Immortal Reign(100)

Lucia laughed. “You don’t know Kyan like I do, Cleo. He can be charming when he wants to be. Curious about mortals and their amusing behavior. But he’s not a man who can be reasoned with. He is fire, and it’s in his very nature to burn. The others are the same.”

“You’ve seen them.”

Lucia nodded. “They’re all at the palace waiting for you. I thought I might be able to reason with Olivia, that she might have some kind of maternal instinct and want to protect Lyssa. She is the earth Kindred—that magic is what makes healing and growth possible. But she’s not like that. She’s just like Kyan. She wants to use her magic for evil. And she will destroy everything on a whim. Mortals aren’t important to them, not individually. We’re . . . like insects—annoying pests that are easily swatted away.”

Cleo waited for the water Kindred to add something, but it stayed silent.

Perhaps that meant it agreed with everything Lucia said.

Cleo wasn’t surprised by any of this. Last night, Kyan had pretended to be kind as he’d offered to help her through this—as both Olivia and the water Kindred had called it—“transition.”

But Kyan gave her no choice in the outcome.

He would win. She would lose.

“Is Lyssa here?” Cleo asked. “Have you see her?”

Lucia’s expression grew pained, her sky-blue eyes filled with anguish. “She’s here, I’m sure of it. But I haven’t seen her yet.”

“If you haven’t seen her, how can you be so sure she’s here?”

Lucia turned a glare on her, one so sharp that Cleo nearly flinched away from it. “Where else would she be? Kyan has her—he’s using her to keep me in line. And it’s working very well.”

Cleo’s stomach sank. Lucia sounded so despondent, so hopeless. Yet she’d also never sounded more dangerous.

Part of Cleo had begun to doubt that Kyan had taken Lyssa. She would have seen some sign of the baby last night at the temple.

Surely, Nic would have known about her.

But if Kyan didn’t have her, who would?

It didn’t make any sense.

“When did you come back?” Cleo asked more tentatively now.

“Kyan summoned me earlier today.”

She frowned. “What do you mean he summoned you?”

Lucia paused as they passed the city gardens. A portion of the hedges were shaped into a maze that children could run through, searching for a way out the other side. Cleo knew it reminded Lucia of the ice maze back at the Limerian palace.

She saw a very familiar emotion cross the sorceress’s blue eyes.

Wistfulness. It was the same ache Cleo felt for a simpler, happier time.

“I was with Jonas and . . . I felt it here.” Lucia pressed her hands to her temples. “My magic—it’s fully connected to theirs. In an instant, I knew where he was, and I knew he wanted me to come to him. I didn’t hesitate.”

“Where is Jonas now?” Cleo asked.

“I don’t know.”

There was something in the way she said it . . .

“Did you hurt him?” Cleo demanded.

Lucia turned a bleak look on her. “He’s strong. He’ll survive.”

For a moment, Cleo couldn’t speak. “You could fix this, all of this. You are a sorceress. You could imprison them.”

“I would be risking my baby’s life if I even tried.”

Cleo grabbed her arm, finally getting angry. “Lucia, don’t you get it? Your baby’s life is already in danger. But the whole world will be in danger if you do what Kyan says! You know this already, yet you’re still siding with a monster. Perhaps you’ve just been looking for an excuse all this time to join his side. Is that it?”

Outrage flashed in Lucia’s gaze. “How can you say that?”

“You are your father’s daughter. You only want power, and if that power is given to you by an evil god, you’ll gladly take it.”

“Wrong,” Lucia growled. “You’ve always been wrong about me, so quick to judge from your perfect golden tower and your perfect golden life.”

Cold anger flowed through Cleo then, and ice formed at her feet, expanding out to coat an abandoned carriage on the side of the road.

Lucia looked at it with a frown. “You can control the water magic within you.”

Cleo fisted her hands at her sides. “If I could, you would be a block of ice right now.”

But then a wave of water hit Cleo from out of nowhere—an invisible wave that covered her mouth and nose. She couldn’t breathe. It took her under, drowning her.

No, it couldn’t happen again. She wouldn’t survive it this time.

“Yes,” the water Kindred whispered. “Let me take over now. Don’t resist. Everything will be much better the moment you stop struggling.”

It was too hard to keep fighting when the inevitable loomed in front of her.

The Kindred would win.

Cleo would lose.

And she had to admit the truth of it: It would be so easy to just stop struggling . . .

The sensation of Lucia grabbing hold of her hand and pushing something onto her finger drew her out of the invisible waters.

She gasped for air. “What? What are you doing to me?”

“Cleo, you’re all right,” Lucia told her firmly. “You’re alive, you’re all right. Just breathe.”