Page 125 of The Stolen Throne
It feels like everything around me, inside me, goes dead still. I don’t want to know, do I? I swallow. “Easy?”
“To let his Shadows do that.”
Wait. “You weren’t fighting them?”
His expression is torn. “I didn’t want to stop them.”
My gasp fills the hole of silence.
“The soldiers were coming,” Reven continues. “Eidolon was coming, and you were there.”
For her. Eidolon’s words echo in my mind. But what the king doesn’t know is that I’d also burn down the world for Reven. Corrupted. That’s what Eidolon said. Because of me. If he hadn’t passed out, would he even have regained control? I reach out a hand, but he leans back, so I drop it. “So…we need to figure out if I can actually do anything. You need help.”
“I don’t deserve—”
“Stop.” It comes out harsh and frustrated and scared. “Just stop it. You showed me your heart the day you showed me the Vanished. You save people—that is the core of who you are, no matter the evil you come from or that you contain. You deserve to be helped.”
His jaw works. He holds up a hand, ticking off on his fingers the words he’s now throwing at me like weapons. “I could kill the Vanished as easily as I saved them. I’m not sure what I did to Trysolde. I wiped out those soldiers at the temple. Again. Even knowing what that means. Fuck, Meren. Those souls are trapped now because of me. Their deaths are on my hands. That temple will be—”
He cuts himself off, and I can see the guilt working under his features, and it’s killing me.
“Meren?” a voice calls into my room.
Horus. I almost forgot that he was going to come for me.
52
Achlys’s Story
Horus is waiting outside my door. Is he paler, or is it a trick of the sun that is starting to lower in the skies? Oh goddess. “Is Tabra—”
“There is no change.”
I balance somewhere between relief she isn’t dead and disappointment that she isn’t improved. I’d hoped, with both Achlys and now Omma tending to her, that maybe…
I follow Horus across the open expanse of sand between the tents the Vanished—who have been moved, too—sleep in and Tabra’s at the center. Reven comes with us, sending surprise rippling through me.
Horus draws back the flap, and we duck inside. Achlys is there, kneeling beside my sister, who lies still on the ground. She wipes at her face with a cool cloth. Her expression is controlled, but I can see the love in every gentle touch.
Omma is standing off to the side.
My last thought about her was that she might have been the one who betrayed our location in Wildernyss, but as soon as I see her face, I know that she can’t be the traitor. Her information must have made it to the traitor when she arrived in the zariphate.
As soon as she sees my face, she scowls, an expression so familiar I actually relax. Now I’m nostalgic for her scowls? That’s messed up.
She also puts herself between us and Tabra.
No. Not us.
Between Reven and Tabra.
She eyes him up and down at her imperious best. “So, you’re the Shadowraith Meren told me of.”
I have no idea what Reven does, because he’s standing behind me, but I do see the way Omma takes a tiny step back.
“So, you’re the woman who…raised her,” he replies softly.
I know that tone. I’m not surprised when Omma actually swallows. “I did the best I could.”
