Crown of Darkness

by Bec McMaster

  And the grimalkin’s tail lashes back and forth, back and forth, as he sits there and watches me.

  “Did you know?” I ask hollowly, my fists shaking with rage. “You say you see the future, and everything you have said to me…. Tell me you didn’t know that I have a daughter out there who is all alone!”

  For the first time, there’s a hint of doubt in his eyes. “I knew. It was not yet time for you to face your past.”

  “Who are you?” I demand. “Why are you taunting me?”

  “Haven’t you not realized yet?” he growls. “I have lost my child. The child you will lead me back to.”

  The shock drives the heat from my face. “Amaya? Amaya is your bonded companion?”

  He merely blinks at me.

  “But why did you not say something?” I slide to my knees before him. “If you knew where she was—?”

  But he’s looking at me, and I feel that debt of knowledge sink into my bones like lead.

  “She is my child, and I promised I would protect her with my life,” he tells me, his voice serious for once. “And I would have given my life when the fetches came to get her. I saw it as clearly as I can see the grief on your face. It didn’t matter how many times I tried to twist the future, it all came down to the same scene: I died, and they took my child anyway.”

  “Then why are you here—?”

  “There was one future that led me down a different path. A single future in which I could protect her, and that future meant I had to abandon her. I had to let her be taken and find the one person who could save her: Her mother. And don’t think it didn’t cost me. I abandoned her in the moment she needed me most, and I couldn’t tell her why for fear it would interfere with my possibilities.”

  The one person who could save her….

  I kneel back on my haunches, sick with grief. “We’re going to rescue her?”

  His green eyes hold the weight of the world. “I don’t know.” He hesitates. “You are the leanabh an dàn. You twist fate, Princess. I see a thousand possibilities around you, but I don’t see the end of our journey. I only see… a Hallow, an ancient god rising, and a princess sobbing as she rocks her daughter in her arms. I never see beyond that moment in time, but I do know this: You will find her. And you will hold her in your arms before tomorrow ends.”

  “Vi?” Thiago murmurs, stepping out of the cottage and resting a hand on my shoulder. “What’s he saying?”

  I didn’t realize I was the only one who could hear Grimm, so I swiftly fill him in.

  “There is one last thing,” Grimm tells me, and his eyes glow so golden I can’t look away from them. “If you set out for the Black Keep, then the Horned One will be freed from his prison. You will hold your daughter in your arms, this I promise, but in doing so, you will set about a chain of events that sees him freed.”

  A punch of breath escapes me.

  The only way the Horned One can break free is if powerful blood is spilled within his Hallow—if Angharad manages to complete her sacrifice.

  “If we don’t go, he will rise anyway. Her blood will be just as powerful as my own. But if there is a possibility we could rescue Amaya, then I will take it.”

  “If you get to her in time, then she will survive.”

  And I note how carefully Grimm phrased everything.

  He said I would hold Amaya in my arms. He said the Horned One will rise. And Amaya will survive.

  But he didn’t say that I would walk out of there alive.

  Maybe that’s the price I must pay to keep her safe.

  “Vi?” Thiago demands.

  I slide my hand over his, squeezing gently. “If we go to Black Keep, then Amaya will be safe. She will survive.” And I look up at him and don’t tell him my suspicions. “Grimm says I’ll hold her in my arms. We will have our daughter back.”

  I just don’t say for how long.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I close my eyes as Thiago carries me back to the Hallow, trying to open the line between myself and the fetch. I’ve seen through its eyes before, but I’ve been trying to fight the link between us for so long, that it’s not until I touch the white hand mark on my arm—where it touched me once—that I manage to get through.

  I thought I’d killed it when I blasted it with light, but it must have twisted into the Shadow Ways at the last moment.

  I open my eyes to a dark hallway, and there’s a weight dangling at the end of my hand.

  “Let me go!” the little girl screams, sinking her white teeth into our hand.

  Pain jars through me, and I can’t stop him as he backhands her across the face. She slams into the wall, and I’m screaming in my head, trying to stop him from touching her, when he goes still.

  He turns to look at the wall—toward my mortal body—and then I’m no longer in his skin. Instead, we’re staring at each other across the distance.

  “You will die,” I tell him, “if you ever touch my daughter again.”

  The fetch merely smiles and hauls Amaya to her feet.

  “Too late, little bitch queen,” he whispers. “She is bound for the Horned One now.”

  He makes a sharp cutting gesture, and the world drops away. I try to reach for her, my gaze meeting hers, but—

  I jolt back to awareness in Thiago’s arms, gasping for breath.

  “She was so close,” I whisper. “I saw her face. Her eyes. She has your eyes.”

  “We’ll get her back, Vi.”

  Heat floods behind my eyes. I promised I would protect her. I promised that all she would ever know is love.

  But there’s no time for tears.

  Only rage.

  My mother never broke me. I won’t allow this to do so either. Amaya needs me.

  He slowly sets me on my feet.

  “Take me to the Hallow,” I whisper.

  “We’re not ready,” he says. “Eris and Baylor are redistributing our packs and trying to—”

  “Not to travel,” I tell him. “I need to talk to the Mother of Night.”

  “Vi—”

  “No.” I turn and press my palm against his cheek, thumb stroking the stubble along his jaw. “I love you, Thiago. I do. But there is no more time for second guessing. I need to see her.”

  And this time, I do not go to bargain.

  I close my eyes as I lie in the snow in the center of the Hallow.

  “Are you there?”

  My stomach plummets. The ground drops away.

  And when I open them, I’m standing within the Mother of Night’s prison world. Soft lights pick through the darkness, but the Mother waits for me, her hood in place and her dark eyes implacable as she rests her hands on the arms of her throne.

  Rage beats within my chest like a flurry of bird’s wings; some part of me feels empty and scraped raw. Perhaps my chest is nothing more than a cage, my ribs the bloody bars? Perhaps there is a bird in there, waiting to be released, though if it is, then it’s a falcon, and its claws knot in my guts even as I think it.

  “They took my daughter,” I tell her.

  She merely tilts her head. “Yes.”

  She knew. She knew all along when I first came to her, rash with promises.

  We stare at each other.

  “You have the crown in your possession,” she says. “But you did not bring it with you.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I pace the circle of stone below her dais. “Did you know that my mother spent years stealing my memories from me so I would dance to her tune? I thought I found freedom with Thiago, but there you were, whispering in the shadows…, manipulating me just as she did.

  “I’m tired of being manipulated. I’m tired of being a pawn. I’m tired of having everything I’ve ever loved, everything I’ve ever hoped for taken away from me.”

  “You have more to lose.”

  “Is that a threat?” My voice roughens.

  “It is merely an observation.” She slowly shakes her head. “You are so young. So rash…. You made a bargain with me, I
skvien, and you have not paid the terms of it.”

  “It’s not yet the end of the year. I owe you nothing.”

  There’s an ancient sense of sadness in her eyes that I didn’t expect. “If you go to the Black Keep, a part of you won’t return.”

  And there it is….

  Confirmation of everything I know in my heart.

  I try to breathe through it, try to ignore it. I’m not ready to die. I want to see Amaya smile. I want to tell her how much I love her. But if there is one thing my mother has taught me, it’s how to lock away your heart and focus on what’s right in front of you. I swallow. Hard. “Worried about your crown? If we’re all dead, then our bargain is broken. You get nothing.”

  “You are no match for the Horned One.”

  “But that’s where you’re wrong. I don’t have to be.” Striding up the dais, I rest both hands on the edges of her throne and lean forward, until I can almost taste her breath. “Because all I need is an Old One to counter his magic, and all my books say you were the only one with the power to stand against him. You want the crown? Then you will protect me from Angharad’s magic and the Horned One’s power. If I return from the Black Keep with my daughter, I will give you the fucking thing the second I arrive in Ceres. I will ram it so far down your throat that you can taste it.”

  Her black eyes remain unmoved. “You are growing in power. But you should be careful how you speak to me, Daughter of Darkness. Because we are not done yet.”

  “No? Well here is what I know…. You need me or you need my daughter in order to free yourself and your kind. Right now, Amaya is in danger. They’re going to use her as a sacrifice to bring that bastard back. And I am going to rescue her. If you want to protect your asset, then you will do as I say.”

  I turn and walk away.

  And with a click of my fingers, I tap into the power of the Hallow and step back into the real world.

  It’s becoming a little easier each time.

  But I see the relief on Thiago’s face as he drags me out of the circle and into his arms. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing. But she’ll protect me.” I give a rough, bitter-edged laugh. “She has no choice.”

  I stare through the open arch of the Hallow at the full moon that floats through darkening skies. Not quite night, though the caress of it darkens the horizon. Soft footsteps pad through the snow behind me, and I know before I turn who they belong to.

  “You,” I say dully.

  Grimm curls his tail around himself, staring at me. “Well?”

  “Well, what?” I snap. “Have you not done enough?”

  “For a creature with such large tapered ears, you do not seem to listen very well.”

  I’ve had enough. I rest my hand on the hilt of my sword and stalk into the Hallow, where Eris is dumping weaponry in preparation for our trip to the Black Keep.

  “Ask me again when the moon is full, your heart is torn in two, and you have no more hope remaining,” he calls.

  And my feet slow.

  My heart beats with rage. The others are waiting at the Hallow for me. And my daughter—

  But I slowly turn around. “You want me to ask how Maia defeated Sylvian now?”

  He looks pointedly at the full moon.

  “Fine.” I stalk toward him. “Tell me, o wise one…. How did Maia defeat her sister-queen? How does any of this help me find my daughter?”

  “Tell me about Charun.”

  I swear…. “I don’t have time for this—”

  “Yes, you do.”

  I gnaw on the inside of my cheek. “Charun was an ancient Hallow that was destroyed when Maia battled Sylvian.”

  “It was an origin Hallow,” he corrects.

  “Fine, it was an origin….”

  And a stray thought occurs.

  The origin Hallows are where the Old Ones are bound into their prison worlds. But Charun was never one of the prison Hallows—there was no Old One tied to that Hallow. It was destroyed thousands of years ago. And there were only thirteen Old—

  Wrong, whisper my instincts. There were dozens of Old Ones that the otherkin worshipped. Pages and pages of them in Imerys’s book.

  The image of those three moons sear themselves in my mind’s eye, and suddenly they’re superimposed by the golden lines of three moons bound together—the symbol for the Daughter of the Three Moons.

  Suddenly, there’s a furry gray cat in my vision, staring at me smugly.

  “Behold,” he mocks. “The pieces fall into place.”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with anything. The Hallow at Charun served the Daughter of the Three Moons, who no longer exists. I’d thought the Mother of Night absorbed her into her mythos and stole her worshippers, but how does Maia fit in?”

  Grimm leans closer. “Do you think you are the first leanabh an dàn?”

  The world drops out from beneath me.

  Of course not. The Mother told me that herself.

  But….

  He leans closer. “Maia bound herself to the lands. She made herself the first bound queen. She began her life as fae, but by the time she ascended, she was so much more.”

  The lands…. Which were tied to the Old Ones and their powers of nature.

  But how? How does Charun fit into anything?

  And then my breath catches.

  I see the obliterated Hallow, those runes blown out of the stone, and its power weak and ebbing. Something drained them. Something massive. Nearly two thousand years later and the Hallow has barely recovered, as though it will always be a shadow of itself.

  “Maia made a deal with the Mother of Night,” the grimalkin patiently explains, “when she went to fight Sylvian. She knew her armies and her own powers were barely a match for her sister-queen’s, and so she made sure she was going to win. Maia didn’t merely ascend to godhood, little princess. She bound herself to the Daughter of Three Moons’ Hallow and wrestled her power from her. And then she obliterated Sylvian and her armies. They say the light of her implosion swept from sea to sea.”

  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with my daughter,” I snap.

  Grimm’s eyes narrow. “You are going to the Black Keep to rescue your daughter from Angharad, who plans to sacrifice her to the Hallow in order to break the Horned One free from his prison, are you not?”

  I can’t breathe again. But I nod.

  Grimm stalks forward on predatory paws. “That is my child they plan to sacrifice, and while I am omnipotent, I cannot do this alone. If they raise the Horned One, then we are going to be facing an old god of unimaginable power.” His eyes flare gold. “If we fail, then bind yourself to the Hallow and I will get the child out of there. Wrest his power from him. You have Maia’s blood in your veins. You have the power of the Old Ones. It’s our only hope.”

  “I am not a—”

  “God?” Grimm curls his lip. “Well, neither was Maia. But every fae on the continent prays to that bitch at night, and I don’t hear her complaining about it.”

  Bind myself to the Hallow. Wrestle with the Horned One. Steal his power.

  I bite my lip as the others gather in the middle of the clearing.

  I’m not powerful. I’m not a goddess. I’m just a woman who wants her daughter back.

  And he was the most powerful of all the Old Ones.

  Yes, something whispers in my mind, but he is also trapped. If he is freed, he will be newly reawakened in this world. Weaker than he ever was. Hungry. Possibly vulnerable.

  I feel sick.

  “Are you ready?” I ask as I stand in the middle of the Hallow.

  Thiago slashes a knife over his forearm, drawing enough blood to power the glyphs that will take us north. He decided I should reserve my strength for the fight ahead. “Ready.”

  He looks at me, and I see the question in his eyes.

  Am I ready?

  I step forward and capture a fistful of his shirt, hauling his mouth toward mine. It’s a kiss born of passion
and desperation. A kiss meant to convey everything I feel for him.

  I love you, I tell him with my lips.

  And then we’re both breathing hard, foreheads pressed against each other’s. His hand slides through my hair, as if he too feels the weight of the future upon us.

  “Thank you,” I whisper. “For everything.”

  He gave me freedom when I could not see it for myself. He’s offered me nothing but love, ever since the first moment we laid eyes upon each other.

  “I am honored to be your wife.”

  His eyes narrow. “What are you planning, Vi?”

  “Planning?”

  His fist curls in my hair. “That sounds like goodbye. That sounds like you’re plotting to do something foolish.”

  “We go to face Angharad and the Horned One. Is that not foolish enough?”

  He looks at me.

  I close my eyes and breathe him in. He’s moonlight and darkness; smoke on the wind; the scent of burned cinnamon. My promise. My hope. My dream.

  He’s been there at my side at every step of the way.

  And he deserves the truth.

  “There’s a possibility I could bind myself to the Horned One’s Hallow,” I whisper, “and wrest his power from him if he rises.”

  “He will not rise,” Thiago growls. “I will not lose you. I will not lose Amaya. And if that bitch thinks she’s going to harm either of you, then she knows not what she faces. We just have to get to Amaya and protect her. Angharad will have her bound within the Hallow. The second we’re all within its circumference, use the Hallow to get us out of there.”

  It’s a simple plan.

  They’re always the best.

  I nod, and he kisses my forehead.

  “Vi.” One last kiss-roughened word. I look up, and Thiago’s eyes turn sultry as he strokes my cheek. “Promise me you will get her out. Promise thrice.”

  To promise three times locks me into a vow I won’t be able to break. “I promise—if I get a chance—that I will get her out of there.” And then I repeat the words twice.

  “Even if I—or one of the others—isn’t within the Hallow.”