The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2)

2

Pandora

F or as long as I’ve known her, Venus Deragon has remained a composed and calculated woman. Lethal grace lingers wherever she goes, as if imbedded in her very shadow. And with merely the glimmer of her eyes, she causes her enemies to crumble. Mother told me that Venus always possessed the quality, but that her choice of prey grew in magnitude as she grew older. The idea startled me at first—to imagine a woman in my sphere of influence being perceived by the masses as foreboding and ruthless.

But looking at her now, her diadem perfectly settled atop her head as if there isn’t a bounty on it, I see her strength. Her defiance.

She’s giving the nightly rundown once more to members of the King’s Guard. Most of these men are young, burly, and heavily armed, but one of them catches my eye—the same one that stood outside my rooms only moments ago—and winks at me when my gaze lingers. The blush begins to fill my cheeks as someone steps before my line of sight.

“You look lovely this evening.”

The crimson uniform blocking my view of the guard is simple enough to register, and I draw my eyes up towards my uncle’s face. “How kind of you to say,” I whisper, even though Jericho’s assessment of my beauty suddenly makes my dress feel more constraining.

“Is something wrong?” he asks, noticing my discomfort.

I know better than to tell him it’s stage fright. He has always been able to see through people’s lies, even the ones that are told to dismiss any worries. “It’s not that I’m fearful, per se,” I begin, trying to find the most appropriate wording for this subliminal, uneasy feeling. “But I can sense the immense pressure of this night. It’s . . . crippling.”

Jericho nods, understanding the feeling well. Were his hands not already stuffed in his pants pockets, I wouldn’t be surprised to find them white-knuckled and in the forms of clenched fists. “You are a mesmerizing musician,” he tells me earnestly. “And every time I walk through the East Wing, the sound of your voice fills the castle with tranquility.”

I bite down on the inside of my lip, regretting the words even as I let them spill out.

“You asked me to sing tonight,” I whisper, “because it will allow people to take their eyes off Venus and look at me . But what if the only way I can get people to see me, to respect me, is in song? What if, apart from my voice, these people do not have the confidence in me to one day continue your legacy?”

Jericho pauses at that, pondering my perspective in contrast to his own. In the end, he still appears too baffled by my line of questioning to further dissect it. “Do the pressures of being our heir affect you this deeply?”

“I’m not scared to rule,” I clarify. “I’m only scared of disappointing you.”

The words hang over the two of us like a suspended blade held by a single string—dangerous and unsettling. Jericho runs a hand through his dark hair that has given way to hints of silver, unable to look at me for a moment, then finds the will to draw me closer to his side. A sudden sternness absorbs all the kindness in his face—the kindness I know he worked for years to obtain. He casts an assessing glance over the room, as if ensuring Venus’s presence isn’t lingering nearby.

Then, we stride down another hallway, and I try to quell the hurried heartbeats threatening to break through my ribcage as we finally settle upon a shadowy spot. His gaze descends onto my own once more, and the intensity of it nearly makes me shiver.

“Every example of family your aunt and I have known is one we don’t wish to replicate. Traitorous fathers, children who lived for the benefit of their parents, mothers whose deaths felt so unnecessary. And so, we are perfectly happy with the family that lies before us. Her and I. You and your mother and Calliope. It’s enough for us.”

His eyes seem to hint at a lingering sadness in the silence that follows, and I choose to call him out on it. “Is it, though?”

His lips thin into a line. “When royal blood runs through your veins, children secure your legacy just as much as they weaken your stability. Venus and I have seen our fill of the latter, so when Genny had you, we were more than content to install you into our line. To let her sisters bear the weight of expanding our lineage so that Venus and I could just be .”

His eyes glimmer with hesitation, but he clears it away with a few, fast blinks, the same gesture one would see from someone fighting back tears.

“Still, you know of my blessing, the way I foresee things in my sleep. Most of what the Saints grant me insight on happens soon after I encounter it. But one day, I foresaw a scene that had been haunting Venus for nearly a decade. Each day felt less and less like borrowed time that we were being mercifully granted, and when I came around to the notion . . .” He drifts off, as if in memory. The most somber smile tugs at his lips, framed by the beginnings of a thin, graying beard. “Well, we realized that having a child of our own was nowhere as scary of a concept anymore as losing one another was.”

Jericho paces about the room to avoid the full weight of the sadness that follows. “We tried for years, but your aunt endured a grave illness in her youth, and eventually . . . we felt helpless. We had everything —power, security, wealth—and yet, I couldn’t give her the one thing we had finally come to long for most. I tell you this so that you know the truth; that we’ve experienced plenty of disappointment together. But you? You’ve never once come close to disappointing us. So long as you’re alive, you stand as the embodiment of the years the Saints have granted me Venus. Your very existence, Pandora, is a gift.”

Jericho’s never been affectionate in a physical sense. A pat on the back or a quick clutch of one’s hand is about all the affection he spares for anyone apart from Venus. But his words have always carried insurmountable power, and as I throw my arms around him, nestling my head into the dip of his shoulder and whisper the words, “Thank you,” Jericho doesn’t fight it. Doesn’t try to pry me off.

His hand cradles the back of my head and I feel his pulse thrum within his neck. “Always,” he tells me.

I pull away and grant him his space, but my uncle catches my hand in his, briefly pulling me back towards him. “Just a moment,” he says as his eyes catch something amiss about my hair. His fingers adjust one of the pins there, and with a curt nod, he approves his handiwork. “All right. You’re all set.”

I smile at the sentiment, remembering the days when Jericho would bargain with me to get me to do self-defense training. I hated the idea of possibly hurting anyone, even if the instructor was brought in for the sole purpose of taking my practice blows. Eventually, I only conceded if Jericho agreed to braid back my hair before each session, and he did so faithfully. The longer he did it, the better he got at it—soon incorporating more complicated, woven patterns.

And I see now, as Venus rounds the corner looking for him, that he keeps the habit up. Plaited to perfection, Venus’s dark hair whips with sudden motion as she halts, spotting us mid-sentence. “Oh, there you are. Is everything—”

“Just as it should be,” Jericho returns calmly, easing the tension so obviously creeping over her normal, relaxed demeanor. Even though she’s the one supposedly under fire, Venus’s primary worry continues to be him. “Shall we?”