He sank down onto the throne, hoping his fatigue didn’t look as glaringly obvious as it felt.
The hall was a disaster. Blood and bodies everywhere. He couldn’t undo the damage Tanith had done, but he could right the path she had put his people on.
Dorian stepped forward and spoke the words that would make Caius’s ascension official.
“Does any among you object?”
Silence.
Dorian met Caius’s gaze and nodded. It was done.
Caius leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He needed to rest. Soon. But he had one order of business that could not wait.
“By royal decree,” he said, his voice resounding but still rough as gravel in his throat, “I hereby call an end to the war against the Avicen.” A titter rose among the gathered nobles. Already they were complaining. Some things never changed. And some things had to, if any of them were to move forward. “The Avicen are not our enemies. Not any longer. It is a far greater threat we face.” He met Echo’s gaze across the room. Her features were indistinct from such a distance, but he didn’t think he was imagining her small, proud smile. “And the only way we can defeat it is if we face it together.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
In a quiet room, set apart from the main living quarters of Wyvern’s Keep, Ivy sat by Helios’s bedside and remembered a time, not too long ago, when she had tended to another Drakharin’s wounds. She and Dorian had not been friends then; they had been something only slightly less than enemies. Circumstance had positioned them on the same side, but time and effort had allowed Ivy to see another side of him. It would not have been possible if he had not been willing to grow beyond the limitations of his hatred. He’d shed his well-worn prejudices like snakeskin. He had become someone Ivy could trust.
But trusting one Drakharin was not the same as trusting them all. She had let herself forget that they were enemies. Not just to her—in the great scheme she was not an individual, but rather a stand-in for a people, an idea—but to all the Avicen. Months of friendship with one would not—could not—overcome centuries of hatred. Only a fool would have thought so. A naive, optimistic fool.
Her hands went through the motions of checking the bandages on Helios’s head. The force with which Tanith had struck him had sent him careening into a wall of solid stone. There was probably a Helios-shaped hole in the throne room now.
“Serves you right,” Ivy muttered. Even so, her hands were gentle. Once the white-hot flare of her anger had subsided—she had trusted him—she found that she didn’t want to hurt him. With Dorian, the fear and mistrust had come first—when he frightened her, hurt her, she had wanted to hurt him right back—but Helios…Helios had been kind to her from the moment their eyes met across the courtyard of Wyvern’s Keep, when a backstabbing warlock had delivered her right into Tanith’s waiting claws. He brought her food. He helped her escape. He told her to be brave.
And then he turned on her. On all of them. They had welcomed him into their home. He had tended their garden. He had stood beside Ivy in the kitchen, sweating over a steaming cauldron of boiled bloodweed, assisting her as she distilled its putrid essence into an elixir that would save the very same lives he was planning to jeopardize.
And still, Ivy did not want to hurt him.
She stared at him. His face was motionless, eyes still hidden beneath their lids, too deep in his pained slumber to be plagued by dreams. His pale skin was even lighter than it normally was; Ivy could see the blue lines of his veins beneath the surface. Bruises blossomed along one cheek; the line of them extended across his jaw, down his neck, and along his collarbone (likely fractured).
“That doesn’t sound like the Ivy I know.”
Ivy turned from her study of Helios’s many wounds to look at Dorian. He was leaning against the doorframe. The battle had left him with but one injury: a gash across the knuckles of his right hand. One of the other healers had wrapped it with gauze after applying a salve. Ivy could smell the witch hazel from where she sat. He’d been watching her work in silence. No one was to be alone with the prisoner, according to Caius, enthroned once more as Dragon Prince. Dorian had silently volunteered to act as guard, though Ivy didn’t think an unconscious Helios was much of a threat. Not anymore.
“Really?” She arched a brow, but she wasn’t nearly as good at doing so as Dorian was. “Because I’m such a saint?”
That pulled a tired smile from Dorian’s lips. “Not saintly, no. Just kind.”
Ivy snorted. “Right. Kind.” She turned her attention back to Helios. His chest rose and fell with deep, even breaths. Her gaze stayed resolutely attached to the slope of his collarbone. She didn’t know what her expression betrayed; she had never had much of a poker face, and she didn’t feel like having Dorian—or anyone—dissect the thoughts she opted not to voice. “That’s probably what makes me such an easy target.”
She didn’t see Dorian approach the bed, but she heard the scrape of chair legs as he pulled up the only other seat in the room. His movements were slow as he sank into it. Maybe the burn on his knuckles wasn’t the only memento the fight had bestowed upon him.
“You’re not an easy target,” Dorian said. “Being kind is not a weakness. And that is not something I would have said a year ago.”
Ivy huffed. She didn’t want a pep talk. But then, she also didn’t not want a pep talk. She didn’t know what she wanted in that moment, but it was easier, somehow, with Dorian beside her. Even if he insisted on resorting to shallow platitudes as a clumsy attempt at consolation. “Maybe if I had been a little less kind, I wouldn’t have played right into his hands.”
“He had us all fooled,” said Dorian. “Even me.” He quirked a silver eyebrow at her. “Do I look like an easy target to you?”
Ivy did look at him, carefully, knowing full well that the words she didn’t say were written on her face. She couldn’t say that it felt like her heart was breaking. She couldn’t say that she had let herself care about a boy she barely knew. She couldn’t admit that she had been blinded by a pretty face and sunshine eyes and a kind smile. All she could say was “I trusted him.”
Dorian’s injured hand came to rest atop her own. “You saw the good in him. There is no shame in that.”
“I brought him into our house.” Truthfully, allowing Helios access to their home, their sanctuary, their secrets, had been a group effort, but Ivy could not fight the blame that seemed determined to rest on her shoulders. “How can you say that?”
“Because you saw the good in me.”
He said it as if it were that simple. It wasn’t. “That was different.”
Dorian met her glare with a roll of his eye. “I punched you in the face, Ivy.”
“And I forgave you.”
“Well, maybe someday you can forgive him.”