Page 156 of The Silversmith

I drew in a long, deep breath and whispered, “I wrote that?”

Damond nodded, his dark brow furrowing behind his round glasses. “You left it for Smyth after Simeon took you from him. Four hundred years ago.”

“And he… followed me.”

“Yes.” Damond huffed out an awestruck breath and pushed both the note and letter closer to me. “Yes, Ary, he followed you.”

I had told him not to follow me to Molochai’s camp. He had anyway. And then…

“I swear on every star, every sky, every soul that has passed through this world, I will follow you…”

Even in death, he promised.

“Tell me.” I looked up at my curly-haired friend—friend, I finally decided at that moment. Not an enemy. “Tell me everything you know—every detail. My old life. Tell me about him, what we were. Who I was. I need to hear it from someone who isn’t him. And then I’ll decide what’s true.” Or try to decide.

Damond sighed in relief and leaned forward in his seat like he’d spent the last three weeks preparing for this moment. “You’ve been told how Molochai and Simeon unlocked hidden power from within Nyrida to overthrow the old rulers? The Rexus dynasty. Tyrants.”

I nodded.

“The two of them made Christabel queen in their belief that the people would be more amenable to a matriarchy.”

“Yes. And Christabel fell in love with another man, married him, and it drove Molochai mad.”

“Yes,” said Damond. “But years before Molochai turned completely to the dark, while he still pursued Christabel and continuously failed to win her heart, he found ways to take out his… frustrations. One victim was a young servant girl named Louisa. Vulnerable, early twenties. She became pregnant. Something went wrong while she delivered the child, and she lost too much blood. The child survived, but she did not. Louisa had one older sister, but the sister and her husband rejected the bastard. Luckily, an older woman named Eden, who’d assisted Louisa in delivering the baby, decided she couldn’t abandon an innocent child. She and her husband, Isaac, a blacksmith, took the child and raised him. That child was Smyth.”

Eden and Isaac. He’d told me about them.

“I have loved you since the moment you walked into my blacksmith’s shop…”

Damond’s words were the loom pulling Gavin’s truth together.

“She was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen…”

When he’d said that, he’d looked at me.

“Three and a half years later, Christabel had her husband’s child,” continued Damond. “And that finally broke Molochai. He killed her husband. Then he found the infant, a baby girl, and thrust a dagger through her heart at only three days old. And you now know… that child was you.”

My fingers brushed over the two-inch-wide scar over my heart. The mystery scar that was no longer a mystery. Why else would Elowen have kept it from me?

“Only you didn’t die. You survived, revealing traces of power so incredible that your mother and Simeon kept you locked up in that castle to protect you and keep Molochai from ever learning you were alive. That you were able to survive a dagger to the heart at a few days old…” Damond shuddered. “They loved you, but they were afraid of you. And though you were harmless at the time, just a baby, Simeon knew if Molochai could sense your power, if he found you, there was no telling what he’d do. Either try to kill you again or use you. So he kept you locked up and then decided to use you himself. For… the greater good.”

And there it was. The other villain in the story of my shattered past—Simeon, my uncle. Not my father but my uncle, my real mother’s greedy older brother who’d sought control in his own way and held me captive for centuries.

“I’m one of the last people to defend that manipulative prick,” Damond continued, “but I know—at least I think—that Simeon has always had good intentions. Smyth’s even said so himself, though I don’t think he’d hesitate to kill him if he could.”

When I met Simeon, I wasn’t sure what I would do to him myself.

“If Simeon and Molochai are equal in power, why hasn’t Simeon tried to kill Molochai?”

“Because they’re not equal in power,” Damond answered. “Simeon uses spells—like the one he used to erase your memory—and wards on all the large cities like he placed on Tovick and Brinnea. Molochai pushed the boundaries of the power they once shared. His darkness—those shadows—that’s something more corrupt than the power the two of them found four hundred years ago, and that’s why Simeon needs you.”

I shook my head. There was time for all of that later. I couldn’t process it, not now, so I shoved it away.

“Gavin said I came to his blacksmith’s shop asking for a weapon, and that’s how we met.”

Damond nodded. “When you were sixteen. He was nineteen. He loved you, he pursued you, and you spent four months sneaking around together before Christabel finally succumbed to her illness. The curse Molochai placed on her. The city was sacked. Simeon had found out about you and Smyth by then, had forbidden your union, but instead of staying in that castle as he commanded, you ran away. To Smyth. You were married, and he brought you here.”

I looked around and absorbed the calming comfort of the seaside cabin, seeing it in a different light. He’d told me about this place—his favorite place—and I could see why. The bright oak and gentle blues and greens in every piece of decor were soothing, and the sound of the ocean was a constant restorative.