Page 123 of Fate of the Sun King

The hard glare she gives me suggests she will not waver on this point.

“So then what?” I ask, brushing past it for now, resolving to come back to this later.

“Eventually, I realized I’d need someone with the magic of Heart to find it. And while the magic was ostensibly gone for the whole of Serce’s mistakes, I knew someone else had survived that night and that someone else had carefully safeguarded the magic from being taken from the Primary.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “Safeguarded it?”

Cloris pierces me with a penetrating stare. “Do you have it? The piece of the Heart Crown that Daedra bestowed on your mother?”

Again, I try not to react.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Cloris studies me, and I’m almost positive she doesn’t believe my lie.

“Daedra saw her daughter for who she was that night and understood that Serce had gone over the edge. I watched the Heart Queen send a piece of the Crown with the next Primary.”

“Why?” Nadir asks, sitting forward.

“I suspect it was a way to escape punishment when Serce tried to steal the magic of Heart. The gift of the Primary would pass over her and on to the next. Only no one could have predicted what would happen instead.”

“The explosion. That was the punishment?” he says.

“No,” Cloris says. “That was the bonding she tried to orchestrate herself—there was too much power between them to seal it without precautions. The punishment was when everyone lost their magic for fifty years.”

My vision swims at that revelation. I remember the story Nadir told me. That everyone hated my grandmother because they all lost their magic. None of it had been an accident.

His mouth opens and then closes, a grim set forming to his mouth. “How did Daedra know to give away a piece of the Crown?”

I’m glad he’s the one asking questions, because my mind can’t stop tilting.

Cloris shrugs her bony shoulders. “I can only assume the Crown must have revealed it to her at some point. Perhaps it was as desperate as she was. Whatever the case, I found the child. And lo and behold, not only was she still alive, she was in possession of the magic her grandmother had saved.

“And had three children.”

She levels another look my way.

“I wasn’t expecting to find such strength in someone so young. While my initial goal was your mother the day I encountered you in the forest, I wondered if perhaps she wasn’t the Primary after all. The magic had skipped to you instead. I had intended to use you as leverage against your mother, but you should not have been able to do that to me. It was then I knew you were the reason the Crown had seen fit to protect your family from Serce’s greed.”

I grind my teeth, wishing I had killed her that day. I can’t believe I ever felt bad about it.

“When you managed to best me, I knew I had to find another way. I returned to the most ambitious king in Ouranos, told him what I knew, and waited for him to root you out.”

She sits back and allows those words to settle. She doesn’t need to tell me what came next. Twelve long years behind those bars. I’ve lived those days over and over so many times.

“But you were a tricky thing,” Cloris says with a wrinkle of her nose. “Rion was skeptical of my claims. Suspicious of me despite the way I’d handed Serce’s betrayal to him on a platter. And you refused to let him see your magic. You nearly convinced him you weren’t who I promised you were.”

She purses her lips as though all of that was my fault. I want to stand up and slap her.

“My, how you screamed,” she says in a nearly musical voice, and I’m on my feet in a flash. Nadir’s arms wrap around me as I swing with my fist, barely missing her face. She leans back only a fraction as she clings to that thin, horrid smile.

“You were there,” I spit. “You saw what he did?”

She waves her hand as if it’s of no importance, and I lunge again, but Nadir holds tight.

“Lor,” he whispers softly. I know he’s angry too. I can feel him shaking, but he’s also right that clobbering her will get us nowhere.

Let her keep talking.