“You would have tried to alter the course of events had I told you the truth. Rhianna was my daughter and the only unmated phoenix. So, I did what I needed to do in order to ensure her sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain. I knew you’d fancied yourself in love with my daughter, but not that it went beyond that. How could you not love her? Rhianna was so easy to love.” I wasn’t sure if they remembered the audience actively watching the exchange, but it was as if I were watching a show about their tragic history. “I couldn’t change the course without the old gods abandoning us. If I’d have tried, you’d have lost her anyway, Zyion. Of all my children or those I’d loved. Rhianna was special to me. The day she was born, it was like I’d finally found a purpose in life. She was the only child I’d ever thanked the gods for giving me. By doing so, I’d sealed her fate to mine, knowing the gods would come for her if I didn’t follow through on what the visions foretold.”
“It didn’t have to be her, Scylla. You willingly led my lamb to her slaughter.”
“If I’d told you they’d tethered her fate to another, you’d have fought the Fates to prevent it.”
“You’re goddamn right. I’d have waged war for that girl. I’d have done whatever I needed to keep her from knowing the pain he forced her to feel beneath him. When you said I had to give up love, that wasn’t what I’d agreed to do. She’d still have been mine, and loved me. I’d asked Rhianna to keep the secret until I’d found time to tell you myself that we were mates. True mates, Scylla. Obviously, that was a mistake. By the time I returned from you forcibly sending me away, I was told she’d fallen in love with the dragon, who’d eventually become king to their kingdom.”
“If you were mates, I’d have known, Zyion. You’d have told me the truth, as you pledge to always do.” Zyion reached for the collar of his shirt and jerked it down to reveal a bite right above his heart. “How? Why didn’t you tell me? You were beholden to me. If you’d mated my daughter, I should’ve been the first one to know of it.”
“Before I could, you sent me away to scour the realms for the sickness you’d obsessed over. In the meantime, you fed my mate to a cruel, violent, heartless bastard who brutalized every woman he took to his bed.” Zyion fearlessly strode forward, his eyes burning with images playing inside his head. It wasn’t hard to imagine what those images might have been either. If he’d been able to, he’d probably have murdered her again.
“Do you know what Dragharyn did to her? I assure you he wasn’t gentle to the girl whose pretty, turquoise eyes held my future and my entire soul within them,” he rasped, shoving fingers through his hair. It laid his pain bare before us, raw and profoundly rooted in his soul. “I felt her pain when he ripped her cunt in his need to force his dragon knot in as deep as he could. He’d been spelled to think she was his fucking mate, which led his beast to demand he rut her because you fed your daughter to a rabid dragon who’d spent more time in his beast than he’d ever spent in his human flesh.”
The rawness in his tone had tears burning my eyes, and my lips trembled. I didn’t need to hear him say he’d loved Rhianna. He revealed his vulnerability through the trembling in his voice, in the grief embedded in his every syllable. It was in the way his eyes turned glossy and moisture pooled too quickly to be blinked away. Zyion had loved her.
“The Fates showed me they’d be compatible. In the end, she bore him a daughter. Ryna was their child. Had she lived, she’d have adored the child they’d created.”
“She had promised to have my child, not his, Scylla. The gods blessed me with a stunning, tender-hearted mate. And you? You’d promised her that only she could choose her mate. Rhianna chose me. I’d never had any of the women from the Vanir or anywhere else fucking choose me for anything other than my cock. They didn’t want your thrall staying for one second more than it took for them to get off on my dick. Rhianna, though, knew what I was, and she wanted me regardless of it. You took that away from me. You, who I served dutifully, stole all of it.” Rubbing his chest, he shook his head. “Instead, I returned the same night you wed my mate to another. That night, I found her walking around aimlessly, bathed in her own blood with another’s come dripping down her thighs. My mate bore the scent of another alpha, and she told me she loved him, that they were true mates. I can still hear the haunted way she declared it to me. It was how I knew something was horribly wrong.” Tears trickled down Zyion’s cheeks.
“I wish it hadn’t been her, too. If they’d given me a choice, I’d have chosen another. To achieve what was required, my blood was necessary. I only have one daughter, Zyion. In the end, he took her away from us both.”
“Dragharyn didn’t kill my mate. Your actions did. He couldn’t have murdered Rhianna.” Though I was glad he’d done what he had to the sadistic bastard, it was still shocking to hear it laid out like that. “When I found Rhianna again, I knelt before her and placed Dragharyn’s head at her feet. If she noticed the gesture, she failed to show it. I didn’t see her again until I collected her broken body from the bottom of the cliffs she’d jumped from. Had you not been so obsessed with creating your precious savior, you might have noticed how endless her pain had become.”
Never would I have thought he’d lost more than he’d already disclosed. Turquoise eyes clashed with mine and widened when he noted the agonizing pain exposed on my face. Squaring his shoulders, he exhaled before shaking his head. He wiped away the tears and then strolled back to the colored bottles, grabbing one before downing the entire bottle in deep swallows.
“I didn’t know,” Scylla whispered brokenly.
“No, you didn’t. But that wasn’t enough to steal hers and my future together for your own goals, was it? No, you also had her soul taken to where I could never go. In the library you created with Draghana Karnavious. Rhianna is within the Library of Knowledge, forced to remain among the same beings that stole her from me.” My eyes went round, and I knew my face had leached of color.
“You created the library?” I asked.
“Why don’t you tell her and Eira Karnavious’s sons about how the library came to be, My Queen,” he hissed in a tone that scraped against my flesh.
“Before the war between dragons and phoenix began, we were allies.” Scylla started. “Draghana was one of my closest friends. Before Hecate arrived, we’d created a place where the council could gather, where we could discuss things amicably. Dracarius, her husband, also used magic, though it differed from mine. We combined our power to forge the Library of Knowledge. It houses all knowledge of everything and everyone within the books inside the library.”
“Is that why some people cannot see it?” Basilius asked, and after Scylla nodded slowly. he continued. “The rumors of a Keeper of the Library, are they true?” His dark, smoky voice was close enough to Knox’s that I felt a tug on my heartstrings.
“Yes, very much so. We created the Keeper of Knowledge after issues began arising between monarchs. We sought a fair-minded and incorruptible being. The Keeper doesn’t take sides, per se. He had no need for titles, land, or riches, and he was fair to all. The library also became a safe place for our children to hide after war broke out between the dragons and phoenixes. Children were off-limits, as were all royals from being murdered in the endless battles occurring over land. But war brings out the worst in people.”
Hello, Kettle, meet your Pot!