Maybe Commander Nyx and King Horrace had never lied. Maybe Derrick was telling the truth.
And maybe Blayne, tired of being in his tyrant father’s shadow, had decided to bribe his father’s man to learn Caltothian secrets. Something to use to his advantage. Because perhaps his father had told him about all of the staged attacks. After all, Blayne had been groomed as King Lucius’s successor for years. Why wouldn’t the king share his secret with his heir?
And perhaps Blayne had needed a mage to help accomplish his mission. Not a commander, not the current Black Mage, but the jealous sister, Mage Mira. The one who would love more than anything a position of power. Something to distance herself from her prestigious brother. Something to rise.
She stepped in like a hero to kill the king’s murderer. It had been so easy. So convenient. It had earned her a place as King’s Regiment lead mage. Blayne’s right hand in castle affairs.
Blackmailing Lord Tyrus with his lover and child would have accomplished two goals with one act:
First: Kill the father. The man who had tormented him for years. The king who had taken a sweet boy, and made him a monster.
“You see the boys as the men they are now,” Benny had said. “They were much different back then.”
Second: Convince the other countries that Caltoth had broken the Great Compromise in one indisputable act. Kill off a Pythian heir, an added blow to the shrewd King Joren who was so reluctant to pick a side?
Blayne had been poisoned, of course. But what if it had been a farce? What if one of the healers had already had an antidote on hand?
It took a mage precious minutes to identify a strange poison’s symptoms, and even longer to cast the correct balance of magic mixed with the herbs and powders on hand. I had seen the Restoration mages struggle during their Candidacy trials just to concoct the correct casting for their prisoner’s ailment in time. And those took close to an hour.
The crown prince had been healed within twenty minutes.
I slipped to the floor.
This past year. Everything Blayne had done to win my trust. I hadn’t ever trusted him, not completely.
But I had let down my guard after he had shown me a bit of his past. Isn’t the best bit of truth always woven in with a lie? Blayne had never lied about the cruelty of his father. But he had used it to garner my pity.
But why hadn’t he tried to kill me, too? Why didn’t he just get rid of the girl he hated and force his brother to marry Priscilla instead?
The crown prince had hated me from the moment we met. The second he saw the way Darren looked at me that second year at the ascension fest—
And then I paused. Darren. That was it.
“My dear,” Benny said. “Darren is the only person that boy has ever cared for, besides himself.”
Blayne hadn’t been able to do it. Not after he saw how hard Darren had worked to trick his father into accepting me as his betrothed. An infatuation he could ignore. But love? As much as Blayne had hated me, he loved Darren more. The younger brother who continuously fought his father to protect him from the blows.
Blayne had probably felt indebted to Darren. And so he had made me a part of his plans. He had changed his game, he had shown me vulnerability, sympathy in his father’s cruel acts to win me to his side.
It was all to further his ploy. Like Blayne had said: “The two most formidable warrior mages our kingdom has ever seen... The Crown has never been more powerful.”
He had been building his indisputable reign. All along.
****
My head pressed against the chamber wall. I kept my eyes clenched shut as the wave of nausea hit, breathing heavily through my nose.
Derrick.
I slammed my fist to my mouth. Teeth scraped against skin as the scream ripped me apart. It clawed up from my chest. It was so long and so hard I had to slap my other hand over to muffle the cry. Blood coated my tongue. I was choking on hot metal that was melting my lungs.
DERRICK!
The screams rippled across my skin, one after the other, until all will left my limbs, my hands and arms went limp against the cold marble floor.
I let him die. I let him die, and I could have helped him escape. I was the second best Combat mage in the realm. I could have taken on a whole legion of guards. Why hadn’t I done something?
That first night, after he was caught. I could have done something. I would have been caught, of course, and tossed in a cell to rot. But Darren would have convinced Blayne to spare my life.
And I could have let my brother live.
But instead I had called my own brother a traitor. I had blamed him for not telling me everything about the rebels’ orders. And why would he? He’d known the Crown was tainted. He had suspected the wrong brother, but he had been close.
Why didn’t I listen? The answer had been staring me in the face the entire time.