Page 196 of A Legacy of the Light

His attention focuses on me, the coldness in his eyes fracturing my heart. The hard, darkened gaze is so much like his father.

“I told you I’d make sure you saw your Granny again.” A cruel smile curls his mouth.

Dark shadows coil and swirl around his shoulders and flick down his arm, around the blade that caresses the skin of Granny’s throat where he holds her.

“Who is that? What do you want?” Callahan bites out between clenched teeth.

Tavish leans to purr in Granny’s ear. “Show them. Or your little Elspeth will pay the price.”

Her nostrils flare and she closes her eyes. Static energy hums around her, making her form shiver and quake. The Craobh nestled against my ribs pulses, and the band flexes around that second beat I feel in my chest as she uses her magic. Granny pulls back whatever disguise she has kept in place for one hundred and fifty years.

She pants, and sweat trickles down the side of her face. The face that now looks so much like my own, only older. Her green eyes are the same shade, but the set of her wrinkles have faded and her face has changed shape. Her long silver hair is now as blonde as mine.

The Seelie around us, save for me, Callahan, Rach, Grandpa, and Reyne, drop to one knee before Màiri Darrow, the lost queen returned to Elfayne at last. Callahan looks to me, realization dawning as he puts the puzzle pieces together.

Tavish tips his head back and laughs. “You see, dear cousin, I have spent years searching for the lost queen who fled to the human realm. And two years ago, I finally found her.” Tavish grips Granny’s hair in a tight fist and pulls her head back, exposing more of her throat. “And it turns out, she had a daughter. But she couldn’t wield, could she, Your Majesty? No light for her,” he snarls. “So after I took care of her, that just left Màiri Darrow, the last light wielder.”

I can’t breathe. The air in my lungs is frozen solid. My heart squeezes in my chest and the last five months flash before my eyes.

“It was you . . .” I mumble. “You killed my mother?”

A savage grin spreads across Tavish’s lips. “Oh, how she screamed.”

Reyne moves to stand next to me and takes my hand in hers, giving me the same comfort I gave her when Eòghann entered our tent. Rach moves to my other side and does the same as Tavish continues.

“I took her majesty back to Elfayne with me. She was so weak and pathetic from being in the human world for so long. And I expected that would be the end of it. Expected that, when I finally killed her, there would be no more light wielders and I would end any legitimate claim to the throne. We would finally rule.”

My head spins and my vision threatens to go dark.

For as long as the light remains, the wicked darkness shall never reign.

As long as Darrow blood lived, the Dorche could never rule Elfayne. So they killed them all.

“Only Màiri’s daughter wasn’t the last one. Oh no, I found little Elsie here quite by accident.”

The bar.

He’d looked at me like he wanted to possess me.

“Why?” Reyne demands, lifting her chin high.

Not why did he kill my mother. Why did he pull the remnants of my heart from my chest and play them like puppets on a string.

“How else was I going to break her?” he shrugs. “I like my playthings broken.”

Break me? Plaything?

This was a game to him.He never wanted me. He wanted to destroy me so thoroughly I would never be a threat to him.

“Stay strong, sweetheart,” Granny’s voice echoes in my mind and my eyes find hers. Confirmation of what I have known deep down all along, she found a way to be with me.

Sorrow fills her face—sorrow for me as she realizes what Tavish has done.

“You were so easy to fool,” Tavish taunts and Granny’s lips peel back from her teeth. “So lonely and desperate in your heartache. I barely had to try.”

His words slice through me like a thousand cuts at once.

“What’s your grand plan? Why are you here and what do you want?” Callahan demands, stopping Tavish’s cruel tirade, mist still curling around his wrists and forearms.