The Shadows Have No Face || 𝐀𝐂𝐎𝐓𝐀𝐑

Only The Truth Can Free You

Azriel glared at me, his eyes molten gold. "Are you going to tell them? Were you ever going to tell them?"

"Tell us what?" Amren asked, turning to look at me.

His gaze darkened. "That you're an Illyrian."

His words hit me like a glacier falling into the ocean—crashing and causing abrupt change all around me. It felt like my blood stopped flowing and pooled in my hands and feet.

The room spun around as my knees wobbled and I fell onto them. It caused shocks of pain to travel up my legs, but I couldn't feel them. I couldn't think, couldn't even breathe. How... how did he find out?

The Seeing spell.

Mor whipped her head around and gawked at me, brows knit in confusion. She kept turning her head to look at us, as if there was something in our eyes that she missed. "What?" She asked, now looking at Amren.

"Take off your glamor and show them," the Spymaster growled out. The shadows around him had become like jagged vines of rose bushes, sharp tipped like glass. If they were angry, then he was furious.

I shook my head and sucked in a much needed breath. My mouth opened and closed as I tried to think of what to say—what to do. I had no idea what to do. I'd never expected this to happen.

This wasn't supposed to happen. I was so careful, careful with how I dressed, with how I spoke, how I acted. Now it was all out in the open. All here, nothing more to hide but the scars.

"What is he talking about?" Mor asked, taking a step towards me. "Nia, what is he talking about?"

Amren finally snapped out of her frozen state and said, "your name isn't even Niana, is it?"

Too many questions—it was all too much. I wanted to hide away like a turtle in its shell. I wanted to run back into hiding, never to be found again. Take another name, make something else of my life. I had many names before; I knew how to learn a new one.

"Speak, before I bring you back to my High Lord so he may deal with this," Amren demanded, her voice like a thundering crack of lightning in the room. It made me flinch. My heart quickened with fear before I had to calm myself.

I lifted my head and looked at him, at Azriel. Someone I once called a friend. Someone I thought I could trust, that I could confide in. Cauldron boil, he was someone I thought I could make a life with—someone I wanted to allow myself to care for, to love. And now this is how he treated me.

Of course. I should have seen it from the start. It was all part of his job as Spymaster, wasn't it? To gain my trust until he could find something—anything that he could use against me. Then everything I had done, everything I had said—it was all a lie. One simple fact could change me into this villain, unable to speak without poison dripping off my tongue.

How was that fair?

I lifted my shaking hands to my head and pulled slowly the layers of glamor hiding me. Each piece revealed more and more of all that I kept carefully hidden. The scars across my arms, the rounded ears, golden eyes, darkened skin.

Even my body changed, limbs lengthened and grew as bones thickened and muscles moved to accommodate missing appendages. The bumpy remains of which now pushed through the Illyrian leathers, through the slits left for wings.

Wings I never got to see, to love, to know, as well as my heart.

Mor sucked in a breath at the sight, as if everything finally fell into place for a puzzle she was trying to solve. Amren—Amren could kill me with her gaze. Lethal, in need of immediate explanation.