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“Explain yourself,” he hisses.
I grit my teeth so tightly that I feel a pain radiating up my jaw and temples. “There’s nothing to explain, Stone. Viola Mistflow is not your vessel.” Stone ignores my response, bending down to remove his boots. He walks across the brightly lit room towards his dining area and pours a glass of amber liquor. My mouth practically waters at the thought.
He raises the glass to me, an unspoken offering. I nod, unable to resist the chance to calm my nerves.
Seeing Viola in person was overwhelming. She was everything I thought she would be, but somehow more enhanced. She was like a bright flare of sunlight that you did not want to stare at for too long. The strength that emanated from her was intoxicating. Even disheveled, dirty, and grieving, she was captivating.
When I had her hand in mine for that brief moment while I pulled her down the hallway, I felt a frigid shock to my core. My body reacted the same way it did in the clearing of my dream: an inexplicable urge to pull her to me despite the fury of the magic in my veins. Just a few moments in her presence confirms what Loris said at the time. She is not only the last Winter Seasonale.
She is a rebirth of the Gods.
I must protect her.
I must have her.
After both of us finish our glasses of liquor, my nerves subdued a bit, Stone leans against a table and stares me down. His hands, lined with veins and wrinkled with age, betray how upset he truly is in their punishing grip on the wood.
With a deep breath, he finally addresses me again. “Zeph, you do not know what you’re getting in the middle of here. Mace and I have...”
“That’s the problem. You and Mace, planning and scheming, leaving me in the dark.” I interrupt.
He rolls his eyes, irritation flashing on his features. “It always has been a competition with you, Zeph. Like a petulant child, you cannot see the forest for the tree. You are not cut out for the reality of everything that must be done for the glory of the Gods.”
After our parents died, Stone took Mace and me in and helped shape us into the men we are today. But it was always clear that Stone and Mace were kindred spirits. If I hadn’t suspected it before, Stone helping Mace rise into our father’s position as a Patrician confirmed it.
“The glory of the Gods?” I sneer. “How would the Gods feel about your perversion of their will to keep the humans in line?”
His harsh laugh is hollow when it reaches my ears. “Do you think the Gods will care about a few humans when we finally restore them to their full glory? Humans were the ones that exiled them.”
I can no longer stay sitting in this chair, being lectured at by Stone as if I am a child again. I cross to his table and help myself to another glass of his liquor, using the burn of it in my throat to ground me. “Besides,” he continues to my back, “the Race is why we can bring them back at all.”
I turn, unfortunately intrigued by Stone’s statement. “The Race was a cover all along, wasn’t it?”
The old man shakes his head, his hands steepled in front of his body. “No, my dear boy. Haven’t you ever wondered why there are no more Winter Seasonale?” I nod, curious as to where this could go. “We designed the Race so those with latent Winter magic would win. We had to eliminate them to concentrate the power of Himureal into one person - our vessel. Why do you think most of the winners come from Dalery? That is the city Himureal’s high priest fled to during the banishing.”
Bile rises in my throat. “What about the fae of Winter magic?” I ask, barely above a whisper. Stone shrugs as if what he is admitting to is not a horrific deed but as routine as what he ate for dinner.
“They had to be eliminated, unfortunately. We had to concentrate Himureal’s power in the vessel to give him the means of returning to Krillium.”
I clench my hands fiercely, my nails leaving half-moon crescents in my palm. “And the humans you deemed expendable?”
He dismisses me with a wave of his hand. “We had to have sacrifices to convince the humans that this was what recharged the Gods. A small casualty in the name of the greater good.”
“Small casualty? You increase the numbers year over year!”
The smile that rips his face in two transforms him into someone entirely unrecognizable to me. “Ah yes, that was one point that Mace and I disagreed on regularly. But there is truth to the sacrifices and the Race enhancing Godly power. When they return, the blood spilled in their name will still enrich them.”
My legs threaten to buckle as I return to the velvet chair and lower myself into it. “So, what’s next? Do you plan to kill all the Summers next to bring Solarius back?”
His laughter infuriates me. “Of course not, boy. Once Himureal returns, he will be able to bring the other Gods back on his own. Winter was chosen because it was the rarest Seasonale and would require the least bloodshed.”
“It certainly does not seem like you cared to spare any bloodshed, Stone.”
The nonchalance with which he relays this information to me sets me on edge. I am half tempted to wrap my hands around his neck right here and now. But I have to know the answer to a question digging at the back of my brain.
“And what of Viola?”
He throws that sinister smile back my way, setting the hair on my arms on edge. “Ah yes, the Mistflow girl. We’ve had eyes in all the villages for years, and she was curious from the beginning. We even took and questioned someone she had a relationship with in his Ascension year for more information on her. I believe his name was Link. He seemed quite fond of her.”
