Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 42412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 212(@200wpm)___ 170(@250wpm)___ 141(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 212(@200wpm)___ 170(@250wpm)___ 141(@300wpm)
The unknown Fate turned back to where I sat with a frown. “Is that how you usually greet guests?”
“I’ve done worse.”
Aydun snorted. “Don’t we know.”
“You’ve been watching?” I asked, inclining my head. “Again?”
“We’ve all been watching,” he replied.
I sent him a smirk. “Have you all been entertained?”
“Entertained is…one way to put it,” the unknown Fate answered. “Disturbed—” The ravens returned, their croaks echoing from above. “Is another.”
“And who are you?” I asked.
“You may call me Kyriel.”
“I call him Ky,” Aydun announced, like I gave a fuck.
My head straightened. “Would you also say you were afraid, Kyriel? It’s okay, you know.” I smiled. “To be afraid.”
Aydun snorted. “We are not afraid.”
“Thought you all couldn’t lie.” I arched a brow. “Ah, but you and the rest of the Arae aren’t Primals. You’re something else entirely, and those rules don’t apply to you.”
“Careful,” Aydun murmured.
Propping my elbows on the arms of the throne, I leaned forward and whispered, “Ancient.”
The ink along the side of Aydun’s face throbbed in tune with his jaw. “I see our little chat had little impact on your choices.”
“Our little chat?” I huffed out a dry laugh. “Which part?”
“The one where he said you were her weakness,” Kyriel answered.
Cold essence throbbed in my chest.
The marks along Aydun’s face deepened in hue, becoming a darker russet. “Was I wrong?”
I said nothing, letting the essence appear along the sides of my face in the same pattern.
Both of their eyes narrowed.
Grinning, I sat back. “Why are you two here?”
Neither answered immediately. Kyriel stared at me with marked interest while Aydun eyed his surroundings. That eyebrow of his rose once more as his gaze traced the vines encircling the pillars. “This place sure has changed.”
“Do you like what I’ve done with it?”
“Not particularly.”
My stare slid to Kyriel. “And do you like what you’re staring at?”
One side of Kyriel’s lips rose. “You should’ve talked to her.”
My fingers spread across the left arm of the throne. “I see he was eavesdropping on our conversation.”
Aydun sighed. “There’s no such thing as privacy.”
“Instead, you chose silence and half-truths every time she asked if something was wrong,” Kyriel continued, undeterred. “And something was. It was eating you up—the mere idea that she didn’t trust you enough to come to you with her fears. The knowledge that she didn’t believe you could stop her before she needed to be put in the ground.”
“And the fact that she went to your…bestest friend in all the realms instead of you?” Aydun chimed in. “It rotted you.”
Their knowledge wasn’t surprising, nor was it unnerving. The part of me that could be unsettled had mostly died. But Aydun was wrong.
Her going to him hadn’t rotted me.
I’d wanted her to be able to confide in him. Trust him. Rely on him. Rot, the kind he spoke of, was caused by two things: jealousy and hatred. I felt neither of those things toward him.
It wasn’t worth the effort to correct Aydun, though.
“Then again, both of them should’ve come to you and let you know what had been promised between them,” Aydun added with a shrug as my fingers tapped idly off the bone. “Poppy is not without fault.”
Fury coated my skin like slick ice. “Do not speak her name.”
“My bad.” He lifted his hands. A moment passed. “Can I say his name?”
“No.”
“All right, then.” Eyes that were blue, brown, and green rolled.
“Nice chair, by the way,” Kyriel said. “You do realize we could create one ourselves.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” he replied blithely, a hint of amusement playing across his lips and then vanishing. “Though I don’t need to feed my ego with such endeavors.”
Fingers still tapping, I smiled at him.
Kyriel held my stare. “Or my vanity.”
I arched a brow.
Aydun approached the dais, crushing the vines beneath his boots as he made no attempt to avoid them. “I warned you. Told you that…she of no name was the Harbinger, the Bringer of Death and Destruction.”
My tapping slowed. “Yet you failed to mention a few key details.”
“He did what he could for you to fill in the blanks, much to the rest of our displeasure,” Kyriel stated, sending Aydun a pointed look. “All of you should’ve been smarter. You should’ve been wiser,” he said, as if I had any desire to sit here and be insulted by this fucker. “After all, you felt it inside you from the moment you woke from your stasis. Unia eta eram.”
Ruin and Wrath.
“You saw it in your own eyes when you looked upon your reflection.” Aydun crossed his arms. “Felt it every time you summoned the essence.”
Had I? Possibly. It didn’t fucking matter, though. “You stopped me while I was in Pensdurth.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew you were about to do something incredibly reckless.”
Reckless? Fuck that. “One of them had her blood on him.”
“He did.”
I could feel my flesh hardening and thinning. “And you stopped me from discovering why.”