Page 114 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

Stellen’s tension fades. “You knew my mother?”

“I met with her in secret. Also with Maxim’s aunt, Miriam. They couldn’t meet each other, so I was the conduit between them. We wanted to change the course of your lives.” Her gaze moves from Stellen to me. “Did we fail?”

Impossible to answer.

Stellen takes a step back, casting me a narrowed-eyed glare, but I assess it’s not only because of my attitude toward his attempt at peace. In the distance, the vampyric shrieks are growing louder.

“Judging by the way they’re swarming, I can only buy you a few minutes,” Stellen says. “Make the most of it.”

Then, to Riven, he says, “Come with me, but stay behind me at all times. You are a second line of defense only.”

Riven gives me a solemn nod before turning away. “My king.”

Fuck it.

“I’m not,” I say, causing the young Iron Fae to miss a step. And Stellen with him. “I’m not the Iron King. Not anymore.”

A weight lifts from my shoulders, a heaviness I’ve been carrying for years, and with its absence comes a freedom I need.

My purpose is Thyra. Keeping her alive and safe is my only goal now.

Stellen acknowledges my declaration. “Good.” Then he hurries away into the darkness, his pale robes and white hair making him clearly visible, along with his white wolf.

Well, the vampyrs will certainly know whom to target.

My mother’s starlight fades as she crosses the distance to me, her power no longer biting as she peers up at me. “I have so many questions, but most importantly, there are things I need you to know about that night.”

I’m suddenly wary. “You don’t need to speak of that.”

“I do,” she says, peering earnestly up at me. “I should have been there to stop him.”

Not even remotely what I expected her to say.

“When your father forced you into the catacombs, I wasn’t there to stop him,” she says. “I was in the south, visiting Miriam. If I’d known what he was going to do, I would have⁠—”

“Stop,” I say. “It’s done.”

“But you need to know why I came south.”

“Mother, you really don’t have to⁠—”

Her palm presses to my armored chest, a silent but firm command for me to listen. “When the False Queen fled with the Dragonstone Blade all those generations ago, the three generals raided her belongings. They took the anvil, the hammer, her Chronicle—yes, it was hers—and they seized the male Blood Fae who had forged the blade.

“They divided the spoils between themselves. The Frost General took the anvil. The Ember General took the Blood Fae, since he had originated from the Tol-Dakri. The Iron General took the hammer and the Chronicle.

“The Chronicle, as you know, was kept in the royal library, but the hammer was entrusted to the Vividari. Not by choice. Once separated from the Blood Fae, the hammer began emitting a dark light and with every passing day, it grew darker and darker. The Blood Fae had cast a blood bind onto it, and one of those runes was creating the darkness.”

This isn’t news to me. The hammer crumbled when the blood bind transferred to Thyra. Stellen and I spoke about it. He was hopeful a Ferocie Scribe might be able to alter the runes on Thyra’s arms to overcome the blood bind’s purpose, whatever it might be.

“So the Vividari hid the hammer away to control its light,” Mother continues. “For generations, we guarded the hammer. But then an Ember Fae burned your brother.”

I stiffen. She’s talking about the assassin who came for me and nearly killed Victor instead.

“By a simple act of fate,” she says, “I sought to distract Victor from his pain by describing every detail of the hammer to him. Only to realize that the runes had been altered! I don’t know when it happened, but it was within my lifetime. An additional rune had been added and the shapes of the original runes had been distorted.”

“To what end?” I ask.

“I don’t know.” Her bright eyes are wide. “What I truly feared was how. Blood Fae are supposed to be extinct, but only a powerful Merovian could have made such changes.