Page 192 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Instead of answering, Eren looked puzzled as he asked, “Why are you with my sister?”

“Complicated to say the least, but long story short, she is married to my brother,” Mal spouted out before I could stop him.

Both my sister and brother gave me stunned looks and I might have winced.

My brother blinked confused. “You married Kilian?”

“Stop addressing him by his name,” I said, a bit too angrily.

Eren raised a brow. “Do you not call your husband by his name?”

I winced again.

Eren’s eyes turned hard. “Did father have something to do with this?”

“You will want to take a seat for this one,” I said, dropping to the ground.

After telling the both of them the whole story, the two sat in silence while processing all I’d told them while Mal and I ate some chestnuts.

“Scary,” Mal murmured beside me, and I turned to him. “How much you two look alike and how much you actually don’t.”

I followed his line of sight that ended at my sister. “We looked almost identical when we were young.” It was why my uncle loved to hurt her. I swallowed a hard lump of hurt down at the memory of all she’d been through because of me.

He passed me a peeled chestnut. “Do you think they’ve thought about it enough or shall we return another day?”

I kicked his leg and he laughed.

“The Octa Virga,” Eren called absently, staring at the ground. “Is it stronger than…us?”

I nodded. “She is a guardian of heavens—guardian of the white flame to be precise. Father has hit his stroke of luck.”

“But you have a piece.”

“Yes.”

“And Kilian is helping you with all of this?”

This time I frowned. “What part of ‘I was planning to burn Adriata to the blessed grounds before father got in my way’ did you not understand? We have a bargain, one soon ending when I kill him for what he has done.” The word kill trembled and shattered on my lips.

My brother’s dark brows knitted together. “You can’t possibly blame him.”

That made me frown. “You can’t tell me otherwise. Not when I was left picking pieces that he broke.”

“Lin, Kilian was barely king. If anything—”

The skies rumbled from the fury swirling inside my chest. “Enough. Enough saying his name as if he isn’t the reason why you and Thora grew up to be some people I don’t know.”

Eren glanced at the skies before saying, “You know Aryan did all of this.”

“Our uncle only lit the flame, but Kilian blew the rest.”

“Lin.”

“Don’t try to reason this with me. Not when you do not know half of it.”

He rested a hand on my face. “What matters is that we survived.”

Disbelief. “Wait till you find out how.”