Page 94 of Revealing Fate

Adder sipped his liquor and waved him off. “Anyway, we found her cornered by a merchant and two of his crew, accusing her of pilfering supplies from their ship. I said we should leave her to her fate. Said her actions finally caught up to her. Divine justice, and all that.” He took another swallow. “You remember what you said?”

“That if you wanted your knife back, her fight was our fight.”

Adder hummed. “And fight we did, mate. Just a couple of kids, playing heroics.” He laughed. “Ophelia, the hellion. The look on her face when she realized her saviors were prior marks.”

“You let her keep your knife,” Kal pointed out.

“Yes, well.” Adder toyed with the mug. “Hard to demand it back when I learned she was using it to feed herself.”

Ophelia carried that knife to this day.

“Why remind me of this?”

“Because you always had a sense we lacked, Kal,” Adder explained. “You saw something in Ophelia that I didn’t. You knew we had to fight with her when I wanted to leave, the same way you knew Sett, Santhe, and Cinah would help in your rebellion. You knew Grisham would prove a valuable business partner if leveraged appropriately.” He pointed at Kal. “You’re a problem-solver, mate. You’ve a knack for figuring shit out before the rest of us even realize we’re standing in it.”

Kal sighed. Stared at his drink. “I don’t know this time, Dev. I’m in the dark here.”

Adder’s expression softened at Kal’s use of his given name. “What happened? At the Watch Post?”

Kal gazed numbly ahead, remembering the rage, the overwhelming urge to destroy—to kill. He glanced down at his hands. “I just…reacted. I was powerless, and yet so fucking powerful at once. It felt like being…unleashed.” He looked up at his friend. “I’ve never lost control like that. Not ever. But when I saw her in that arena, saw the grim coiling for a kill, smelled her blood and fear…”

Adder folded himself over his knees, elbows braced on either thigh. His thundercloud eyes were clear. “She calls to your second form.”

Kal didn’t even know what that meant, but it explained exactly how he’d felt. “Yes.”

His friend’s lips tugged up in a sad smile. “Your dad used to say that about your mom. ‘Find a woman who calls into you, lad,’ he’d say. ‘Your first form might not hear, but your second will. And then you’ll know.’”

Kal frowned. He couldn’t recall his father ever imparting those words to him.

“Kitty calls to you, mate. You couldn’t ignore her if you wanted.”

“I tried to,” Kal admitted. “I was so fucking angry.”

A rational man still would be. Kitty’s ilk was of the worst sort. Her faith, her family, her blood was everything he wanted to purge from Ilistaar. He should be trying to use her to achieve his aims. Should have malice to spare. But instead of trying to hold onto an enmity he didn’t feel, he’d made peace with its absence.

“Am I compromised?” Kal asked. “Is my judgment impaired?”

Adder tilted his head. “Has your mission changed?”

“No,” Kal said. “The monarchs will pay for what they’ve done. For what they continue to do. Asteros must fall.”

“Then you’re steady as the tide, mate.”

Kal hummed. Adder watched him, an unreadable expression clouding his countenance. “Say it.”

Adder’s lips pressed into a thin line. Then, “Santhe wasn’t all wrong, you know. The prophecy still presents an issue.”

Kal’s glower returned. If ever there was a word he loathed, it was fucking prophecy.

“Hear me out. You know there’s truth in those texts, mate. Your mom and dad believed as much.”

“Yeah, well, look how faith repaid them.”

“You’ve got a damned archive of translations,” Adder persisted. “A treasure trove of forbidden texts. You’re better studied in the godscripts than a bloody priest.”

He wasn’t wrong. Kal had spent years collecting and poring over every copy he could get his hands on, trying to find a way to dismantle the Faithful Cursed, to find some shred of evidence that his parents had been mistaken about his uncle.

“She’s in those books, Kal. Every one. You can’t ignore her role in all this,” Adder said. He hesitated. “Or Karrick’s.”