Page 112 of Revealing Fate

The doors to the king’s receiving room opened, and General Corstow entered. Behind him, dragged by two additional guards, was the cloaked figure Domitan had witnessed meeting with Cinah earlier that evening. He’d been beaten and bloodied. The man’s face was a swollen, contused mess. One leg twisted grotesquely underneath him. Several fingers were missing, their stumps dripping onto Domitan’s polished porcelain floor.

The guards dropped the man before Cinah, eliciting an agonized cry from the stranger.

Cinah’s faithful, unfaltering mask cracked. What a marvel to behold. Wide, worried eyes stared at the crumpled figure before him. Domitan’s favored attendant’s hands shook at his sides.

The king tilted his head thoughtfully as he gazed upon the man at his feet, attention resting on one hand’s bloody remnants. “I don’t suppose your chef will retain much use for his talents.”

General Corstow nudged the beaten man with the toe of his boot. “Tell your king what you told me.”

The man began to weep, tears leaking from the swollen knot where his eyes used to be. “I’m s-sorry, Cin-nah. My fam⁠—”

Corstow kicked the man in the ribs, silencing his apology. “I said confess to your king!”

Cinah’s dark eyes filled with horror.

The man gurgled, bloody phlegm leaking from his mouth. “I delivered a m-message. Of the…” He coughed. Choking. “Of the Pr…pr…”

Cinah suddenly gripped the man’s shoulder; the only body part that appeared unharmed. “No, Tavor.”

The man, Tavor, shuddered.

“Now, you foul creature,” Corstow demanded, “or your family will suffer for the next half century.”

“The Prima!” he wailed. “Cinah’s man is in Stillwater Wood. He arrived with…a woman. It’s her. It must be her. I know where…p-please. Please don’t h-harm…”

Domitan listened, unmoving, unspeaking, to the messenger’s garbled confession. When the man had expended himself, finally falling unconscious, the king found himself smiling. Despite the agonizing cut of betrayal. Despite the unexpected turn of events. Domitan’s face broke into a feral grin.

He stared at Cinah, the man whose body he’d claimed, whose mind he’d thought he knew, whose loyalty he’d believed he owned. Domitan stared at him and smiled.

“There’s been a change of plans, General,” the king said, eyes never leaving his attendant, still kneeling, still shaking at his feet. “Cindamar will have to wait. We are going to Meress.”

Chapter 41

SELFISHNESS

KAL WHISPERED THROUGH STILLWATER WOOD. The tranquil night and its gentle sounds—buzzing insects, a sighing breeze ruffling feather-like ferns, and the low rustle of tiny feet scurrying through the underbrush—were at odds with the tumultuousness of Kal’s thoughts. He didn’t know what exactly he’d expected of Saul, but more was an apt description. He wanted answers. A way through the shitstorm they found themselves in. Assurances. Instead, Saul warned him of a growing mutiny within the Conclave and a target on his back. On Kitty’s, too. Lucien held the bow, and apparently Rask had threaded the arrow.

Kal parted a dense wall of green. A familiar silhouette reposed in the shadow of his cabin’s porch. Somewhere in the dark, Sig snorted, sensing his approach.

“How’d it go?” Adder asked by way of greeting. His fingers were stained with the water-repellent salve he’d been rubbing into his leather armor. The sight of Kal’s family crest—a Sea Lion, with its strong lion’s maw and foreclaws, scaled serpentine body, and sea dragon’s webbed tail—embossed in the tawny chest plate sent a pang through him. His grandfather had gifted Adder that armor. Never again would Kal find such loyalty in a friend. If Adder had been permitted to join his family in traveling to Asteros, Kal might have lost him, too.

“Not as well as I’d hoped,” Kal replied, dropping onto a step. His body ached from all the tension he’d been carrying. He hadn’t found a moment’s reprieve since his rescue attempt in the capital, nor did any seem to be forthcoming.

Adder wiped a rag over the leather in his hands, buffing the ridges of cresting waves. He stayed silent, waiting for Kal to continue.

“I should take her away from here,” Kal mused, voicing aloud a thought that he’d had on more than one occasion since learning Kitty’s true name.

“And go where, mate?”

Kal scratched at his scalp and blew out a breath. “I don’t know. The Rhize Mountains? The jungle? One of the many nameless villages scattered along the western coast?” Anywhere absent from murderous tyrant monarchs, religious conflict, and scheming rebellions. Did such a place still exist within Ilistaar?

“Home?” Adder ventured.

Home? Home. Brightsea. The very thought of the eastern coastline with its white beaches of silk sand, towering pale cliffs shrouded in morning mists, and the smell of brine and seaweed rolling off indigo waves pierced Kal’s heart with a fierce longing. He rubbed a calloused hand over his chest. He hadn’t been back to Brightsea since before Asteros. Since the worst night of his life. The notion of returning to the glistening cliffside castle with its spiring towers, sea-spattered stone walls, and noble ramparts without the mother and father who’d made it a home felt like digging at a poorly-healed, near-fatal wound.

“No.”

Silence stretched between them. Kal could feel Adder’s disappointment. He’d been urging Kal to return to Brightsea for years, to seize his birthright and take his place as Lord of Brightsea, prodigy of the last Bladesinger of Ilistaar and her Infallible Aegis. How did Kal explain that he couldn’t be those things any longer? The potential had existed within him once, had been the only future he’d once seen for himself, but that boy died the night his parents were murdered and his uncle was taken. Now he was a man raised by retribution, succored on heartache.