Page 105 of Consumed By Fire

“He asked me to tell him everything that happened. He knew that I had been lying to save you. He wanted to know what really took place.”

“And you lied.” My heart sinks.

“No.” He shakes his head. “I told him everything. All of it.”

I swallow hard. “When is your beheading?” My eyes fill with tears. “Let me guess: this is goodbye.”

I knew it.

“No, not even close.” His eyes glint as he takes my hand. “This is the beginning…if you’ll have me.”

I frown. “What do you mean? You’d better tell me everything and right now,” I growl.

He laughs, and I hit the side of his arm. “Now, Octane. I mean it. How is this not goodbye? What’s going on?”

“Okay, okay.” He laughs some more, turning serious. “That Prince Ice is some piece of work. He is the opposite of his brother. I can’t even believe they have the same mother.”

“Actually, they don’t. Arctic’s mother died in childbirth. She was a wonderful woman. Frost and Ice are twins. They—” I make a face. “Shit! Sorry! Go on.” I flap my hand, urging him on.

“Different mothers.” He nods a few times. “That makes sense.”

“What happened with Ice? Tell me. You did a one-eighty on me. You had Ice hostage, and then you just let him go. It made no sense to me. We were going to escape.”

“He came to propose that I work for the Reds as a go-between. A liaison between Mistveil and Draig. He wanted to know more about the Draig Dragons…with peace in mind…of course.” Octane rolls his eyes. “He was full of shit. I could see right through it. He gave me a bad feeling, so I turned him down. I suspected an angle.”

“And there was one,” I say, my eyes narrowing on him.

He snorts. “Oh, most definitely. It was only after I turned him down flat that he got desperate. I think that he was partly worried about being killed as a hostage, but his biggest motivation was wanting to see his brother…the king…fall from grace with the people. He needed me to make that happen.”

“How?” I ask.

“By doing just as he said, by making me a liaison. He guessed that the Mistveil citizens would not be happy with a Draiger working in the castle to broker peace talks. He was banking on the king losing ground. On the people accepting a new king more readily when the time came.”

“A new king?” I’m trying hard to keep up. “I don’t know what you mean.” I frown.

“Ice said that he planned a coup. He planned to kill both his brothers in order to take the crown.” I gasp, but Octane goes on, “He said when that happened, I need not worry because my place in the palace was secured. All would be revealed.”

“He told you this?” My eyes go big. “Surely not.”

“Yep, he did. I think he knew that I would see through him otherwise. He needed to tell me as much of the truth as he could get away with so that I would buy it. He didn’t like that I could see through his sweet-talking, sugar-coated bullshit.”

“Why? Wait just a minute! Igor said that he would be promoted to general once the new king took over. That there was a new king waiting in the wings, one the people would accept. He was talking about Ice, wasn’t he? Holy smokes!”

“He was, indeed.” Octane nods.

“And Arctic just believed all of this? That doesn’t sound right. I mean, you’re a Draiger. I can’t fathom that he’d take your word over his brother’s.”

“Thankfully, the king didn’t have to believe me.” Octane shrugs. “There was camera footage of our whole conversation. The coverage through the regular CCTV camera had been switched off. It was Ice’s doing. What he didn’t know was that Arctic had put cameras behind the mirror on the far side of the cell. He put a whole lot of cameras all over the castle without telling his entourage. He suspected that there was something afoot. He’s been gathering evidence against Ice for some weeks now.”

“That’s lucky, Octane.”

“I’d call it astute. Arctic is no fool.”

“Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you stand up against him?” I ask. “Against that bastard, Ice.”

He sighs. “I decided to let Ice go and not to pursue the hostage situation because I believed that it would be seen as a show of good faith. I wrongly and stupidly believed that I would be granted a meeting with the king. I didn’t want to just leave knowing what I knew about what Ice planned. If that asshole had taken over, it would have been a disaster for both islands.” He shakes his head. “I know now that it was short-sighted of me to expect to be given a chance to talk with Arctic. Once they threw me into solitary confinement, I knew that no one would believe me, anyway. And so, I decided to use my last two minutes far more wisely.” He takes both my hands. “They would not have believed me if I had spouted all of this against Ice. I didn’t know at the time that there was evidence to support me. That the king was busy looking into all of it. The tunnels, Igor and Titan’s place. All of it. Arctic waited until the last moment to see how it would all play out, and he made his decision accordingly.”

“What did he decide?” I’m almost too afraid to ask. I’m on the edge of my seat.

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