Page 141 of Realm of Wind and Vines
A sickening, wet, snapping sound echoes between the trees.
Then Isera pulls out a piece of dragon steel from Diana’s arm.
I feel like I’m going to be sick. This cannot be happening. If this is real, it would mean?—
“I tried to tell you,” Diana yells at Draven, that desperation still lacing her voice. “Azaroth’s flame, I did everything I could to make you understand. I tried to convince you that you couldn’t trust me. I told you, God damn it. Right before you left my lands, I told you that I wasn’t on your side!”
My entire body turns cold. Dread spreads through my every vein like ice as I stare at Diana while my mind tries desperately to deny what is unfolding before my eyes.
“I tried to warn you!” Diana yells again, her eyes wild as her gaze darts between all of us. “And now, you’ve walked right into their trap!”
“How long?” Draven begins. Disbelief shines on his whole face as he stares at her. He swallows. “How long have you been wearing dragon steel?”
“Since after I sent my people to kill you outside the Ice Palace. It was my punishment for that.” Shaking her head, she looks between us all desperately. “They were playing you from the very beginning. They made it overly obvious that Rin was wearing dragon steel so that you wouldn’t suspect that I was too. And now, you’ve walked right into their trap.”
“What trap?”
“Azaroth’s flame, we need to get out of here! Now. He was right behind me.”
“Diana!” Draven locks commanding eyes on her. “What trap?”
“The archives.” Fear blows across her face. “They used you to break the wards on the archives.”
“What archives?” I ask, dumbfounded.
Then realization slams into me with such force that I stagger a step back.
“No,” I breathe. But it’s more of a desperate plea than a refusal.
“They ordered me to tell you that they were looking for the Gold Clan,” she says. “And that Lavendera was in charge of it. All so that it would plant the idea in your mind that something important was happening inside a library. Then, when they had everything ready, they spread the word among their elite soldiers that Lavendera was locked in the library while working on something important, so that you would take the bait and break into it.”
“No,” I repeat, my mind still refusing to believe it.
“She’s right,” Lavendera says quietly. “After the Icehearts threatened to destroy the Green Clan’s archives in order to make them swear allegiance, they managed to ward them. The library with the archives was physically in the Icehearts’ possession, but they could no longer get inside. They have been torturing members of the Green Clan for millennia, trying to get them to drop the wards. It has never worked.” Her gaze slides to me. “That all changed when they realized what you can do.”
My heart jerks. “Me?”
“They had never considered it before. They’ve always seen emotion magic as a weak type of magic. But after the human rebellion you ignited in Frostfell, they realized that there is a way to break the spirit of someone who refuses to break.” She gives me a sad smile. “You simply change their emotions so that there is no spirit left.”
Staggering a step back, I drag in an unsteady breath.
“That guard who was handcuffed to the door of the library was a member of the Green Clan and the current guardian of the wards,” she continues. “He has never broken under torture. So they usedyouto break him.”
My head rings. I feel like my skull has been hit by a giant hammer.
But it makes sense. Goddess above, it all makes sense. The countless memories of being tortured by the Icehearts that Orion could see. The library that looked like no one had been in for ages. The Silver Clan soldiers rushing in to secure the building as soon as the door was open. Kander von Graf in the dungeon rambling about how he felt something fall. Even the door was fucking green, for Mabona’s sake.
Alarm suddenly shoots up my spine, and I snap my gaze to Draven. “Kander was in the Ice Palace dungeon. He’s here.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Diana yells, and swings an arm out to stab a hand in the direction of the city. “He was right behind me! With the archives on the line, he will do whatever the Icehearts want. And they want him to?—”
“Change our memories,” I finish for her, dread pulsing inside me like a living breathing thing.
“Oh fuck,” Alistair says.
Shock and disbelief and utter fucking rage burn inside me. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that they managed to play us this thoroughly. Goddess above, how could I have been so stupid?
We have been such fools. All this time, we’ve been outmaneuvered. They used us. From the very beginning, they used us. We might have gotten Lavendera. But they got everything else. They lost the battle but won the war. With the Green Clan at their complete mercy, they can change our memories and make it so that we don’t even know each other.
