Page 12 of The Trials of Ophelia

Even Barrett, born of our enemy clan, knew.

“I wonder…” He trailed off.

“What?” I pushed.

He evaluated the shelves. “Nothing, that just reminded me of something.” He dismissed it, but it was obvious whatever the tangent was, it continued poking at his mind.

Finally, he gestured back to Lucidius’s journal. “What did he want?” Barrett flipped through the journal, but the entry didn’t continue. “He goes on about the time he camped in the Engrossian Valleys for a week undetected…”

“It isn’t as tedious as the tour of the Starsearcher temples we sat through three weeks ago.” I attempted a joke, and Barrett gaped at me for a moment before releasing a laugh, shaking his head. “I’m guessing it didn’t work, whatever he tried to do. That’s why he never wrote about it.”

Barrett brushed a thumb over his lips, thinking. “Or it did work…and whatever he found out was too distracting to write.”

I considered, brows drawn together as I read and reread those words until they blurred together before me.

“The only record of an Angel appearance to a Mystique that any of us have found is Ophelia.” Granted, Damien had shown himself to her four times now, but there was no evidence he’d done so with any warrior in recent history.

“It’s possible,” Barrett continued, “Lucidius’s ritual worked, your Angel appeared, and he delivered a secret or a prophecy. That whatever it was, it was too personal to write down or too jarring. Maybe he didn’t want the words to reach other ears, or maybe Damien was angry. Calling on an Angel is a risk—it could have ended with Lucidius’s death if Damien didn’t deem him worthy.”

“We know that didn’t happen.” Fucking Spirits. Though neither of us would be here now, it would have saved the continent plenty of pain. “Maybe that’s why…”

“What’s why?”

I pushed my chair back and paced before the fire, hands rolling around my whiskey glass, the amber liquid sloshing inside. “What if…what if this was the start of him becoming so warped? What if Damien told him something that drove him mad and everything else came after? There’s a reason no mere warrior sees the Angels. Their power is…strong.”

We’d all briefly seen Damien appear to Ophelia after the battle, and while she’d been fine, fed even by his presence, the rest of us had felt the consumption of it.

My boots pounded against the floor, every sixth step cushioned by carpet as I pivoted. My heart raced, tattoo tingling. This could be an explanation, a hint as to what happened to turn Lucidius into the bastard he’d grown into.

He’d claimed it was his mother’s lies about his heritage and the nurturing of the Engrossians that swayed his allegiance, but what if that was only the start of a kinship, an opportunity to learn things he shouldn’t have, and there was a circumstance that turned him truly evil.

If that was true, maybe there was hope for me, and I wasn’t a lost cause because of my father’s blood in my veins.

But Barrett hadn’t moved.

Straightening, I looked across the office at him, ghosts of our shared past littering the space between us. “Malakai,” he said softly. Pity weighed my name. My chest seized under the pressure.

“It’s possible,” I argued.

Barrett pursed his lips. “It is. But it’s not likely. And it’s probably better for us both if we don’t look for reasons Lucidius was evil and accept it was his nature.”

His nature. Those words threw me off balance.

“If it’s his, then it’s ours.”

“Not necessarily,” Barrett hummed. “Despite what resides in our past, only we get to shape our future, brother.”

But my past wasn’t residing, it was consuming. I didn’t want to be a victim to the fucked-up circumstances I’d been put through, nor to the truth of my existence, but it was heavy. The facts weighed me down further each day, and though I actively fought them, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could outrun the shadows.

“Come on,” Barrett said, taking my glass from my white-knuckled grip and placing it on the mantle. “We’ve done enough tonight. We can go over these new theories tomorrow.”

I nodded, voice stuck in my throat. Silently, we tucked away the papers and journals we’d been working with, filing them into the pile of current projects on the middle shelf of the bookcase. Before we left, I swiped up my water glass. It was earthy as I downed it in one go and ignored Barrett’s pressing gaze.

When the door shut behind us, I already felt a bit lighter, the drugs working to ease the tension and shut off my mind.

“This confirms one thing, though.”

“What’s that?” Barrett asked, brows raising.

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