Drothiker
48.

Azryle awoke in a dark, moonlit bedroom.

Each inch of his body ached, as if he’d just taken down the burliest baeselk. The bed squeaked as he sat up, and Azryle’s each sense came alert, just as the events of the duel came rushing to him in a swift stab of a dagger.

Azryle heard the quiet stretching far enough to suggest he was in an apartment. The scent of lilies and storms struck him and he gleaned where he was.

Lilith’s apartment. Not at the Glass Palace. Azryle caught the scent of embers and sunflowers then.

He turned to where the moonlight slipped in from. Vendrik was standing cross-armed, leaning against the wall beside the small square window. Night. It was night—

“Come to whip me again?” Azryle blinked at the bite in his own words.

His looked down at himself—he was drenched in sweat. His hand lifted to his bare chest—to his heart—

It was beating. Not constrained. Not utterly sturdy. His heart was racing—

“What is happening.” His throat felt dry as a sandpaper. It hit him then, as if her own bolt was hurled over to him. “Where is Alpenstride?”

Was this … concern? Azryle’s stomach lurched.

Vendrik angled his head, flames burning bright in his eyes in the dark. “You tell me.”

“What.”

“What happened earlier?”

Azryle barely had any explanations—his head was a cloud of tangled wires.

“Felset is furious like you’ve never seen before, Ryle. She’s already on the quest to hunt you down—and Alpenstride.”

She was alive … Alpenstride was alive—

And escaped.

Something crashed into him like cool water on destroying fire. Relief …? And—

“Why is she looking for me?” Azryle’s hand lifted to his neck. “She can simply urge me to approach her through the bond.”

Azryle gazed out of the window and his breath snitched. Olkfield was in ruins at the horizon; cracks in the ground, buildings crumpled down to rocks and sand. Faint stench of blood saturated the air all the way over here.

“She can’t,” said Vendrik.

Azryle waited.

Rik’s brows furrowed. “You’re not bound to her anymore, Azryle.”

Azryle rubbed at his forehead—his head was aching badly enough already, he wasn’t sure he could take these ridiculous jokes. “What is happening,” he seethed. Even as he said it, there was an uneven beat of his heart. So foreign. “If I were free, I would have been no better than an animal. You know if I were free, I would’ve been out slaughtering—”

“Then why are you not?” Vendrik lifted his dark red brow. “You jumped off the balcony when Alpenstride drove that sword through herself, even when Felset commanded you to halt.”

Azryle shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s because I’d jumped off before the command.”

“No, Ryle.” Vendrik’s voice was soft, enough that Azryle’s gaze snapped to him. “Before that, the command to you had been to stay kneeling on that balcony. Yet you stood and hauled yourself off. You were standing a few steps from Syrene the whole time on that field, Felset could have only uttered a few words to you and her enemy would have been down in a matter of seconds. But she didn’t, because she had no hold on you.”

Everything in Azryle seemed to go silent. “That’s not …” He trailed off, roaring words in him too deafening.

“The bond between us—that brotherly bond Felset had sewn between us to keep you contained …”

Azryle peered into himself, to the place where that bond was supposed to be a glowing thread lashing him to Vendrik … all he found were the burnt ashes of it.

“Ryle,” Vendrik said. “It wasn’t there even on the night of Feast of Melodies.”

The pulse at Azryle’s temple was pouncing now. The hammering of heart too loud, and too strange to his ears, his body. A sweat beaded to his brow.

Alpenstride—she’d looped her mejest around his throat that night. She had … she’d bound him to herself.

Syrene Evreyan Alpenstride, Felset had said. You’ve stolen two of my assets, and I want them returned to me.

World seemed to sweep off from beneath his feet.

Their mejest twined, with that world of power coursing through them, breaking Felset’s leash had been no more than cutting a cloth with scissors. Or flesh with steel.

“Had you known?” Vendrik was saying, “About … Alpenstride.”

Azryle couldn’t muster more than a curt nod. Powerless—he felt so unbelievably powerless. Weak.

“You’d known she’s a Kaerion?”

Azryle’s head shot up. “What.”

Vendrik sighed, and ran a hand through his hair, looking every bit the boy who was about to tell his father a bad school grade. Or the husband who was to reveal he’d gotten the neighbor’s wife pregnant.

“I …” Rik’s throat bobbed. “The first time my fire grew agitated was the day I’d gone to fetch the prisoners from Jegvr. It got out of my hands. I gulped down loads of water on the birdship, and kept it contained. It rested when I went to Nofstin with the three prisoners, after leaving Alpenstride with you.” He sighed. “A couple days later, it grew restless again—that was the day you’d entered Nofstin with Alpenstride. It hadn’t calmed since then—”

Azryle felt color draining from his face. “Because Alpenstride was near.”

Vendrik nodded, and rubbed at his face again. “It rested an hour ago … my guess is Alpenstride is far—very far.”

“Out of the city.”

Vendrik’s fingers drummed at his elbow, waiting for Azryle to connect the dots.

“You’re both Kaerions.” Azryle’s teeth ground, every word like a dagger to his gut.

Vendrik Evenflame. Heir to the Otsatya of Flames, held the power of the otsatya. Born to pay the debt.

Syrene Alpenstride. Heir to the King of Hemvae. Heir to the Otsatya of Skies. Born to end the debt. An Elite Kaerion—with Drothiker running in her veins.

What did that make her, if anything less than an otsatya?

“Then why did it not rile Syrene’s power every time she was near you?” asked Azryle.

“She was in her human body—had no mejest in herself in that form to provoke.”

Azryle let each word sink …

“You need to leave,” Vendrik said abruptly. “It wouldn’t take her long to track you—”

“And go where?” Azryle snapped.

“You’re a prince.” Vendrik’s tone was harsh. “You have enough jedzem in your pockets to reach the other end of the world.”

It wasn’t as easy as Vendrik made it sound. Azryle had been told what to do his whole life; given purposes, tasks, commands. But now … there was nothing.

Nothing, except one thing.

He did have a purpose, a target.

A Destiny.

Syrene.