Warrior of the Moon

24

Iliss had not shut up their entire ride.

They had chosen to go on horseback this time to save their energy, and Tarin had placed Iliss in front of him on his own horse, not trusting her anywhere else. Besides, he had wanted to talk to her to see what else she could tell him. He had never imagined she would be so forthcoming.

She told him how Celestine had raised her on Mistress' Mesa, trained in the darkness of caves to be a creature without empathy, without mercy, without anything but bloodlust and conviction. She told him about how Celestine continued growing darker and darker; about how she would overhear their mother chanting at night deep within the cave they slept in, and how she could have sworn voices answered her in a language she had never heard.

Iliss admitted how happy she was to be sent away when she was deemed old enough; from her mother, from the Mesa, from the corruption that created a bitterness one could taste in the air, as if the magic around them had rotted. Still, she had loved the excitement of working against the queen from inside her walls.

"You do realize, Iliss, that there's no coming back from what you've done," Tarin finally stated, unable to take much more of her stories without giving her a piece of his mind. "You are a traitor to the Realm. I know you weren't under any kind of curses when you were doing Celestine's bidding, and I saw you administer the blood potion to the princess myself. You gave the orders for Azure to be attacked--"

"I only did that to try to show her I could do something," Iliss argued, jangling her chains as she shifted her grip on the horse's mane to look at him over her shoulder. "By that point she was so obsessed with you, you have no idea. Everything I had done up to that point was inconsequential, because you were the golden boy. The golden boy who would throw her into a cell if he had the chance to. She never did seem to see the irony of it."

What more could I have wanted out of my child? Iliss is by far the greater disappointment. That was what Celestine had said to him. So far, it did not seem as though Iliss was lying, and she and the twins had both informed him already about the conversation they had shared. Iliss needed Tarin if she had any hope of surviving her mother's wrath. He wondered if she realized that he would be just as happy killing her as his mother would, specifically for the way she hurt his princess. Then again... he had not yet. He kept shrugging that off, convincing himself it was because she had things yet to tell him, and perhaps his queen might want the pleasure of ending her once she came home.

"But," Iliss continued, "turns out, she hadn't wanted to attack Azure the day the castle went down. The problem for me was, I had already given the order. Even when I tried to convince her it was the best plan, she wanted nothing to do with it, because she still didn't have you, and she felt that if we attacked the city, she would never stand a chance of getting you. She never listened to me. I could have told her that she lost any chance of getting you on her side willingly when she went after Serena."

Tarin was silent for a while, concentrating on leading his horse forward at the fastest speed the creature could muster. He heard the pounding of hooves behind him, his Wolves keeping pace with him as always. They had crossed the White Channel a few hours ago, which meant Ocette was not far away. None of them had asked for a break yet, and Tarin was not planning on giving them one until they got there. After the battle, they could all rest, but they could not lose any more territory if Celestine still had a whole other army to march on them.

Then: "You told me she would have killed the princess the night of the ball."

Iliss nodded. "The plan would have been different. I'm not sure exactly what she had in mind. But I convinced her to go with the plan of taking me hostage instead. She only went along with it because she actually believed you might hand over the princess for me, even if you just did it as a trick to ambush the Infernals. Ha!" Iliss snorted, and Tarin had to hold himself back from echoing it.