Page 162 of The Eye of the Fifth
Nysari stood up so fast her chair tipped over and slammed on the stone floor. ‘Thisis justice?’ she hissed, accusatory eyes on Naal as she pointed at Kyra’s white crystal. ‘For my father,yourformer Second? For the entire damned city?’
The male Kyra didn’t know said furiously, ‘My family died because of him, Naal. They were children. You cannot mean to let him live, after all he has taken from us?’
‘You are ourpramah!’ Nysari cried, slamming both hands on the table. For a moment, she was quite wild. ‘If you will not avenge our people, who will? How can our people look up to someone whoturns her back on them?’
Mankar grabbed her wrist. ‘You go too far, sister.’
Nysari wrenched away from him, looking about ready to blow when Naal stood. Her voice was dangerously quiet as she said, ‘You made a vow when you became Eternal, Nysari Myrso, a vow I remember like it was yesterday. A vow to this family. A vow to me. I have never once given you a direct order. Your decisions have always been yours to make, of your own volition. I told you once before that you are right to question me. But this decision was not mine to make alone. And before the Four, judgement has been made.’ She gestured to the stones scattered on the table.
Nysari spat, ‘I should have slit his throat the second he arrived on Nythanor’s shores.’
‘You will not harm him!’Naal boomed, pointed face contorted with fury. ‘None of you shall harm him. Thatisan order.’
A stunned intake of breath answered her as the order took root in the Eternal’s bodies. Nysari’s pupils dilated, her lips trembling with furyas though there were words behind them she was desperately trying to hold back.
‘Sit down, girl, you shame yourself,’ Maida scolded Nysari from across the table, sounding bored. ‘You are Third to ourpramah.Act like it.’
‘We are split evenly, four and four,’ said Naal, somehow already composed.
Zuriel asked, ‘What does that mean for the outcome?’
‘That aspramahof the northern continent, where this trial takes place, the final decision falls to me.’
Nysari’s nails scraped the table. Naal ignored her and glared at Gedeon. ‘You want to prove yourself, Fire Warden? You want to be on the right side of history? I will grant you your freedom, your life, Gedeon Dewmaul, on one condition.’
Gedeon’s stoic expression barely changed, except for the arch of a dark brow. ‘What will you have me do?’
‘Take the Eternal Vow.’
The room erupted in a dissonant chorus of outcries.
Nysari snarled, ‘WHAT?’
‘Pramah,I urge you to rethink-’ Maida said.
‘But Naal, he is not an airling-!’
‘It matters not, Zuriel,’ Naal said, her voice rising over the raucous. The noise instantly dimmed. ‘Take the Eternal Vow, Prince of Fire. Bind yourself to this order, to me. Aid us in the wars to come. Do this, and I swear to you, I will release you from your vow when balance has been restored. Betray us, betray me, and the vow will take your life. What say you?’
Kyra looked up at the Fire Warden. In fact, everyone did. Even Nysari.
He lifted his shackled wrists in front of him with perfect, collected calm. ‘I will take the vow. My life is yours, Naal Westerra.’
???
Gedeon.
The Air Warden wasted no time in fusing Gedeon’s life to hers, as though she did not want to even let him leave the room before the Vow had been taken.
Gedeon did not want to do it. Bound to another, after spending a lifetime in royal servitude to his mother. But if it was the only way for Naal Westerra to trust him, he would swallow his reservations and endure his new position.
Before the eyes of the council and all who had witnessed the trial, he drank from an ancient cup a mixture of Naal’s blood and centuries-old aged wine, after repeating a string of promising words.
Meaningless to him, but a means to an end. An oath of service that wrapped and tethered itself around his bones, the vow taking its hold on his body, his mind, his soul. It felt wrong, to swear fealty to Naal after spending his entire life listening to his mother’s aching desire to wipe the Air Warden’s existence from the world.
But he had made his choice. And now that choice was solidified by blood. By promise.
If he hadn’t been before, he truly was a traitor prince now.
