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So boo-fucking-hoo and to Hel with her atonement.
I left, wandering the lands for a time, seeing how they had moved on without Theia’s rule. They’d splintered into several territories, and though they were not at war, they were no longer the unified kingdom I had known.
I will spare you the details of how I came to wed a High Lord’s son. Of the years before and after he became the High Lord of Night, and I his lady. He wanted me to be High Lady, as the other lords’ mates were, but I refused. I had seen what power had done to my mother, and I wanted none of it.
Yet when my first son was born, when the babe screamed and the sound was full of night, I brought him to the Prison and keyed the wards into his blood. No one knew that the infant who sometimes glowed with starlight had inherited it from me. That it was the light of the evening star. The dusk star.
And this island that had become barren and empty … this, too, was his. I told him, when he was old enough, what I had left here for him. So that someone might be able to access this record, to know the risks of using the Trove and the threat of the Asteri, always waiting to return here. I made sure he knew that the buried weapon he’d need against the Asteri was down here. I only asked that he not tell his father, my mate. To my knowledge, he never has. And one day, he has promised to tell his son, and his son after him. A secret shame, a secret history, a secret weapon—all hidden within our bloodline. Our burden to carry forward, carved and recounted here so that if the original history becomes warped or parts of it lost to time … here it is, etched in stone.
Nesta murmured to Azriel, “Does Rhys … does he know?”
“No,” Azriel replied without an ounce of doubt. “Somewhere along the line … all this was forgotten, and never passed on.”
Bryce couldn’t bring herself to care. She knew the truth now, and all that mattered was getting home to Midgard to share it with others. With Hunt.
But to the rest of the world, Silene said, I ensured that my mother and her lands became a whisper. Then a legend. People wondered if Theia had ever existed. The old generation died off. I clung to life, even after my mate had passed. As an elder, I spun lies for my people and called them truth.
“No one knows what became of Theia and General Pelias,” I told countless generations. “They betrayed King Fionn, and Gwydion was forever lost, his dagger with it.” I lied with every breath.
“Theia and Fionn had two daughters. Unimportant and unimpressive.” That was the hardest, perhaps. Not that my own name was gone. But that I had to erase Helena’s, too.
Bryce glowered. Erasing her sister’s name was worse than butchering human families?
My son had sons, and I lived long enough to see my grandsons have sons of their own. And then I returned here. To the place that had once been full of light and music, and now housed only terrors.
To leave this account for one whose blood will summon it, child of my child, heir of my heir. To you—I leave my story, your story. To you, in this very stone, I leave the inheritance and the burden that my own mother passed to me.
The image blurred, and there she was again. That old, weary face.
I hope the Mother will forgive me, Silene said, and the hologram dissolved.
“Well, I fucking don’t,” Bryce spat, and flipped off the place where Silene had stood.
22
Hunt could only watch in despair as the Bright Hand of the Asteri swept into the chamber, followed by Pollux and the Hawk. The Hawk noted the hand still dangling from the chains and laughed.
“Just like a rat,” the Hawk taunted, “gnawing off a limb when caught in a trap.”
“Get fucked,” Baxian spat, Ruhn’s blood coating his face, his neck, his chest.
“Language,” Rigelus chided, but didn’t interfere as Pollux snatched the iron poker from where Ruhn still clutched it between his feet. Ruhn, to his credit, tried to hold on to it, legs curling upward to tuck it close. But weakened and bleeding … there was nothing he could do. Pollux ripped it away, beating Ruhn’s back once with it—prompting a pained grunt from the prince—then used the poker to prod Ruhn’s severed hand from the shackle above.
It landed on the filthy ground with a sickening thump.
Smiling, the Hawk picked it up like it was a shiny new toy.
Observing the three of them, Rigelus said mildly, “If I’d known you were so bored down here, I would have sent Pollux back sooner. Here I was, thinking you’d had enough of pain.”
Pollux stalked to the lever, wings glowingly white. With a smirk, the Hammer pulled it and sent all three of them dropping heavily to the ground.
The agony that blasted through Hunt drowned out Ruhn’s scream as the prince landed on his severed wrist.
Hunt gave himself one breath, one moment on that filthy floor to sink down into the icy black of the Umbra Mortis. To fight past the pain, the guilt, to focus. To lift his head.
Rigelus stared down at them impassively. “I’m hoping that I will soon have further insight into where Miss Quinlan might have gone,” he crooned. “But perhaps you might feel inclined now to talk?”
Ruhn spat, “Fuck off.”
