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Another shift of memory, and Fionn pulled a long blade from the Cauldron, dripping water. A black blade, whose dark metal absorbed any trace of light around it. Bryce’s knees weakened.
The Starsword.
Two other figures stood there, veiled in the thick snow, but Bryce hardly got a chance to wonder about them before Silene’s narration began anew.
They fought the Daglan and won, she went on. Using the Daglan’s own weapons, they destroyed them. Yet my parents did not think to learn the Daglan’s other secrets—they were too weary, too eager to leave the past behind.
“Wait,” Bryce cut in. “How did they use those weapons?” Nesta and Azriel cast wary looks her way. “How the fuck did they use them? And what other secrets—”
But Silene kept speaking, history unspooling from her lips.
My father became High King, and my mother his queen, yet this island on which you stand, this place … my mother claimed it for herself. The very island where she had once served as a slave became her domain, her sanctuary. The Daglan female who’d ruled it before her had chosen it for its natural defensive location, the mists that kept it veiled from the others. So, too, did my mother. But more than that, she told me many times that she and her heirs were the only ones worthy of tending this island.
Nesta murmured to Azriel, “The Prison was once a royal territory?”
Bryce didn’t care—and Azriel didn’t reply. Silene had glossed over how Theia and Fionn had used the Trove and Cauldron against the Asteri, and why the Hel had she come to this planet if not to learn about that?
Yet once again, Silene’s memory plowed forward.
And with the Daglan gone, as the centuries passed, as the Tithe was no longer demanded of us or the land, our powers strengthened. The land strengthened. It returned to what it had been before the Daglan’s arrival millennia before. We returned to what we’d been before that time, too, creatures whose very magic was tied to this land. Thus the land’s powers became my mother’s. Dusk, twilight—that’s what the island was in its long-buried heart, what her power bloomed into, the lands rising with it. It was, as she said, as if the island had a soul that now blossomed under her care, nurtured by the court she built here.
Islands, like those they’d seen in the carvings, rose up from the sea, lush and fertile.
Bryce couldn’t take her gaze off the wondrous sight, even as Silene continued. After centuries with an empty womb, my mother bore both my sister and me within a span of five years. My father was fading by then—he was centuries older than my mother. But Fionn did not consider my mother a worthy successor. The crown should go to the eldest child, he said—to my sister, Helena. It was time, he thought, for a new generation to lead.
It did not sit well with my mother, or with many of those in her court—especially her general, Pelias. He agreed with my mother that Helena was too young to inherit our father’s throne. But my mother was still in her prime. Still ripe with power, and it was clear that she’d been blessed by the gods themselves, since she had been gifted children at long last.
So it was just as it had been before: those behind the throne worked to upend it.
The image shifted to some sort of marsh—a bog. Fionn rode a horse between the islands of grass, bow at the ready as he ducked beneath trees in bloom.
My parents often went hunting in the vast slice of land the Daglan had kept for their private game park, where they had crafted terrible monsters to serve as worthy prey. It was there that he met his death.
A dark-haired, pale creature that could have been the relative of the nøkk in Jesiba’s gallery dragged a bound and gagged Fionn into the inky depths of the bog, the once-proud king screaming as he went under.
Horror rooted Bryce to the spot.
Theia and Pelias stood at the water’s edge, faces impassive.
Petals began falling from the trees. Leaves with them. Birds took flight. As if sudden winter gripped the bog. As if the land had died with its king.
Then the Starsword was thrust from the center of the pool, sparkling in the gray light. A heartbeat later, a scaled hand lifted a dagger—Truth-Teller. Debris or a gift from the creature, Bryce could only guess as they sparkled in the grayish light, dripping water. It didn’t matter—in the face of such treachery and brutality, who fucking cared?
My father had never shown himself to be giving—long had he kept Gwydion and never once offered it to my mother. The dagger that had belonged to his dear friend, slain during the war, hung at his side, unused. But not for long.
Theia extended her hands toward the water, the offered blades. And on phantom wings, sword and dagger soared for her. Summoned to her hands.
Starlight flared from Theia as she snatched the sword and knife out of the air, the blades glowing with their own starlight.
My mother returned that day with only Pelias and my father’s blades. As she had helped Make them, they answered to the call in her blood. To her very power.
Bryce knew that call. Had been hearing it since she arrived in this world. A chill rippled down her spine.
And then she took the Trove for herself.
Theia sat, enthroned, the Harp and Horn beside her, the Mask in her lap, and the Crown atop her head.
Unchecked, limitless power sat upon that throne. Bryce could barely get a breath down.
