The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2)

47

Kellan

A ll week, Andie and I have been talking in circles regarding what transpired the night Madden confronted me on the porch. Tonight, however, is the first time I’ve dared to bring up loyalties, and Andie is having none of it.

“You turned on me.”

“You turned on her ,” she counters.

“Must you insist that Pandora isn’t the enemy here?”

“For the last time, Kellan. Bloodlines do not define every individual within it,” she bristles, baring her teeth like a wild beast. “If that were the case, I would’ve let the Hive swarm you and the rest of your siblings, because Saints forbid I raise up three miniature Victor Seagraves.”

A wave of wrath ripples through my entire body at the name of Urovia’s naval forces, at the mention of Saints as opposed to gods.

My father was a man of great power . . . but of what else, I’m uncertain. Six-year-olds don’t tend to fully comprehend the magnitude of what a crown symbolizes, just that they reflect the light well. I didn’t know him beyond his role as a father very well, and while I wouldn’t disservice him and say he was a bad father, he was always tense. Borderline hostile.

“I understand that you are heartbroken—”

“I am not heartbroken,” I bite back. “I never let her in enough for her to break my heart, and that’s for the best.”

She didn’t break my heart, but somehow, even at arm’s length, she managed to bludgeon it.

Or maybe I did it to myself—because of course I couldn’t have my cake and eat it, too. I couldn’t despise the people and the culture that composed her entire life and expect her to find me endearing.

“I understand you are reeling,” Andie amends. “But the fact is, you scared me. At best, you were going to maim the poor girl, and I was not going to have any part of it. Even now, it doesn’t matter that you’re the estate owner here or that you’re now the first in line for a throne that was stolen from you—you will not treat Pandora or any other woman like that again. You’re almost thirty years old, Kellan Seagrave. Act like it!”

It’s silent for a moment as I digest the greatest bout of fury I’ve ever experienced from Maia Andromeda—and then, slow claps sound from down the main hall.

Speak of the devil.

Pandora leans against one of the study columns that supports the weight of the second floor, one foot crossed over the ankle with hands settled on her hips. She wears a snide smile like a well-tailored suit, and she dons an onyx gown that makes her typical dark eyes look bright with mischief.

“Nice to see another woman putting you in your place,” she says by way of greeting.

I want to claw her eyes out.

Andie’s attention frantically darts between me and Pandora, who appears to have ventured here unaccompanied. Brave. Too brave. Andie reads the urge I have to take advantage of her arrival, and quickly jumps to Pandora’s unknowing rescue. “You’re back! What a lovely—”

“I’m here to speak with your son.”

The words are full of contempt, and Andie mouths the words, “Oh dear.”

“I’ll just be in the kitchen if you need me,” she forces out, which is code for I’ll be within earshot in case either of you try to kill each other .

When Andie departs and the door eases shut behind her, I settle down onto the sofa in the reading room and refuse to make eye contact. “Where’d you run off to this time, Princess?” With everything out in the open, now, there’s no point in pretending that her name doesn’t make steam come out of my ears.

“Sevensberg Palace.”

I dare not flinch at the revelation; at the way she’s not even trying to beat around the bush.

“Madden told me everything,” she adds.

The use of my brother’s name stings like a fresh wound, but I refuse to let the sensation show. “I see. So you’ve come to beg me to reconsider.”

“Reconsider what?”

The words taste sour in my mouth. “Not telling him where Anna’s buried.”

Pandora takes a suggestive step towards me, eyes full of heat and surety. “No, actually. I’m not keen on inserting myself in the middle of sibling disputes, at least not more than I already have.”

She winks in a way that makes me want to set Andromeda House on fire. “Why come back here, then?”

“I have a proposition for you.”

“I don’t work with people who play me for a fool—”

“Help me stage a coup against the Deragons.”

Pandora’s face gives away nothing, and the longer I think that she’s genuinely proposing the bomb she just dropped, I laugh straight in her face, keeling over at the middle. “You? A coup ?”

She nods once, her gaze unfaltering. Shock aside, I know better than to insist she’s still joking around. “No uncertainty?”

“None.”

“Oh, come on, princess. You can’t possibly expect me to believe—”

I feel her hand at my throat before I see it, and I choke out a gasp.

“I want what you want, now, with one minor adjustment.” The pulse in my neck hammers against her iron-clad grip. “ Jericho dies, and I get to be the one to kill him.”

Something cataclysmic shifts in me. Maybe it’s the rage turning her blood hot beneath her skin, or maybe it’s the fact that she has me pinned to the wall with one hand. Whatever it is, it empties out my mind completely. It doesn’t matter what changed or why she’s so insistent on Jericho as opposed to Venus—because I can see it in her eyes that she’s out for blood. There’s no faking it.

Pandora pulls her hand away, trusting that I won’t lunge for her, and my lungs burn for the fullness of air. “What’s in it for me? Because taking the final blow from me already puts you at a disadvantage.”

She smiles in a way that tells me she already anticipated my rebuttal. “You help me pull this off, and I’ll give you something no one else can offer you.”

I cross my arms and lean back against the doorframe, feigning disinterest even as my mind whirs to life with curiosity.

“I’ll translate every foreign tome you own, both here in Andromeda House and the Sevensberg Palace library.”

Laughter swallows me whole again, this time to the point of shedding tears. I worried it would have something to do with the books I value so highly, but this? The fact that Pandora thinks she could accomplish that—or at least make better headway than I already have—is absurd . I hold out a hand, silently begging her to let me catch my breath before she gets all pouty and exclaims that she’s not joking. It’s short lived to say the least.

“I’m serious, Kellan.”

The use of my birth name sucks all the humor out of me.

“Oh, please. Your royal tutors didn’t care to teach you other languages. It would go against the whole mass assimilation blueprint your parents laid out.”

She doesn’t lash out at the dig, warning sign number two that she isn’t messing around. “You’re right. They didn’t. But I’ll prove it to you anyway. Pick any book off your shelf that’s not documented in the Urovian tongue and ask me to translate it.”

I point a finger towards my collection. “Second row from the top, fifth book from the left—the one with the periwinkle spine.”

Obediently, Pandora climbs the sliding ladder, shifting her weight so it glides across the floor. My selection is the only item in my catalog that I know Pandora couldn’t fake, because when she first started reading through my belongings, I ensured she never came across it. Tucked it away from sight.

Andie had grabbed the diary in her final moments of panic before boarding us on a getaway ship. I remember asking her about it all those years ago, noting that it looked more like a journal than an actual book, to which she had told me it was hers. Once Madden left Andromeda House and I’d grown fond of literature, however, she came clean about who the diary truly belonged to.

“Read the second paragraph of the third entry,” I say to Pandora.

She opens the pages, and I watch her nose crinkle at the smell of them. Not with distaste, but with sadness. Time, it seems, did not dilute the smell of Mother’s perfume—and I almost insist she close it so more of it doesn’t fade away. Her mouth opens, beginning to form the first syllable. Then, she stops. Flattens her lips.

“Stumped so easily?” I dare to ask.

Her eyes narrow in defiance before she directs them back to my mother’s handwriting.

“How long ago did your father lose his loving nature? I’d like to think that somewhere, floating in the realm before human birth, you might know the answer. Or perhaps I don’t want to know at all. Victor’s anger rears its ugly head at me the more you grow, the sicker I become. If nothing else, know that I don’t blame you for how your progress has depleted my strength. That, and if I have hoisted you into a world you may grow to resent, I’m sorry. It’s just that nobody needs me the way you will, and I’m not sure how much longer I can live a life of being utterly unneeded.”

Pandora gently closes the diary, unwilling to read another word. I see the heartbreak of what she just voiced descend into the dark depths of her eyes—the connection she draws back to her own mother.

“How?” I say through trembling lips.

Pandora shakes her head. “I can’t believe you made me read that to you.”

“How did you translate that so easily? So fluently ?”

“The Saints you hate so much,” she says calmly, “they’re real. Whether you like it or not, they’re real .”

The vainglorious image of Venus and Jericho hand in hand, looming over the world they usurped for their own benefit in the name of being blessed , burns my eyes like a brand. I’d heard the claims—studied the histories—but never believed in it firsthand. Didn’t want to.

“Marzipan had the gift before me,” she continues, her voice drying up in her throat. That would explain all the books and the way she could communicate with anyone and everyone at the drop of the hat. “But she passed it down to me after the King’s Guard killed her.”

My stomach hollows out.

Now I know why she’s going after Jericho.

But even without that context—the concrete justification that causes even the kindest of souls to pick up a sword—I succumb to the proof of what she’s offering me in exchange. “I’m only agreeing because your translations will save me decades of labor and will likely uncover a lot of buried knowledge. Not because I like this version of you.”

“Well, you considered killing the kinder version of me. Maybe you just don’t like what you can’t control.”

The jab is merited, but it fills me with disdain, nonetheless. “Tell me, Pandora,” I whisper, noting the way her breathing turns shallow when I use her name. “If Madden told you to stand down, to not pursue violence, would you listen?”

“He’d never ask me to put aside my feelings for what he thinks is best,” she counters. “And it’s too late for him to insert his opinion on the matter, anyways.”

I stare and stare after her, my face blank amidst the sinister implication.

“I’m not sure which is worse. The fact that after all my years of fighting off my family’s bloody habits, I must cave into them just to make my stand—or the fact that I’m not frightened by the consequences of doing so at all. Either way, I’ll get over it eventually.”

It’s almost like she already has.

“That’s the thing about falling in love with the villain,” I tell her grimly. “You end up becoming one yourself in the process.”

She raises a brow amidst an otherwise bored expression. “Spare me the lecture and help me make this happen.”

Whatever Pandora Deragon I thought I had a hold on, she blew away with the wind long ago. I shake my head at the comprehension of it all, the way the aggressiveness in her eyes wears me down by the minute. “Have it your way, then. I take it the three of us are carrying this out together?”

“That’s correct.”

“Well . . . where is he, then?”

“Madden?” Pandora only grins back at me as she makes for the kitchen. “Taking Thatcher Chumley’s head to Honeycomb Harbor.”