Tejus
The wait was intolerable.
All I could do was stare silently at Hazel as she curled up in a ball by the entrance to the temple. I wanted to comfort her, to hold her, but I couldn’t risk being syphoned before Benedict emerged. I would leave her exposed to danger that way. As it was, I was having a hard time forgiving myself for what I’d caused her to become. Seeing her around her friends was difficult – I knew that in time it would change, but I would do anything to spare her the agony of the growing period she was about to experience as she came into her powers and gradually learned to harness them.
“Tejus!”
I turned to see Ruby hurrying toward me.
“I need to speak to you—now!”
Glancing back at Hazel, I waited for her to react to the shouts of her friend, but when she made no movement, I realized she was asleep. It was probably for the best. I just had to keep in mind that she would probably wake up hungry.
“What is it?” I snapped. Julian and Ragnhild were looking over in our direction, waiting curiously for Ruby to divulge whatever was bothering her. Instead of speaking, she shoved a letter into my hand.
I was about to ask her what it was when I noticed the familiar handwriting. It belonged to Varga—what was Ruby doing with a letter from him? Without saying another word, I began to read what he had written.
When I finished, I crumpled the paper into my fist. It needed to be burnt before anyone else saw it.
“I thought he was a good man—at the end of it all,” Ruby whispered.
I didn’t trust myself to speak.
“He was just misguided,” she continued, “but he loved you like a brother.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I spat out. I didn’t want to hear Ruby’s opinion on the betrayal of my only friend. How insidious and sickening Queen Trina’s grip had been on him—on both of us.
“Forgive him, Tejus,” she urged. “I don’t believe he ever meant you harm.”
“You don’t?” I asked her.
“No!” she stated. “I just think he lost his way. And I don’t think he’s the only one guilty of that.”
At the damning insult, she flounced back to where she’d been sitting, avoiding the wide-eyed stare of Julian, who had witnessed the exchange.
Ignoring them all, I strode purposefully toward the water’s edge. The tide was out, leaving the damp sand littered with the debris of the sea—the bleached skeletons of its long-dead inhabitants, the soft sludge of underwater weeds and the stench of rot.
I cursed my friend. The initial betrayal I could forgive—Queen Trina was a snake, capable of worming her way into the lives of anyone she wished, polluting their minds till they turned on friend and family alike. It was the years of silence that wounded me the most. He had been a coward—why had he never told me?
Would you have ever spoken to him again if he had?
Would you have banished him?
Exposed him?
Perhaps. It was too late to know for certain. I wanted to think that I wouldn’t have, that I would have forgiven him…but I could not say for sure. I had never managed to forgive my brother anything, so why would Varga have been any different?
Frustrated, I unfurled the letter again.
I should have known that Lithan was up to no good. I had suspected him of disloyalty, but the harmless, gossiping kind. I had been very careful to keep him close, but not to divulge anything that could damage my family or me. I hadn’t realized the true nature of his treachery…I had been too conceited, too arrogant to believe that he could do me any real harm.
Fool, I cursed myself.
My eyes were drawn back to the letter, Varga admitting that he had brought Queen Trina and me together at her insistence. How shameful that I had been so easily manipulated. I recalled how Varga had always encouraged it in the beginning, urging me to visit her, accompanying me to the palace time and time again…how I had supposed that we were all friends, not for a moment thinking I was the fly in some kind of intricately woven web.
There had been one night that I now remembered with clarity. Trina often left our bed in the middle of the night—she claimed that she had trouble sleeping, and I never questioned it, as I was always happy to sleep alone. She would return at dawn, sleepy and doe-eyed, curling up to me. Once I had heard her and Varga talking outside the bedroom door before she returned, but I had thought nothing of it—it had been near the end of our relationship, and I had started to care less about what Trina said or did. I wondered now if they had been returning from an Acolyte meeting…if that was where she had been going every night—where they had both been going.