Page 87 of Oracle of Ruin

“Good to know.”

“You didn’t have to come all the way down here.” I try my hand at being polite. I’ve avoided Lyra ever since she walked through the door.

You have her eyes.

Those words have been clouding my mind ever since I met the woman. Somehow, the rebellion leader’s wife knew my mother, knew her well enough to recognize me without a last name. Even knew my last name, something not even the Nightwalkers knew.

With my memories now returning, I have a good grasp on many things. The day Irene attempted to take my life. My father’s face and love before the dark magic took over his mind. My mother’s friends and the company they both kept before we ran. Lyra does not appear anywhere in these memories. Not even her name.

“I know.”

Amír pretends not to listen to the conversation. Her eyes flit to mine and my lips peel back in a slight snarl. She raises a brow in challenging, but turns away as Lyra approaches.

“I suppose you want to have a talk.”

“You knew who I was.”

Lyra settles deep into the chair across from me and stretches back with a groan. “Of course I knew who you were. You’re Rowan. The only living hybrid and future king of Krycolis.” She says it so sweetly, so simply. It is like the first night I met Vera, when she tried to worm her way out of danger with sweet words and wit that matched my own. Beneath Vera’s voice, though, was an edge. There was a silver tongue hiding beneath the honey of her words. With Lyra, there is just emptiness. The kind that rattles in the ribs where a heart should be. The type that never stops bleeding.

“You knew my last name. How.”

Not a question. A demand.

Lyra sighs. She isn’t an assassin or a runaway princess. She may be the wife of a rebel leader, but she does not have the same tight lips of one. I can see it in her eyes. She is tired, and willing to tell me anything. The wall crumbles with a few well-placed blows. “It is my maiden name,” she finally admits with a small smile. “How is my sister?”

I’ve come to expect the worst of the world. If you expect disappointment, you will never face it. Very few things in my life have truly shocked me. The event is a rare enough occasion that I can count the number of times on one hand. The first was finding Kya and Derrín, Kya with a bloody knife in hand, standing over four grown men while Derrín huddled behind her. Then learning my father is the king, the third was thinking Vera was my sister.

Learning my aunt is Roiden’s wife, or learning I have an aunt at all, will have to be my fourth.

“She’s… alive.”

Lyra’s face falls a bit, not enough to break the newfound glow in her features at the mention of my mother. She’s alive—that brings hope. My lack of description is the culprit for her disappointment.

“Are you going to say anything else?”

“Why did she never mention you?” I press.

“Emilie has a habit of not talking about things that make her sad. She doesn’t even know I am alive, it’s been so long. I was gone before you were born, married to Roiden.”

She’s right. If my mother thinks her sister is dead, there would be no way for her to bring herself to even speak about her. The pain would be too much. She’d bury it.

“And why wouldn’t you say anything? If you knew, you were breaking her heart.”

“You think I could get back?” she hisses under her breath. “Look at the silver in my husband’s hair, boy, and the little I have in mine. Do you see how things are run around here? Use that brain she gave you and put it together. Not to mention the fact that you’re the king’s son. Under different circumstances, Roiden would have killed you already, and that would have killed her more than my disappearance.”

The Nightwalkers’ stares burn into my spine and sweat pricks the back of my neck. Lyra is speaking lowly, but the room is small. Even the crackle of the fireplace cannot mask her words. Their gazes are questioning, waiting for their next command. Their next move.

I have none.

I sit, letting my head fall into my hands and stare at the ground between my knees. It always comes back to me. No, not even me. My father.

The scars across my wrists burn. They burn with the same searing pain that they did the day I tried to claw my veins from them. The same ache in my heart that told me the universe knew I should never have been born. There are laws against hybrids for a reason. We are too powerful.

Abominations.

Lyra’s chair screeches against the floor as she pushes it back and rises. She offers the others water before settling by the fire and talking with them. I should be there with them, offering them comfort and hatching a plan to free her from the rebellion. I don’t move.

A hand settles on my shoulder, then a shadow falls over my legs. I look up to find Amír standing before me and Blaine’s hand clasping my shoulder.

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