Page 88 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
Kase’s nostrils flared. He’d lived through a nightmare in the last month. Nothing his father nor the High Council could do scared him anymore. The entire government and city were in shambles.
He stood, the sachet dropping to the ground. He was taller than his father. Not by much, but the inch felt like a mile. Kase feared nothing. “Correa took Achilles. All our people are dead.”
It was Harlan’s turn to be silent. He didn’t even move. After a few tense seconds he said, low and slow, “I don’t believe you.”
Kase rubbed his own unshaven cheek. The puckered and healing cut interrupted his short beard—a physical representation of the scarring no one else could see. “I think they had inside help. The only Jaydian survivors are Stoneset villagers holed up in the mountain caverns. Not sure how much longer they can hide.”
His father cursed loudly and kicked the pebbles beneath his boot, adding yet another scuff.
Kase gazed steadily at his father as the older man took it all in. He remembered the last conversation he’d had with Harlan—the one that had ended with a busted lip. He traced his tongue along the inside of his lip, tasting phantom blood.
“You can believe me or not, but it’s true.” Kase crossed his arms, growing more confident with each passing moment. “I watched it happen; nearly died at Correa’s hands myself.”
It was Kase’s curse—to survive against the odds.
Harlan swallowed, his gaze still as frozen as ice. He remembered. He remembered what he’d said to Kase. The slight feathering of his jaw said so, but Kase couldn’t tell if it was of regret or irritation. Either way, his father didn’t rise to the bait. “The Cerls seek the Spark Essence.”
Cold shock coursed through Kase’s body at the words. “How do you know that?”
He’d come all this way to give Harlan that information. He’d left Hallie—and his father had already known. He clenched his fists against his sides, his arms still folded.
“I was unsuccessful in keeping the Essence wielder from wreaking havoc on our world. For once, I and the Cerls are aligned on that front.” It was his turn to rub a hand down his face. More lines had grown around his eyes and crossed his forehead in Kase’s brief time away. Vaguely, Kase wondered if he’d been the cause. He hoped so.
Harlan continued, “I’ve even been meeting with Cerl defectors, and all of it was for naught.”
What?
“How long?” Kase uncrossed his arms.
“Doesn’t matter. I had a good contact in Nar particularly. Dead now.” Harlan grabbed a rock he’d been using as a paperweight on the makeshift desk. He gripped it in his hands. Kase knew he wanted to throw it, but his father reined in his temper and set the rock back down, his hands shaking slightly.
The longer Kase stood there, the more the words sank in. He lowered himself into the chair and put his face in his hands. His father had been missing on multiple occasions during the months after Kase had returned from Tasava. Vicious rumorsof an affair had circulated quickly in a society so obsessed with decorum. Kase himself had believed them. Harlan had never done much to dispute it.
Cerl defectors. The affair rumors had been a great cover, Kase loathed to admit. Still, it didn’t excuse Harlan’s other sins.
Pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes, Kase muttered, “Correa needs all the Essence powers in order to defeat something called Jagamot. Not sure what that is.”
“Allof them? Where did you get that information?”
“I told you, I nearlydiedat their hands.” Kase sat back, blinked away the wavy lines in his eyes, and twisted Ana’s ring around his finger. “The Cerls kidnapped Hallie, and I…I turned myself in to save her.”
Harlan’s eyebrows rose a little at the mention of Hallie. They fell by the end of Kase’s sentence. “Ridiculous. You could’ve been—if I had—”
Kase leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I did what I had to do.” He steeled himself to deliver the next bit of news. “They’re systematically working their way through the countryside.” After seeing Nar, he guessed that the blue markers he’d memorized on the map in Correa’s office must’ve coordinated with the places they’d taken over or had planned to do so—maybe even with One World’s help.
“Nar?”
“Overrun.”
Harlan turned his back to Kase, a hand rubbing down his face. For once, his frustration wasn’t aimed at his youngest son, not entirely. His father spoke to the back of the tent. “Have they collected all the Essence powers, sans Loffler?”
Kase shook his head to clear it. Surely, he’d heard wrong. Loffler was half-dead and useless. “What does that old coot have to do with this?”
Harlan let out a disbelieving chuckle. “Everything, apparently.” He folded his arms across his chest. His jacket was missing all his accolades. The only thing decorating it was the Jaydian emblem on the breast. Harlan smoothed his mustache, taming the few wayward strands. “So Correa has found them all, except him?”
And Hallie. Kase ground his teeth. “No.”
“No?”
