“Who?” Allyra asked, her voice barely a whisper. A glimmer of the answer had already worked its way into her mind. Ice coated her heart, making every heartbeat feel stilted and heavy.
“The man who was fighting beside you.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Jason?” she choked out.
Alex watched her carefully. “He means something to you,” he said quietly.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, no… I don’t know,” she stammered, unsure of her own emotions. She’d believed that Jason had betrayed her to Marcus, but he’d saved her in the end, sacrificing himself in the process. “He’s my partner—in The Five Finals.”
Alex nodded, accepting her answer. “You call him Jason, but when I knew him, I called him Mattie. He was my younger brother.”
She couldn’t breathe.
“My younger brother was a happy child, but he lived with the weight of expectation. Thomas and I were both Elementals, as were my parents. Everyone expected that Mattie would be too. At first, it appeared that he would become even more powerful than either Thomas or myself. By the time he was six, Mattie could already control the Fire Element, and as time passed, he became ever more skilled and powerful. But no other Element ever manifested. That, in itself, wasn’t unusual—it often happens that one Element manifests before the others. However, on the night of Mattie’s Joining Ceremony, he was declared an Inferno, and everything changed.
“Mattie became withdrawn and secretive, drawn into the darkness by the weight of disappointed expectations. He began to spend time with my uncle Marcus. We were blind to it, but I know now that the Ancient slowly corrupted him, playing on his ambitions and desires, until my brother chose to betray his entire family.”
Allyra fisted her hands, clenching her fingers so tightly that her nails bit into the soft flesh of her palms. “I don’t know what to believe in anymore,” she whispered. “Jason tried to kill me in the Final Trial of the Elemental Trials, but since then, he’s saved me time and time again. And through it all, he kept my secret—the fact that I was an Elemental.”
“Kept your secret or just waited for the perfect opportunity to use it again you?” Alex’s expression was hard and unyielding. “My brother can’t be trusted. Don’t be fooled by his lies. Remember, he betrayed his whole family, played us all for fools, leading us all to our deaths.”
“He let me go in the end.”
“Doing one thing right does not undo all the harm he’s done in the past.”
Allyra got to her feet, restless and unable to stay still. Her mind was a mass of tangled thoughts and emotions. “Maybe not,” she admitted reluctantly.
Alex’s blue eyes froze, light dancing off shards of ice. “Everything Mattie does is to serve his own purposes. Every word, every gesture, is deliberate and calculated.”
Anger blossomed into life within her. It grew and grew until her body could no longer contain it. It bubbled over like lava breaking through the surface of the Earth. “I’m tired of being a pawn in this game,” she spat out. “I’m tired of being manipulated and used.”
Her rage turned to something much more dangerous—hate. The lava surging through her veins cooled, turning her heart to stone—black and hard.
A silver thread, Alex had once called her. She was the silver thread tied to a future that didn’t contain death and destruction. A bubble of cynical laughter threatened to burst from her lips at the thought. She wasn’t silver, far from it. She was the wave of darkness that left nothing but death in its wake. It was time her enemies felt the power of her grief.
Her breaths turned ragged. Each one seemed to burn through her lungs, like acid eating through metal. “I’m tired of it. I’m tired of losing the people I love. It’s time that Marcus and everyone with him feel the sharp edge of my hate. I want them to feel my pain, multiplied tenfold.”
She turned abruptly to Alex, unable to hide the weight of her grief. “Will you stand with me?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Alex got to his feet and made his way to her. He stood quietly beside her, both looking out over the barren countryside. Turning to her, his blue eyes deeper and more enigmatic than the deepest fathoms of the ocean, he nodded. “Can’t you feel it?” he asked quietly, so close now his breath lifted a few strands of her hair. “We are a confluence, Allyra. Whatever you do, wherever you are, I will always be by your side.”
Epilogue – Jason
The walls were thick. Black granite with seams of iron and lead. Thick, but not thick enough. The sounds of torture were a form of torture themselves—shrill screams that Jason couldn’t escape. Each one worming its way into the deepest reaches of his mind.
Jason rotated his neck, trying to work out a knot that had taken up permanent residence in his spine. It creaked, releasing some tension but none of the pain. A hollow bark of laughter escaped his lips. What did he expect? Pain and discomfort were a part of his existence now. They would be his loyal companions to the end.
His arms were strung up above his head, unnaturally stretching out his body until his toes barely touched the ground. Jason tried to shift his weight from one foot to the
