The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2)

8

Pandora

K it Andromeda is not the looming man of power and punishment his title made me picture him as. Chestnut hair flows in waves just short of his shoulders, slightly damp, as if freshly bathed and slowly drying. Muted green eyes meet my own, and they possess a sort of coldness that makes my posture straighten from where I’m sprawled out on the ground. Looking at him makes me feel brittle, reminding me that I’m only wearing a shirt, and I quickly cross my legs in a way that keeps me modest.

He notes the movement and quickly turns to Andie. “See to it that suitable clothes are provided for our guest ,” he instructs, and the use of the more hospitable term for prisoner does not go overlooked on my end. “And ready her a room on the first floor.”

“Of course.” Andie stands behind him and retreats without another word, her head down and her steps focused.

Kit wastes no time with introductions. “Dry your tears.” He tosses me a handkerchief he kept stashed away in his pockets. “I’m not going to kill you.”

“The last guy said the same thing,” I quip, but accept the handkerchief, nonetheless. I dab at the underside of my eyes, embarrassed by how puffy and pathetic I probably look. “Thanks,” I manage to bid in return.

“I am, however, entitled to ask you a few questions surrounding your arrival.”

“Considering you’re housing me, I’d say my answers are the bare minimum of what you’re entitled to.”

My reply makes him flinch, but only for a moment, like some unintended insinuation is a slap in the face to his character. “Please, sit,” he offers, gesturing once more to my bare cot. I obey, soundless in steps and in words. When I look up at him again, I see that Andie has returned with a dark robe.

“I fetched this from my personal wardrobe,” she shares, handing me the garment. The material is plush and comforting to the touch, and as I slip into it, the length of it surpassing my kneecaps to where I feel properly concealed, I shut my eyes and breathe in the scent of it. All it’s missing is Mother’s perfume for me to convince myself that I’m back in Broadcove, cradled in one of her mending embraces. The thought makes my eyes sting with tears.

“I shall go into town today and gather more,” she continues. “What do you require for her?”

“Functional houseware,” he replies. “A few pairs of slippers, and anything you think would be suitable to tend to her hair care. That will be all, Andie.”

She saunters off without another word, and when the door shuts behind her, I cower deeper within the robe she brought me. “As I was saying,” Kit continues, leaning his body against the wall and casually crossing his feet at the ankles. “Your presence here at Andromeda House is rather unexpected. I’d appreciate it if you could tell me a bit about how you got here.”

I’ve never been a convincing liar, but a voice in my head advises me to tell limited truths. Even though I cannot clearly detect if it’s my own voice or Madman’s, I choose to heed its intrinsic warning.

“I was celebrating Queen’s Feast with my family,” I begin, knowing the event has been widely gossiped about through all territories. “When I was alone, I encountered a threat against my family, and I chose to try and cut a deal with it rather than fight back. As you can tell, I’m not exactly in fighting shape.”

In all actuality, that ending remark may be the biggest lie of the entire statement. I’ve been extensively trained on how to defend myself from an attacker. I just happen to avoid any instances of harming people until it becomes absolutely unavoidable. But Kit doesn’t need to know that.

“Andie told me you mentioned a very peculiar name.”

Madman.

“The man I encountered,” I try to explain. “I didn’t know his name. But he seemed crazed. The name you heard me say was nothing more than an insult.”

“I have it on good authority, princess, that your aunt is the reason for a lot of misery. Mine more so than most. And that name you gave her was, indeed, a name. A very distinct, infamous name.”

I gulp, hoping the movement isn’t too loud or too obvious for him to pick up on.

“But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

“Only because he insisted that I address him by the identifier. What’s it to you anyways?”

His smile takes on a vicious glint. “I hired him.”

The revelation stuns me to my very core.

I came here to kill a queen, Madman had said. And then, he forsook his orders, his bound duty , and took me captive instead.

Oh, Kit Andromeda definitely hates my guts. He probably wants me dead, too.

“You see,” he says, pacing about the room, “Madman’s a bit of a legend here on the Isle.”

“The Isle?”

Kit catches his mistake too late. “Yes, the Isle. I suppose I can tell you that. After all, it’s not like you have any way to signal for help.”

He grins at the power he holds, continuing with his pacing. I try not to sneer at him as he does. “As I was saying, most people believe Madman to be the subject of recent, eerie fables. But I know otherwise, because Madman was unmistakably real . . . and I experienced him firsthand when he murdered my brother, Cato.”

The memory of him firing Whisper brands itself into my mind.

“It was a long time ago,” Kit quickly cuts in, not wanting any part of my pity. “You needn’t fuss over someone you never knew. Really, I only mention it to help illustrate my fascination with man. I knew he wasn’t some scary story, which meant, if I could corner him, he’d do anything I pleased to go free. And I knew exactly what I wanted from his . . . services. I’ll spare you the bloody details of how I ensnared him. All that matters is that he owed me a life debt—and the way we’d be even was if he brought back Venus Deragon’s head on a spike so not even her lover could hold onto it.”

Rage heats my blood, coloring my cheeks. I knew Venus was not well-liked beyond Urovia’s borders, and Queen’s Feast certainly put a target on her back, but to have this otherwise hospitable man go to such great lengths to have her killed? Something didn’t sit right with me.

And yet, my knee-jerk response to the man is to correct him.

“Her husband.”

Kit’s devious smile returns, slowly but surely. “What’s that, princess?”

“Her. Husband ,” I enunciate. “Jericho and Venus have been married for twenty years.”

Kit’s returning expression is laced with disgust. “I meant what I said before, though. I am not going to kill you. I’m just going to use you.”

“Charming.”

“If Madman has gone back on his word, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands. And for now, that means holding you for ransom. Get comfortable, princess, because until your aunt and uncle deem your life more valuable than their own, you’re stuck here. With me.”

Truth be told, it’s not his tone of voice or the satisfied gleam of his eye that makes defeat wash through me like a tidal wave. It’s the fact that Kit believes it won’t take time for Venus to cave. But I know the wretched truth.

No one is coming for me.

Because as wonderful of an uncle as Jericho has been to me, he would never trade Venus for anyone . Not even for his heir.

Kit drinks in my silence, and then, in a sudden change of character, he crouches down to my level where I sit perched on the cot. Nothing threatening remains in his gaze or his stature—only honesty. “Do forgive my temper. You ought to understand, though. After all, I asked for your aunt’s severed head, and instead, Madman goes back on his word and brings me you . . . alive .”

I cross my arms against my chest. “Would my corpse have smoothed things over better?”

Kit laughs, and against all odds, the sound endears him to me. “I suppose we have plenty of time to uncover the answer to that, now. Don’t you agree?”

The little voice in my head returns, only this time I know exactly who’s speaking to me. Not only does it sound like Madman, but its message is incessant, as if he felt the way my body reacted when Kit chuckled at me.

Don’t trust him. Don’t trust him. Don’t trust him. Don’t trust him. Don’t trust him. Don’t trust him. Don’t trust him. Don’t trust him.

+

I spend the next hour, while Andie readies my room on the first floor, wondering whose danger Madman’s voice is aiming to ward off: mine or his own.

It could go either way. His self-imposed moniker, the way he slaughtered Ardian without even blinking, and his deviation from orders proves that Madman is inherently selfish. He doesn’t make a strong case for himself regarding honor or keeping his word. Or maybe that’s just in Kit’s case.

I’d almost forgotten about the way Kit conveniently skirted around just how he had gotten Madman to agree to his terms in the first place. He’d even used the term corner .

It draws my focus to Madman’s mask.

I don’t get to simmer on the thought long enough, though. Not before Lady Andromeda returns and waves me over to her. “I’ve got warm stew all set up for you in your room if you’re ready.”

To settle down somewhere with a window and a mattress? By all means.

As we ascend a short flight of stairs onto the main floor, she gives me a quick run-down of the house. According to Andie, the space I woke up in wasn’t a holding cell, but rather a storm shelter. Being this close to the coastline meant that thunderstorms proved to be more volatile than for those further inland. And when I then follow up by asking why my guest room lies on the first floor as opposed to the second, she quiets for a moment before answering with, “The master suite resides on floor two, and from what he implied, the two of you didn’t exactly start off on the right foot.”

I don’t attempt to rebuttal, but it still gets me to thinking. “I know you can’t tell me where the Isle is located in relation to back home, but may I ask where you hail from?”

When the word Mosacia leaves her lips, it doesn’t surprise me in the least. “Which part?” I run through all I can recall from what Jericho taught me regarding their demographics.

The eastern hemisphere was a melting pot. You could knock on every door of a single neighborhood, and each family unit would have something different going on. Unique occupations, differing family types, varying languages—no doubt due to how many smaller nations were clustered together in one of Mosacia’s previous sweeps of ownership. I never told anyone, least of all my aunt and uncle, but I always wanted to know what it was like: living in a place where you’d never run out of things to learn about your next-door neighbor. A castle only feels so big for so long, and after twenty years, no amount of gold on the walls could keep my mind from wondering if I had just been existing in a gilded bird cage.

Towards the center of Mosacia, all of its citizens existed peacefully, circled around an ancient, famed shrine that people would make pilgrimages to. No one ever told me what the shrine held, nor what it honored, but I presumed it had something to do with the deities they placed their faith in. Jericho never educated me on any of them save for the one he first mistook his wife’s namesake for. Not much commotion came out of the land-locked nations. They certainly would have raised their fists at Urovia had we stripped them of the sacred shrine, but since we left it untouched, they pretty much complied to the turnover of power in silence.

Out west, a stronghold of Urovian soldiers permanently resettled to keep the continent in line and under Deragon Dynasty regulations. Their written communications to Broadcove Castle were transcriptions I was taught from a young age to digest quickly and comprehend soundly. One dispatch I vividly remember studying from their camp several years back came with the strangest inscription. Dirtied Water , it had read. I didn’t understand it at the time, given the ledger reported on a Urovian guard and his wife welcoming a newborn son into the world, but I do, now.

His wife was Mosacian, which meant this was the first instance where a bloodline from our home country had been diluted . It makes my chest ache at the memory of Madman pointing out the way his nationality never fazed me.

And along the westernmost coastline, the once mighty Sevensberg Palace collected dust. A reminder to all Mosacian inhabitants that even the most powerful had not been immune to Venus and Jericho Deragon.

I’d seen photographs of it before, and in its heyday, the palace was downright otherworldly. Milky-white spires reached towards the sky as if trying to grasp onto their gods. Inside, grand, tiled floors and sweeping windows shed sunlight onto a porcelain dreamscape with endless rooms and finely manicured gardens. I’d have considered the palace to be an almost romantic setting had time not reduced it to a pile of bones.

Andie’s somber expression brings me back to the Isle. “I’d prefer not to dwell on the past. Andromeda House is my home now.”

“I understand,” I say quietly, feeling sorry for offending her. “What about Kit?”

“He’s never left Isle,” she returns gently. “And neither have I since we came upon this estate. It’s a haven for me and my son.”

Son , I realize.

Lady Andromeda is Kit’s mother .

They don’t bear too much of a resemblance, though. Then again, it takes two to create new life, so perhaps Kit bears the likeness of his father—who also remains a mystery. The longer I’m here, the more confused I become, and the feeling only grows as we pass over a room I mistake for the one she’s prepared for me.

Andie catches my change of pace and turns her head sidelong to look back at me. “I had a daughter once, too,” she murmurs. “Her room is likely the nicest one on the first floor, but I cannot bear to stow away her things and empty out her room. Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” I tell her, truly meaning it.

Then, Andie leads me into my guest room. Dull, periwinkle walls with bleak curtains bid me a dismal sort of welcome, but the bed proves to be larger than I expected, dark quilts coating the mattress beneath in layered warmth. Unlike my suites back home, where pillows clutter the surface of my bed, only four rest on the one I’m offered here.

“It’s nothing fit for a Urovian Princess,” Andie says as a means of an apology. “But I hope it shall suffice.”

“Kit has every reason to keep me jailed in the storm cellar,” I acknowledge, wondering if he is still debating on doing so from wherever he wandered off to. “This is a kindness. Thank you, Andie.”

It truly is. The room may seem cold and hollow in many ways, but along the wall, there’s an oval window that overlooks the water. The waves along the Damocles rush against the shoreline and retreat, the moon casting glittering ripples of light over the dark waters, and for a singular moment in time since leaving Broadcove, a calmness settles over me. The sound of the crashing surf soothes something in my aching soul, as does Andie’s silent departure as I tuck myself underneath the covers.

But I know, the minute I’m alone, it’s not enough to lull me to sleep.

After dozing for Saints knows how long thanks to the tonic I drank, I’m not even remotely tired. The sun’s far-away glow against the crescent moon above is keeping me up, along with my stirring heart and sudden homesickness. The things I’d give to go back in time and—if not escape this strange fate—tell my mother I loved her one last time . . .

The memory of her face, of her words as she told me I was the great love of her life—it all threatens to shred me from the inside out.

I’ve cried myself to sleep before, mostly due to the personal despondency of feeling untouchable, to the stress of lessons with my aunt and uncle, where they would hound me about how I ought to treat any traitors of the crown, or how I ought to garner vital information out of the strongest of war captives.

But now, I am the war captive. I’m boarded up in a foreign land I don’t know the name of, brought here on the whims of a creature that killed someone I once saw as a grandfather, and am now being held here as bait. There’s no other way around it. Here in the darkness of Andromeda House, my every breath is dependent upon Kit’s kindness towards me or the timing of Venus and Jericho’s ransom. My life is no longer my own.

And the devastation of it is swallowing me whole.

“Oh, angel . . .” a familiar voice whisper-sings in the corners of my mind.

I sit up in bed fast enough to dizzy my head. Stars briefly flicker over my eyes, but once they dissipate, I prepare to set my bare feet onto the cold, paneled floors. But I pause, waiting for another prompting, for the only semblance of optimism I have left to reach me once again.

The last thing I remember him saying to me was a song. A sacred truth.

We are not as different as you think.

I must be downright senseless to seek hope and deeper meaning in Madman’s parting phrase. And yet, here I am, searching for his cloaked frame amongst the shadows of my room. Waiting for his pleasing baritone to drift in and guide me towards him—because the minute I heard him sing, I feared the possibility of what exists for certain now.

I don’t just want to trust him—I do .

Because where there is music, there is soul, and I am determined to uncover the man beneath this musical monster.

“Where are you?” I ask in return, the words so quiet I barely feel them in my throat.

“In the forefront of your mind, it seems.”

I’m too inconsolable to take offense to the pleasure lingering in his statement.

“Please,” I breathe, shutting my eyes in an attempt to keep the tears trapped beneath my eyes. “I need . . .”

“Tell me,” he urges, all seriousness, now, and alarmingly closer to me than moments ago.

I open my eyes in time to see him standing at the edge of my bed. Same black cloak, same skeleton mask, same full mouth surrounded by dark stubble. Madman’s gaze is brutal and wary, yet I return it with an undiscovered intensity of my own.

“I need something that will keep me from breaking,” I finally confess. “I need you .”

I may as well have ripped his mask off his face and struck him.

“You don’t mean that,” he insists, straight-faced and stoically still before me.

“I don’t know how I mean it. Whether it be your voice or your promises or your presence I need—I’m still not sure. But I want to be, because all I know is that I cannot find peace apart from you,” I rasp, realizing how chilling the truth of this conversation really is. “I hear your voice in my head, Madman. You’re the only one I trust.”

The final phrase of my helpless declaration sounds as desperate aloud as it does in my mind, and I swallow hard hearing it back. It hangs in the air overhead, suffocating me.

But just before I consider turning him away completely—hastily redacting the reality of my current circumstances—Madman extends his hand once more to me. For the first time, his startling exterior and the menacing power in how he carries himself softens, fading into something beautifully human. The gesture is a kindness I know shouldn’t be afforded to me.

Knowing that, I accept it in a heartbeat, unafraid of whatever follows.

Madman helps me out of bed. And then, his voice impossibly gritty, he tells me, “Get on your knees.”

Panicked exhilaration whirls to life within my core, my brain interpreting the command as a seductive endeavor. But seconds later, I watch as Madman lowers himself at my side, and I follow suit. Privately embarrassed by the trajectory my thoughts took, I wait for what he needs from me next.

“All fours, now,” he says.

Saints, my mind is filthy. His instructions do not come across entirely pure of heart, though.

I mirror his movements, braced on the ground before the left side of the bed. Then, he cranes his head to look at me. “Silence is the only way we’re making it out of here,” he whispers. I nod my compliance, drawing a responding smile across his exposed lips—one that I find myself committing to memory.

And then, Madman draws the bed skirt away from its elevated frame, revealing a hole hollowed out in the floor beneath my bed.