Page 5 of On Brutal Thrones

Fenric gets slowly to his feet. “There are no fae.”

“Apparently there’s one.”

“Nyx.” His gaze moves over me with the intense concentration he usually reserves for a problem he’s trying to solve. “The gods hunted your kind to extinction. They were too powerful, too resistant to divine magic. Every history of the Purges says the same thing.”

“Then every history of the Purges is wrong.”

Thorian still hasn’t spoken.

His stare makes me more nervous than either of their questions. I can almost see him going backward through the Trials, reconsidering everything he’s seen me do. The beasts on the first day. The magic I wrapped around him. Every moment when he looked at me as though he knew there was an answer I wasn’t giving him.

“That first Trial,” he says at last. “When you protected me.”

I nod.

Understanding settles across his face. “Fae magic.”

“Yes.”

“How?” Fenric asks. “Were your parents fae?”

A knot forms in my throat. “Yes, although we never really talked about it. I wasn’t allowed to ask questions, and I definitely wasn’t allowed to explore what I could do. My mother only ever told me that no one could know and that I was never to use my magic.”

Thorian lifts an eyebrow. “You failed rather spectacularly at that.”

Despite everything, a laugh slips from me. “Mostly. I mostly followed the rule.”

“Mostly,” Talon echoes.

“It’s hard not to use it sometimes.” I rub my palm against my thigh, suddenly aware of that familiar restless sensation beneath my skin. “It doesn’t feel like a weapon I can put down. It feels like part of me.”

Talon’s expression sobers again. “How do the gods not know?”

“I don’t know.” That question has haunted me for years. “Maybe my parents found a way to hide me. Maybe the gods stopped looking once they believed they’d killed us all. I only know I’ve kept it hidden my entire life.”

Saying the words aloud makes the danger of what I am suddenly real.

Fenric has spent the Trials fighting for the chance to return to his family. Thorian knows better than anyone what the gods are capable of when they decide someone is a threat. Talon has survived by knowing when a complication is worth embracing and when it’s better left behind.

And I have just made myself the greatest complication imaginable.

“I understand if this changes things,” I say quietly. “Being associated with me could put all of you in danger, and I can only hope that you’ll keep this between us.”

“Nyx…”

Thorian crosses the small space between us before I can say anything else. His arms close around me, pulling me firmly against his chest.

“This changes nothing.”

My throat tightens.

Fenric joins us next, his hand settling against my back, and Talon crowds in from the other side until the four of us are tangled together in a cave barely large enough to hold us.

“What did you think?” Talon murmurs near my ear. “That you could get rid of us that easily?”

A laugh escapes me, embarrassingly wet with tears. “No.”

“Good. Because being hunted by the gods is hardly new territory for this group.”