Amara gave her a cutting smile. “Yes, I did, actually. In the very prison you would be in for treason had Cleo not intervened on your behalf. Don’t give me a reason to change my mind.”
Nerissa didn’t react at all to the harshness in Amara’s tone. “I know I hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” Amara laughed lightly at this. “That’s rather unlikely.”
Nerissa absently tucked a piece of her short black hair behind her ear. “I need you to know, your grace, that I sided against you only because you gave me no other choice. My loyalty is and always has been to Princess Cleo.”
Amara gripped her cane tighter. “Yes, that’s become crystal clear, Nerissa.”
The betrayal had cut deeper than Amara would ever admit. Nerissa had swiftly become more than an attendant to her, more even than a friend.
Nerissa blinked. “I saw it, you know.”
“Saw what?”
“Your true self. A part of you that isn’t hard and cruel and hungry only for power.”
The pain in Amara’s leg shifted momentarily to her heart. But only for a moment.
She forced a pinched smile to her lips once again. “You were only seeing things. Your mistake entirely.”
“Perhaps,” Nerissa said softly.
Amara eyed the girl with disdain. “I had heard tales about you, most that I had dismissed as only rumors. It seems that your ability to seduce your way into influential beds is second to none. The perfect little rebel spy, aren’t you?”
“I seduce only those who are willing to be seduced.” Nerissa held her gaze for another small eternity before she bowed her head. “If you’ll excuse me, your grace. I must see to the princess.”
Amara watched the girl walk away toward the royal residence, her heart a tight knot in her chest.
Her mind was set. It was time to leave Mytica.
Time to plan her next move.
CHAPTER 6
JONAS
PAELSIA
Jonas had stayed at the royal compound far longer than he’d ever intended.
He stayed for Cleo, for Taran, for Enzo and Nerissa. And for Felix, who’d managed to get himself locked up again.
And, it would seem, he stayed to help in the search for his former enemy.
Lucia believed that Prince Magnus was dead, but the search still continued. When she’d asked Jonas to help, he found that he couldn’t say no.
After a long, exhausting, and fruitless day of searching the barren Paelsian landscape beyond the gates of Basilius’s former compound, Jonas fell into the deepest sleep he could remember. One that blissfully lacked any nightmares.
But then it happened. As if grasped from one world and yanked into another, he found himself standing in the middle of a grassy field facing a man in long shimmering white robes. A man he recognized all too well.
Timotheus wasn’t old—or, at least, he didn’t appear to be old. His face was no more lined than Jonas’s brother Tomas’s would have been at twenty-two, had he lived.
His eyes, though, betrayed his true age. They were ancient.
“Welcome, Jonas,” Timotheus said.
Jonas glanced around, seeing nothing but the grassy field stretched out in all directions. “I figured you were done with me.”
“Not yet.”
Jonas turned to meet Timotheus’s gaze fully, refusing to be intimidated by this immortal. “I defied your prophecy. Lucia is still alive.”
“Yes, she is. And she had a child—a daughter named Lyssa, whose eyes glow with violet light on occasion.” Timotheus nodded at Jonas’s shocked look. “I have ways of knowing many things, so let’s not waste time retreading what has already occurred. The child is of great interest to me, but she’s not why I need to speak with you now.”
Fresh resentment coursed through Jonas. These otherworldly immortals spent centuries watching mortals through the eyes of hawks but provided little in the way of actual help. He preferred it when Watchers were only myth and legend he could ignore at will, not an annoying reality.
Jonas paced nervously back and forth. This didn’t feel like a dream. In a dream, everything seemed hazy, and hard to grasp on to.
Here, he could feel the mossy ground beneath his feet, the warm sunlight on his face. He could smell the flowers that surrounded them as fragrant as those in his sister Felicia’s small garden.
Roses, he thought. But sweeter somehow. More like the sugar crisps he’d enjoyed as a rare treat as a young boy, made by a kind woman in his village.
He shook his head to clear it of the distracting sensations all around him.
“Then you know the Kindred are free,” he said. “Two of them, anyway. And Cleo and Taran . . . they’re in trouble. Great trouble.” He paused to rub his forehead hard. “Why did you let that happen?”
Timotheus turned his face away from Jonas’s accusatory glare. There was nothing in the distance for him to focus on; the lush green field seemed to go on and on forever in all directions. “Does Lucia have possession of all four crystal orbs?”
“Why should I tell you anything when you seem to know it all?”
“Tell me,” Timotheus said as harshly as he’d ever said anything before.
Something lurched in Jonas’s chest, something strange and unpleasant that reminded him of Lucia’s ability to draw the truth out of him whether he wished to speak it or not.
“She has three,” he bit out. “Amber, moonstone, and obsidian. The obsidian orb had a crack in it, I’m told. But it doesn’t anymore.”
“It healed itself,” Timotheus said.
“I don’t know. I would guess it did.”
Timotheus’s brows drew together. “What about the aquamarine orb?”
Again, Jonas felt a strange compulsion to reply with the truth. “Cleo has that one.”
“She can touch it without great difficulty?”
“No, she . . . carries it with her in a pouch,” Jonas replied.
Timotheus nodded, his expression contemplative. “Very well.”
The strange, magical grip on Jonas’s throat eased. “Do you have any idea how irritating it is to be lied to and manipulated?”
“Yes. Actually, I do.” Timotheus, his arms crossed over his chest, began to walk a slow circle around Jonas, peering at the rebel with narrowed eyes.
“If you know everything,” Jonas said, “you’ll know Lucia’s in mourning for her brother. If you want her to help you stop Kyan, you could tell us where Magnus is—and whether there’s any chance he’s still alive.”
“You care about someone you wanted dead not so long ago?”
That was a trickier question than he’d like it to be. “I care that Lucia is in pain. And Magnus . . . for all his faults . . . he could be useful in the coming war.”
“The war against the Kindred.”
He nodded. “Against the Kindred. Against the empress. Against anything that comes our way in the future.”
“I’m not here for that.”
Jonas hissed out a breath of frustration. “Then what are you here for?”
Timotheus didn’t speak for a moment. Jonas realized that despite the immortal’s eternal youth, he looked tired and drawn, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks.
Do immortals even need sleep? he wondered.
“This is almost over,” Timotheus finally said, and Jonas could have sworn he heard pain edging his words.