him to me after he was bonded, as we had agreed , I could have returned before the season changed to spring. I could have used their little bond to break her from the inside out.”

Julian’s eyes darted to Andrian. “He is here now, Your Holiness,” he spluttered. “You can take him again, use him again. It’s not too late.”

“Sniveling fool. ” Kol released Julian, the lord falling forward with coughing chokes. “Don’t you see? She not only burned out my presence; she scorched my essence. The very piece of him that made him useful.” Kol turned his sneer to Andrian. His face softened a fraction, even as his words fell upon Andrian like stones into water.

He’d always known his shadows were a curse.

His father slowly rose to his knees, throat red.

“What are you talking about?” Andrian said with deadly softness, his quiet rage and dread and fear wrapping around him, consuming him.

Kol’s mouth twitched with the beginning of a smirk. “So many shocks for you today. I’ll answer your questions, but tell me, did Lord Laurent ever tell you to withhold the bond from your dear little queen? I saw so many interesting things in your mind, but I think I’d like to know the truth.”

But Andrian had no interest in answering Kol’s questions. “It was you,” he murmured, almost to himself. His shadows, though he hated it, danced with his rage.

“It was you in my mind,” he said louder. “You forced me to hurt her.”

Kol shrugged. “Not exactly me, but close enough, I suppose. Everything you did was on the order of our dear Royal friends here, not me. I only wanted our queen broken, so she would shift and my prison would be broken. Though I hear you struggled quite a bit against it, especially when she was involved.” He frowned. “How curious. Or, perhaps, not curious at all.”

Andrian decided then that he would kill this god. No matter if it was impossible, he would find a way.

With a snarl, he lashed his shadows out, his aim for Kol’s neck true.

But shadows far more ancient swatted him easily away. His magic dissipated like smoke, vanishing into the air.

Kol tsked. “Now, there is no need for that. I understand you’re upset, but we’re simply wasting time here. You can’t hurt me, and you know it.” His glowing eyes crackled. “Answer my question, Andrian. Did Lord Laurent tell you not to bond with the queen?”

Andrian hesitated, darting his father a glance. Still on his knees, golden hair disheveled, face twisted into terror.

Before he knew what he was doing, Andrian nodded.

Kol sighed. “How disappointing.” He snapped his fingers, and two demons emerged from the rubble, serrated claws still dripping. “Take him to the dungeons. Until I decide what to do with him.”

The demons obliged, gripping Julian between them and hauling him to standing. The lord didn’t speak, his face too blanched with terror. A pair of deistair cuffs were clamped around his wrists, even though the fire had long since left his eyes.

“And send word to Antoris,” Kol called after the demons. “I’d like the Laurent heir to join us here. I don’t like that his father has kept him out of the fold.”

“ No,” Andrian growled, but it was hollow with his defeat and rage.

The dark god smiled. “Oh? Feeling protective? You never have before. I’ve seen your memories, remember?”

Andrian’s hands shook. “Leave him out of this. Please.”

Kol frowned. “I don’t understand why you care.”

“He’s my blood. Of course I care.”

“Oh, but is he?” Kol’s grin now … it raised the hair on Andrian’s arms. Made his shadows quake in his soul.

“Have you ever wondered,” Kol said, folding his hands behind his back, “why you look nothing like them? Why you didn’t get the golden Onitan hair and the ability to wield flames? Why you took so much after your mother, as if her Leuxrithian blood was all you had?”

“I favor my mother. That’s never been a secret,” Andrian rasped.

Kol’s smile was villainous. “And what if I told you that you favor her, because the man you thought to be your sire does not share blood with you?”

The earth tilted.

“What are you saying?” Andrian whispered.

Kol stalked a step closer. “The truth of the reykrs arrival in this world was always my best kept secret. I may have been trapped in Enfara, but my influence ran deep. You can take the sun from the world, but you cannot take the world from its sun.” Shadows curled off the lapels of his jacket.

“I made the reykr . With the pieces of my magic that lingered here, I created them. Quickened them in their mother’s bellies. There were always communities in Leuxrith who favored me; in a country so cold, they craved the sun’s heat. The first generation was always the strongest. They carried so much of me, and when raised by loyal mothers, it made it easy for me to wield their minds and shadows as my own. Their offspring made good soldiers, too, but they were more difficult to control. More corrupted by humanity.” He scoffed.

“My magic was not infinite, though. After a thousand years, it all but ran dry, and my reykr faded with it. Weakened with each generation they bred into until they were all but extinct.”

Kol stood too close to Andrian now, his golden stare level with Andrian’s own. Something in Andrian—something deep and buried and woven into the very fabric of his being—called out in recognition. As if knowing the truth of Kol’s words and knowing what more there was to come.

Andrian, though, simply rooted himself to the bloody grass. His dread and loss and heartbreak was all he had left.

“Until your beautiful, brilliant, loyal mother found the last cache of my power, stored away in her ancestral home.” Kol sighed, almost dreamily. “I did not give it to her; not right away. I used the influence I had stretched into Onita to encourage a marriage between herself and a powerful Royal. Told that lord what was expected of him; he would allow his wife to bear me a reykr , the last of its kind. To raise it as his own, a member of his family—his heir, even. If he did that, I would raise his house to unimaginable heights.”

The gardens were silent. The lords and guests watched on, fascinated, horrified, but if they spoke, Andrian did not hear it.

Andrian heard nothing but the racing of his heart and the crushing, knowing agony of his soul.

“And now, here you are.” Kol ran a hand down the side of Andrian’s face. Andrian could not stop the way he flinched at the touch, at the way Kol grinned like someone delighted that what he was doing, what he was saying, was ruining the man in front of him. “It’s interesting that Priam Marked you, but it was but a small hiccup. He has always been an annoyance.” His hand fell from Andrian’s face, and he took a step back.

“The last of the reykr. A once-perfect specimen, Marked by a pest and corrupted by that stupid little goddess. But it is no matter. You were made with the last of my earthly power, the most powerful drop I hid. I think there is time yet for you to reach your potential.”

Andrian begged to be released from this hell, begged for some sort of mercy.

But the gods, as he’d always known, were as selfish as men. They would not listen to his prayer.

“It is time to welcome you back into the fold … my son.”