Dividing Eden (Dividing Eden #1)(76)

“I should have known.” Imogen stared up at Carys and weakly pulled at the blade. “The stars are never wrong.”

The devil with the stars. “Tell me which Elder helped kill my brother and father and I’ll get Madame Jillian,” she promised as she looked at the blood oozing out of the seer. “She can heal you. Tell me!”

“The power. The winds. I thought it was me, but it’s you.” Imogen coughed. “And you don’t know.”

“Know what?” It didn’t matter, she told herself. “Who is helping you, Imogen?”

“You are the dark path. You will shatter the light with your power.” Imogen coughed again and a line of blood trickled out of her mouth. “You’ll destroy it all.”

“Imogen,” Carys yelled. No. Not yet. “Imogen, you can’t die. You have to tell me who else is trying to kill my family.”

But the seeress’s chest no longer rose and fell. Her eyes were wide as they looked up at the sky. The Seer of Eden was dead.

And Carys had to get off the battlements before the guards returned and saw. Andreus. He would—

Something raced out of the shadows. Carys grabbed the stiletto. The winds began to swirl again, but the figure didn’t run toward her. Instead it darted toward the entrance to the East Tower and turned for just a second before racing down the stairs.

It was the boy. Max. And Carys was certain where he was running to. He was going to tell Andreus that her hands were stained with blood.





18


Andreus smiled at the note as he finished getting dressed in Imogen’s rooms.

Went to call the winds and study the stars. Didn’t want to wake you.

If she had woken him, Andreus certainly would have tried to convince her there were other things to do this morning than walk the battlements looking at the sky. But he knew she wouldn’t have been dissuaded no matter how much he pleaded. She spent hours searching the skies each and every day. On the mornings he worked with the Masters of Light he could count on seeing her on the battlements with her eyes fixed on the heavens. Perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that he had found more and more reasons to spend additional time working on the lines. He had wanted her then like he had never wanted anything else.

Now she was his.

Just as the throne would be his.

He hadn’t wanted his brother and father to die. Part of him feared his coronation would be tinged with guilt. But as Imogen told him as he lay next to her, the death of the King and Micah came at the hands of the Kingdom of Adderton. Once the crown was on his head, he would call on the High Lords to send more men to his banner. There they would avenge their fallen king. Andreus and his army would crush Adderton. He would show them and all other kingdoms what happens when faith is broken with virtue and light.

He hoped his sister would learn that, too. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since she had last taken the Tears of Midnight, but it had been long enough that she would now show signs of her body’s need for it. Her muscles would be aching. Her stomach cramping. He knew from the last time she went through the withdrawal that she wouldn’t be able to eat. It took great efforts to get her to take tea or water as she sweated and shook and screamed from the pain.

He remembered the glassy look in her eyes—the agony. He wished things could be different. But she had made her choices and he had to make his. And really, wasn’t he helping Carys? Once the Trials were over, she would no longer be bound by the drugs that held her in their thrall. Then she would have another choice to make: to stand by him as he ruled or to be banished to another kingdom as the wife of a foreign lord. Imogen said he might have to exert more force upon her to bring her to heel, but the seeress didn’t know his sister the way he did. She only wanted the freedom to live her life as she pleased. They would make peace.

In truth, Carys had served him for their entire life. She would do so again because he was all she had.

Gongs echoed as he turned the key to unlock his rooms. The same gongs that signaled the return of the King or the attack of the Xhelozi. Only there was no King and the sun was shining, so the gongs should not be ringing at all. Andreus put his hand on the hilt of his sword. He turned and started toward the steps just as Max burst into the hall. “She’s dead,” he yelled. “The Lady Imogen.”

Andreus went cold. “What are you talking about? Did you hear someone say that?”

“No, Your Highness. I saw it. I stayed up all night so I could follow the devil man and I saw the Princess and Lady Imogen on the top of the castle. They were fighting. Princess Carys threw a knife.”

The battlements. Where Imogen had said she was going to go to look at the stars. She’d gone up there to search for a vision that would help him.

No. The boy got it wrong. Imogen wasn’t dead. His sister couldn’t have—wouldn’t have—killed the only woman he had ever loved.

Pushing past servants and members of the court who were wandering the halls in confusion at the sounding of the gongs, Andreus raced through the castle and up one of the sets of stairs that led to the battlements. The footsteps sounding behind him said Max wasn’t far behind.

She wouldn’t be up here, he told himself as he burst through the door onto the battlements. But he stopped as he saw dozens of people looking down at something on the stone walkway. His heart pounded as he stood, unable to move.