Page 73 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

Resting my elbows on the table, I rub my temples, trying to ease the pressure in my mind. Trying to breathe through the recounting of my mother’s pain. A pain I share.

“My father told me she made the most beautiful white roses,” I say. “Not black like the ones she must have made later. I wish I could have seen them together. When they were happy. I wish I could have met her… Even at her most furious… There’s a hole in my heart that can never be filled.”

I raise my eyes to find the Mothers resting their chins in their hands, their lips set in firm lines, their expressions indecipherable. Pensive and tense.

Other pieces of information that Miriam gave me are suddenly registering, namely that Ember women aren’t allowed into battle.

“Wait… Were you punished?”

“For placing ourselves between Ember warriors and your mother?” Miriam asks. “Yes, the Mothers were punished.”

Each of the women pushes up the sleeve of her silks to reveal an Ember burn across the upper-right skin of her arm.

I gasp. Dear Goddess, but those scars look like…

Urgently, I hum to my armor so that the silver retracts from my right shoulder, exposing the scar of my long-ago Ember burn.

The woman I believe is named Charis jolts toward me, the first of the Mothers to speak directly with me and the nearest to me on my right. “How did you get that burn?”

The other women gasp. “Charis! You must not speak with her!”

I’m surprised by their exclamations but don’t have time to ask them for an explanation.

“How, please?” Charis insists.

Speaking carefully, I say, “I stepped between an elderly villager and an Ember Fae who came to buy ripplefish pearls. The Ember man wanted pink pearls and the villager had none. Ripplefish pearls are never pink.”

“Dear Goddess.” Charis leans back, her hand to her mouth. “But how?”

Miriam’s eyes are wide. “I don’t know.”

“He was erratic toward the end,” another woman says. “Remember how he disappeared for days. We never knew where he went.”

I have no idea what they’re talking about. “Whom are you speaking of?”

Miriam’s expression is dark. “We speak of our Former King. Maxim’s father.” She points at my scar. “That burn is his signature mark.”

I try to process this as I consider the scar I’ve instinctively kept covered all my life. It was only when I found out about Victor’s burns that I revealed this scar to Antony. Stellen never asked me about it, but that was his way of avoiding the painful past. Maxim won’t have seen it because I was wearing sleeves at the coastal village and my armor would have covered my shoulder during any interaction I had with him since.

Still, it seems impossible. “You’re telling me I survived an encounter with the former Ember King.”

“How old were you when this happened, Thyra?”

“Thirteen. It was twelve years ago.”

Miriam purses her lips. “Maxim was born a week after you, so that puts him at thirteen years of age at the time, too.” She turns to Charis. “What of the Iron King?”

“Well, I believe he’s twenty-eight now,” Charis says, a finger to her lips. “So he would have been sixteen at the time.”

“Four years after his brother was burned.” Miriam gives a grim nod. “Four years during which my brother’s mind rotted to the point where he was demanding nonexistent pink pearls from coast-dwellers…”

“Pink pearls!” Charis suddenly gasps. “He promised her pink pearls. Do you remember? He wanted to give her the impossible.”

“Oh, that’s right,” another woman says. “I heard him one night near the end. He was mumbling, saying she was whispering blood into his ears⁠—”

“Pink droplets.” Another woman nods hurriedly. “He wanted to pluck them from his mind and give them back to her.”

The women clearly know what they’re talking about, but I’m very confused now. “I don’t understand…”