Page 107 of The Eye of the Fifth
Kawai’s demeanour was as cold as ice. ‘I know that’s why you and Naal went to Blythtrie. I know you spoke to my parents. I know why you’ve been hopping from islet to islet with us. You’re looking for Kano. And I’m telling you to stop. You’re wasting your time. He doesn’t want to be found.’
‘Do you thinkIwant to be here?’ Kyra hissed. ‘Do you think I want to be the damned Earth Warden? I didn’t have a choice in this godsforsaken war, and neither does Kano. Naal needs him.’
Kawai gave a humourless snicker. ‘Seems I had you all wrong,Earth Warden.But you’re just like them. Just another fae fucker who gets a kick out of ordering the rest of us about. Kanodoes not want to be found.He left the capital for a reason. Leave him out of whatever it is you’re planning.’
Well. This was taking a turn for the worst. ‘I misjudged you too. There was me thinking you actually gave a fuck about the state of the world. Or is the raider thing just a ploy to get anything with a pulse to sleep with you?’
‘Yep,’ he said, unfazed. ‘That’s exactly what it is.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘If you say so.’ He yawned wide, stretching his arms to the side before ruffling his hair. ‘You and I don’t have a problem, Kyra. As long as you and Naal stop searching for Kano.’
‘He’s a Warden,’ Kyra said coldly. ‘I may not like being one either but I know it’s my duty. It’s Kano’s too, neither of us can hide from it-’
‘No.’Even clouded by night, his ire was palpable. He leaned toward her, his tone of voice significantly darkening. ‘Kano doesn’t owe shit to you or Naal or anyone else in this fucked up world. I’ll say it one last time: leave himalone.’
Kyra fell quiet then. Not because he had frightened her, nor because she had nothing more to say. It was the earnest, albeit furious look in his golden eyes that triggered a memory. The grief-soaked words of a mother who shared those same eyes. ‘What happened to him? To Kano? What was he escaping from?’
Through a dark laugh, Kawai said, ‘What, my mother didn’t bother divulging the whole story during your little visit? Just the part where I’m the fugitive for doing whattheyshould have had the balls to do ten years ago?’
‘They were tortured for information after you left,’ Kyra ground out. Maressa had been a little annoying but she did not deserve his hostility.
‘Then it’s a good thing I didn’t say a fucking word to them, isn’t it?’ Guilt flashed in his eyes, but he shook his head. ‘I can guarantee that whatever the kingsguard did to them was nothing to what that cunt of a king put Kano through.’
Kyra paused. ‘Did he hurt him?’
‘Never physically.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘It was here. All here. Kano was five when he mastered his Warden magic… that sounds so young, I know, but he was always smart. Much smarter than I ever was. In Loros, when a Water Warden masters their magic, they are conscripted as a servant of the crown. I remember the guy before Kano was born. Some fae male who killed himself rather than live out the rest of his life under the king’s enslavement. He was only something like two-hundred. I don’t needyouto tell me that’s young for a fae. I know.’
‘Conscripted how?’ Kyra asked.
‘That’s the question isn’t it? Is it merely a political play of power? To have the Warden of your lands as your closest confidant, your servant for all intents and purposes?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘From the outside looking in, even I’ll admit it’s a brilliant move.’
‘But your mother said Kano was dedicated to the king,’ Kyra recklessly debated. ‘It didn’t sound like he was forced into servitude.’
‘My parents turned a blind eye to everything if it meant they got to keep their head down and out of trouble,’ Kawai said flatly. ‘People don’t like upsetting the peace. They’d rather sit in their own shit and bitch about it, than take a stand against the machine that grinds them. My parents are no exception, even if they were treated slightlybetter after Kano was born.’
Kyra frowned. ‘So, what? Kano was trapped in the system?’
‘Not just in the system. But in his own head.’ Kawai turned away from the sea, resting his back against the bow. ‘The king… he has a way of getting into people’s minds, I’m sure of it. The Wardens always stayed at his side because he manipulated them into thinking they were nothing without him. That theyneededhim to survive, that their sole purpose was to serve the crown, to serve him. Kano grew up with that… thatpoisonbeing poured into his mind.’
A thought struck Kyra. ‘The king sounds like an imperi. But imperis are extremely rare…’
‘I know, I know. But I watched Kano change from the moment he was in the king’s service. He was a funny kid, always had to be right, always had to have the last word. The change was so gradual that even my parents didn’t notice at first. But then he stopped debating with us. And stopped eating and talking as much. Then before I knew it, he was basically mute and starving himself. But I couldn’t figure out why.
‘There was one time though… onetime where I heard him in his room at home, talking to himself. He must have only been about eleven… and I’d come home from drinking with some friends at some shit tavern in the slums. I peered through the crack in his door and he was upright on his bed, rocking back and forth with his head in his hands, just saying the same thing over and over again.’
‘What was it?’
‘He said, “get out, get out”. He kept repeating it. When I’d heard enough, I pushed the door fully open. He saw me and immediately stopped. When I asked what he meant by “get out”, his face went completely blank. He just got up without another word and closed the door on me. It was like my brother had gone. And there was nothing I could do to find him again.’ Kawai gripped the wooden rail. ‘That’s when I knew I had to rescue him. I wouldn’t let Kano’s fate be the same as the Water Warden before him. And I knew that once Kano left, I could never go back either.’
‘And that’s the last time you saw him?’ Kyra asked quietly. He nodded once. ‘You left everything behind to save him. Even your parents.’
‘I don’t care,’ he said, a tired edge now skirting his voice. ‘Kano deserved to live. He deserved to be a kid. He may be a Warden but he’s human first. He’s my brother first. The Goddess, nor any damned king shouldn’t get to dictate what becomes of him. His life is his own now. And I will never, ever take that away from him again.’
A sombre sort of silence settled over them, and guilt took hold in Kyra’s gut, for she knew that Naal would not stop until Kano was found.
Even so, a promise began to rise on her lips, a promise that she would leave Kano be, that his freedom would remain untouched.
