The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2)

43

Pandora

T he moment I burst through the doors of Sevensberg Palace, all hell breaks loose.

I’m crying and cursing and clawing at an invisible, gripping vice. I’m stumbling blindly through a palace that’s starting to feel like a massive, porcelain tomb. Beheaded statues of gods Madden grew up revering litter the floor with stone and dust, except for one left strategically unharmed. I recognize her from her shrine, and it sickens me what she represents here.

Victory. The vanquishing of her enemies, and the pleasure she takes in it.

I’m climbing a set of stairs onto the second floor, contemplating the idea of leaping from one of the windows just to put myself out of this briskly escalating misery—only when I look through the glass, assessing if the height could do any real damage, Madden stares after me through its vantage point.

Darting into a hallway and hiding myself from his view, I take off in a run until my lungs burn. I cough out my broken sobs, my back sliding down one of the walls when I finally resort to sprawling onto the ground and wailing. I don’t care how loud I am, don’t care that Madden may enter the building and hear me. A part of me hopes he sees the price of his secrecy and feels the weight of my agony.

My friend is dead. Kit— Kellan —turned on me. I’m a lost cause to my family, save for my mother, although my mother chose to run after some guy instead of boarding the ship out of Mosacia with me. To the people that should matter most—the people who birthed me or raised me or set a crown upon my head—I’m none of their first priorities.

By some twist of fate, however, I’m Madman’s—no, Madden Seagrave’s top priority.

To him, I’m the easiest ask, a steadfast choice he’s been making five years over.

The reminder of that only makes me sob harder. That somehow, in the midst of so many lies and hurts and treacheries, his love remained unfaltering for me. All this time, he knew the sort of betrayal loving me, a Deragon, would be to his Seagrave lineage. The ultimate betrayal.

And it never swayed him.

I peel myself off the floor to glance out the window I passed by, and while Madden still lingers on the front lawn, he’s no longer standing. Instead, he’s sitting in the grass, his face bowed into the shelter of his hands—and it shatters me anew.

I retrace my steps to him in a full sprint, no longer concerned with how withered my heartbreak makes me look—not when he’s only ever looked at me with devotion. Yes, I accepted him amid his self-imposed mystery. But now, he needs me more than I have ever needed him. Needs me to accept every truth he’s been burying away.

To accept him as Madden despite loving him as Madman.

Madden must hear me coming back for him, because I barely make it to the palace’s threshold before he crashes into me. His arms bind me to him, holding me tight enough to crack my spine. “I thought you needed—”

“Withholding truths is still lying,” I stammer, a jittery, furious, brokenhearted mess. “And I don’t want to be in the dark. Not with you. So I want you to tell me all of it.”

After a long, suspended while, Madden nods once. Then again, slowly. “Okay.”

“And I swear to every god you pray to, if I figure out that you’re hiding pieces of what you know from me, I’ll make you suffer.”

Madden stiffens, and knowing how his temper takes the wheel in hostile situations, I’m impressed to see him keep himself reined in. “Okay,” he says again. “But . . . let’s go somewhere.”

His eyes cast a passing glance at the Venus statue, and I realize just how deeply it must offend him knowing the history there. I give him my hand in acknowledgement, and as he weaves our fingers together, he tugs us down the hall opposite of where I first ran off towards. The only sound between us is that of our footsteps, which gradually goes in and out of sync the longer we coast through the looming space. Madden doesn’t look back at me once, and a wounded part of me wonders if it’s because he needs his full concentration to remember his way around this place. The thought guts me like a spear.

After rounding one more corner, we turn into a room that makes my eyes bulge in my skull. If this is what the space looks like trashed , I cannot even begin to imagine the kind of splendor this room held in its heyday. High ceilings, marble floors, and a larger-than-life bed that couldn’t possibly have belonged to a young child. Although, being a member of the richest family in Mosacia, I suppose nothing is off limits.

“This was . . . your room?”

“My parents’,” he corrects, then closes his eyes. “Well, more so Mother’s. Father would sleep in a room two wings over whenever he was angry.”

The revelation makes my heart squeeze.

Madden closes the door behind us as if this moment weren’t private enough already. Then he sheds his signature, black cloak, breaking the loop around his neck by the center clasp. The movement is minimal, and yet, I feel like I’m watching a soldier remove his armor after a bloody, costly battle. There’s a deeper weight to it when he takes his gloves off, too. I note the absence of the scar that Kit bore.

One last time, Madden stares me down. “Everything?”

“Everything.”

Obediently, Madden sucks in a deep breath as I awkwardly settle onto the foot of his parents’ old bed. He begins with, “I thought that your aunt was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever laid eyes on.”

“Nice start,” I scoff, the disgust in my voice palpable.

“Notice how I said one of the most beautiful, though. Not the most.”

“Like that makes any difference at all.”

“It does,” Madden snarls, one fist slamming into the dilapidated bedside table. “Because since I was seven years old, I was enamored with a woman named after the goddess of beauty, and yet, one look at you . . .”

My palms turn clammy. All words are lost in my mouth, in my mind.

“I was enchanted by you from the moment I first laid eyes on you. Then, I heard you sing, and I became utterly infatuated . Whatever attention I once had for anyone on this planet, or could ever conjure up for another woman dropped dead the moment you opened your mouth.”

My heart wails its fists against the inside of my chest, begging to break out just to intertwine with his own. My eyes burn with the ghost of tears I shouldn’t be shedding yet, and so help me, I’m scared that Madden isn’t going to stop his declarations there. I fear, more than anything in the world, that he won’t give me the truth I’m longing for—that he’ll profess his love and go to his knees for forgiveness—and I’ll be too lovestruck to say no.

The Saints must hear my silent distress, though, because Madden straightens himself out again. “But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. I mention Venus first because the moment she walked into my life, my days in Sevensberg were numbered, and I didn’t see it coming.”

The reality of who Madman really is still feels fresh, and his words wake me up in a manner that feels more like a sharp, static shock rather than a firm nudge. Venus may have raised me and taught me everything I know about how to rule a kingdom, but to Madden—to Kellan, too—she did the unspeakable. She destroyed their family from within, like a fatal virus. She ended one story just to start another. This one.

“Mother had gone home to the gods,” Madden tells me. “We had already said our goodbyes, to her and to the little sister I had for all of maybe . . . three days?” Madden shakes his head, a tortured expression on his face. “Her name was Emmaline, and she was—”

I see the words drifting in the glassy ocean deep beneath his gray eyes.

Beautiful. Innocent. Too young .

He doesn’t finish his earlier sentence. “Kellan and I thought that the worst was over. Father had gone to Urovia to discuss business, specifically the arrangements for Slater and Venus now that they were married.”

My uncle had told me how horrible of a man King Victor was. That he neglected his wife during her latter pregnancies. Worse, that he abused one of his daughters when she found out the truth of his deplorable character. But now, I have an eerie inclination that despite his reputation, Madden may have seen Victor Seagrave as a decent man, whose nastiest qualities were magnified because of Jericho’s very existence.

“Before he crossed the Damocles, Father broke the news to us in total honesty. Venus had bested King Jericho in a long-willed battle of wits, killing him in a moment of farced romance. Then, to rub salt into the wound, she married my oldest brother. Father was practically smitten with Venus’s ingenious, and to reward her for her valor, he announced that the line of power would be transferred upon her and Slater. Anna was never in line anyway with the challenges she faced developmentally, and Kellan and I were boys. If we cared at all about Father’s crown, the desire was always dampened by the existence of our three oldest siblings, so his plan never felt like an insult. Truthfully, as the baby of the family, I loved the idea of growing up without the responsibility of being all my brothers’ and sisters’ failsafes. And after the loss of Mother, I don’t think that Father felt inspired to keep ruling.”

Madden’s throat bobs. “I got to say goodbye to my mother. Really say it, as in I knew that our parting would be final. The same, however, could not be said for how I last interacted with my father. I think my version of goodbye included something along the lines of, “Tell Slater to share his bride when you bring them home,” which, knowing what ultimately happened, still turns my stomach.”

My own reaction has my muscles tightening, and I bite down on the inside of my cheek to redirect the pain.

“Had I known what would become of him and the rest of my family, I would’ve held onto him with all my strength. I would’ve forced him to break the bones in my fingers to pry me off him.”

I’m too antsy to sit still for much longer, so I shift my weight a bit. The closer my body drifts to the bedpost, however, the heavier I must feel to the abandoned furniture. I try not to grimace as the old thing creaks beneath my weight.

“You already know the story,” Madden continues bitterly. “Your aunt and uncle have probably raved about it countless times over dinner—how the once mighty Victor Seagrave and his entire security league fell prey to poisoned goblets, and how his eldest son became a meal for the tiger Slater quite literally gifted her. But what you may not know is that before Diana was slaughtered, too, Venus called the palace. Andie had picked up the Dial Line, and to her utmost surprise, the new Queen of Mosacia was ordering her to get Anna, Kellan, and me out of the palace as quickly as possible. She knew how to steer a ship, but in her haste, she forgot to grab an updated map. We landed on the Isle by accident.”

The mention of Diana’s name pricks my conscience like a needle, and for a split second in time, I’m back inside her sanctuary hearing her reveal the curse she cast over me.

I shove the thought away, choosing to empathize with him rather than retreat into my memories. As fearful and disoriented as I was when Madden first took me to the Isle, I could not imagine being seven years old, deserting my home with no preparation, and sailing blindly towards what they could only hope was safety.

“The Isle was no more than camping grounds when we first arrived, populated by nomads or Mosacian architects keen on testing their newest builds on unoccupied land. It was a lonely existence for the next few months, one plagued with unanswered questions on what happened to the rest of our family. Even at our age, we knew death had come to collect, but it was the brutal fixation on how that ate my younger self alive. Eventually, all our questions were answered in the form of several cases stuffed with money— Urovian money—which had now become the primary source of currency in Mosacia as well as their home territory, compliments of the Deragons. Not the Seagraves or even the Morgans. The Deragons .”

Madden seethes my family name as if the very sound of it is poisonous, and in the silence that follows, I try not to focus on how much worse it sounds on his lips than it ever did on Kellan’s.

“The cash value was the equivalent of our inheritances alongside enough money for Andie to build an estate for the four of us—a way to buy our compliance and anonymity. It came with a note, too, but Andie never let us read it for ourselves. All she revealed before burning it in the fire was that it came directly from Venus herself, and for the sake of our safety ,” he snarls, “we had to create new identities for ourselves, that way our enemies couldn’t find us.”

The fact that their true enemy was the very author of that letter makes my blood run cold.

“Maia Andromeda was a scullery maid when we lived here, so no one knew her personal history or that she was ever affiliated with Sevensberg. However, just to be safe, she started asking those she met to call her Andie, a nod to the fact that she was the primary tenant of the estate. Annabelle, stubborn as she was in addition to her inability to understand this significant change, simply became Anna, and Kellan became Kit. My chosen identity took longer to formulate, however. Grief seemed to consume me the deepest, which made me exceedingly indignant when it came time to disguise my true self. After all I had experienced, all I had lost in Venus and Jericho Deragon’s wake, I didn’t understand why my name had to die, too.

“Everyone grieves in different ways, but my coping method of choice came through music. Listening to it. Making it myself. Learning my way across any instrument I could find. Singing myself hoarse. And as the gods would have it, we soon discovered I had become quite the virtuoso. Andie decided that my name would be Marcato—a musical term that, translated, means played with emphasis —but I would go by Cato for short, the hard consonant sound of the name matching my twin brother’s.

“For nearly a decade, my life as the reimagined Cato Andromeda consisted of my brother, my sister, my makeshift mother, our estate, and my music. Mainly the latter. There were days— weeks —that I wouldn’t see anyone aside from passing through the kitchen for meals because I was so consumed in crafting a ballad that expressed my emotions. Even if no one spoke, Andromeda House was never silent. My hours at the pianoforte in the sitting room, or my restless nights spent at my desk etching notes into empty sheet music as I sang aloud never left any room for it. I liked it that way, and in time, the rest of Andromeda House did, too. Anna would ask me to sing her something before bed every night. Kellan, despite insisting that my supper serenades proved to be bothersome, would always be caught tapping his foot along to the rhythm my playing provided. But Andie resonated with my music far beyond mere enjoyment, and for my seventeenth birthday, she surprised me with an acceptance letter to the premiere music and arts academy . . . in Urovia.”

Madden swallows hard at the memory, one side of his mouth crooking upward in a defeated smile. “She broke the news to me that morning without telling the others. It was the first time any of us had dared to think about Urovia again, let alone consider going there. But she had done careful research on the program. Apparently, the academy had existed as more of a trade school for poorer citizens in the continent, a way to take up an artistic skill to find employment. But as a wedding gift when your Aunt Calliope got married, the Queen Inherit made a sizeable donation to the institution, elevating its price and overall prestige. Fortunately, I possessed the skills to be admitted, and the funds from our estate and my remaining inheritance easily covered the cost.”

“That’s wonderful,” I sigh.

“Except I couldn’t tell Kellan where I was going, not unless I wanted to be smothered in my sleep before I could make the trip. So Andie crafted my cover story; I would be making the citizen’s pilgrimage into the center of the Mosacian continent, and after that, I’d settle in somewhere over there to study their music and culture. Kellan didn’t even bat an eye, and neither did I as I boarded a boat and embarked on my future, just hoping that no one would grow suspicious of the identity I prepared to don like a second skin.”

I never got to attend any sort of formal, public schooling, no university or international travel-based education. I can only imagine the sort of fun Madden must’ve had. The friends he made. The knowledge he gleaned and the joy he experienced around my current age.

He chooses not to dwell on it. “I graduated from the academy a few months after I turned twenty-three. I had set aside a month to return home and reconnect with my family before venturing back out at the start of the new year to pursue performance full-time, and while I missed Andie and my siblings, Urovian winters were the bane of my existence. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. The Isle always provided its residents with an uncanny sort of warmth, and I had grown to miss it after six years of studies.”

Madden’s eyes cast a traitorous glance towards the door. He means to look down the hall he’s closed us off from, and I brace myself for the worst of what’s to come.

“The minute I set foot back on the Isle, the very atmosphere felt . . . off. Like all the joy in being home with my family had been leached out of the air, and I felt it like the first chill of winter in an autumn wind. I staggered into Andromeda House, and all I had to do was look at Andie to know things were very, very wrong. That, and with how long I’d been gone, I found it hard to believe that Annabelle wouldn’t have ambushed me at the door.”

I extend a hand, silently assuring him that I don’t need the details if it’ll only hurt him. But he tells me anyways, “People with her condition don’t live longer than thirty-five years on average. It was just . . . her time. The unforgivable part of it, though, was that Kellan hadn’t alerted me to when, exactly, her time came.”

“What?”

Anger mars his beautiful face. “When Annabelle passed, Andie panicked about sending correspondence to me at school, and when Kellan realized that I wasn’t where she’d told him I was, he . . . lashed out at her. Not physically, well, not entirely at least. My guess is that the moment he found out I was in Urovia, he threatened violence against her should she reach out to me. Instead, they buried my sister without me. I lived four months of my life not knowing she was gone, and to this day, I want to tear Kellan limb from limb for it.”

So do I.

“He confronted me about it just as kindly as I did last night,” he says, drawing my attention back towards frustration as opposed to deep grief. “Andie had to beg me not to put Kellan six feet under for his manipulation, but I complied for her. She was the only mother I had left. What other choice did I have? Of course, that question would rear its ugly head at me when I eventually asked them to tell me where she was buried. Andie looked at Kellan with such contempt, and that’s when he told me that I’d never learn unless I made up for my betrayal.”

“Betrayal?” The word tastes bitter in my mouth.

“Yes, angel. The same way your family likely writhes at the thought of you even remotely enjoying your time in Mosacia Proper, the same can be said about Kellan in concerns of me being in Urovia. So he came up with a proposition: prove that I haven’t entirely disgraced my heritage, and he’ll tell me where they buried Annabelle. One grave in exchange for another. I think his exact words were ‘You were a traitor the minute you boarded that boat without telling me. What’s a little blood on your hands going to do in the long run? Unless, of course, you’ve come to empathize with the people who killed our family .’”

I shudder at the corruption Kellan believed was appropriate for his brother to take on—and then it dawns on me just how long ago that was. I do the math, discovering that Madden didn’t hesitate before preparing to give his brother what he demanded of him. Heartbroken to the point of compliance.

“You likely don’t remember, considering it was five years ago, but a few months after I returned to Urovia, I was invited to perform at that year’s Queen’s Feast. All my classmates from the academy had nearly clobbered me with congratulations, but their words meant nothing to me. Their praise never rose above the noise in my head, the buzzing of anticipation and dread and disgust for what I knew was in store. My performance was a success, but I made sure not to turn too many heads. I didn’t want anyone to remember me from it, to risk that someone might try and trace my voice or my face back to a person that didn’t really exist. And then, as the party slowly dissipated, I began roaming through Broadcove.

“I connected the different wings in my mind, stalked through the shadow-lined halls on silent feet, and watched as young couples crept down corridors stealing lewd touches. I realized then, as I watched it all unfold, how skilled I was at remaining concealed, and I used that to my advantage once I found my way into the kitchens. One of the pastry chefs accidentally opened a trick door, mistaking it for the pantry, and in the split second she turned her back, I slipped into the tunnels undetected.”

A tear slips past my defenses, and we both dare to meet each other’s gazes. I find his own sorrow starting back at me.

“I learned my way through the Broadcove’s underbelly, and nobody ever came looking for me. But I knew it was better that way, because if I could pull this off—if I could kill Venus Deragon and take back my birthright, my homeland—there’d be no need to explain what happened to Cato Andromeda. I’d finally get to go back to being me , and the rest would sort itself out. It took about a month for me to master the underground passages and secret entryways, mainly because I started out by homing in on what routes took me directly to Venus. Of course, I quickly learned that if I wanted to be successful in my deadly endeavors, I needed to understand Jericho’s routine, too.

“One day, however, there was an opening where they both had separate matters to attend to. Jericho got word from the King’s Guard about something, and I wasn’t quite sure where Venus was headed. All that mattered was that their room was left unattended, which bought me the perfect amount of time to steal a weapon and slip back into the darkness. I ran through the tunnels, desperate to get Venus alone and dole out my family’s retribution, because who knew how long I’d be stranded there if I didn’t act right then and there. Kellan insisted the kill be Venus , not Jericho—but when I found her holed up in a private office, she wasn’t alone anymore.”

Before I get the chance to turn my head in hopes of warding off the tears that spring into my eyes again, Madman’s ungloved hand ticks my chin towards him. The feel of his bare skin breaks down the last of my defenses.

“You were so young. Sixteen if I had to guess. And you looked at Venus with such devotion. But I could sense that beneath your calm exterior, there burned a lonely fire of resentment. You were too composed to be the Deragon heir Kellan and I presumed you’d be, because despite sharing a vague resemblance to Venus, I couldn’t trace any of your attributes back to Jericho. And that fascinated me.”

“You could tell,” I whimper. “From one glance?”

“Not for certain, but I had a hunch,” Madden says. “The feeling only grew as I watched her reprimand you for whatever it was that day. I was so fixated on the way your face became a blank slate of understanding, but the minute Venus turned her back, your chin lowered. The look of defeat in your eyes struck me dumb, Pandora. I didn’t know anything about you, and yet I ached for you. I wanted to tear Venus to shreds for making you feel like that . . . but I needed to ensure you weren’t going to curl up in your room and break down because of it. So I followed you as best as I could through the tunnels, eventually tracking you down not to your personal suites, but to a private room with a harp in its center. And that’s when you started singing.”

We’re both crying, his voice breaking on nearly every syllable.

“Watching you was one thing, because your grace and beauty doomed me. I thought it couldn’t get worse for me, but your voice?” He marvels, stroking my cheek with his thumb. “It poisoned the last of my goodness in the greatest way imaginable.”

A fat tear falls from the corner of my eye, and Madden kisses it away.

“I never found another opening to target Venus again. Not until Queen’s Feast—and it was worth it. Abandoning my plans and picking you was well worth it. Even now, I’d gladly repeat those five years going mad in the darkness of Broadcove’s labyrinths and sleeping on the stony ground, because you were there. Waiting for someone to see you for who you were, not for the way everyone wanted you to be. And I wanted to be that for you more than anything , Pandora.”

I shake my head in quiet disbelief, fighting the subtle sickness in my stomach as the dread slowly fizzles out. “That doesn’t make sense to me,” I whisper. “How could I, a stranger to you, anchor you in the midst of such . . . nothingness?”

“When you spend long enough in the dark, you go mad for even a sliver of light. And watching you all those years, it felt like the sun shone only for me. Like I had found a lifetime of warmth in the freezing cold just from all those stolen glances. You weren’t a stranger, nor were you my enemy. You and I were kindred spirits—you just didn’t know it yet. Despite coming from the two most opposite sides and viewpoints of the world, we shared in each other’s pain without even realizing it. You had no idea that I even walked the earth, and yet, it felt like you saw me, angel. The same way I saw you.”

He cradles my right hand within both of his own, and I savor the feel of his unguarded skin. “The moment I first took your hand in mine, I finally understood why so many people fled to Urovia centuries ago. They wanted to be where divinity dwelled. And in that moment, even wearing my gloves, I knew I had grasped a fragment of something holy.”

Saints spare me.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all this sooner, that I waited this long to come forward with the truth. The full truth. But I was selfish, too consumed by the fear that telling you everything would scare you away from me—that you might judge me like the other Deragons would. I cannot bear how awful it sounds now that I’m hearing it aloud, but I did it. I’d take it back if I could. I’d tell you everything just to keep your heart from breaking like it is right now, but I can’t. And I’m just so, inexplicably sorry.”

The word strikes a nerve. “You’re sorry?”

A thousand different apologies flood his eyes in the form of brewing tears. “More than I can express.”

Every ugly truth he’s given me feels like nothing more than a scratch in comparison to the way sorry guts me like a harpoon.

“Don’t start with that. It’s not fair. You don’t get to ask for forgiveness . . . not when you’ve been the only one that’s ever tried to offer me the truth.”

My words fail me at the confused expression on his face, and I draw closer towards the intensity of his gaze—a howling storm stirring within the gray of his eyes.

He’s scared , I realize, and something bobs in my throat at the thought.

As my lips part to form invisible words of assurance, my fingers grasp his own. Twining them together.

“I’m hurting and heartbroken and drained. I’m coming to terms with so many things at once. My mother’s unknown fate and the fact that there’s someone out there that she might love on the same plane as me. That the Seagrave line didn’t die off all those years ago like I was led to believe. Trying not to crumble under the pressure of Marzipan’s death and what I’ve inherited from it.”

Saying it aloud helps reassure me that it’s okay to bend beneath the weight of it . . . so long as I remember I’m not bearing it alone.

I brush my nose against Madden’s, grateful and emotional that I finally get to feel the exposed skin there. “But even amidst the mess of it all, if there’s one thing I am more than anything else, it’s yours , Madden. I am yours.”