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The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2) 25 45%
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25

Jericho

W hen the Saints first showed me Pandora’s whereabouts, I didn’t believe them. I’d never had any reason to doubt them—they’d never lied or shown me false events before—but I just couldn’t wrap my mind around what I was seeing.

Underground, but not chained or gagged.

She wasn’t a prisoner at all. In fact, she looked like . . . someone’s guest of honor.

That was a week ago, and against my better judgment, I said nothing. Not even to Venus. She’d have questions about who Pandora’s not-jailer was, and I didn’t have enough answers. Only the vague depictions the Saints provided. Which was another thing that threw me—the fact that all the variables in place were neither outright explained nor perceived. All I saw in that vision was Pandora alive, sitting in a cavern lit by sprinkled candlelight.

Singing with someone.

The tribunal met this morning, but with the time difference and with us having to wait on confirmed sources for messages, the evening sun is nearing the lip of Honeycomb Harbor’s horizon by the time we hear anything. In Ardian’s absence, I assigned Henry Tolcher the task of temporarily filling his post—more so to keep my mind at bay from the truth of him never coming back than for organization’s sake. So when he comes striding into the throne room, eliciting a hushed silence over the room, his presence comes as a worthy distraction.

“Status report.” My hands grip the arms of my throne.

“Rumors say that Duchess Geneva may have been spotted at the tribunal.”

“ May have?”

“The few locals that picked her out were unsure, but our eyes in the field caught sight of the person in question.” Then, he reaches into his uniform pocket and hands Venus the object first: a faded, folded photograph. She stiffens to my right at the sight as Tolcher informs us, “It’s her.”

“Holy Saints,” I swear when the proof finally meets my grasp.

Genny’s not just near the scene of her daughter’s sentencing. She’s there . Just beyond the sight of the jury and High Judge. The under part of her eyes gleam with tears already shed, but the look on her face here . . . pure anger. A mother’s vehemence.

“ How ?” Venus barks, pointing fingers at the guards stationed throughout the room. She comes rearing off her throne, disposition ablaze with righteous fury. “How does Geneva Deragon not only escape to Mosacia unsupervised , but navigate her way to the center of the bloody continent?”

I don’t have the heart, nor the gall, to tell her that underestimating Genny is what got us into this mess in the first place. Not when she’s this wound up.

“It’s embarrassing enough that Pandora’s capture was an oversight. But to have two Deragon girls running amuck in Mosacia unchecked by our security? Pure and utter humiliation !”

“Venus,” I murmur.

“Beyond this castle, she’s your Duchess. But here ,” she bellows, “ in these walls, you know who she really is. She kept this bloodline, this dynasty, alive—and if we lose her, we may very well lose everything .”

“Darling,” I say calmly, eyes still hung up on the photograph.

“ What ?” she snarls.

Her anger takes over her entire posture, her entire, lovely face. But it’s only then that I realize Venus’s hazel eyes are glazed with tears that threaten to pour over. Still, I find enough of a voice to say, “Genny’s not alone out there.”

+

With years of practice, I’ve learned to let my visions unfold without knocking my corporal form fully unconscious. Instead of falling prey to passing out, I feel the Saints’ intuitions like a subtle spike and temperature and revert to a prayer-like posture. Ready to receive.

No sound from reality interrupts my current circumstance—where I find myself in the streets just outside of the Mosacian tribunal. Despite the dust kicked up underneath people’s feet, the climate isn’t as arid as it appears. But it’s certainly warm. I know so because the sun sears deep into the dark fabric along my back. Citizens are retreating from the scene of the sentencing, their whisperings filling the atmosphere every direction I turn.

One person bristles, “That coward.”

“You think the princess slipped past him?” wonders another.

“Doubtful,” the first one returns. “She likely seduced her way out. That serpent.”

I try not to feel utter repulsion at the thought, at the way he reduces the Crown Princess of their ruling nation to a snake—

“She must be quite the charmer if she can change the mind of Kit Andromeda.”

The mention of that strange name signals another passerby’s attention before I can utter some sort of reaction. “The rich gentleman whose house lies on the edge of the Lonely Isle? How did he come across Pandora Deragon of all people?”

“He has a . . . habit,” the first one says snidely, “of acquiring things of great interest.”

Even though I get the feeling that I’m missing out on an inside joke, the mention of the Lonely Isle strikes me like a blow. I’ve never done any official business there, let alone with some wealthy aristocrat bearing such a gaudy name. Still, something eerie festers inside of me the longer I think about that place, or the fact that people other than myself know about its existence enough to converse casually about it.

A flash of gold catches my attention from the corner of my eye, and as I turn away from the gossip session to my left, I squint against the way the sun catches on the shimmering object.

No, not object—a person. A man with a scalp full of golden, furling hair that matches the scruff starting to form along his jaw. His white shirt, likely dirtied from wrestling his way through the crowds, billows in the breeze. And when it finally falls flat against his strong arms—

“What’s our strategy now?” a familiar face asks from the man’s side.

Geneva.

Just as the photograph showed, there she stands. Dark hair pulled away from her face to let the sunbeams kiss her soft, brown skin. Like Pandora, she appears completely unharmed, which manages to settle the secret anxiety I’ve harbored since she first fled Broadcove. At best, Genny reaches shoulder-height to the man I figure must be her companion, the only plausible reason she’s made it as far across the continent as she has.

He smiles at her question, like there’s no need to panic and this is all just some puzzle they must solve.“If Pandora really did escape her captor, she’ll likely have done it on foot, which means we need to stay local should she be returned to the tribunal.”

“But people are looking for me, too,” Genny protests quietly, and as both this gentleman and I take in the look on her face, I realize this truly may be the first time she’s thought about herself. Her wellbeing. Her discovery. “I can’t help her if they find me—”

The man shushes her in a slow drawl, embracing her. He pulls back enough to look at her and cradles the side of her face with a dove’s gentleness that feels borderline romantic. His next words sound soaked in honey.

“Trust me, Genny, I won’t let them take you from me.”

Seeing the way Genny swallows against his touch, I start to think I’m not just imagining things. Saints, Venus will have an absolute conniption.

“Besides,” he says, pulling away slowly once Genny’s smile has returned. “Where we’re going, you won’t need to be on guard about people recognizing you.”

+

I keep the details brief as I report them to Tolcher, instructing him to meet the other foot soldier scouts across the Damocles. He concedes, requesting he leave in the morning to spend one more night with his wife, Nadine, and their two boys. Venus relents, though I see the battle in her eyes.

Once Venus and I clear the throne room and escort ourselves down towards our private hall, however, she halts me with a hand to my chest. “You’re not telling me everything.”

You don’t need to know all the ins and outs if it will only make you upset.

Venus crosses her arms, the fabric along her sleeves creasing. “Talk.”

“You’ll get caught up on everything in a matter of days anyways,” I groan, trying not to make the impression that, sometimes, it stings to know that there’s little privacy I have left from her. Even if it’s true. “Why bother?”

“Because I’m—” she blurts, the first word firm but the second . . . weak. Choked. Venus shuts her eyes tight to keep from shattering. “I’m to blame for all this.”

“Venus.”

“ No , I am!” she shouts, and in that moment, the dam breaks. “I reprimanded our guards, but had I not been so fixated on my safekeeping during Queen’s Feast, Pandora would still be here— Genny would still be here. They wouldn’t be being hunted down by lands I insisted we conquer, and I wouldn’t have to pretend that the guilt and agony isn’t eating away at my soul.”

It’s been a long while since I’ve seen Venus cry like this, internal brokenness contorting the lovely features in her face. Tears dilute the brightness in her eyes, and as they cascade down her cheek, they leave a faint line along her skin. It vaguely reminds me of a cat scratch, and the pain overcoming her likely bears the same physical manifestation.

“First of all,” I say, pulling her hands free from her defensive stance and taking them within mine. I squeeze her fingers to remind her I’m here. Listening. “We conquered those lands together. Sure, you set it into motion, but I’ve been behind you every step of the way. They nearly dismantled everything the Morgan Dynasty built, and it was time for retribution. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Perhaps the last statement goes too far, but I do not retract. Not when I know the heavy burden and shame Venus has harbored in her heart all these years, and I with her.

Venus went off the deep end for me, devised this insane scheme to lure Slater Seagrave into her heart, her bed, and into the jaws of death. All according to plan, she stole his power and his kingdom like it was nothing.

But the cost took her life in more ways than one. Yes, she had lived to tell the tale, but Greer had perished. Harriet and Emmaline—the only other soft spot in the Seagrave Dynasty—gone. Her only shred of hope was that she could spare the remaining children from the fate she dealt the others. The unique little girl and the twins, they didn’t deserve the slaughter the rest of them faced.

But no one sent word of their survival. Not even the Saints, and as I watched the realization of it sink in fully, I witnessed Venus experience the kind of personal devastation that I know well. The moral consequences, the soul wound one ought to feel after every kill. Venus hadn’t been able to stop the Seagrave Slaughter once she set it into motion, and I couldn’t rewind time and give Pandora the father she looked for in me.

We were equals in our despair, our self-disgrace.

“And second,” I press on, “your sister is resourceful because I firmly believe that mindset is hereditary. Pandora is resourceful because we spent our lives training her to be. They’re both as smart as you are stubborn, so I have faith that they both will fare just fine until our soldiers can get to them.”

“Do you?” Venus chokes out, the look in her bleary eyes telling me she doesn’t buy it for a second. “Yes, Pandora is intelligent, but she isn’t like us, Jericho. You know this. She’s never killed. She wouldn’t —”

“You said the same thing about Calliope once.”

The memory of it takes her by such surprise that Venus keeps walking down the hall. I trail her, waiting until she feels ready to speak again. Her hand pauses over the knob on our bedroom door before she whispers, “I just. . . I worry that it’s too late to help her. Either of them.”

“It’s a human thing to worry, Venus. Being human is appropriate, even when you wear a crown and bear the responsibilities of a nation. It’s perhaps most appropriate to feel how you are when you have all that going on.”

“Don’t do that,” she begs, her voice ragged. “Don’t console me. Not when the way I’m feeling is my own fault. Not when I pushed them both away, but this time, they’re too far for me to reach them again.” She sputters over her words again, biting down on her lip to keep whatever remains of her stony composure. “I left my sister no choice. All those years she let the world believe Pandora was mine, and I repay her like this —by abandoning her daughter. Of course she’d leave!” she says, holding the photograph up again and shaking it in my face. “Of course she’d trust some stranger more than she’ll ever trust me!”

“It’s not that Genny doesn’t understand. She just doesn’t have the full picture.”

The prophecy. Yet another liability we took on in secret—one that, most recently, excluded Genny from the equation.

But then, another thought comes crashing over me.

Pandora was never in that vision either.

Not when Venus first beheld it when Pandora was a newborn. Not when the Saints first revealed it to me when Pandora was ten. Not even in its newest development.

I even out my expression before Venus starts asking questions, and I press a kiss upon her brow. Her skin runs hot against my lips, and I make a note to draw her a bath before she can insist otherwise. “We’re going to find them, Venus. We’re going to find them and bring them home safely. Then, we’ll explain everything. We’ll make amends. All will be better than it was before, I promise.”

She’s hesitant at first, but eventually surrenders. A rarity.

There’s no need to make things worse by telling her where Genny is headed, and how her sister’s eyes had glimmered with an emotion for the man accompanying her that I remembered fighting so valiantly against as Venus and I first grew closer.

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