Fire and Bone (Otherborn #1)(108)
Pain shoots through my head, and I groan, squeezing my eyes shut. I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Are you well?” the silver-eyed young man asks, urgency filling his voice.
“Where is my king?” I mutter.
“Sage?” Someone shakes my shoulders. “Sage, are you all right? Look at me!”
Sage . . .
No . . . it’s wrong. It’s all wrong . . . My stomach shivers, everything swirling inside of me, bones aching, chest tingling . . . What’s happening—
My eyes fly open, and I gasp, my lungs stinging. I grip his arms as a lifeline. “Kieran!” I gulp in air like I was drowning a second ago. I was. Who was I? What just happened? “Oh my God, Kieran.”
His face comes clear in front of me, fear in his eyes. “That was her, wasn’t it?” he asks.
I nod my head, not even caring how he knows. It all totally took me over. I couldn’t even have my own thoughts. I was just . . . gone.
His hand becomes a fist at his side as tension fills his body. “It’s too soon,” he whispers. “I was sure the torque would hold this in.”
“You what?”
“It was her torque—Queen Lily’s. It should have held her spirit down. That’s what the damn monk said.”
I blink at him. He knows Lailoken? “You know what that was.” It’s not a question. I can see he’s fully aware.
He nods, his eyes going distant.
“How much do you know? About me.”
“A lot more than I like.” He moves to the fire, staring into the embers.
“Tell me. What just happened?” I look back to the bed, all the memories and emotions of Lily swirling in the background of my mind like a mist trying to press in again.
“She surfaced,” he says, his voice tense. “Her spirit took over your body.”
Dread soaks into my bones. “How’s that even possible?” Her spirit? In me? My body begins to shake. This has gotten totally out of control. “Am I possessed or something?” I nearly choke on the words.
“No,” he says, and then he adds, “And yes.” He releases a long breath as my lungs stop working. “The truth is,” he continues, “I’ve known for a long time that Queen Lily pulled all of her power—her spirit—from her blood, leaving her body an empty vessel, before the Cast came to drag her into the Pit. It was her way of escape. I kept her secret. Because all of this time I assumed she’d simply had her essence placed into her owl, that she’d remained in the wood. But when I went to the old monk, he said that the owl had died centuries ago.”
The realization of what he’s implying begins to sink in. “She needed a vessel,” I say under my breath.
“When I read your spirit that night in the alley, it didn’t make sense,” he says, still caught up in his thoughts. He starts to pace again. “Something was wrong. You were merely supposed to be a second daughter, lesser, not a being to be reckoned with, not carrying the power I felt inside you as I looked deeper. It was as if you were something . . . more. Extra. I assumed that I wasn’t sensing right, especially when you didn’t defend yourself, then bled out so swiftly. But . . .” He pauses, looking oddly unsure, not like himself at all. “Then I learned more of the truth of what Queen Lily did to my brother, what they had both done to force the hand of fate, and I knew with sudden clarity that it was Lily’s spirit hidden inside you that I was sensing.”
The stone floor seems to shift under my feet. And the truth looms like a specter, clouding my vision. All I can see is the painting of her above the mantle. Of a woman dressed in pure white, cloaked in furs, wild copper hair a stark contrast to the icy surroundings.
It’s nuts. It’s crazy. These visions, these dreams, they aren’t just memories. They’re actually her. Queen Lily.
Her spirit is inside me.
A shiver runs through me. That’s why it’s been so overwhelming, why I’ve felt like someone else at times. And just a minute ago she was able to take me over so completely.
God help me. It’s getting worse.
And now I’m with Kieran. Who I’m not even sure I can trust.
“How do you know all of this?” I ask.
His voice drops so that I can barely hear him. “My brother.” I open my mouth to ask what he could possibly mean—the king is dead—but he cuts me off, saying, “I’ll explain, I swear, but first we need to hide you from the creature trying to poison you.”
I thought that was him.
“Faelan is being brought up momentarily,” he adds. Then he tips his head, giving me a curious look. “But you don’t seem to be terribly worried about him.”
“Oh, God. Faelan!” I can’t believe I forgot for even a second.
“I assumed you’d accost me the moment I came into the room. I should have known something was amiss when you didn’t.”
I shake my head, overwhelmed, confused by his shift to semicongeniality. This isn’t a side of Kieran I’ve seen before; I have to wonder if it’s real. I’d be stupid to buy into anything he says. But right now my mind is exhausted from the shock of what just happened. All my guards are down.
“I know you don’t trust me,” he says, like he can see the turmoil on my face. “That’s fair. I’m not known for my subtlety.”