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Everywhere he looked, there were bodies.
“No, no, no, no,” he said it to himself a thousand times. He pinched his eyes shut, hoping to open them and stare at the ceiling of his bedroom. But every time he opened them, he saw the same thing.
The city street, littered with bodies. Homes burning. Lightning striking. Buildings falling. Smoke rising.
He tried to think quickly. Yes, this was bad. It was very bad, but the Conclave deserved it. He’d acted in self-defense. He didn’t mean to do… this.
Heaving in gasps, he shook his head quickly.
Morduaine.
Before he went home, before he told his brother what he’d just done, he needed to speak with the queens. They were a part of this treaty as well. Some of the people from his new world would go to Matriaza, and some would go to Morduaine.
But if Matriaza had reneged…
* * *
Lux had opened the egress to the First Queen’s castle. It’d been Véa’s once. He knew it well.
It took time for her guards to let him pass by. Lux’s current state likely played a part in that. He smelled of burned flesh and smoke. His hair was knotted, some part singed off entirely.
And he was bouncing. Literally.
All those souls inside him, not only the Conclave, but everyone in the capital, everyone nearby, maybe even all around the—
He couldn’t think about that. When he was done here, he’d return to Matriaza, and he’d examine the damage. For now, he was just trying to come to grips with this feeling.
It was unlike anything he’d ever experienced.
Like the anxiety of falling off a cliff, or running from a bear, but multiplied by millions. Hefeltthose souls within him. Not their power, although he felt that as well, but their yearn to live. It was like they were clawing him from the inside, tearing his organs apart, desperate to free themselves from the cage that was Lux’s body.
This wasn’t the first time Lux had absorbed a soul, but it’d never felt likethis.Certainly never on a scale like this. When he’d created the souls that now inhabited his world, he’d held them within him, and the mass of those millions felt similar to this. But those souls hadn’t wanted out. They were infants. They’d wanted to stay in the comforting confines of Lux, one of the men who’d played a part in creating them.
These souls were not infants. Many were as ancient as him. They’d already lived, and they wanted to still. They wanted out of him.
And he’d let them out. He didn’t want them inside him any more than they wanted to be. But the Fae queens were far stronger than Lux, and if they’d turned on the par animarum as well, he needed to use their power to defend himself until he could meet with the others.
Ah, fuck, if I did what I think I did, they’re going to kill me either way.
But do I care?
Lux wasn’t sure he deserved to live if he’d done what he believed he had.
Perhaps he’d be alright with death. What he wouldn’t be alright with was Nix and Véa not knowing that another ally had turned on them. If the queens had done what the Conclave had done, they were just as much of a threat to Lux’s children.
A threat that would need eradicated.
He’d be more careful than he’d been on Matriaza, but the fact remained.
When Queen Prinna entered the throne room, she saw Lux, and her trot slowed. “What the fuck happened to you?”
He’d been sitting on a table. He stood. He broadened his shoulders. “Did you know?”
“Did I know what?”
“About the Conclave. What they have planned for my people. For your a ‘chraobh’s”—tree of life, the Fae’s living embodiment of eternal life, Véa— “people.”
She arched a brow, walking past him to the shelf of liquor. “I’m going to need you to elaborate.”
