Page 8

The look my mother gives me is both proud and full of worry. “My son, you’re already powerful. Not yet powerful enough to escape your father’s clutches, but one day … one day you might become the very thing he fears.”

I don’t know what to do with her words. At any other time I might preen under the praise, but right now … they sit like spoiled meat in my stomach.

She releases my hand and moves over to her rickety bed. She pushes it aside, staring at the ground beneath it. I follow her gaze, looking at the uneven, rocky surface. Other than some dust motes, there’s nothing to be seen.

She holds her hand out and mutters a few words under her breath. My arms prickle as I feel her magic drift out from her. The ground shimmers, like a mirage, then disappears, revealing a huge pit in its place. And inside the pit …

“Mom …?”

I stare, transfixed, at the mountain of coins that fill it nearly to the brim. Some are copper, some are silver, but most are gold. Scattered between them are rough cut gemstones, the kind that pulse with heartbeats.

Lapis viventem. Alchemist stones.

“What—what is all this?” I ask.

There’s far more money here than a scribe makes. Whatever my mother has been doing, it’s not just scribbling out the histories of Arestys.

My mother stares at the treasure. “It’s yours,” she says, her gaze moving to me.

Her words are like a blow to the chest. She’s been saving all this money … for me?

I’m shaking my head. Fairies don’t give gifts like this, not without catches. Not even to their brood.

It feels like cursed magic.

“I won’t take it.”

“Youwill, my son,” she says, “along with the rest of your inheritance.”

I furrow my brows as I look at her. There’s more?

She looks steadily at me. “My secrets.”

My heart is pounding, and whatever she’s about to say, I don’t want to hear it becausesecrets are meant for one soul to keep.

I pinch my eyes shut and shake my head over and over again. I refuse to think of what it means that she’s breaking one of her deepest rules. That she’s giving me herinheritance. That’s an ominous word to use.

“Desmond,” she says, touching my shoulder and shaking me slightly, “where is the man I raised? I need you to be strong for me right now.”

My eyes open at her words, and I’m silently begging her to not go down this path, but she ignores my look.

“The King of Day owes me a favor. Take this money, buy yourself asylum.”

Asylum? In the Kingdom of Day? Forced to never see the night?

“If he won’t accept your money, tell him you’re the daughter of Larissa Flynn and Galleghar Nyx. Show him your wings if you need to. He will not refuse you then.”

“Only if you come with me,” I say. Because that seems to be the catch—acquire safety, but abandon my mother. And that I will not do.

She cups my cheek. “I can’t, my son. I bought my fate long ago.”

I squint at her, not understanding.

“Listen carefully,” she says, “because I only have time to tell you this once. I didn’t love your father—I never did,” she says.

As soon as the words leave her mouth, I still. So many times I imagined asking her about this—how she came into my father’s clutches. I couldn’t fathom how my clever, principled mother could care for the Shadow King, a man who collected wives and killed his children.

“My name once was Eurielle D’Asteria. Originally, I was one of the king’s spies,” she admits.