“Yes, I thought as much,” she soothed, her smile spreading.
Whether it had been done on purpose or not, Ovailia had played her cards right with that one. She needed a way to control me, and thus, she chose the person everyone perceived as my best friend. I guessed, in a way, it was true; except, I didn’t believe in friends.
I believed in using the right people in the right way, and she had taken out one of my most valuable assets right when I needed him the most.
I had told Wyn I had made a mistake moments after it had happened. Only, she had no idea how truly damaging that mistake had been. For all she knew, I had left the oven on.
In reality, I had let the man I had been grooming for centuries to play as bait be incapacitated beyond all hope. All my work with Rosaline was rendered useless in that one moment.
I had needed him. I still did. I hadn’t found a suitable replacement yet.
I had tried to use Ryland, but while he still remained loyal to me, he had risen above his father’s control before I had expected him to. That raw power and anger he’d had before was gone. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to mold him in the way I needed.
Wyn was too headstrong, and no one else was emotionally broken enough for me to manipulate in time. Therefore, I had to keep playing into Ovailia in the hopes she would give Thom back to me, awaken the dead so he in turn could kill her.
I ground my teeth together at her threat, my heart racing angrily in a display of emotion she did not miss.
“Strange you care more for the life of one whose blood is as distant from yours as can be, while you would willingly feed your own progeny to the wolves.”
“She was not bred for life. She is nothing more than a pawn.” The words came without thinking, my head spinning with power, with the deep Drak magic and imagery of that first sight. The truth I had concealed flashed before my eyes in a recall so powerful that, for a fleeting moment, I wasn’t certain if I was the one who had summoned it.
When Ilyan had come to me that day, all those centuries before, he had been a weak boy searching for a mate. I had looked into the water to see what he sought. While I had seen it, while I had seen his future with Joclyn, a future with this powerful urchin with unrestrained magic I instantly recognized as Drak, it was not the future I had shown him.
I had shown him joy. I had shown him light. I had shown him possibility.
But I had also shown him death that had not existed.
I had also turned the precious girl who was meant to be the liberator of our people into a martyr.
Even though I had seen her sent from the mud to restart the realm of magic, I had not seen her as queen.
I could not let such power be free in the world. I couldn’t. Therefore, I changed it.
I changed it and created a war that would end in her death. I set brother against brother and father against son. I took the image I had seen of Joclyn beside the well, of her magic restarting all of the magic. I took the other, of her alongside her father-in-law in peace. I took the battle that ended in life. I took it all away and showed him death and destruction, instead. I showed him her dead body as he held her, as he screamed. I took his future away.
I took any possibility Joclyn had to use the Drak magic that she was not worthy of holding. I took it all away and gave them something different… because I could.
After all, they had taken my future away, and I would stop at nothing to get it back.
Besides, it was easy. Before the false words had even left the mouths of the Draks who had surrounded me, it was done, and it would be that way because I had “seen” it.
Oh, how suggestive everyone was.
I could say I “saw” a three-legged medusa come forth from the mud, and they would all sit around and wait for it to happen.
It was ridiculous.
“She is disposable.” I finished the thought with a snap, watching Ovailia’s eyes widen as her shock wound through her spine, the look gone before I had even fully registered it.
“To more than us, it would seem,” she whispered.
I smiled, and so did she.
For the first time, I had let her see a sliver of who I really was, and although the glimpse into my reality didn’t scare her, it was definitely a surprise to see it so well received. To see that, despite everything she had seen of me and all the falsehoods, she liked it. She liked me.
Just as, in that moment, I liked her.
For the first time in my life, I actually wanted to kiss her.
What an odd feeling.
Screams echoed through the frigid air as I made a beeline toward my father. The haunted sounds carried on the back of the wind as though they were nothing more than remnants of lives long gone.
In a way, it was true.
The sounds were the ghosts of people who had been pulled out of the once vibrant city, their bodies mutilated and destroyed by my father’s beautiful creations. Fragments of souls battling through a powerful poison, battling against a magic that would either devour them or become them.