Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter Twenty-EightEvaline

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Evaline

I couldn’t stop thinking about the note I’d sent with Sage. The note for Wyott. I’d written it as if it was a goodbye because I knew Vasier would read it, and I wanted him to believe I’d given up.

But I couldn’t help worrying about what Wyott and Cora would think when they read it. I didn’t want them to think that I’d given up on them, but I also didn’t want them to wage a war for me. There was no use in thousands of Kova dying for me.

“Evaline,” Vasier’s voice called on the other side of my door a moment before his knock sounded. I jolted, I hadn’t even heard him approach.

I wiped my hands down my face and stood from the bed to open the door. When he strode in, hands clasped behind his back, he eyed the armoire. No doubt he heard it slide across the floor as I shoved it out of the way to open it for him.

But he didn’t say anything. Just looked once around the room before turning back to face me, and I was thankful I’d cleared the linens from the chair I slept in this morning.

“I wanted to take you on a tour today. You should see your new home in its entirety.”

He waited for me to don my boots—I’d already dressed in some of the pants and a blouse that were left for me in the closet, and I always had my barbed wire braided into my hair.

When we passed the guard Vasier nodded at him.

“Take a break. I will bring her back later.”

The Vasi nodded and turned to head down the hallway, but where he turned left, we turned right.

“You said goodbye to your friends,” Vasier said low as we walked, staring straight ahead.

I didn’t dare turn to look at him. “Yes,” I answered.

He was quiet for a few steps.

“You don’t expect me to believe that you’ve given up so easily, do you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t care what you believe.”

He bobbed his head.

“Well, we both know that you haven’t conceded. If these mates are as important as the Kova make them seem, you wouldn’t give up so easily on yours.” He tilted his head toward the ground. “And your mate wouldn’t give up so easily on you.”

I clenched my jaw and when I didn’t speak, he made a show of throwing his head back.

“Oh, wait. That’s right. Your mate is already gone.” He cut me a look. “Forever.”

I raised my chin as we walked but didn’t give him a response.

“Regardless,” he said turning to face forward again. “You should give up on him. You should give up on all of them. I do hope what you said in your note was true, even if you don’t realize it now. It will only continue to cause you pain to believe that you will see them again.” He turned us down a hallway, then wagged his head. “Well, I guess that’s not true. You will see them again one day, on the battlefield.”

I swallowed as he spoke, and tried to remind myself that the Kova had strength in numbers. They’d win, as they always had in the past, if it came to a battle. Even if he tried to use me as a weapon, I’d fight him every step of the way.

“This is the library,” he said as he turned the handle on two gargantuan double doors. They swung open and we stepped into the brightly lit room. The ceiling was domed and almost looked like a greenhouse, because every wall, except for the one that housed the door, was made of glass. The bookshelves stood in the center of the room and wound in circles. Above, I could see that there were several floors to this room, but they each had hollow centers reaching to the ceiling high above. Stairs curled around the shelves, leaving a small walkway to get to each row.

“You can use it whenever you want, just tell your escort to bring you here.”

I only nodded, hoping that if I was agreeable I could map out the castle quietly in my mind and he wouldn’t notice, and we continued on our tour.

We left the library and continued down a new hall while Vasier told me about the art that hung on the walls and how his kitchens housed the greatest cooks he could find in Brassillion.

He motioned a hand to a door, but it was shut.

“This is where we house the new Vasi,” he said the word so casually, as if he wasn’t speaking of a human, then a Kova, who’d turned—whom Vasier had forced to turn.

Vasier was still talking as the door swung open, and I got a glimpse into it.

“This is where we help them get through that initial bloodlust that plagues every new turn,” he continued, but I looked through the door, and saw several Vasi milling about the room. Saw beds set up along the two long walls, saw bodies hunched over, in on themselves, while they rocked back and forth.

Their hands were on their head as if they’d be ripping their hair out if they could, but they were all cut short.

I saw the red hair of the human servant I’d seen at dinner, and beside him, the blond. And as we passed the door, their eyes shot up to lock with mine. Wide and wild and red.

It only lasted a moment, before the door swung shut as someone walked out, and I tried to quell the ice that slipped over my skin.

“Don’t worry,” Vasier said, placing a hand on my back. He steered me forward, around the corner, and away from the room.

My breath shook from my chest for a moment, but I did my best to calm myself. I had a job to do.

I memorized every turn, every hallway. He wasn’t going in one cohesive route. Rather, he’d go in one direction from my room, and double back to go past it again to another. In my head I mapped it all out, keeping my room pinned in place while I crafted the routes around us. He was trying to confuse me, but it only helped me build a better picture in my head. Only showed me what the different hallways looked like and gave me new landmarks to remember.

“This is my wing of the castle, and down that way,” he said, lifting a finger to point down a set of hallways we passed. “Is Sage and Lauden’s room.”

I nodded and there was a beat of silence before I spoke.

“She’s not really your daughter,” I said and he gave a slow nod.

“Correct. I adopted her. Raised her since she was only six years old.”

My mind went back to that first lesson with Sage and Lauden, when they’d both told me about the first time they’d used their magic. Sage had said she was five and used it to get out of a tree. To imagine her mother helping her down.

It didn’t seem happenstance that the year after she discovered her magic, Vasier would have happened to adopt her.

“What happened to her mother?” I asked and Vasier turned down another hall.

“I killed her.”

My feet stopped moving at his words and my own stuck in my throat.

“W-What?”

He turned around slowly to face me. “Did you expect a different answer?”

I shook my head, unsure myself. My lip pulled back in disgust. “Why?”

“Sage was a young Sorceress, and powerful. I heard of her ability to portal, and took her.”

I swallowed. “Does Sage know?”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. She thinks her mother abandoned her, and I saved her.”

He turned on his heels then and started walking.

I ran to catch up. “Why in the world would you tell me, then?”

He looked at me with furrowed brows.

“Because you hate her.” He tilted his head. “I thought hearing something like that about someone you hated would make you happy.” He turned to look forward again, shrugging. “It’d make me happy.”

I evaluated him a moment. I thought of all the vile things he’d said and done, wondered what misfortune he must’ve faced that would have forged such a careless, callous, man.

“Someone must have really hurt you,” I breathed.

He was the one to stop then, whirling to face me.

“Someone did,” he said, flicking his eyes down my face.

When he whipped around and turned into another room, I slipped in behind him.

“Who?” I asked, but the word caught in my throat as I saw the portrait that hung beyond him, over his shoulder. I nearly ran into his back.

“It’s not perfect,” he said quietly. “I had to give the artist instructions from memory. But I think it’s close.”

He stopped next to a large table but I walked toward the portrait of my mother that hung over the mantle of the fireplace.

It took up most of the vaulted ceiling, far larger than even life-size, and my brow furrowed.

He was right, it wasn’t perfect. The artist didn’t get her chin quite right, but it was close enough to know who it was. Her silver hair was half up, half down. Just like it was each time I saw her. A few strands fell to curtain either side of her eyes, and the rest flowed down in loose curls. She wore a crimson dress that corseted around her abdomen and dipped low to show her bosom. Her eyes were wide and bright. But she did not smile.

I slowly turned to face Vasier.

He leaned against a large wooden table, and even from here I could see it was a map of the world.

“You have a portrait of my mother in your war room?”

He clasped his hands in front of him.

“Yes.”

I swallowed. “Why?”

His lips curled into a smile but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Because I hate her.”

I shook my head. “Why? Because she made you a Vasi? At least you didn’t die. She brought you back.”

In a blur, he stood up to straighten and took a step toward me.

“Not by choice . She didn’t do it on purpose, she did it to save him .” His voice had risen and it only caused mine to, as well.

I took a step toward him. “Why would she have brought you back intentionally? You attacked her! You tried to kill her,” I scoffed. “You may have, if Kovarrin hadn’t stepped in.”

His eyes darkened.

“Oh yes, Kovarrin ,” he growled out the name. “Always the savior.” He spat the word. “You have no idea what happened, Evaline. You were not there.”

“I saw the memory. She showed it to me.”

I took another step and his angry eyes watched my every move.

“I saw the way your hands tightened around her throat.”

His eyes twitched, and I swore he almost winced.

“I saw how close you were to killing her. I saw the hatred in your eyes.” I shook my head. “And all because she was escaping a death sentence with Kovarrin?” I cocked my head and noted that he didn’t move as I neared. “He was your twin, yes, but you were so angry that she’d take him away from you that you’d kill her for it?”

He leaped forward, eyes raging.

“Oh is that what she told you? Or him? That is not why,” he seethed and curled his hands against his thighs. “And the fact that you don’t know that just shows how little you understand of the situation,” he bit out. “Clearly whatever memory she showed you was altered to fit the narrative she wants you to believe. Because your mother was not as innocent as she must have convinced you. Or as innocent as she convinced him .”

I took another step toward Vasier, pulled in a breath, ready to scream.

“You—” I started to yell back, but the words died in my throat.

The anger on his face, I realized I’d seen it before.

My mind flashed back to the memory my mother had shown me. The one I’d seen through her eyes.

His hands were around her throat and angry tears filled his eyes.

But I realized then that both instances, while he strangled her back then and how he glared at me now, his eyes weren’t burning with anger. His face wasn’t contorted into one of rage. It was easy to confuse the two, because Vasier always looked hateful, but that furrow of his brows combined with the widening of his eyes. The way they’d traced over her face when he strangled her, as if he couldn’t believe what he was doing but was so angry that he couldn’t stop.

No, not anger. Hurt.

It wasn’t rage on his face, then, or now. It was pain.

I fell back a step as my own eyes widened. The breath I’d sucked in to scream at him shuddered through my lips as I watched that same pain flash through his eyes now.

“You loved her.”