Page 115 of Trial of Thorns
“Caelynn, I swear to you.” I stand, hands in fists, ready to attack, ready to do whatever I can to get this information from her because everything I know, everything in me is telling me my life depends on it.
She sucks in a desperate breath, her mouth wide and eyes open in shock. I blink, confused at her reaction. What did I...
“Oh.” My anger pops like a damned balloon.
I said her name.
Call me by my name before you kill me.
A wave of regret washes over me, all intensity dissolving in one instant. I drop my bottom back on the stone, unable and unwilling to hold up my own weight any longer. She doesn’t speak or move. For so long, I swear the shadow sprites must be blocking our own sounds from us.
I pull in a breath. This is still important. I can’t let her distract me from this.
“You bargained with that creature down there for the power you hold.” That’s the only truth I have so far. I could assume more, but I’d rather not. I need to know the full truth.
“Rev,” she says. “I promise, you do not want to know this.”
I clench my jaw. “Do you know what the Black Gate showed me?”
“You’re not supposed to...”
“I don’t care,” I tell her. “My death must have been painful and chaotic. I don’t really care about that. There were words spoken to me. My own thoughts at my death, that’s what you said, right?”
She sits on her own stone, facing me, and nods slowly.
“If only I’d known.” I pause, looking down at my hands. “Those were the words. That’s what I thought during my death.If only I had known. But it wasn’t just a phrase or even a quick chanting. It was repetitive and intense and... desperate. It was screaming at me. Those words. Crying them over and over. The Black Gate made it very clear that this message was important. Desperately so. So, you can tell me all you want that I don’t want to know this truth, but everything within this competition has told me otherwise. The Ruby Well somehow stuck it in my head to wish for truth. The Black Gate showed me how I’d regret not knowing something in my death. Even the answer to the riddle was truth. And I am certain, more than anything else, that the truth I need most comes from you. You hold it. I know you do.”
I let out a breath and suck in another.
She stares at me, unblinking. “I hold a lot of truths,” she whispers. “Truths no one else in the world should know.”
“Caelynn,” I say.
She closes her eyes, and I wince at the serene expression that fills her face.She likes it when I say her name.
And there is that dizzy feeling again. No. No, there is nothing between us. We are allies until it’s time to be enemies again. I will not allow anything more.
“Please,” I say.
She shakes her head as a tear escapes her right eye. “What do you want to know?”
I pull in a breath, knowing I’m going to hate the answer to this question. Knowing it’s going to make me hate her more than I already do—and maybe that’s a good thing. Certainly, it shouldn’t hurt the way it does. “What was the bargain? What was the cost for the power he gave you?”
No one in the Shadow Court has been as powerful as she is in centuries. So why now? Why her? Because she bargained for it from an evil creature. It makes sense, but now I have to know the cost.
She considers, eyes cast to the floor, at the short distance between our feet. “Banishment,” she says.
I wince. “You murdered my brother,” I infer for her, since she clearly doesn’t want to say it aloud. “You bargained with an ancient being, and the terms were to kill Reahgan to obtain this power.”
My voice breaks as I finish the sentence. I want to kill her more than I have at any single point before in my life, which is saying something. I want to strangle her, this woman who somehow thinks my brother’s life was expendable. That somehow having a bit more magic was worth becoming a murderer and destroying my life in the process.
Selfish. Manipulative. Horrendous. Devious. Evil. Selfish. Awful.
Dead.
My whole body is shaking so intensely I barely hear her as she whispers, “not exactly.” She stands suddenly and takes several steps away. Her rapid breathing is the only sound that fills our small camp site.
“Tell me,” I demand. Before I explode. Before I react without all the information.
