Trinity (35 page)

Hakon made a small noise in his
throat, which Kiana could only assume was agreement with her
words.

She pulled away from Hakon, her
eyes wide. “That’s why everyone blamed Ysia: because her vessel was
the mother of Miale’s killer!” But that wasn’t enough. She still
didn’t know why. Skaric still didn’t know why.

Kiana reached through the bars
again and took hold of Hakon’s hand. “Please… I need to know why
you killed Mira.” She kept her voice quiet and soothing.

“
My hands
killed her.” Hakon was shaking violently but his voice held no
anger, only the hollowness of despair.

What does
that even mean?
Kiana felt a hand curl
around her shoulder again. The lightness of the touch told her it
was Skaric.

“
Ask him about
the other man,” Skaric said.

“
What?”

“
Don’t you
remember? He said someone else loved Mira as well.”

Kiana frowned. She didn’t
understand the relevance; she simply had to trust that Skaric had
picked up on something she hadn’t. “Who else was in love with
Mira?”

Hakon wrenched away from her,
screaming as the silver bars constricted around his soul. Kiana’s
heart exploded with shock. Her entire body jolted, knocking her off
balance. Nidan caught her arm, preventing her from tumbling from
the pathway.

She grabbed Hakon’s hand again.
“Why did you kill Miale?”

Hakon squeezed his eyes shut.
“Please go.”

Kiana growled; she was getting
nowhere. “My soul—Mira’s soul—has been trapped just as long as you
have. Every lifetime has been the same. We’re held captive.” She
paused long enough to gauge Hakon’s reaction, but his expression
had become unreadable. He was staring at her; his dark eyes made
her shiver. “It’s through love. It’s to protect Miale. I’ve spent
nearly every day of my life confined to a small set of rooms. I’ve
known there was a world beyond it, but I was never allowed to see
any part of it. I wasn’t even allowed to look over my own
balcony!”

Kiana could
hear her voice rising in anger; she didn’t care; she had to make
him see. “In some lifetimes, I was hunted down and murdered. My
soul has died countless violent deaths. Because of
you
!” She breathed in and
out several times, pressing her nails into her palm to anchor her
emotions. “This is the only lifetime that I’ve tasted freedom. But
it’s so fleeting. If we can’t find a way to save Miale… to fix the
damage that
you
caused… then I will just be locked away again in every single
lifetime!”

Light reflected in his
tears.

“
If you
ever
loved Mira… if
you
ever
cared
about her at all… how could you do that to her? How could you
sentence her soul to an eternity of imprisonment?” Maybe Nidan was
right; maybe Hakon did deserve to be trapped in the Darkness
forever. He had stolen Kiana’s life a thousand years before she had
even been born. “Why? Why did you kill Mira? Why did you kill
Miale?”

“
My hands
killed her!” Hakon glared at her. “What’s the point?” His entire
body slumped forward and convulsed in pain. His mouth turned down
whilst his lucid eyes stared at the ground. “Anything I say will be
treated as a lie. The truth can’t change what’s happened to you… or
me.”

Hakon tried to pull his hand
away from Kiana; she held on tightly with both hands to counter the
surprising strength of his soul.

“
No. You don’t
get let off that easily. I want to know the truth. All of it!
Now!”

Hakon’s hand suddenly relaxed
and went limp in Kiana’s grasp. “I loved her. But so did he.” His
gaze shifted so that he was staring past her, focusing on nothing
but blackness. “She didn’t want him. He punished us both. Destroyed
us both.”

“
He killed
Mira?”

“
My hands
killed her
.”

Kiana shook her head. Why did
Hakon keep saying that? Why not just admit that he had killed her.
“Tell me about him. What was his name?”

“
Lord
Grayvon.”

Her eyes widened. “One of the
ruling lords of Gettryne?” She knew the family name from her
lessons with Ducarius. He had made her learn the lineage of each of
the twelve ruling lords. The Grayvon family had ruled over Aelbank
for centuries. Kiana half closed her eyes and remembered the fresco
she had seen in Norlea. “He was one of the men whom the gods were
going to choose between. He could have been made king.”

“
He
wanted
to be king.
He
wanted
Mira.
He
thought
the two
went hand in hand.” Bitterness laced Hakon’s voice. “He destroyed
her.”

“
Lord Grayvon
is responsible for Mira’s death? Your hands, his doing?” Kiana was
certain that was what Hakon’s ramblings meant. “But if there was a
chance he could become king, why would he have killed
Miale?”

“
He was
never
going to be king.
The trinity despised him.”

“
What?
Why?”

“
Greed. No
magic. Made his own. Tore power from the earth. Killed the land.”
He whimpered softly. “Killed Mira. Killed me.”

“
He’s
describing Wolf magic,” Nidan said quietly.

“
But the
Grayvon family was never part of the Wolves,” Skaric
said.

Kiana glanced over her shoulder
at Skaric. His expression was slack, lost, as he gazed into the
blackness beyond the pathways. Anguish formed a lump in her throat
as she saw the glimmer of tears gathering in his eyes. “Maybe…
somehow… they learned it from him? Hakon was aware of it. The
trinity was aware of it. Maybe other people were too?” she
said.

“
No.” Hakon’s
sharp tone sliced through her thoughts. “No one else knew. Mira
didn’t know. Mother didn’t know.”

“
Then how did
you know?”

Hakon laughed but the sound
quickly turned into a strangled cry. “He used it to destroy me. To
make my hands kill Mira.”

Kiana glanced back at Skaric
again.

He shook his
head, his brow crumpled. “The magic of the nyxii
can’t
do
that.”

Kiana arched her eyebrow.
“Can’t? How many magical rules have you broken?”

Skaric looked away from her
abruptly.

“
How do we
know any of this is even true?” Nidan said. “For all we know, he’s
lying.”

“
What would be
the point in lying? What could he possibly gain from that
now?”
I know he isn’t. I know this is the
truth
.

Nidan shrugged and hunched his
shoulders.

You don’t
like the idea that Wolf magic was created by one of your own. You
don’t like the idea that one of the ruling lords killed
Miale.
Kiana didn’t blame him. If Hakon’s
words were true, it changed everything. But what if the truth
caused even more pain than the lies? Learning the truth about Ysia
had caused Skaric too much grief.

Kiana turned her attention back
to Hakon. “What happened?”

He began to cry freely. “I
didn’t want to hurt her. I couldn’t stop my hands!”

Kiana wanted to pull him into
her embrace as his anguish poured out of him, but the bars forbade
her from doing so.

“
She smiled at
me. She didn’t know. I couldn’t stop my hands.”

Kiana began to sob as well. She
wanted to take Hakon’s pain away.

“
I was glad
when they killed me. I was glad I couldn’t see the terror on her
face.”

Kiana’s blood froze in her
veins at his words.

“
They killed
him straight away,” Skaric said. “No questions.” He almost spat the
words out.

His anger and
Hakon’s pain were more than Kiana could bear. A thousand years of
war because of one man’s lust and greed. Anger bubbled inside her
and for the first time, she knew that she truly hated someone.
She
hated
Lord
Grayvon. It didn’t matter that he was dead and gone, that his soul
had been reborn more than one hundred times. She hated the memory
of him and the thought of him.

“
How do we fix
it?” They had so many answers yet Kiana didn’t feel any closer to
saving Miale. “Why didn’t Ysia save her?”

“
She
couldn’t,” Hakon said miserably. “The mind and soul separate at the
gateways. Ysia has no power over the mind. She couldn’t put Miale
back together again. She needed help. But no one listened. They
pointed fingers and blamed her. They turned against her. Because of
my hands.”

Kiana released
Hakon. She placed her fingertips underneath his chin, forcing him
to look at her. His eyes glistened with tears and his cheeks were
damp.
Are they even real tears?
“Because of Lord Grayvon. It wasn’t your
fault.”

“
Tell Ysia
that.”

Kiana sank to the ground and
hugged herself tightly. She was glad when she felt Skaric’s arms
embrace her, however hesitantly. She sank back against his chest,
leaned her head against his shoulder and allowed herself to cry.
“We should go,” she said. “You need to rest. We’ve learnt what we
can.”

“
No,” Skaric
said.

Kiana was surprised by the
determination in his voice. “Why not?”

Skaric’s
shoulders were hunched. “We
have
to free Hakon.”

Kiana looked up at him,
wide-eyed.

“
You were
right,” Skaric said bitterly. “He doesn’t deserve this. I can’t
leave him like this; not now we know the truth.”

Kiana trembled. Skaric was
right: Hakon had to be set free. She couldn’t help but feel afraid
for Skaric. His soul was already damaged, and setting Hakon free
would mean going against Ysia’s will. Despite her fears, she said
nothing to dissuade him. There was no point; he would try anyway
and she loved him for it.

*

I don’t know
what I’m doing.
Clenching his fists Skaric
stood, leaving Nidan to comfort Kiana. He glanced down at them. He
could send them back to the physical world; they’d be safe there.
But what if he didn’t have enough energy to get back again? He
turned to Hakon. Every moment that he remained a prisoner was a
moment too long. Skaric’s wrists and ankles burned with the memory
of his ordeal in Norlea, overriding the shaking weakness in his
legs and the nausea in the pit of his stomach. Hakon’s eyes were
closed again, his face slack and expressionless.

Skaric studied the silver cage.
The bars looked thin and potentially fragile, probably deceptively
so. He shrugged; there was only one way to find out. He wrapped his
hands around a pair of silver columns. Excruciating cold ran up his
fingers, encasing his hands and arms, creeping into his chest,
robbing him of his breath. He gasped painfully, trying to draw in
enough air to breathe.

“
Skaric!”
Kiana’s voice was full of fear.

Skaric refused
to look back at her. Narrowing his eyes, he gritted his teeth and
tried to prise the bars apart. It resisted his strength. The cold
made Skaric’s body so numb he could barely feel it.
I’m not doing this right.
He relaxed his grip, realising it wasn’t physical strength
that he needed.

Skaric breathed in deeply and
then released the air slowly as he channelled the tattered remnants
of his soul towards the silver bar. It was stretched thin already
and Skaric couldn’t risk losing control of the pathway beneath
their feet. He imagined his soul wrapping around his hands and
tried to pull again, not with his physical strength but with his
spiritual strength.

He felt the bars pull apart.
Pain tore through his soul. It burned with cold fire. Igoring it,
Skaric seized the next pair of rods.

Instantly, Hakon’s eyes shot
open. His spectral hands sought the gap and closed over Skaric’s
hands. Soothing warmth flowed into Skaric’s soul, fending off the
chill.

“
Stop.”

Skaric’s eyes grew wide as he
stood motionless, staring. Somehow Hakon’s voice acted like a
barrier to Skaric’s own will. He could feel the connection like an
itch he couldn’t scratch. His head began to pound fiercely. “I have
to free you.”

Hakon’s blank expression
crumpled into one of confusion. “My hands killed Miale.”

Skaric focused on the cage.
Even with Hakon’s hands covering his, he tried to pull the bar
apart. Again it began to give; again he felt unbearable pain.
Skaric ground his teeth together so hard that his jaw ached; at
least, he wasn’t screaming.

“
If your soul
is destroyed you… will… die.”

Skaric let go of the white bar
as though it had just turned into a live snake in his hands. Behind
him, Kiana whimpered fearfully.

“
What good
will you be to her if you’re dead?”

Her? Did Hakon mean Miale?
Skaric followed Hakon’s gaze and saw that he was staring directly
at Kiana. She was crying, her eyes wide and imploring.

“
She said you
want to restore Miale.”

Skaric nodded slowly.

“
You need to
make Miale’s soul and mind one
.
”

Skaric
frowned. “But her soul is linked to Kiana’s.” He looked down. Azure
scars ran through his soul, making it look even more ragged than
before. His hands were tinged blue and covered in frost.
If I’m not strong enough to break these bars, how
will I be strong enough to separate their souls
?