But Lirael doesn’t rise to the bait. “Have you really? Good. Loyalty is a commendable trait. Buttrueloyalty requires more than a few shared meals and a common enemy. It requires trust. And trust is a fragile thing, Arien. Easily broken. Wouldn’t it be wise to first ensure they are worthy of such devotion before abandoning your dreams for theirs?”
“They are my friends,” I force the words through gritted teeth.
“Are they? What if I told you that, from the very beginning, your friendsneverintended to join Martysh?”
My heart sinks, but I fight against the doubt creeping in. “I… I don’t believe you. They’ve been fighting harder than anyone to win.”
“Tostay,” Lirael corrects with a smooth voice. “To remain in the game long enough to complete the mission they came here to accomplish. And to ensure you remained as well. Because, Arien, you are, undoubtedly, a valuable asset. A remarkably useful tool in their arsenal.”
No. It can’t be true. My heart plummets, a sickening drop into a cold, empty void. My palms grow clammy and numb. Darian, Bahador, Faelas… they are my friends. The first friends I’d ever had. The only people who’d ever accepted me in their company. This… this is a lie. It has to be. But the doubt, that insidious whisper, is growing louder, harder to ignore.
“I don’t believe you,” I whisper as a plea more than a statement, my hands trembling.
“Then tell me, Arien. Why would the sole heir of Izadeon, the last remaining Dartheon, a young man with a duty to his people and his lineage,abandon it all to join Martysh? An order he has publicly despised for years?”
“Bahador isn’t High Lord Dartheon’s son.” The words are a desperate attempt to steer the conversation away from the dangerous precipice it’s teetering on.
“No, he’s not,” Lirael agrees. “His father is the High Lord’s chief advisor. And Faelas is indeed the son of the late Chief Commander of Izadeon.”
Deliberately and methodically, she’s laying out the pieces of a puzzle, forcing me to face a reality I desperately don’t want to see.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“No…”
I rummage through my memory, desperately searching for some evidence that she is lying. But there’s nothing.
Darian, who was usually open about everything else, was always strangely silent about his family. The subtle dynamics between him and Faelas and Bahador—how they sometimes deferred to him, almost instinctively, as if recognizing a higher authority—start to make a sickening kind of sense.
“He hates the Dartheons,” I say weakly, in a last-ditch effort to cling to my convenient illusion.
“And with good reason. Dartheons are corrupt and unfit to rule. But Darian Dartheon seems different. He’s willing to risk everything to save his homeland, even if it comes with deception and betrayal.”
A sharp ache pierces my chest. I clench my fists, trying to control the tremor that threatens to consume me, but my hands betray me, shaking uncontrollably.
“It can’t be true,” I murmur, more to myself than to her.
Martyshbod Lirael’s smile is gone, replaced by a somber, almost pitying expression. “It is, Arien.” Her voice is heavy as if she is aware of the devastation she knows she’s inflicting.
“Then… why are they here? If not to join Martysh…”
“To learn how to wield the power of the Star’s fragments.”
“But why?” I press, even though the answer, the horrifying, inevitable answer, is already forming in my mind.
Lirael sighs. “Because they possess one. The earth fragment.”
Silence descends on the room as the truth, with all its bitterness, finally sinks in. Betrayal, confusion, and hurt fill me in waves.
Darian, my closest friend, the man who has touched me in a way that no one ever has, the man I have feelings for, has been deceiving me all along. Memories flash through my mind: his smile, his laughter, his touch, his words. Each one was a lie. Each one was a piece of a cruel deception.
The warmth I’d felt, the connection I’d believed in… all of it was false. A cold, hollow emptiness spreads through me, starting in my chest and radiating outward, numbing me and freezing me from the inside out.
Darian. High Lord Demar Dartheon’s son? The heir to Izadeon? Why would he lie to me?
But the answer is already there. They needed my sorcery to break into Martyshyar’s wing. I’d foolishly let my guard down, thinking I was part of a group finally, but I was still that unwanted girl, the outcast, the orphan, the child waiting in the shadows for a father who never wanted her…
There is a hollow, aching void where my heart used to be. Martysh, the trials, the Star… none of it matters anymore. All I want is to be alone. To crawl back into the darkness of my childhood closet in Fire Temple, where I used to hide when I was afraid, where the outside world couldn’t reach me.
