“What are you talking about?”
Kitt’s words are a hiss, making me flinch. His red-rimmed eyes grow unfocused. My heart pounds beside Kai in this study that seems to be closing in on me. I almost try to convince myself that I’ve misheard the malice in my husband’s voice.
But it is no use. The crazed look he wears only confirms the words he spit so readily. It’s as though they have been smothered beneath his tongue for weeks before finally unleashing them.
This is not the Kitt I knew, nor is it the one I was beginning to befriend. This is the embodiment of a fraying mind.
“Edric wasn’t my father,” Kai answers, his shoulders stiff. “Myla already had a child when they were secretly wed—a powerful one that your father only wanted as his spare and weapon. So really”—the Enforcer takes a step forward, so stoic and sure—“Paedyn is your blood, not me.”
After all that time of calling Kai Azer a cocky bastard, that was precisely what he was. I had uttered the truth on a dozen occasions.
I watch the steely words hit Kitt, and yet, he hardly flinches. “That may be so, but you are my brother. You are more family than I have ever had. More…” He searches Kai’s gaze desperately. “More love than I have ever had. Father was obsession, Mother a ghost, but you… you showed me what love was.”
The reminder of my naivety nips at the corner of my consciousness. I’ve spent weeks trying to repair a bond I thought was only severed due to the killing of a king. But I realize now that Edric Azer was merely a variable in Kitt’s contempt for me. It is Kai he wants at his side—his brother and friend. And I alone stand between them.
“Why did you marry me?” I prod. “If I am a wedge between you two, then why not kill me?”
Kitt finally deigns to meet my stare. “My plans for Ilya require you.” I gape at his curt response before he’s turning once again toward Kai, features suddenly beseeching. “Together we will build the greatest nation—stretching far beyond the Scorches and Shallows. We will create a legacy that Father never dreamed of.”
Kai stares at the boy he’s called “brother” his whole life. “I thought you wanted to be exactly like Father—your father. Whatever happened to following in his footsteps, doing anything to make him proud?”
“Again,” Kitt says with a cough, “I grew up. Father told me of his plan for the Resistance, how his entire life was wasted trying to rid the kingdom of Ordinaries.” He shakes his head. “I spent so many years believing he was a god among men, that his plans for Ilya were beyond anything I could hope to achieve. But it was all so… mediocre. Obsessive.”
Kitt wags a finger in the air. “Yet, he had the gall to make me feel inferior my whole life. All I wanted was his pride, his approval, his love. So now”—his gaze widens with that wild look—“I will be so much greater than him. His name will be overlooked in the histories beside my own. Beside ours.”
Kai’s expression grows worried. “And how will you do that?”
Kitt rounds the desk slowly. His features morph into something so terrifyingly calm, I nearly flinch. “We have already begun, Brother.”
The look in his eyes worries me more than his words. I swallow thickly. My voice is quiet. “What did you do, Kitt?”
“No.” He clicks his tongue. “What did you do, Paedyn? You became queen and made the surrounding kingdoms open their borders to us. You, a relatable Ordinary, had them lowering their guards against us.”
“And why,” Kai breathes, “would that be a problem, Brother?”
“You know, I’m used to being overlooked.” The king mutters distantly before beginning to pace. “Kind, caring Kitt, after all. But I really thought that you”—his piercing gaze cuts through me—“would suspect more from me. You thought saving Ilya was the best I could do?” He grins sharply. “No, I’m liberating every kingdom.”
“Kitt…,” I begin slowly.
“See, I don’t care whether the Ordinaries live or die—obsessing over their existence is what ruined Father,” Kitt explains eagerly. And for the first time, I see a trail of dark veins creeping from his hairline. “But Elites should not be confined to this city; they should populate every kingdom. And when I rule over every realm on our maps”—Kitt smiles, and it is chilling—“I’ll have earned Father’s favor.”
Kai steps hesitantly toward his brother. “What are you saying, Kitt? Was uniting Ilya just some… ploy?”
“Not at all,” Kitt says, sounding almost offended. He coughs into that handkerchief again, splattering it with something ominously dark. “It was needed for the kingdoms to open their borders and begin trade with us.”
My heart pounds. Each rapid beat of it brings me closer to discovering yet another truth to tear at the fraying seams of my life. “You’re not opening trade to exchange resources, are you?”
The question is hushed, and I fear the answer.
“Of course I am.” Kitt’s voice is even. “So I can exchange resources laced with the Plague.”
Air flees my lungs.
I’m still struggling to breathe when Kai shakes his head. “You’re not thinking straight, Kitt. What are you—?”
“I was waiting to tell you, Brother,” the king admits. “I wanted all the distractions out of the way, but now will have to do. Ilya needs food and land, yes, but that is not what is important here.” He hurries on before Kai can object. “What I found in Father’s letter was so much more than his pathetic plan for an Elite kingdom. I found the truth.”
I stand there, paralyzed by his words.
“The Plague didn’t just happen to Ilya.” Kitt grins. “It was made for Ilya.”
The sudden ringing in my ears nearly blots out the king’s hurried explanation. “A century ago, when Ilya was weak and on the verge of being conquered, Scholars thought they concocted a substance meant to strengthen our troops against attack. Favian Azer—funny how I could never remember his name during my tutoring—was at the end of his rule when the Plague began. Perhaps the spread of this virus was accidental, or more likely, Favian unleashed it on the kingdom.” Kitt rasps out another cough. “You know us Azers and our hunger for power. Either way, what started as something meant to offer our armies a defense turned into a kingdom-wide Plague.” The king’s gaze sweeps to mine. “But it failed to strengthen us all.”
“That can’t be right,” I sputter, skin prickling beneath his stare. “How could we not know the Plague was man-made?”
“You’re the Psychic, Paedyn,” Kitt muses. “Take a look around and observe. Why do you think we even have a fever season? Why Elites, the strongest among us, exhaust ourselves when using too much power? Why there is a dying queen in the west tower, unable to be saved from the grief slowly stealing away her life? Why the Healers couldn’t prevent my mother from dying because of your birth.” His words sting, but he doesn’t stop. “The signs were always right in front of us. Because the Plague wasn’t right. Wasn’t ready. There were never meant to be Ordinaries left on the other side of it. And my father spent his life trying to right that wrong.”
“They should have died with the Plague but instead they plague us. I’ve planned for this day a long time, waiting until I could rid myself of this Resistance.”
My head spins as Edric Azer’s voice rings through it. His spewed admissions beside the Bowl come flooding back, now suddenly clear.
“Don’t worry, Paedyn, I didn’t just kill your father simply due to some gossip…”
I’m panting beneath the crushing weight of realization.
“I killed him to ensure my Elite society remained.”
This was my father’s doom—the truth of our Plague.
Calum was right. It wasn’t Adam Gray’s involvement with the Resistance that cost him his life. It was the secret he was smart enough to figure out.
Images flash before my mind; evidence in plain sight. My father frustrated with his own power and its inability to save a sick child. Scribbled notes in his journal documenting a fever patient he couldn’t cure. Elites slowly weakening over time. The death he could not spare Alice from.
“I’m a damn Healer and I couldn’t even save her….”
I feel faint, my mind unable to handle any more illuminating discoveries. I’d watched my father trek to the castle every year during fever season, watched him struggle to heal a sick child despite his ability, and never once did I wonder why those named Elites bore such weakness. Perhaps some part of me reveled in the fact that the almighty were not gods, that sickness still stalked them, and exhaustion accompanied the use of too much power. Perhaps I should have listened more closely when my father muttered about the Ordinary disease being bullshit. Perhaps he knew that the king was only attempting to right the wrongs of a defective Plague.
Adam Gray died because the king couldn’t risk his people knowing the truth of their flaws.
“When the Plague began, Favian swore all of his Scholars to secrecy,” Kitt is telling his Enforcer when I blink back to the present. “No one was meant to die. But, then again, the Plague was never meant to spread across the kingdom in the first place. So, not wanting to be blamed for the multitude of deaths, Favian instead spun a story for those strong enough to survive, saying they had been chosen by God to become Elites. Now, the truth of this Plague is passed down to the kings alone.”
I press a hand to my tight chest. “All those meetings with the Scholars,” I mutter under my shallow breath. “You wanted them to create another dose of the Plague.”
“And they were stubborn,” Kitt admits. “The kings before me wished to hoard our power just as the Scholars do. But do you not see how many Mundanes crowd the kingdom?” His voice crescendos into something crazed. “Our abilities are dwindling, Kai. The Plague has been so diluted in our blood over the decades that Offensive and Defensive Elites are becoming scarce. Soon, we will become nothing more than Ordinary. And now, the Scholars have perfected their dose.”
I bite back my scoff when the king adds, “Father was too simpleminded to see that every kingdom could be Elite.” His lips curve. “But I will save us from becoming extinct. And when every city is brimming with powerful Elites, I will be so much greater than Father.”
“Have you lost your mind?” I hiss.
“Think about what you are saying,” Kai utters slowly. “You might save our power, but tens of thousands would die, Kitt. Half the population from each kingdom—dead. Not to mention how many people you would need to break before they bowed to you.”
“You said so yourself, Brother. That is why you’re here. To save me from brutality.” Kitt takes a step closer. “We make a great team.”
A dark shadow crosses the Enforcer’s face. “So, just like your father, you will use me as a weapon.”
“I am not using you, Kai,” he says earnestly. “We are working together. Using our strengths.”
The Enforcer’s response is biting. “And mine is death.”
“It is a gift. Brother”—Kitt lifts his arms as though awaiting an embrace—“together, we will rule the greatest nation this world has ever seen. The kingdoms will be loyal to me, to us, for strengthening them.” He smiles, and it is unnervingly genuine. “Father has trained me my whole life to rule over Elites. I will make them fall into place, and your troops will help. The surrounding cities will want to follow me.”
Silence stifles the room. I step into it, facing the man I’ve married. “This is madness. The Kitt I knew once would know that this—”
His biting laugh makes me wince. “The Kitt you knew?” A fit of coughs steals his breath, but still, he attempts to laugh. “The Kitt you knew was naive enough to tell his father that you wouldn’t dare betray me.”
My voice is choked. “You knew about Edric’s plan for the Resistance?”
“Calum sent you to go find the tunnels beneath this castle, and Father used me to ensure you did.” He shakes his head. “I was stupid enough to think you wouldn’t use me like that.”
“Calum wasn’t controlling you,” Kai states. “You were working together.”
“No, he wasn’t controlling me.” The king nearly laughs. “But I was happy to go along with that theory. I already knew of Calum and his role to the king when Father died. So when the Mind Reader found me, hoping to continue Father’s plan of exterminating Ilya’s remaining Ordinaries, I was hardly surprised.” Kitt takes a step closer, and Kai shifts toward me slightly. “At first, I mourned my father deeply, as you know. So when Calum advised I marry Paedyn to draw out the remaining Ordinaries, I agreed. But that was before I found Father’s letter. I was reminded then how inferior his goals were, how little he cared for me. So with the knowledge of a man-made Plague that could be replicated, I suddenly knew how to bury Father’s legacy with my own.”
My body begins to tremble. “And Calum agreed to this?”
“He recognized that my plan was far superior.” Kitt waves an inky hand. “But he did become a liability once I discovered those letters in the jewelry box. If I was a bastard, I couldn’t have him telling the kingdom that.” Slowly, his eyes find mine. “But he was not the only loose end.”
Blood rushes to my cheeks when reminded of its royal qualities. “I’m not a threat to your throne, Kitt.”
“I saw the way all of Loot kneeled before you,” Kitt hisses. “If the slums discover the truth of your lineage, they might rise against me to see you on the throne.”
“This is absurdity, Kitt.” A look of concern crosses Kai’s face. “You’re not thinking straight.”
The king’s laugh is hysterical. “What, because this isn’t your caring Kitt? Because I’m clever enough to devise a plan you’ve both played into?” Another step forward. He looks like a shell of the boy I once knew, his mind frayed and body frail. “I must not be thinking straight because no one is used to me thinking at all.”
“What about the Trials?” I blurt. “Kai training your troops?”
Kitt’s sigh is exasperated. “For Kai, a distraction and safeguard against stubborn Elite kingdoms. For you, a death sentence.”
My face pales.
“But you just wouldn’t die,” he says softly. “The bandits, the crew, the Wielder in that Pit—none of them could rid you from our lives. And that was fine, because I was going to let this next dose of Plague take you on its own terms.” His gaze softens. “I’m not a monster. I didn’t want to kill you, Paedyn. But now you have a claim to my throne.”
My stomach churns, threatening to spill its contents on the worn carpet below.
This cannot be happening.
I must be dreaming, desperately trying to claw myself awake from this nightmare. Because I refuse to believe my life is yet again crumbling around me, all within the span of a single day.
But this is real, and I am standing—shaking—before my husband who used the Trials as a way to kill me. Trials that are typically meant to showcase the Elite powers that were not gifted but created. Elite powers that do not make you a god—they make you a successful experiment.
I don’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or rage.
“Just… calm down, Kitt.” The Enforcer’s arm brushes mine when he takes another step to shield me. “This is insanity. I won’t let you go through with any of it. You cannot ruin yourself for the promise of legacy.”
But the king is hardly listening.
His gaze has fallen to the stretch of skin Kai has pressed to mine. “Even now,” he whispers. “Even now.” This proclamation is louder. “Look at you, protecting her. She has taken everything from us, including each other. We are so much better off without her, Brother.” Kitt reaches out an arm, his fingers curling around the hilt of that ceremonial sword. “Just like old times.”
There is a wildness to his features, his movements. I watch it unfurl down the length of his body, spreading from that crazed gaze. Something sinister seems to have snapped within the king. I see now that those stoic moments with me were simply a repression of everything he felt, a biding of time.
“Kitt,” Kai utters slowly. “Put the sword down.”
“It’s never going to stop.” He waves the blade’s tip in the air as though completely oblivious to the picture of severity he paints. “You are going to keep choosing her over me. Again, and again. But I need you, Kai!” He laughs out the words humorlessly. “I need you with me—your focus, your loyalty, your heart. All of it.”
“Kitt, think about what you are saying,” Kai warns.
“She was only ever a means to an end!” The king’s sword swings dangerously at his side. Those dark veins bulge against his pale skin. “I needed her as queen to draw out the kingdoms, open their borders. But her usefulness is short-lived for us, Kai!”
My stomach lurches beneath a clenching heart. I can’t help the pang of hurt that vibrates through me. I once considered this boy a friend, a confidant I accepted spending the rest of my life beside. But the hysteria in his voice, the sword in his hand, makes me flinch.
A means to an end.
Kitt is not the only Azer I’ve been used by before inevitably meeting the end of their sword. This king is a reflection of the last, whether he sees it or not.
“Enough, Kitt!” Kai’s chest lifts with quick breaths. “This is mad. I won’t help you spread another Plague through the kingdoms. You told me I wouldn’t have to kill Ordinaries while you are king.” He swallows. “And that is exactly what you would be doing.”
“Kai…” The king’s gaze grows eerily sympathetic. “It’s already begun.”
My blood chills. “What are you talking about?”
Kitt swings the sword sloppily at his side. “Fine. The Trials were more than a death sentence. They were useful to me.”
My mind reels as I drift back to each of the Trials.
Mareena’s crown. Mak’s death in the Pit. And—
“The roses,” I sputter. “What did you do to those roses?”
“They were laced, and you delivered them for me.” The damning words slide easily off Kitt’s tongue. Then a rattling cough spews from his mouth. “Izram will be the first infected kingdom.”
Kai’s chest heaves. His words are drowned in disbelief. “What have you done?”
“You will come to understand, Brother,” the king urges. Blood trickles from the corner of his lips. “Just as you will understand why I must rid our lives of her.”
I take a slow step back. “Kitt…”
Kai stretches out his arm in front of me like a shield. “You’re… sick, Kitt. You know this isn’t right.” His stern tone slips into something more pleading. “And you know I won’t stand here and let you hurt your… wife.”
The king’s eyes flash. “Still, you hate that she is mine. Even married to me she holds so much power over you. Look at yourself, Kai! You are wound so tightly around her finger that you can no longer think straight.” He tugs at his hair in frustration, tangling the blond strands. “Things will go back to the way they were without her. You and me, always.”
I glance nervously at his swinging sword. “Why would you want to do this? I… I thought we cared for one another.”
“Oh, don’t take this too personally, Paedyn.” Another step. “I even began to enjoy your company over these past few weeks, despite how desperately I wanted you out of our lives. But you have to understand—I just want my brother back.”
“Kitt, calm down,” Kai orders. “You’re not yourself right now.”
The blade flashes in this flickering light. “I didn’t want it to be like this. Really.” His eyes are on me, but I’m not entirely sure he sees me. Delirium curls his lips into something that makes me shiver. “But you’ve forced my hand. I can’t have a lost princess stealing my throne from under me.”
“Kitt, stop—”
“I’m not after your throne!” I hurl the words at him, cutting off Kai’s and hoping to break through this haze of hysteria Kitt wears. “I never wanted it. This is all in your head!”
He looks down at his sword. The king seems to be somewhere else entirely. “Of course you want the throne. All you’ve ever wished for was power.”
Kai steps forward, and I’m unsurprised to see him pause at an equal distance from myself and the king. That is where he has always stood, torn in two different directions.
Duty. Desire. Loyalty. Love.
Like always, he strains to hold on to both. But his grip is slipping, and a cruel reality is setting in.
One cannot have both.
Kitt lifts the sword, angered that his brother stands in its lethal path. “I’m doing this for us, Kai. For Ilya. She is all that stands in the way.”
“Let’s just talk about this.” Kai lifts his hands slowly, just as one does when attempting to calm a spooked animal. “You and me, Brother. We will work through this. You’re not yourself—”
“This is what I was made to be!” Kitt’s voice cracks. “If this is not myself, then I don’t know what is. I was created to be king, and that is what I am. That includes making the hard decisions. The brave, the benevolent, and the brutal.”
The sword flashes as Kitt surges toward me.
Kai would never hurt his brother—I know this as much as he does. So when the king lunges toward me, I expect this breath in my lungs to be my last.
Death allows me a single moment to accept my fate. He reaches for my hand like an old friend, our reunion at long last. And I am content. The father who would never dare hurt me is waiting beyond, Adena at his side, and Mak next to her.
The sound of singing steel rings through the room when Kai blocks his brother’s blade with a fire stoker. He’d only just snatched it from the hook when Kitt swung, forcing him to step beneath the arching blow and halt it with trembling arms. Kitt drags his sword across the length of the stoker before stepping back. “Get out of my way, Kai. That’s an order.”
“Not until you calm down.” The Enforcer flips the stoker in his palm. “I will fight you all night if I need to.”
Hurt flashes across Kitt’s face. “You’ll never stop choosing her until she’s gone.”
The king attempts to shove past his Enforcer again, but Kai steps into the blade’s path. That iron rod counters the swinging sword once again, though its pointed tip expertly avoids Kitt’s chest. I watch Kai, noting how deliberately he remains on defense. This is not a fight he intends to win—only one he wishes to put an end to.
I can do little more than shake my head at them. “Stop this, both of you!”
The stoker Kai holds clashes against his brother’s sword. “I’m not choosing between either of you!”
“You already have!” Kitt pants. He shoves a shaky finger toward the empty space beside Kai. “She told me!”
Staring grimly at the indicated nothingness, Kai murmurs, “You’re sick, Kitt. Let me help you.”
“Sick?” The king’s tone is terrifyingly calm. Then he’s laughing, the sound somehow more frightening. “Greatness is not a sickness, Brother. And once she is gone, you will see that.”
A clashing of metal ensues. Jagged shadows are painted across the walls, scrawling an ever-changing story of this battle between brothers. It’s hypnotic, the way they flow in and out of each other’s ferocity. This is a dance well practiced, one they have been partners within for years.
I blink at their forms, at the fluidity they find within each other. This is hardly a fight—this is reminiscence. It is as though they are back in the training yard, sparring with a routine that is second nature.
Kai steps in, arcing his weapon. Kitt falls back to catch the attack with the blade of his sword. A cross of metal hangs between them as both brothers strain against the other’s strength. They push away. Resume the routine they created as boys.
This is the Enforcer’s distraction.
I watch them anticipate each movement.
Calm Kitt down without hurting him in the process.
There is something so intoxicating about the way they move. I stand there, stunned at the sight of two people knowing each other so deeply. It is entrancing, like a prophecy foretold finally unfurling before my eyes. Kitt’s hostility toward me means nothing in this moment, because there is nothing but peace here.
Steel flashes; metal sings. Kitt advances; Kai evades. The Enforcer feints; the king anticipates.
It is a beautiful sequence of controlled chaos. When their weapons meet again, and they stand face-to-face, a slight smile is shared between them. This is how they know each other—this is how they remember themselves. Before me are the brothers who taught each other to love with a sword in hand and a muddy ring beneath their feet. They found companionship in what they could control, and in this moment, that is each other.
Panted breaths fill the study, shadows stalled on the wall before the brothers break apart. Still sharing that small smile, they fall back into that familiar flurry of movement.
Kitt lunges. Kai parries.
The Enforcer thrusts that stoker toward the king, his broad back blocking my view.
I wait for the answering sound of steel.
I wait longer.
Time grows sluggish.
Something shifts in the air, like a stuttering of the song they were sparring to. Their feet halt awkwardly between beats of this rehearsed dance. The peace that once filled this room flees from it.
A solid back collides with my chest, making me stagger.
That is when a haunting sound fills the room.
A strangled shout cuts through the silence.
My own shuddering breath fills the tight air as I step around Kai.
There is that slight smile on Kitt’s face—the one he used to give so freely. Charming and warm. Now it’s found his lips again, as if to make up for all the times he had forgotten how to wear happiness.
My eyes drift downward.
The iron stoker protrudes from his chest.
That golden hair lies tousled on his head, glinting like a halo around his pale face.
The king’s blood stains the same as his father’s had.
Kai rushes to his brother, voice choked. “No! You were supposed to dodge, Kitt!”
Dazed, the king looks down at the stoker buried in his chest. Touches shaking fingers to the gushing wound. His palm leans heavy on the desk beside him, leaving a bloody print atop his pile of parchment. My whole body trembles as I watch blood seep from Kitt’s touch, bathing scribbled words in scarlet beneath his fingertips. His wide green eyes lift. “I… forgot.”
Kai catches his brother when he stumbles.
Stained sheets of paper tumble from the desk.
The king watches them flutter delicately toward the ground.
And then he follows.
