"I—" Xander started. "I—"
"He didn’t take her," Cassi cut in without hesitation, her tone final. Xander's stomach flipped and he sucked in a breath. Of course she'd betray his secrets. For Lyana. To see her safe. Of course she'd want the doves involved in the search. It didn’t matter to her if Lyana returned to the House of Whispers or the House of Peace—all that mattered to Cassi was that she returned. Or so he thought. "She left of her own accord."
"What?" Luka and Xander said the word in unison, one a stern snap and the other a whisper. Xander swallowed, hoping no one had heard. And no one had. Cassi's revelation had shocked them all numb.
She lied.
She lied…for me.
"She left?" The dove prince shook his head as though attempting to dislodge the thought. "She wouldn’t do that, to me, to you. She would never just leave."
"Wouldn’t she?"
"I don’t believe it."
"Luka," Cassi said apologetically, as though sorry for revealing the truth. "You know as well as I do that she never wanted this life. She's always seen her destiny as waiting just over the horizon, somewhere far, far away. I always thought I’d be the one to go with her. But she fell in love, and they ran away before I could stop her. I think maybe she knew that if she told me, I'd talk her out of it, the way I always did, but this time she didn’t want to see sense. She only wanted to be free."
"So she just…left?"
"I'm sorry," Cassi insisted, her tone soft with sympathy yet hard enough to deter questions. "I never wanted you to find out. We kept it a secret to try to save her honor, to save Xander's honor, and we said she was taken. We hoped we'd be able to find her and convince her to come home before the rest of the houses learned the truth."
"Then why did you go to the House of Wisdom?"
"Xander and I were studying their maps for places she and Rafe might've gone to hide. We were relaying the information to the ravens so they could send guards to search. But we couldn't find them."
"And what about the dragon?"
"A coincidence. Lyana and Rafe snuck away in the chaos, and we used the presence of the dragon to help push the story that it was Vesevios who had taken her instead of Lyana leaving by herself."
"But— But—"
Luka searched for an excuse, the muscles in his throat tensing with the effort of defending his sister. But Cassi's story was convincing, so convincing even Xander almost believed it—he would have, if he hadn’t been in the sacred nest to see that man with his own eyes. For every question, she had an answer. The lie had enough depth to come off as truth, filled with so many layers he had no idea how she'd come up with it so quickly. Not only that, but her voice, her expression, and her words all begged to be believed. Though he'd never known Cassi to be a liar, she clearly excelled at it, a thought that left an unsettling feeling in his stomach.
A memory emerged like a monster from the shadows, creeping slowly across his thoughts—of Cassi, her clothes stained red and her cheeks and hands still pink with faded blood, her eyes swollen by tears as, on her hands and knees, she looked at him in the city streets, nothing but smoldering fire and destruction around them.
She's gone, he'd confessed.
Cassi hadn't asked who, or how she vanished, or what had happened. It had never struck him as strange until right now that she'd accepted the words without question, that instead of demanding answers, she'd turned her face away to stare at the chunks of her vomit still on the ground. And even later, she hadn't flown to his room in the middle of the night to force a confession. She hadn't hunted him down for information. She'd waited for him to come to her in the practice yards the next day, almost as though she'd been expecting him.
"Ana." The rough whisper pulled Xander back to the present. He blinked away the memory and returned his focus to the dove prince, who stood rubbing his palms along his cheeks while he sighed, the tips of his fingers shifting from brown to pink with the force. "Oh, Ana."
"It'll be all right," Cassi murmured. "We'll—"
Luka gasped so loudly she stopped talking. He jerked his head up, his eyes going wide, as a single name erupted from his lips. "Elias."
"What about Elias?" Cassi asked, looking toward the two other doves. Her brows drew together when they pointedly averted their eyes. "Why isn’t he here? Where…" She trailed off as understanding dawned, an understanding Xander lacked, though he recognized the horror in her sharp inhale. "You sent him into the mist to look for her, didn’t you? Oh, Luka, you didn’t, did you?"
The dove swallowed. "He volunteered."
"No," Cassi muttered with an anguish Xander didn’t quite understand. Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe this Elias would come back with the answers they needed. Unless, of course, they weren't the answers Cassi wanted him to have.
Xander frowned, thinking back to their nights in the library and all the circles they'd spun in their endless debates, leading him nowhere. Was it possible she'd been argumentative on purpose? Not just thorough in her research, but deliberately leading him astray?
Why?
To what end?
He'd wished for an epiphany, but the one spiraling across his thoughts like a maelstrom, shredding his newly constructed illusions, was the last thing he'd ever wanted.
"I have to find him," Luka said.
"Luka, no. It’s too dangerous."
The two of them were so wrapped up in each other, they didn't notice the way Xander stumbled, his knees going weak as something within him snapped. Helen grabbed his elbow, giving him support. Her touch was the only thing keeping him grounded.
"Excuse me," Xander cut in, drawing their attention. Cassi tilted her head, studying his face, but he refused to meet her eyes. "I'm sorry for hiding the truth from you, Prince Luka, but perhaps now it’s best to let Cassi fill you in on the rest. Tomorrow, come find me in the castle and we can discuss the next steps we should take to find the princess. Until then, I've been away from my home for quite some time, and there are matters to which I must attend. Good evening."
"Xander," Cassi said, stopping him.
It took every ounce of strength he possessed to keep the mounting distress from filling his eyes and flowing over. "Stay, Cassi. Stay and help him. We'll talk tomorrow."
Her jaw clenched briefly, but he watched as she forced her lips to relax and nodded. "Good night."
Without another word, he left, making haste for the castle. The second he landed in his room, not bothering with the formal entrance, his mother was there. Xander hugged her, half his thoughts on their conversation as she filled him in on all he'd missed, and half his thoughts on the spool unraveling inside his mind.
Had Xander told Luka the same story, the dove prince would never have believed him. But he trusted Cassi, deeply and intimately, so from her lips the words held undeniable truth.
Lyana had also trusted Cassi, and now she was gone.
Rafe, too.
Xander had seen them together enough times in the practice yards to know the owl had broken through his surly brother's defenses, no small feat. He'd never thought to question why she'd bothered tearing down his walls, but now he did.