Reign the Earth (The Elementae #1)(52)

“Yes, yes, my king!” the man cried.

“Get this scum out of my sight!” he roared, shoving the quaesitor toward the Elementae.

A loud sob escaped me, and I covered my mouth as my husband seemed to notice me. “Stop crying!” he roared. “Get up!”

I struggled to my feet, and as soon as I did, he grabbed my arm, dragging me into the hall with blood-drenched fingers. He stormed through the hallways, flinging open a door and pounding down a dark stone staircase echoing with chains and distant cries.

“Who else is with the Resistance?” he bellowed. I tugged against his wrist, too frightened to cry, too aware of the rocks around me that wanted to answer my fear with power. It felt like nausea, my body desperate to give in and desperate to resist in the same awful moment.

The quaesitori down here skittered to open more doors, and Calix yanked my wrist, turning me to face him. “You think I’m cruel, wife? You think I’m cruel because I try to eliminate enemies who try to murder me? They work on your brother’s command!” he roared at me.

“You’re hurting me,” I whimpered, trying to pull away.

He let me go, and I stumbled back against the rock as he turned to face the quaesitori. “Execute them,” he snapped.

“My king, it will destroy the validity of our information—” one protested.

“Your information is already invalid,” he snarled. “Now. So my wife can see.”

I screamed as they slit the throat of one middle-aged man, and I didn’t wait to see another. I turned and fled back the way I’d come, my heart pounding.

I kept running until I hit the open garden. A section of the garden was built around a large boulder, and the moment I fell against it, I felt stronger, and the revulsion brewing in my stomach eased.

Then I hated myself, that I could breathe easily again after watching those people murdered before me.

And worse, the fear that shook every bone and every bit of me wasn’t for them. I saw my face in their stead as I relived the murders I had just witnessed. My face, streaked with blood. My body, feeling the pierce and crunch of the blade that I was supposed to be able to control.

If I couldn’t get rid of this power, it would be my fate.

And if I couldn’t sway his heart, it would be the fate of hundreds of others.

It was a long while before Calix emerged. I had struggled to my feet and thought better of it, sitting down again on a bench and looking at the closed gates. As little as I wanted to, I knew I had to wait for him. I had to compose myself and put my fear behind me. I had to convince him to see the madness of his actions.

Then he appeared. He looked at me and moved past without touching me. A soldier brought his horse, and he waved it away, cutting a sharp look to me. “You like to walk, don’t you?” he snapped.

I nodded, silent, and he waited for me to step beside him before he started walking at a punishing pace. I kept up with him.

“Thrice-damned incompetent fools,” he said after a long while. “If their work weren’t so important, I’d kill the lot of them.”

“So they will be punished,” I said. “Put on trial for imprisoning people like that. That’s what they’re doing, isn’t it?”

He stopped, wheeling on me. “Who? The quaesitori? They aren’t imprisoning people; they’re imprisoning traitors and sorcerers.”

“Who are people!”

“They are not people,” he growled. “You saw what they can do. They’re dangerous, and this could lead us to controlling them.” He shook his head at me, disbelieving. “I thought you understood why this work is so important!”

“I understand why you might want to find this elixir,” I told him. “I want to help you do that. But you are torturing people!”

He jerked away from me. “We aren’t torturing them. We just use their blood and their abilities.”

“That isn’t all you do!” I cried. I was shaking, and I felt hysterical, dangerous, uncontrolled. “You killed them, and you killed them all years ago! You—you—all this, it’s because of you!”

“What did you say?” he snarled at me.

“You did it,” I told him. “You killed the islanders. I knew, when you told me you were tricked, something wasn’t right—you killed them, and it wasn’t just in the past. You’re still killing them.”

“Yes!” he shouted at me. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

I turned around, wildly looking for a way out of there. All I saw were white stone walls and the guards standing farther away than usual. How could I leave this place?

He grasped my arms, and I shrieked at the unexpected contact. “You know nothing about that day, Shalia! I was the one who was betrayed, not her. I can’t change what happened, but what I did—I acted out of emotion, and that has never happened again.”

He had just stabbed a dead woman more than twenty times because of the depth of his hate, but he was too wild, his hands too tight, and I couldn’t say the words.

“I was secretly engaged to Amandana. We were going to marry and stop the war. But your brother was there, and she decided she’d rather have a desert man. So I put the elixir on every weapon we had, and for the first time, they couldn’t stop our arrows. They couldn’t control our swords. I broke the islands, and I made them all pay for her cruelty.”