by Bec McMaster
“I held my tongue while Edain taunted me about all the secrets he knows that I don’t. I held my tongue while we were handling Lysander. And I held my tongue in front of my sister and her Asturian guards, because the last thing I want is for my mother to know Edain’s little arrow struck home about your little secret.” I turn to the others, who are hastily scrambling for the door. “Unless, of course, everyone else knows what Edain was talking about and I’m the last to find out? Is this common knowledge?”
Eris pauses. “Not to me, it’s not. I’m as curious as you are, considering that smirking little prick seems to be aware of a threat to our national security, and I’m directly responsible for said security. Baylor?”
He grunts and shakes his head, though his attention is entirely on his brother’s lifeless form.
All three of us stare at Finn.
Finn sighs at Thiago, tugging his blood-spattered vest open. “I told you this was going to bite you on the ass.”
“Finn knows?” It explodes out of me.
“Finn happened to catch his Most Haughtiness at a particularly vulnerable moment,” Finn corrects. “And Finn was sworn to secrecy, despite his objections. Thiago made me swear a blood oath to him before he would tell me what was going on.”
“It’s not a threat to national security,” Thiago says.
“She. Cursed. You. Didn’t she?” Eris leans toward him, a little hint of fire flickering in her dark irises. “Tell me how this is not a threat to national security?”
“I’ve got it under control.”
“How much stress can your wards handle?” Eris’s voice shifts up a level. “Are they still intact? Are those fucking creatures still contained?”
“Yes.”
“What creatures?” I demand, though I know she’s speaking of his tattoos.
He set them free in order to save me once, and I’ll never forget their malicious whispers—or the way they tore a pack of banes into little, bleeding chunks. And he swore he’d tell me what they were, though somehow, we’ve been so busy dealing with the hunt for the crown and my mother, that it never came up.
I hate not knowing. All of a sudden I’m five months into the past, not certain who the enemy is or what secret everyone is trying to hide from me. I broke Mother’s curse, but I don’t think I’ll ever escape the way it made me feel.
Alone.
“Leave us,” Thiago says, cutting them all a sharp glance from beneath his lashes.
Nobody says a word.
Finn helps Baylor lift his brother’s breathless body, and Eris offers me a hint of a kick his ass smile before she closes the doors behind them with a telling little slam.
Footsteps ring on the marble outside the chamber, slowly growing quieter with distance.
I wait.
And as I wait, the tension in the room builds.
I have no right to be angry. Maia knows I’ve kept my own secrets from him—and I’m still keeping the most dangerous one of all—but Edain knew.
Thiago watches me silently, though I’m reminded of a caged wolf. There’s no sign of the charming prince I fell in love with. No sign of his usual charismatic cloak. No, this is the warlord I’m dealing with. One with his guard fully up, as if he knows exactly where I’m going to strike and he’s prepared.
“Well?” He throws the gauntlet down the second they’re out of hearing distance.
Where to start?
“What was Edain talking about? A curse? Mother cursed you?”
Thiago crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s nothing.”
“You let me walk into a political nightmare where my stepbrother sneered down his nose about a secret the pair of you were keeping—”
“Don’t make it sound as though we were conspiring together,” Thiago’s voice grows a little harder. “I wasn’t aware that he knew. I wasn’t aware that anyone knew. Your mother must have told him—”
“Told him what?”
For a second I don’t think he’s going to answer. He paces back and forth like a caged wolf, violence coiled like a lash within him. “I couldn’t kill her.”
“What?” It’s not what I expected.
“When I went after your mother at the Queensmoot, I intended to kill her. I tried, Vi. I threw everything I had at her—everything I could afford to throw—and she managed to brush me aside.”
“Your mother escaped” is all he said after he returned from the Queensmoot.
“I’m not entirely surprised.” When I had a choice between killing myself, killing my mother, or finding someone with the power to break the curse she’d cast on me, there was a reason I chose the latter and sold my soul to the Mother of Night, so to speak.
My mother didn’t become Queen of Asturia through chance. And she hasn’t held onto that position for over a thousand years out of kindness. Or weakness.
I’m not strong enough to overthrow her, but there was a part of me that hoped he was.
“She cursed me,” Thiago growls, his voice roughening as he lowers his fingers to his sleeve and starts unbuttoning it. Smooth skin reveals itself. Tugging the linen up his arm, he bears his forearm. “At first I thought nothing of it. I thought she’d missed. But this started appearing a week or two after we returned.”
Dark ink starts to penetrate through his skin as if it’s rising from deep within. Or no, not ink, but a shadow. A curse written deep within his veins. It starts at the pulse point of his inner wrist and curls its way up his forearm, like a twining bramble aiming for his heart.
And he hid it.
Everything within me turns to ice and I grab his shirt, tearing his sleeve open over the heavy bulge of his biceps. “How far does it go?”
There’s no emotion in his voice. “Shoulder. It’s been working its way slowly up my arm for weeks.”
If it hits his heart, I’ll lose him.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
A growl echoes in my throat. “Stop. Trying. To. Protect. Me. Do I look like some poor innocent maid who needs you to make her life all sunshine and roses? I’m not afraid of the truth.”
“It had nothing to do with shielding you from the truth.” Shadows darken his green eyes. “You need to focus on finding the crown.”
“We need to focus on stopping this! My mother’s spells kill, curse you!”
“It’s not meant to kill me.”
“Oh no, it’s just a nice, friendly little kiss she slapped you with. Maybe you’ll start growing daisies in your hair. Or fur. Maybe I’ll wake up one day with a bane in my bed.”
“I’m not going to grow fur. It will hit my wards. It’s meant to fracture them and unleash the Darkness within me.”
Dark shapes whirl across the skin that’s exposed. Savage, lethal shapes that bite and snarl. I can never see them in their entirety and that’s probably a good thing.
Thiago sighs, and then golden runes stamp their way up his skin, glowing from within as if he’s stripping his illusions away, inch by inch. “These are my wards. They were inked into my skin with an old magic in order to contain the Darkness within me.”
The curse writhes its way between them, and though I can see hints of golden-red where it seems to be eating its way through some of those runes, the rest of them trace stoic patterns over his olive skin. They’re like a supernova of light painted over his skin, a tangled web streaming between each point as if to capture something and contain it within him.
I don’t recognize any of the markings.
They’re nothing like the runes marked into the Hallow stones.
Nor are they anything seelie, and I’ve spent months searching through books about old lore, so I should know.
“Your mother hit me with the type of curse that was designed to incapacitate me and me alone. It’s not meant to weaken me, but to strengthen the daemons inside me. She knows what I am, Vi. And she knew exactly how to try and destroy me from within. If I was weaker, if my wards were simpler, then s
he might have gotten to me already. They might have broken free.”
“They?”
“These,” he replies, placing his hand over one of his tattoos. “The souls I carry within me. Thousands of years ago they were an ancient primordial race that hunted the night. If they worked together, they would have consumed every mortal soul on this world, but they don’t. They fight among themselves and hunt each other down. The first I knew of them was when I was eighteen and this creature of darkness attacked me. It nearly killed me, but I was drawn to the light within its chest. I… consumed it somehow, and the shadows swarming me evaporated. I could feel it within me though, yearning to be freed. Desperate to feed. It was a constant battle to keep it contained.”
“The Darkness,” I whisper.
“Yes.” His lashes lower, obscuring his eyes as if to hide the flash of hatred I see there. “Others came. I consumed them all. And I began to realize I could sense them out there, because there’s a heart of Darkness within me too. It yearns to hunt for those of its own kind. The more you consume, the greater your powers bloom.” Anguish touches his face. “I was young. I was foolish. I wanted strength. And I didn’t realize that with such power comes temptation. The more you take, the more you want. It’s a constant grinding ache. Hunger. Need.” A little flame flares to life in his dark irises. “The creature inside me grew stronger. Sometimes I would wake in a strange place with no recollection of how I got there, and I would be covered in blood.” He stares at his palms as if seeing something else. “I had to contain it. I had to contain them. And so I went to the Morai, and they told me of a blood mage who might be able to ward it all away within me.”
Until now. “But Mother’s curse is eating away at your wards.”
He meets my gaze. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I had it under control.”
“You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means. That curse has been creeping toward your heart for months and you have it under control?”
“I’ve spent over five hundred years battling this fucking monster inside me, Vi. I am stronger than it is. I am stronger than the souls that rage within me, desperate for release. And I am stronger than your mother’s curse.”
“What happens if it hits your heart?”
His jaw hardens. “I’m not concerned with—”
Stubborn, cursed fool. I stab a finger into his chest. “Well, you should be. You’re the Prince of Evernight, and your kingdom is at war. Your people can’t stand against my mother’s army by themselves. If you die, then she will come for them and she will crush them all, because you’re the only thing currently holding her at bay. And while my mother might be stronger than you are—”
“I didn’t say she was stronger. I said I threw everything at her that I could afford to throw.”
It momentarily stalls me.
Thiago offers me a savage smile, showing me his forearm again. “I could break through my wards, Vi. I could unleash myself and in so doing, I could crush your mother like an ant beneath my heel, but if I do that then I won’t care who gets in my way. Eris. Finn. Thalia....” His voice roughens. “You. I will kill you all to get at her. I won’t even be myself anymore. I’ll be something else. Someone else. And you won’t like him very much.”
I’ve seen it in him sometimes.
Leashed violence. His eyes darkening until there’s no color left in them.
I slip my hands inside his. “I’ve seen hints of him, Thiago. I’m not afraid of your Darkness. And the truth is… whatever lies inside you is still you. And you love me. You would never hurt me. Not even your darker side.”
The breath explodes out of him. “Curse it, Vi. You should be scared. You have no fear when it comes to me. I should never have touched you that first time. I should never have—”
I cut him off with a kiss, painting it across his lips.
“You were my salvation,” I whisper against his mouth, because I know what my life was like before I met him. “If you hadn’t kissed me that first time, then I would be nothing now. I would be trapped within my mother’s court, slowly screaming on the inside, dying a little more each day. You set me free. You welcomed me into your arms—into your heart—and I don’t regret a single moment of it.”
There’s no more doubt within his eyes.
Thiago’s hand slides around the back of my neck, hauling me toward him. His mouth slams down upon mine, rough and demanding, full of proprietary claim. This kiss is raw fire, burning all my hesitation and doubts away. I could let him claim me. I could let this be the end of it, but….
There’s just one thing….
One tiny little thing….
“Wait. Wait.” I tear my mouth from his and rest my forehead against his chest, breathing hard.
Gentle fingertips trace my cheeks. “What for?”
He’s told me everything.
I can’t hide the truth from him any longer. Not if there’s to be any hope for us.
“Since we’re sharing, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Instant frustration. “Vi, is this really the time?” Roughened hands slide down the curve of my waist. “Because it’s been days since I’ve been inside you.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. Because if I don’t tell you now, then I don’t know if I’ll be able to find the courage again.”
Thiago draws back, staring down at me.
“Do you remember the night of the Queensmoot when I drove my mother back?” The words blurt out of me.
A new sort of wariness enters Thiago’s eyes as if he senses a trap about to spring closed. “Yes.”
I press my cheek into his palm, clasping it there. Desperate for it to stay there. “You thought it was part of the bargain I made with the Mother of Night. That she would loan me her power in order to defeat the curse and throw my mother back.”
“What are you trying to—”
“She broke the curse and that was all.” I press my finger to his lips. Those damning lips that promise to steal my soul. “What if I was to tell you that I was the one who threw Mother back? That the power I wielded was… mine.”
Silence.
He’s not even breathing, and I need him to say something. Anything.
“You’re not strong enough.” Quiet words full of denial, as if he senses a glimpse of the truth.
“Not my fae magic, no.”
Shadows sweep across his face, but I stall him again, holding up my left wrist—the one that wears the golden cuff that prevents magic from being able to find me.
“You couldn’t work out why the fetch tried to kidnap me,” I say quickly, “but you knew Angharad was searching for the leanabh an dàn—the child of destiny—in order to sacrifice her to the Horned One.”
“Her?” He catches that tiny slip, because nobody ever said it was a female.
I tip my chin up. “Me.”
He starts shaking his head, and each step back makes my heart curdle a little. “No. No, you’re not—”
“The Morai said it first.” I wrap my arms around myself as he retreats. “They said I would break the world apart and bring about the end of Unseelie. That’s why they attacked me. And the Mother of Night.... That’s why she made a bargain with me. She wants me to set her free. She said my mother slept with one of the Old Ones on Samhain when he was freed for the night, and he spilled his power within her womb. I can feel the Hallows. I can feel the power of the ley lines. I can wield it. I used that power to push my mother back at the Queensmoot.”
And a torrent of magic so bright and burning burst from me, driving her to her knees.
“I am the leanabh an dàn.”
Thiago’s jaw drops.
The truth crashes over him like a tidal wave, and every flicker of it paints his face. Horror. Denial. Then anger. It’s a storm that bruises his eyes, but he cuts right to the heart of my fear. “You’ve known for months. Why didn’t you tell me?”
My heart feels lik
e a small, helpless thing, crushed by a relentless fist.
“You were going to kill the leanabh an dàn,” I whisper, “to prevent Angharad from getting what she wants.”
Thunder darkens his brow. “And you thought I would... That I would….”
“No, of course not!” He wouldn’t hurt me. I know he wouldn’t hurt me. “But….”
“But, what?” Thiago looms closer, his expression incredulous. “You thought I would turn away from you? You thought I would….” He breaks off with a curse, his lip curling in a snarl. “No. I’m not even going to say it. Because it’s such a fucking insult to me. To us. I love you. I’ve told you a thousand times. I will never stop loving you. But when will you believe it?”
“My mother—”
“Your mother never loved you, Vi,” he yells. “That’s not love. It’s not even a fucking mockery of love. She gave you a crumb and you were pathetically grateful for it. And if she denied you those crumbs, then you would beg for them.”
The heat drains out of my skin and I blanch.
And maybe it’s true, because that was all I knew.
Every day in my mother’s court was a bloodied game. Would she smile at me today? Or would her face be cold and expressionless, her voice chastising? Would she seat me at her side for dinner? Or would she sentence me to the oubliette for some obscure punishment?
Every time she pressed a kiss to my hair, the lump in my throat would threaten to choke me, my heart skittering out of control. Because her love—her favor—was something that always had to be earned, and it could be torn away from me with a single wrong word.
I told myself I stopped caring.
I wouldn’t wear the gowns she insisted upon. I refused to perform her little tests. I hammered armor into shape around my battered heart and gave her a merciless little smile whenever she turned scathing words upon me, but the mortal blow she struck was etched upon my heart as a little girl.
And no armor can defend against a wound which is already taken.
“I know,” I whisper. “I know it wasn’t love.”
The only hint of love I’ve ever known before I met him was what I felt for Andraste, but even that was torn away from me.