Page 22 of Ashborne Phoenix

“There were rites—magiks to employ in preparation for the binding ceremonies. And any woman who was available for selection was… blessed. I didn’t have to do those things because I was taking the vows. I was glad. I assumed that Cali was being prepared, just as I was. So, when my mother told me that she’d arranged for me to see the preparations so I could know, she smiled like she had a fun secret.

Watch the preparations. Don’t tell anyone. This is what you were born for. Amaze them all.

“I thought… I thought she’d prepared something to make me happy. I felt the anticipation of something good. I knew I’d feel sure of Cali after we took the vows. The others would stop putting her down. Mother would stop fighting me to choose someone else. I thought… I thought I might finally be able to move forward and take my power. And let go of the fear.

“It wasn’t until I used the passages and saw the chamber where they were preparing the magik that I understood why my mother smiled.”

I held my breath as Voski lifted his eyes, shining with unshed tears, and whispered through gritted teeth. “Cali was in the rites,” he said starkly.

I frowned. “The rites to prepare—”

“The magik. The sex magik for fertility and blessing and…” He swallowed hard. “She was… seducing men. And enjoying it.”

I stiffened. “But I’m sure she was only playing a part—”

He shook his head. “I was her lover. I knew. And my father’s words… I was so sickened by what I saw, I rushed back to my mother’s chambers—I wanted to confront her. But she wasn’t alone. She was speaking to the man she’d been enjoying, and she was laughing. Laughing about my obsession with the girl she’d planted for me when my father said I needed friends my own age.

“There were so many clues along the way, especially in those last years… but all the way back, Grace. They’d fooled me from the beginning.”

“Who?”

“All of them,” he said bitterly. “Mother told her toy that Cali was a tool. From the start. She was three years older than me—not six months as she’d told me. She’d been experienced before we became lovers. She led me by the nose. And my father as well. He’d known she was a plant. He’d decided to use the hunt to show me, to snap me out of my mother’s grip. And instead… instead I killed him.”

His eyes slowly focused, dark shadows chasing across his gaze. “Cali was enamored with power. She’d been sleeping with my father the whole time. Mother didn’t know that at the beginning, but when she learned the truth, she didn’t tell my father. Instead, she set us both up. Two birds, one murder. That was her line. She laughed as she said it.

“My entire life was a lie. There wasn’t a single person I could trust. I’d killed the only one who might have been honest with me. But even him…”

I wanted to weep for him. He looked so bereft. So alone. I couldn’t do anything but pull him to me. He resisted at first, shaking his head, protesting, but I pulled my legs up and knelt, wrapping my arms around him, and refusing to let him go.

“You were a child. You didn’t know. You were manipulated and—”

He jerked back, gripping my arms and pushing me back far enough to meet eyes with me. “That’s what you’re not understanding, Grace. I may not have known they were lying to me, but… I knew lies. I knew manipulation. I knew how it all worked. I studied how my parents dealt with the others. I emulated them. I was one of them.”

“No, you weren’t. Because you had a conscience—”

“When I heard her laughing at me with the man she was fucking, I didn’t confront her. I didn’t demand the truth. I went back to where I was supposed to be, until the rituals were done, and watched the girl I loved fuck other men. I remember every second, because I burned it into my head to remind myself how two-faced they both were. And while I watched that, I schemed about what it would take to beat them at their game.”

I swallowed nausea. I remembered how smoothly he lied and how easily he schemed. “But you don’t want—”

He leaned in until our noses almost touched. “After that, I looked my mother in the eye, while she told me that she was helping me. I let her comfort me that my father deserved what I gave him—and that she was proud of me for it. Then I went into that fucking ritual, and I punished Cali. Damn near killed her before I left her at the center of the circle, bleeding, but still breathing.”

Oh God. “But…” I whispered. “You had a choice to kill her, and you didn’t.”

He gave a bitter huff. “I didn’t because it was what my mother wanted, and I was punishing her as well. I went through the rite, I spilled the blood, and vented rage, and then I refused to claim a Pair. I didn’t complete the rite. I took the power the bloodshed offered, then swallowed it. And I made all the others think that had been the plan all along.”

I couldn’t breathe.

He searched my eyes, looking for something. Judgment? I didn’t have it for him. But fear was there, I knew. Because this picture he painted, these people… they were terrifying.

No wonder he was always afraid.

He nodded as if he heard the thought. “Mother was furious with me. She tried to beat me that night. She shamed me, told me I would fail—that the only way I could succeed was if I listened to her. And when I refused, she threatened to kill me herself and start again with a new son. And I wanted her to.”

I inhaled sharply. “Voski, no—”

“I had no one, Grace. Not a single person I could trust. They’d all worked against me. Together. I was so angry, and afraid. And then… then that night, Cali snuck back into my room. Face so swollen she could barely speak. Tears tracking through dried blood on her cheeks. She snuck into my bed and held me and told me she was sorry. She apologized to me after I almost killed her. And I let her.

“I didn’t kick her out. I didn’t kill her. I lay there and comforted her… secretly raging, plotting how I could use her, because she thought she owed me something. That’s when I realized I was no better than my mother. I would take from people just to make myself feel better.