Page 215 of Salt in the Seas
Without warning, she sliced open his palm with a dagger, spilling his blood into a glass vial. His resistance was like a child against a warrior, and when she had enough blood, she shoved him to the stone floor.
“Controlling you is almost as good as controlling Enlawould be. She’s evaded me so far, but I suspect she’ll come for you. And now I wonder if someone else might too. Someone else I’m eager to get back. Except this time I won’t be so greedy as to wait for Summer Solstice. I learned my lesson. Half the power of a brand is better than no brand at all.”
Her words sent a different spike of fear through him, and his fear of dying by her hand suddenly felt welcome when compared to being controlled. When Enla returned, she’d have no idea he wasn’t himself, just like Iris had had no idea Holm was acting under Mayvus’ control.
Still, something else niggled at the back of his mind. If Enla had been evading Mayvus, did that mean Enla knew Mayvus had been controlling their parents? Enla had told him she’d seen all these deaths. She’d seen them and done nothing about them. Had she allowed this to happen for her own reasons? Or had this really been where all the paths led? He couldn’t imagine her seeing their parents, Uncle Danton, and Croft all dying and deciding it didn’t matter. Not unless there was something bigger that mattered in the future.
Or… maybe he could no longer trust her.
He shook the thought away, hating the disloyalty behind it.
When Mayvus used the same dagger to cut a mark on her shoulder, a sharp pain knifed through the cut on his palm. He lunged for her, preferring death over her successfully branding him. Her hand latched on to his arm, holding him at bay with an iron grip, but at least it kept that hand from being free to use his blood to form the brand mark.
They were at an impasse, one she could easily overcome by killing him, but something she seemed surprisingly hesitant to do.
“Restrain him,” she murmured.
Within moments, two burly Ahmranans pulled him away, holding his arms behind his back.
A smile curled across her face, and she lifted the vial to her shoulder. Before she could follow through, a commotion in the doorway to the council room brought everyone turning that way.
At first Gaeren felt a sense of relief at the sight of familiar faces, but they all appeared beaten and weary, their own starlocks missing from their necks. He counted off his friends, watching as Sylmar and Veldenwere led to the dais, followed by Marnok, Rildan, Cyrus, Iris, Kendalyhn, and Lukai.
Mayvus capped off the vial of blood and tucked it in her left cloak pocket.
Tension rolled off Gaeren’s shoulders, and a sliver of hope wormed through his gut.
One of the soldiers handed Mayvus a tangled mess of leather cords and starlocks, which she eagerly counted and tucked away in her other pocket, which housed Gaeren’s and his parents’ starlocks. Then she frowned and scanned the prisoners before stepping toward Velden, squinting at his cheeky grin. “I’ve heard of you.” She yanked the earrings out of his ears, making him howl as the flesh ripped. “There, now we have them all.”
Brogdon came in near the end of the line, and despite no longer having a starlock, he made a rush for Mayvus, showing a bravery and stupidity that Gaeren hadn’t expected from him. He got several scratches in on her face before her magic brushed him aside, the force of her blow so powerful he flew against the dais’ edge. He went still, hopefully just unconscious.
“I really hoped we’d all be able to be civilized adults for this meeting,” Mayvus said, but then she stumbled, placing a hand over her stomach and reaching out to steady herself on the arm of his father’s council room throne. Her face paled, and she glanced around the room. “Where’s Emeris?”
The guards brought her forward, and for the first time Gaeren caught a glimpse of Aeliana supporting her mother. Fear lined her face, and a dozen regrets flooded his mind. When her eyes met his, her features smoothed over a hair, raising his determination to get them out of this mess.
Emeris tripped, drawing his attention to the way her pale features mirrored Mayvus’. Actually, the closer he looked, the more her face had a greenish tinge, like after Riveran crossed the barriers. Mayvus bent double, her face holding a similar sickly quality. Any disbelief he had over the curse’s validity faded as he watched their mirrored reactions.
“What did you give her?” Mayvus moaned, her authority wavering with her voice.
A slow smile spread on Gaeren’s face as he realized what they’d done.
“If you’re going to depend on a curse,” Sylmar said, “you might want to consider all the possible consequences of that curse.”
She turned to glare at him. “What are you talking about?”
He stepped forward, his staff thumping on the wooden dais, making Gaeren wonder if he could still transform the weapon without his starlock. Could any of them stand against her in her weakened state? Could they combine efforts with the winex and the Elanesse soldiers to fight against her? And if they did, would her soldiers turn on her too?
“You saw the curse as an opportunity to extend your life, but you forget that its original intention was to weaken it. You are tied to Emeris in life…andin death.”
“You are even more of a fool than I realized,” Mayvus spat out, “if you think that’s my only path to immortality.” She fished a flask from her cloak pocket and took a swig from it.
“The winex,” Aeliana murmured, her eyes narrowing.
Mayvus paused, then her malicious smile returned. “Some of my men told me you were partial to the beasts.”
Gaeren felt the heat of Aeliana’s glare from across the room even though it wasn’t directed at him.
“You drained their eggs. All so you could test out a theory and sentence your soldiers to death.”
