Page 31 of Oath-Maker

“You’re not on his side?” I asked, although it was pretty clear she wasn’t.

Isabel flashed her nails again. Although the color did match her dark robes, I realized quickly that was probably not the point. Sparkly black. Like Lucius. His power. My wings.

“I swore an oath to the Order, just the same as you,” Isabel said. “That Order doesn’t exist anymore as it did before, but I and others, we’re still fighting for the innocent. For the humans stuck in the middle of all of this. Foryou, Ayla. You’re still our leader, to some of us at least.”

My heart leapt. I had assumed there might have beensomepaladins still sworn to what we thought were good celestials. I tried to temper my hope. “How many of you are there?”

I’d needed this, people on the ground already in Lightport. Not just to increase our numbers, but to provide a distraction at the same time Lucius did. If we could give Merek and his army too many fronts to fight along, maybe, justmaybe, we could kill him and close the biggest tear in the Veil.

Defiance and—more importantly—confidence shone in Isabel’s brown eyes. The expression sharpened them finer than any blade. “Fifty strong.”

My eyes opened wide. I’d expected half a dozen, maybe ten, still free around Lightport to make this decision out of hundreds of paladins. “Fifty?”

She nodded as a smirk curled the corner of her mouth. “The battle at Alastia changed a lot of minds. We were so surprised by and thankful for Merek’s return. But when he turned on the humans and innocent demons in Alastia, when he turned onpaladins, it opened eyes, Ayla. Plus, there are so many paladins who trust you. That knowyou. You wouldn’t make the decisions you’ve made without good reason.”

But even Ian had questioned me. EvenIanhadn’t been sure.

I glanced out a nearby window and watched the Fallen celestials—pureblood and outfitted in armor and weapons—fly over Lightport. It was oppressive, their presence. Even if one sided with them.

Everything has changed.

Footsteps sounded down the hall. Isabel straightened and reaffixed a neutral, nearly bored, expression to her face. “When the time is right, we’ll be with you. We know the truth and we will fight alongside you as vowed.”

I nodded. “Thank you. We’ll fix this. All of this.”

“I know.” But then Isabel was gesturing for me to follow her again and it was like nothing had happened.

That wasn’t true, of course. Hope had emerged, a tiny spark of it that I was doing my best to both foster and temper at the same time.

I tried not to let it show as I faced Merek again and the avatar of the Light. I accepted my visions of Soltar willingly. I allowed myself to be pulled in, to have my will challenged knowing nothing would bend it. Not now.

Not after so many possibilities had just opened up.

I grunted against the pain. Bathed in it.

There was hope.

There was a chance.

CHAPTER13

By the time they’d returned me to my quarters, I could barely keep my eyes open. My resolve was diminishing, too, but being alone again helped with that. Isabel’s news earlier had been such a win, and I wanted nothing more than to bask in the hope of it. To tell Lucius that we had people besides me on the inside.

But now, alone with my pain, it was hard to hang on to that resolve I’d gained.

I lay on the plush bed and tried not to compare it to the one I’d first been given in my chambers in Alastia. I tried not to compare the situations at all, although they were very similar. I was a prisoner locked away, awaiting my death in a few days’ time.

With a heavy sigh, I closed my eyes and tried to will my body to relax. I needed sleep. But I also needed to plan, and I couldn’t do both at the same time, much as I really wanted to.

I must have fallen asleep somewhere in all of this because the next thing I knew, I was in Lucius’s chambers in his palace in Alastia, laid out in his bed beneath the starry nighttime sky above. The shock of it stole breath from my lungs, only to be returned when Lucius appeared in my vision from the side.

“My love,” he said as he kissed my forehead.

This had to be a dream. IknewI’d gone to sleep in Lightport. But Lucius’s lips on my forehead, the feel of this bed—it felt soreal. So much so that I wanted to question my sanity. “Lucius?”

He drew back so he could look me in my eyes. His were as dark and mysterious as normal. He caressed my cheek. “Yes, this is real. I’m able to reach you through your dreams because of our magic.”

“Potentiality,” I whispered as I put the pieces together.

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