Page 279 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Disdain crawled up my features. “I’ve always known, Macaria, that you’d be smart enough to face death without death searching for you.” She had not aged a day. Her plum hair was still long and straight, her eyes the darkest of black. Macaria. Urinthia’s second in command. And Penelope’s grandmother—the woman that Donovan, Urinthia’s father, had cheated on his wife with and birthed him a bastard son with the name Lysander. The 102nd Grand Maiden was a lot of things, just not one to hold grudges and waste talent. Talent that this one had plenty in her bag. The violet witch. The one who could see so far in your future, she could predict death and victories. The same one who had foreseen my father’s success in Olympia and prompted him to attack with confidence. Some said she’d made a deal with a death godling in hells and fed him living souls every equinox. Others dared to make assumptions that she was a lovechild of hells beast and that she fed on living souls to foresee without consequence. But right now, she looked like she’d seen better days. “An odd choice of fashion for someone who has come to die.”

Her hands shook and she laced them together on her lap. Fear was the last thing I thought I’d see from her. Not when she’d come to me herself. “I need your help.”

That made me laugh a little. “That is a little melodramatic even for you.”

Her onyx stare shivered. “Last night, Red Coven was attacked, and our Grand Maiden was taken hostage. By your father.”

It took me a moment to gather what she had revealed. “Why would my father do that?”

“Because he is certain that the sceptre pieces are almost ready to assemble, and for that, he will need a Grand Maiden’s magic to do so.”

I scoffed. “He is delusional by default. Your Grand Maiden will be briefly returned to you, I assure you.”

She steeled a look at me. “Because you have the three other sceptre pieces?”

What?

Kilian stepped forward, his jaw ticking. “And how would you come to assume that, witch?”

“I know everything. I foresee it all. Urinthia saw it all, too.” Her gaze drifted all guilt to the ground. When had this poison ivy turned to a wall flower? “Months ago, Urinthia performed a celestial craft, possessing the body of an Umbra to steal the Esmeray diaries in her astral form.”

“That was you?” I asked, suddenly struck with all the answers. The odd Canes and how they had been able to get the book despite the veil.

She nodded. “You had to know what you are. To know what you are able to do and retrieve the sceptre pieces. We thought you would be able to read about your ancestor and figure out how to defeat Aurora. Perhaps even destroy the sceptre itself.”

Ice crawled over my hands. “Always the unnecessary scheming and plotting with you witches. Couldn't you just have told me rather than make me chase circles for months?”

She shrunk back at the sight of my magic. “Not with your father looming and looking for every opportunity to get hold of her. We haven’t stepped once outside our coven for two years now. We’ve lost…we’ve lost many of our own trying to keep Silas away from Urinthia. And we lost even more when they began pledging to Melanthe and chose to serve your father. There is a new revolution within our kind.” Her mouth twisted. “They think of her as some sort of a death god.”

Thora shot to her feet again. “Why would Silas need the Grand Maiden’s magic for the sceptre?”

“To assemble it all together,” Macaria said. “Five hundred years ago, the 49th Grand Maiden and her daughter used a certain craft to divide the sceptre. The sceptre’s magic was holy and heavenly, it took her many tries to manage and dissemble it and it takes an even more complicated one to reassemble it. She combined an anima accissor weapon along with her magic to cut it and by the same sort of weapon shall it be forged. One that takes weeks to months to years to craft and there are not many smiths who are willing or capable of completing such a weapon. The elements are rare too. Unblessed metal mined without magic, the heart—”

“The heart of an Aitan Sphinx,” Kilian said, running a hand through his hair. “And he found that in Solarya. He already has all he needs to craft one. Probably already had a smith moulding one, too.”

The witch nodded. “The eight elder Crafter’s left pieces of hidden keys all over the hiding places to make the assembling even more challenging. The Sphinx, the diaries, the Grand Maiden. Finding the pieces was never the hard part, assembling them was. This is where it gets worse.” She swallowed hard. “The sceptre cannot be wielded by just anyone. Kegan did not lose control of it. He could not control it to begin with, so Aurora’s own anger took charge back then.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“You,” she said, looking at me like I was some sort of a death god. “Your bloodline was asked to wield the sceptre. Only the Elding could command Aurora. Humans are mercurial by their definition. And Fader hates that about us more than anything so he asked Zephyr, Nubil’s second, after he descended in Numen to be with his wife to pass this ability to all his generations. Only the divine can control the divine.”

Hells. “Then how would father wield the sceptre?”

“By becoming divine.” Hells.

“Almost,” Macaria said, unhooking a pouch from her belt and bringing a folded piece of paper from it. She smoother the edges and pointed down at an old, faded drawing of what looked like some sort of armour. “Kegan and Silas have not been the only greedy kings in this realm. Eons ago, another Krigborn king that you all might know by the name of Tenebrose, drew this. An anima accissor armour that would mimic the divine. One that would trick the sceptre’s power. Fortunately, he died before he could assemble all the pieces to complete. But your father already has all of them.”

To say that I’d been stunned into stupor was an understatement. How…how long had father been planning this for? Then came the realisation. Bitter and burning. “This…this is why father had us. Why he ruined Olympia. He wanted someone to wield the sceptre. He ruined my kingdom so there would be no more Elding to wield the sceptre.”

When Macaria nodded, my sight coated red. It blurred with fury. And then burned with rage. I was sure I was breathing out fire. “He never intended to use us in the first place. He only wanted to bend us to his will.” The way he’d acted when I’d returned to Isjord—had this been why, had he thought he could still use me?

Thora rested a hand on mine. “It is okay, Snow. We are okay.”

“We are not, Rora. Not until I had his bleeding heart on my hand.”

Kilian took the paper. “Who knew of this? Who knew to provide Silas with this much information?”

Macaria thought about it for a little and shook her head. “The only person who knew of the Aitan Sphinx, the Ahmes Lore, and the joining of the rod was the Grand Maiden. But Urinthia’s only crime to this world is bringing that bitch back from the dead.”