Page 164 of A Warrior's Fate

“Can we tell all of them?” she asked.

Now, he nodded. “I trust them more than anyone. But it has to be okay with you too.”

“Oh, great. Now this shit is going to start.” Ameera pointed between them. “The secret conversations.”

They certainly were convenient.

At the table, Davina dropped their arms, and Isla decided. If Kai trusted them—his family which she was now a part of—then so did she.

“We can’t celebrate yet,” Isla said, tightening her grip on her bag and turning to Jonah.

He lifted a brow, and she simply nodded at him. It was all he needed to understand. His features fell and his eyes went to Kai in question; his brother inclined his head, signaling he knew too.

“Okay, what’s happening?” Ameera had thrown her hands up, zeroing her stare on Jonah. “Are you in on this?”

Jonah didn’t answer, just gulped down the rest of his liquor and descended behind the shelves to his back room. Kai had since gone to secure every lock on the door, while Isla cleared some of the booze off the table to make room for her bag. Carefully, she removed each of the items and placed them in the wood’s center. How garish the embellishments of gold and silver, crystal and gemstone, looked against its worn surface.

“What the hell? Who did you rob?” Rhydian asked, pushing around the pile of blood-red jewels and jabbing at a piece of the diadem as if it would bite him.

Nothing would surprise Isla at this point.

“Get comfortable,” she told them all, gesturing to the seats that Kai was now dragging over. “And ask Jonah if he has more whiskey.”

Isla hated whiskey, quite frankly, but she needed something strong. She downed a glass, the liquid burning her throat, as she waited for everyone to settle.

Like a display at a museum, the marker, the book, the dagger, the two halves of the diadem, a pile of ruby jewels, the sheets bearing the copied messages, and the map—which Kai had apparently stolen from Callan’s room—sat atop the study table. The six of them circled it, staring down at it, features contorted in iterations of awe and disturbance. Kai and Isla exchanged a glance, a silent conversation about who would go first.

Kai took the lead and began with the night he was supposed to die.

That fact alone was enough to shake the room. Isla hadn’t known that he’d kept it such a secret from all of them.

Despite their shock, they remained silent, letting him recount everything he remembered. Everything he’d already told Isla. About the inn of Abalys with Amalie, about the feeling—of being stuck, in pain, disconnected—and the first message.

Even if Kai attempted to appear the vision of strength, Isla felt each word breaking something in him, especially when he recounted walking through his brother’s apartment, empty and eerily quiet after they’d taken his body away. She grabbed his hand beneath the table and stroked her thumb reassuringly over his skin as he explained how he’d never gotten to say a proper goodbye to his sibling before he’d been burned alongside their father.

After Kai had brought up the message in Callisto—the last piece of the puzzle he wanted to offer before Isla would jump in—Ameera put her hand up. A vein throbbed at her temple. “You’re telling me, that you’ve had a psychopath after you for months, and you never said anything?”

Kai had no answer for her but, “Yes.”

“Yes?” the general repeated. “Why wouldn’t you tell us? We could’ve—”

“What?” Kai cut her off, and Isla had a feeling them going head to head like this was a common occurrence. “Could’ve what? Gone after them? They killed my father and Jaden. I wasn’t getting you guys involved.”

Ameera gritted her teeth. “That’s not your call to make.”

“Yes, it is.”

Isla could feel guilt simmering within him, hear the nuances of it in his tone, but it wasn’t because he hadn’t told them. Grief twined within it.

But before she could put much thought as to why, Rhydian chimed in. “Does anyone else know about them going after you too?” He tried to keep his voice even, masking any anger he felt, but his nostrils flared.

“Ezekiel.”

“You told my dad?” Ameera asked.

“He’s my beta,” Kai said.

Her features curled in a snarl, and she said nothing else.

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