I know what you want, I thought. He wanted to root out every doubt and every whisper against him and crush them. And I was supposed to be the tool he used to do that. Ryzek’s Scourge.
I closed my eyes briefly as memories of Lety came to me. I stifled them.
“Please, sit.” He gestured to one of the chairs set up near the screen. They were old, with stitched upholstery. I recognized them from my father’s old office. The rug beneath them was Shotet-made, of rough woven grasses. In fact, nothing in the room was scavenged—my father had hated the practice, said it made us weak and needed to be gradually abandoned, and Ryzek seemed to agree. I was the only one left with an affinity for other people’s garbage.
I sat on the edge of the chair, the fates of the favored lines glowing next to my head. Ryzek didn’t sit across from me. Instead, he stood behind the other chair, braced against its high back. He had rolled up the sleeve on his left arm, displaying the marks.
He tapped his crooked index finger against one of the fates on the screen, so the words grew larger.
The fates of the family Benesit are as follows:
The first child of the family Benesit will raise her double to power.
The second child of the family Benesit will reign over Thuvhe.
“I have heard mutterings that this second child”—he tapped the second fate, his knuckle brushing the word reign—“will soon declare herself, and that she is Thuvhesit-born,” Ryzek said. “I can’t ignore the fates any longer—whoever this Benesit child is, the fates say she will be the ruler of Thuvhe, and responsible for my undoing.” I hadn’t quite put the pieces together before. Ryzek’s fate was to fall to the family Benesit, and the family Benesit was fated to rule Thuvhe. Of course he was fixating on them, now that he had his oracle.
“My intention,” he added, “is to kill her before that happens, with the help of our new oracle.”
I stared at the fate written on the screen. All my life I had been taught that every fate would be fulfilled, no matter what anyone tried to do to stop it. But that was exactly what he was proposing: he wanted to thwart his own fate by killing the one who was supposed to bring it about. And he had Eijeh to tell him how.
“That’s . . . that’s impossible,” I said, before I could stop myself.
“Impossible?” He raised his eyebrows. “Why? Because no one has managed to do it?” His hands clenched around the chair back. “You think that I, of all the people in the galaxy, can’t be the first to defy his fate?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, trying to stay controlled in the face of his anger. “All I meant was that I’ve never heard of it happening, that’s all.”
“You soon will,” he snapped, his face twisting into a scowl. “And you’re going to help me.”
I thought, suddenly, of Akos thanking me for the way I arranged his room, when we got to the sojourn ship. His calm expression as he took in my marked arm. The way he laughed when we chased each other through the blue sojourn rain. Those were the first moments of relief I had experienced since my mother died. And I wanted more of them. And less of . . . this.
“No,” I said. “I won’t.”
His old threat—that if I didn’t do as he said, he would tell the Shotet what I had done to my beloved mother—no longer frightened me. This time, he had made a mistake: he had confessed to needing my help.
I crossed one leg over another, and folded my hands over my knee.
“Before you threaten me, let me say this: I don’t think that you would risk losing me right now,” I said. “Not after trying so hard to make sure that they are terrified of me.”
That was what the challenge with Lety had been, after all: a demonstration of power. His power.
But that power actually belonged to me.
Ryzek had been learning to imitate our father ever since he was a child, and my father had been excellent at hiding his reactions. He had believed that any uncontrolled expression made him vulnerable; he had been aware that he was always being watched, no matter where he was. Ryzek had gotten better at this skill since his youth, but he was still not a master of it. As I stared at him, unblinking, his face contorted. Angry. And afraid.
“I don’t need you, Cyra,” he said, quiet.
“That isn’t true,” I said, coming to my feet. “But even if it was true . . . you should remember what would happen if I decided to lay a hand on you.”
I showed him my palm, willing my currentgift to surface. For once, it came at my call, rippling across my body and—for a moment—wrapping around each of my fingers like black threads. Ryzek’s eyes were drawn to it, seemingly without permission.
“I will continue to play the part of your loyal sister, of this fearsome thing,” I said. “But I will not cause pain for you anymore.”
With that, I turned. I moved toward the door, my heart pounding, hard.
“Careful,” Ryzek said as I walked away. “You may regret this moment.”
“I doubt it,” I said, without turning around. “After all, I’m not the one who’s afraid of pain.”
“I am not,” he said tersely, “afraid of pain.”
“Oh?” I turned back. “Come over here and take my hand, then.”
I offered it to him, palm up and shadow-stained, my face twitching from the pain that still lingered. Ryzek didn’t budge.
“Thought so,” I said, and I left.