Page 208 of The Eye of the Fifth
Bodies littering the taproom.
A woman draped in black standing in the threshold.
Rosary’s screams becoming distant.
A silent room of the dead.
Senseless. The entire world had become senseless.
Kyra heaved up the contents of her stomach. Her eyes streamed, her throat stung. Drunk on grief, she stumbled to the sea, and in the watery, tidal shallows, she knelt. The guttural scream she unleashed spooked a flock of gulls into taking flight.
Through blurred eyes, she watched them fly against the darkening sky. A sky void of stars.
Chapter Fifty Six
Home
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Ousca, Vrethian.
Kyra.
A quivering had begun within her that had nothing to do with the sea spray that clung to both of them from vengeful, crashing waves.
Gedeon had tried to steer her away from the cove. She’d only gotten as far as the jagged jumble of rocks lining the bay before she was retching again. Nothing but bile was coming up now. And the slaughterhouse was still at their backs.
She hadn’t been able to tell Gedeon what she had seen. The words wouldn’t come to her lips. If she uttered them, it made it true. So, she opened her mind to him instead, and let him witness what had broken her all over again.
The rock was cold beneath her. Gedeon was at her side. A silent, warm presence.
Nothing in the world made sense anymore. Had she ever really known her brother? Had she risked everything to set him free only for him to do the bidding of their greatest enemy?
Nothing made sense.
I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.
Gedeon shifted beside her. The wind whistled between them. ‘Is your brother a cruel male? Did he ever show signs of such brutality when you were children?’
With the slightest movement, she shook her head. ‘Never,’ she whispered. A colossal lump in her throat was making her voice sound thick with mucus. ‘He was the best of all of us. The kindest. The artist. He saw the beauty in everything. I always envied him that.’
‘Sometimes, those closest to us are the ones we know the least about. Everyone harbours shadows they want no one else to see.’
Kyra was not really listening to him. ‘I never knew him. Not really.’
Silence fell between them again. Kyra shivered harder. Heat caressed her skin, and she knew it had come from Gedeon. The kindness might have lightened the heaviness of her heart, had it not been for the roaring in her mind.
She’d been blind. Blind to fucking everything. How long had Oslan been under Azar’s wing? Had his mind been warped? Had he truly hated his own family that much to go to lengths as great as this?
‘None of it adds up,’ Gedeon muttered. ‘After you freed your brother from his enslavement, what happened? Did he seem strange? Or perhaps as though he was hiding something?’
‘No.’ A tear leaked from her eye. ‘He was… relieved. After ten years, he was finally free.’ A realisation struck her like a dagger to the gut. ‘He even told me he was going to Taru. And I… I told him to find Rosary.’
‘You could not have known what he was going to do, Kyra.’
Kyra’s bottom lip trembled tenfold with the effort of holding back a sob. ‘She’d be alive, Gedeon. If I hadn’t told him about her, she’d still be alive.’
‘If it hadn’t been him, it would have been another,’ he said bluntly. ‘Listen, do you truly believe your brother to be capable of this? To have acted of his own accord? If the answer isyes,then we have another enemy to add to our list.’
