Page 165 of A Warrior's Fate

“Does Amalie know?” Davina offered weakly, sipping from the water they were forcing her to drink. She was fading fast, leaning against Rhydian’s shoulder, heavy-lidded. “She was sleeping right next to you.”

Kai shook his head, casting a quick eye towards Isla at the mention of his former lover. She responded by running her fingers lazily, and dangerously, up his leg, stopping at the hinge of his hips and trailing back down. He stiffened under her touch. Her reminder and reassurance.

“Cruel,” she heard in her head.

And then Kai spoke aloud, “She didn’t even wake up.”

“Your mother didn’t either,” Jonah said. “Right?”

Kai nodded, whatever exhilaration or joy he’d been feeling fading away. “She doesn’t talk a lot about that night, but I know she woke up because she felt their bond snap, and then my father was dead.”

Isla remembered the man at the banquet who’d lost his wife, and Zahra standing behind him. Imagined how her father must’ve felt. How Adrien must’ve. The thought of losing her connection to Kai now made her nauseous. Davina may have been pondering the same thing as she leaned into Rhydian.

“I might not have thought there was foul play if it weren’t for what happened to me. There were no wounds. There was no blood. No scent of wolfsbane or even mistletoe or mountain ash. They were just—dead.”

Isla felt a shudder whenever he said the word, and the guilt grew stronger.

Dead—they were dead. And he wasn’t.

“What about magic?” Ameera said, folding her arms across her chest. “I remember the weeks before it happened, they were doing a lot in Surles, close to the Wall. Maybe he got too close or spent too much time in the wasteland. I mean, it was like they lived there. My dad was never at my parents’ house when I’d visit.”

Isla rose a brow. “What wasteland?”

“Along the Wall’s border, there are patches of land where forest used to be,” Kai explained. “It’s almost like the Wilds, but without the bak. Everything around there started dying about a decade ago. It never recovered, but thankfully, it never expanded either.”

Isla hummed, something about it now hitting a vague place in her memory.

“Death by magic would give off a scent,” Jonah said, adjusting himself to lean back in his chair. “That’s why the Wilds smell so horrible. It’s just a cesspool of death and destruction.”

Isla frowned, her heart clenching. What a catastrophe that must’ve been. She couldn’t imagine being there that day of the decimation, feeling the curse ripple through the earth, taking hold of the pack’s inhabitants and ending their lives.

As she shook away the grisly images of how she envisioned the past and recalled the ghosts that lingered about in the Wilds, she also noticed that Jonah was eyeing her. “What?”

The shop owner nodded towards the table. “Where did you get those?”

Isla followed his eyes to the dagger and the broken diadem. She reached for the weapon and lifted it in her hand. Everyone recoiled just an inch. “Someone had given this to Lukas to kill me.” She used the tip of the blade to point back at the table. “With the book.”

“Lukas?” Rhydian asked.

Right, she hadn’t gotten there yet.

“A hunter from Tethys,” Isla said, before continuing through an explanation of how Lukas had lost his memory, “lashed out”, and found himself restrained in the infirmary.

As she went on about how she’d gone to visit him and he pulled the knife on her, Kai tensed at her side.

“I should’ve been there.”

“You needed to be here.”

A suspicious look had crossed over Jonah’s face, but he also seemed…perturbed.

“What’s wrong?” Isla hated to have to ask.

“That crystal wedged in the blade and in the crown.”

“What about it?”

He heaved a breath as if he knew what he was about to say would elicit some negative reaction.

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