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Medra. Little Medra. Baby Medra. My innocent niece.
I shook my head frantically. “No. Please.”
“What does he mean? Morgan, what does he mean?” Draven demanded.
I clutched his arm, feeling sick inside. “Medra... She’s the spear. Orcades... This is what she meant.”
Draven’s eyes widened in horror. “No.” He turned to my father. “Not the child. Leave her in peace. I beg you.”
“Beg?” Ancient lips thinned in a grimace. He was foreboding and alien. A being that had no right to strip more life from Aercanum than he already had. “You will beg. Assuredly. Once I have brought the spear here to wield.”
He gave me a look I thought was meant to be paternal. Even reassuring. “It will be better this way, Marzanna. You’ll see. The child was never meant to exist. But now that she does, well... It’s not too late for you at least.” He turned slowly to the grove of oaks that lay behind his throne.
For the first time, I let myself fully take in what lay in the center of the circle of ancient trees.
An altar.
Once, I had been tied to a tree there. My blood was taken and used to forge Excalibur.
As Marzanna, I had died in agonized betrayal.
What was my father planning to forge in blood and agony today?
“She will die so you may live. The power I should never have given up will be repurposed. Funneled into something newer, greater.”
“You would let this one live?” Vela hissed. “Even after all she has done? Even after the grail?”
My father frowned. “A loss, to be sure.”
I thought of the three children of Gorlois le Fay, or Perun as I now thought of my father, who Draven and I had killed.
Lorion. Tempest. Daegen.
Did he consider their deaths a lesser loss than the grail? It certainly seemed so.
“She is here now. She is finally here. This is your chance! Kill her now! End this and take back the power she stole,” Vela pleaded.
“Silence!” My father’s voice boomed like thunder.
He glanced at me, and suddenly, I realized I had heard something I should not have.
A revelation. A confirmation.
“You lost something when you killed me,” I said slowly. “I was right. Power went into me. And now you want it back.”
My father was already powerful. Perhaps he was the most powerful being in Aercanum. If he got back what lay dormant inside me and combined it with the might of the sword and the spear, he would be unstoppable.
“A new world awaits us, Marzanna,” he promised me now. “Aercanum—the way it was always meant to be. The people are weak. Ripe for the plucking. They will serve us as their gods as they have always been meant to. There will be no one higher than you or I. We will be adored, worshiped. No desire will go unmet.”
“I have my heart’s desire,” I said, repulsed. “I have no need for anyone’s worship.”
His lips thinned. “And yet worshiped you still are, Daughter. The platitudes and devotions of thousands go up to you in temples across these lands each day.”
“Not to me,” I contradicted. “To who I used to be.” My heart ached briefly as I thought of the people of Eskira praying to the Three, never knowing the truth. “The temples are a lie. All of this is a lie. We were never meant to be worshiped. We don’t deserve to be.”
My father’s face flushed a color I hadn’t known it could change—turning from icy white to angry red. “We are the most powerful beings Aercanum. We were meant to rule these lower creatures as kings and queens! Gods and goddesses! And you speak of deserving? Does an insect deserve to be stepped upon? There is no deserving. No right, no wrong. There is only power and weakness.”
“Mortals are not insects,” I said furiously. “There is no such thing as a lesser creature. There is such a thing as right in this world. And what you have done with your time here has been beyond evil, Father.”
