No, I thought. But I asked all the same. "What Aedh are we talking about now?"
"You are not stupid, Risa. Please do not act like it."
"Lucian." God, I thought, had every single moment with him been filled with nothing more than lies and schemes?
"As you have partially guessed, he and I are adversaries." There was cool amusement in his voice, and I wasn't sure why. "But what you do not know is that once we were allies. In fact, he was my chrání—what you would call either a student or protégé."
Shock coursed through me. "You and Lucian? Allies? Then why in the hell does he hate you so much?"
"Because I never intended to share domination. Once the keys were safely in the possession of my Razan, I betrayed him to make my own escape."
He was the reason Lucian had been stripped of his powers. Fuck, the hate I'd seen had been aimed at me as much as the Raziq—not only because I was Hieu's offspring, but because I'd also betrayed him by not using his sorceress's ward.
"Then how did you get caught? Or was that another lie to get me to do your bidding?"
"The chrání knew more than I thought, hence I was captured. I was stripped of my flesh form during Malin's attempts to gain the location of the keys, but I could not give what I did not have."
"Why did they keep you alive? After all, I was born by that time. They didn't need you to get to me."
"Yes, but I was the only one who knew the clues. Malin, for all her power, could not take that information from me."
And then he'd somehow escaped his prison. But thanks to his capture, he'd missed his meeting with his Razan—who had, as he'd ordered, killed themselves to protect the earthly location of the keys. "Why was Lucian left alive?"
"As I said, he was my chrání. I have no doubt that Malin thought I might attempt to contact him again."
"Well, that's a stupid thought given how much he appears to hate Raziq."
"She would not understand such emotion. Few of us do."