Page 68 of The Eye of the Fifth
Nysari didn’t celebrate. Nor did a smile crack her lips, but her expression was somewhat softer as she said in a quiet voice, ‘You honour me,pramah.’
‘You accept?’ Naal asked softly.
‘I do.’
‘Your father would be proud, girl,’ Maida said approvingly. Nysari gave a demure smile.
‘A new era begins with this shift. Let what is gone continue to live on in all of us. I think I have spoken enough for one night.’ Laughter answered her, and Naal smiled warmly around the table. ‘Please, eat and drink in memory of those we have lost.’
So Kyra did. She was the first to fill her plate with the salted whale meat, which, though it was an entirely new sensation in her mouth,she thoroughly enjoyed. She ate and drank until her stomach was bursting the front seams of her dress, and though the evening was a far cry from the countless gluttonous, wine-fuelled nights she’d shared with Rosary, it was pleasant.
Not all stayed to drink after the food had been demolished, many returning to their posts, Kyra presumed. Maida was one of the first to leave, shooting Mankar a reprimanding ‘behave’ as she did, to which he laughed and threw his arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek, his own face rosy from wine.
Kyra liked him the most. His laugh was infectious, his smile wide and kind. There was nothing about his cheerful spirit that matched the threatening look about him, for he washuge.It was a wonder his dark-grey wings could carry him.
It was clear he was admired in the order. There was no denying his beauty, either, even if he could probably crush a human skull with his bare hands.
His twin, Nysari, had not wasted her time in staying. Some of the others congratulated her for the ascension to Third, to which she did not verbally reply, choosing instead to give a curt nod. Every single time. As though she were bored. Or just cold-hearted. Kyra couldn’t tell which.
At some point before the end of the evening, Kyra watched Zuriel disappear through the crack in the door, the too-happy, forced smile she had adopted vanishing the second she thought no one was looking.
But Kyra didn’t miss it. Nor did she miss the concerned sadness that befell Naal’s face as her daughter departed.
Chapter Nineteen
The Sentry Captain’s Secret
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Underground, Dracyg Dominion.
Gedeon.
Bound. Again.
The underground outlaws had not hesitated. All it took was for a teenage servant from the Black Castle to recognise him, and the strongest amongst them were upon him within seconds, binding his hands with rope, stuffing his mouth with cloth.
He had not tried to fight back. Amala screamed, begging them to release him, clawing at their arms as they hauled him into a vacant cell. But none of them listened to the insignificant cries of a child.
Their haste to detain him did not come from maliciousness or cruelty, but fear. Pure, Mother-save-us-from-this-wretched-male fear. Their hands fumbled to bind him, their pupils dilating with all-consuming panic.
Gedeon supposed he could not blame them. He was a walking evil in their eyes, escaped from the illustrious confines of the Black Castle. Every breath he took was a threat to their secret life under the city.
But they did not know he was nothing more than a puppet whose strings had been severed. Left to fend for himself.
His mother had been under the impression that he had betrayedherin his hesitancy. Gedeon knew the opposite to be true.
Shehad betrayedhim.She had forsaken him.
The only place he had ever known was by her side. As her son, as a prince of Zarynth. Without those titles, he became inconsequential. A shell with no purpose, no identity.
Tanwen had seen this coming somehow. She had sensed the turmoil in his heart. Recognised the moral conundrum of a male whose life had never really been his own:Do you share that ambition because that is what you truly believe? Or do you share it because you have never considered another choice?
Of course he had never considered another choice. Why would he have? He had been content in his position of power, had believed wholeheartedly that he lived to exist to aid in his mother’s vision of a united world.
Everything had changed the moment he fired his darkness into the Throne Room to save the fledgling. The Empress would never welcome him back now. Sekun’s cunning, venomous voice would be the only one she heard council from now. Without Gedeon’s own voice of reason guiding her, what lengths would she go to in order to attain what she so desperately wanted?
Leaning his head back against the cool, corrugated wall, he blinked in the all-consuming darkness, and for the first time in his life, he truly did not know what to do.
