Page 161 of Vicious Is My Throne

Tristan snorted out a noseful of sparks as I steered a shaking Bexley toward the door, fishing in my pocket for the key. “I do have a question for you.”

“Ask away since I know you will anyway.” Bexley tugged the cloak tighter around himself, teeth chattering.

“Why a male? Why not a female? Why not young, or beautiful, or strong, or?—”

“Why not all the things I am not?” Bexley’s mouth curved up, the sardonic expression exactly like Sylvaria’s. “Because a mousy, cowardly male is not a threat. Because no one will look at him twice or guard their words around him, or even bother questioning how he smuggled an entire laboratory past the wards around the Wynter Palace.”

His smile faded to a frown. “But mostly because young, beautiful women are seldom taken seriously. That is why.”

I sighed. “You’re right. And those are all valid reasons.” We stopped in front of the door, my hand trembling around the key.

“Last chance to walk away.” Sylvi stared at that door as intently as me. “Raziel wants to whisk you across the ocean to the Ascher Islands, you know. I would think you would be safe there for a few years. This path is not written in stone, Anaria. You could let this realm die, let the twins glut themselves until there is nothing left.”

“No. I won’t run away from this.” I shoved the key into the door. “And I’m not letting them destroy one more thing.”

“Then, by all means.” Bexley looked up at me with a small, secret smile. “Welcome home.”

The first thing that struck me when I stepped inside was the warmth. Instead of cold and stale, the air was suffused with welcoming heat, wrapping around me like my favorite blanket, tinged with hints of woodsmoke and cinnamon like someone was baking cookies.

Then there was the light, glowing from torches and candles and faelights hovering near the ceilings, all of them giving off a pale, golden glow. “This is…not at all what I expected.” I stopped craning my neck to take in the comfortable living area, mismatched velveteen settees piled with colorful pillows pulled close to the fire, the floor layered with rugs of every design and size.

This place was the antithesis of cold.

This was…I reached up and rubbed my suddenly aching chest.

“The tower has been spelled to cater to the needs of whomever keeps the key. What you see before you is your vision of home, Anaria,” Bex explained softly, sweeping his hand across the room. “This is how you would live if the tower belonged to you.” He squeezed my arm. “And so long as you have the key, Darkspire is yours.”

There were pastries in the kitchen and bowls of fresh fruit, some so out of season I couldn’t help but take a handful, moaning at the just-picked taste. Pitchers of ice-cold lemonade, condensation dripping down the sides. I wandered from room to room, touching everything from the soft, plushy blankets to the stone mantle warm from the fire to the cool stone counters in the kitchen.

There was a library—apparently not under my jurisdiction—as Bexley pointed out, crammed full of information about the Mystara. “A lifetime of collecting.” Bex lovingly ran his hands over the spines. “We amassed every scrap of information about the Old Gods, anything we could weaponize or use to slow them down.”

“We could have used this information months ago.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice.

“You had everything you needed, Anaria. Nothing in this library would have stopped the blight from spreading. Nothing in this library would have taught you how to trap Gelvira in her own head with a blood circle. That was your cleverness, Anaria.”

Maybe Sylvi was right. Maybe none of this would have made a difference.

But I was so tired of secrets.

“There is one thing that doesn’t make sense to me—why would the Oracle choose her brother over herself? I mean, once Corvus destroys our world, there won’t be anything left for her to survive on.”

“But she is choosing her own survival.”

“Not if this world dies.” I blew out a breath. “I saw what they did to our old world. I—Amalla—was going to end everything there, you know. Let our kind fade away into the ether. Then Gelvira forced me through one of her portals into this realm, and here we are.”

“The two are twins, Anaria. Their magic is so connected, there is no telling where one begins and the other ends. She can’t kill Corvus, not without killing herself. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Suddenly, there wasn’t enough air in the room for me to catch my breath.

“If I kill Corvus, she will die too?”

Bexley’s brown eyes gleamed. “You just have to get close enough.”

68

ANARIA

This was our last night together.

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