Page 53 of A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

52

Bastian

I barely slept. Kat’s accusations were thunder in my thoughts, and I hated arguing with her, so I argued in my mind instead. All night long.

No surprise, we were subdued the next morning, both dragging ourselves from bed before dawn. I suspected she did it for the same reason as me—she couldn’t sleep, so lying there felt pointless.

I was mentally pulling together some of my arguments from the night so I could explain them to Kat and make her understand, when a messenger arrived with a note from Braea.

She wanted to meet me early for our handover. I groaned, too tired to bite it back.

“What’s wrong?” Kat was at my side at once, so concerned, it gripped my heart.

What had I done in life to deserve the care of such a person?

“Just an earlier summons than I was expecting. Which means a longer meeting.” I flashed her the note along with a reassuring smile. “No one’s died.”

But Kat’s face dropped like someone had.

“What—?”

She snatched the edge of the paper, taking another look at it. “This… is this Braea’s writing? Or her assistant’s?”

“Braea wrote it.”

“This… I think it’s the same writing as the letter Cyrus had—the one encouraging him to take the throne.”

I flinched. “What? No .”

No. Because if that was true…

I snapped, “Why would she want Cyrus to act against his father?”

“I don’t know. To make herself look good in comparison? Or maybe she thought he’d be easier to overthrow once she got hold of the Crown?”

My heart thumped, loud and hard like it was preparing for battle. Everything around me was crumbling. “No. That’s…”

If that was true, then I’d been living a lie. If that was true, then what had I killed my father for?

It couldn’t be.

I clad myself in the cool, calm exterior of the Serpent of Tenebris.

I wasn’t going to fight with Kat. Not again. “It’s an interesting idea, and I appreciate you looking out for Elfhame, but a silly little note proves nothing, especially as we can’t compare it to the letter to Cyrus.” I tossed the message on the fire—something Cyrus should’ve done with anything he’d wanted to keep secret—and left for my meeting with Braea.

It felt a lot like running away.

I listened to Braea’s updates and orders. A lot of busy work and nothing truly important. But in my head I only heard Kat’s voice.

All night it had needled me, and as we approached dawn, I still couldn’t bloody well escape it. Even reminding myself of my job, my persona, Bastian’s personal concerns still gnawed on me.

Finally, Braea handed over a list of books from Dawn Court that might relate to the Crown and asked me to request them, since Kat and I were on good terms with Sepher—his manipulations aside.

I looked at the list. It was long, and many of the volumes seemed, at best, tangentially related to the Crown of Ashes. She was grasping at straws.

“Why do you want the Crown?”

She blinked at me, eyebrows raising.

“I thought you just wanted to keep it out of Cyrus’s hands, since he was pursuing it. As best we can tell, Sepher doesn’t even know of its existence. So why are you still after it?”

She opened and closed her mouth three times.

I’d never seen her speechless before. It felt like the world was tipping over so slowly I almost didn’t notice until I started falling with it.

“And Sura. What happened? Because you weren’t fighting her when you killed her—she was cuffed in iron. Helpless.” The words spilled out, a glass toppling over as everything else fell. More questions came, so quickly I could barely keep up. “And Nyx? How did she die, exactly? Whose arrows shot her off that bridge? You always made it sound like the unseelie attacker was guilty, but I heard it was you.”

If she admitted the truth, would that make it better?

“Why did you finally agree to try and help the shapechangers? For their sake as your people? Or to appease me? And why didn’t you help my athair ? Even though I practically begged you to free him. How many times have I asked you for something personal like that? Yet still you insisted on conceding to Cyrus. Why ? And what geas did you place on Kaliban to stop him talking?”

Leaving him to Cyrus’s mercy, I could understand if she truly thought he was guilty.

But there was one thing I couldn’t shake off or explain away. One question she had never really answered.

“Did Cyrus request Kat as a guest? Or did you offer her?”

Her eyelids fluttered as she pulled back.

“Because the way I see it, if Cyrus asked for her, you could’ve negotiated. You could’ve offered someone else. Me . Think of what I could’ve done in Dawn—the information I might’ve been able to pry out. But instead you let a human who barely knows our ways walk in there—a fucking lamb to slaughter.”

“She’s hardly an innocent.” She scoffed.

My blood boiled. “Braea.” I’d never said her name in warning before, and it stilled her.

Slowly, she approached, brow furrowed. “What has got into you?” She reached for my shoulder, but I twisted from reach.

“No. I need you to answer me.” I hated that it was a need. I hated that I trembled and had to clench my fists to stop it. “Just one answer. Pick any of those questions and give me a proper fucking answer.”

With a sigh, she turned and paced away. “Your father. I did place a geas upon him. Something he couldn’t speak of.”

Not the question I thought she would choose.

At one of the high windows that looked out over Tenebris, she stood with her back to me and leant against the frame. “Back when he was fighting for the other side and some called me a pretender to the throne. Those days feel like a dream, they’re so long ago.”

I knew she was millennia old, but it had always been an abstract idea I couldn’t quite grasp. Yet now, she looked and sounded every one of those tiring years.

“The war had been raging for so long and so many were dead. I wanted the throne, yes, but most of all, I was desperate for it to end. You know”—she half turned—“I was the first person to suggest it might end us. Not sure I ever told you that.”

She hadn’t, though it was an idea that troubled me more days than I cared to admit.

“A book was brought to me. Some old, old fae—old enough to call me ‘child’—appeared in our camp one evening, just as the sun was setting. I took the timing as a good omen. But then I saw what he carried. A book of infernal magic—rituals from the time before the unseelie were banished, when magic was wilder and needed to be tamed with spells and incantations.”

One thing my athair had been able to say was “her infernal book”—I’d assumed it was his way of cursing the thing, not an actual text from the age of myth.

“There was a spell inside that allowed the caster to create huge beasts that could be set upon their foes. Creatures that wouldn’t question orders and could be controlled with the right words.”

The simmering of my blood had calmed, but now it ran cold. I had the horrible sensation I knew where this was going. Please, gods, say I’m wrong .

“He whispered in my ear, told me I should use the spell, create an army that would win me the throne.” She hung her head and crossed her arms. “I admit, I considered it for longer than I should’ve. An end to the war. I was desperate. Yet not so desperate that I would kill every fae who opposed me. So I sent him away. But I kept the book.”

The palace suddenly seemed very quiet, like every fae in Tenebris held their breath and waited for her to go on.

“It was almost a year before I had a different idea. A better idea, or so I believed at the time.” She huffed out a breath, shoulders sinking. “I need you to understand, Bastian. I really did believe it would be for the best. Or better than the alternative, at least.”

“You used the book,” I whispered. “You made them.” I couldn’t bring myself to name them, but the iridescent black gloss of their carapaces skittered on the edge of my vision.

“ I didn’t. I had a spy plant it in their camp. Somewhere I knew it would find its way to their would-be queens. I knew it would turn folk against them—it would cost them support and soldiers. They would come to me and Lucius en mass, horrified at what their leaders had done. And the war would be over.”

Just as my fathers had. The great General Sylen Marwood’s defection at the eleventh hour had handed her and Lucius their thrones.

My shadows clung to me, still and tight, like they knew there was a greater darkness coming.

I didn’t want to hear her next words. I didn’t want to believe it.

But they came anyway.

“I gave them the means to create the Horrors.”

The world that had tipped before, upended. My body felt as though it had been stuffed, leaving me little space to breathe, muffling all sound.

I’d known the Horrors had been made. But I thought they’d been an accidental side effect of so much magic being blasted across battlefields, one the other side had harnessed. Not something that had been created deliberately .

“You gave them just enough rope to hang themselves.” I didn’t even sound like myself—it was like someone else spoke and I just paid witness.

“That’s one way to put it. After the war, I tried to control them using other rituals in the book. But nothing worked for long, except for the wards. We had to ensure the magic users who’d carried out the rituals were executed so they wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about that book and the secrets of how to raise the Horrors. I couldn’t have anyone else using them like that again.”

She turned to me, a bitter smile on her face. “I regret what happened. I didn’t know they would be unleashed upon the country—I thought they could be made and then un made. Hells, I expected their ranks to defect before the creatures were ever deployed. I can only thank the Stars above that book also contained instructions for the wardstones, or else, I dread to think…” She shivered, pulling her arms tighter around herself, hip leaning into the table at her side. “But, I promise you, Bastian, I didn’t expect them to use them on civilians so much.”

I shuddered away from the image of Innesol’s families lined up, and the husks that remained after. “ So much ? Then you knew they would be used on civilians and that wasn’t enough to stay your hand?”

“Is it not better this way?” she snapped. “Better that I have ruled over peace for a thousand years than let war rage on and on? Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t create the Horrors, I merely gave them the means to, if they so chose. And they chose .” She drove her finger into the table, jabbing out those three words. “They chose their fates. Their decision lost them the war and won us a thousand years of peace. Is that not worth any cost?”

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, but I couldn’t obliterate the little shoes lying in the wreckage of the town. “Children, Braea. They used them on children .”

“They did. Them , not me. You know there is always a price. Always . And now you understand the first one I paid.” Her voice trembled—something I’d never heard from her. It made my hands fall away. “Sometimes I think I also paid with my daughters’ lives—my punishment for allowing the Horrors to be made.”

Did she really believe the ends justified the means? Even now, knowing all she did?

I didn’t have the energy to process this. I didn’t have the ability to feel when a mountain had just been dropped on me. There was one practical thought in my brain. “Where is the book now?”

“Safe.”

That was something. There had to be answers in its pages—she might have missed something that would banish the Horrors for good. But that could wait. The Horrors weren’t going anywhere.

“Well.” I swallowed, nodded, not quite feeling connected to my body. “You certainly answered my question.”

“I owed you that much. Your father knew about the book—he was one of the few with knowledge of it who wasn’t executed. Hence the geas.”

I was still nodding. “I need to…” I started towards the door, needing to escape to somewhere quiet to make sense of all this. Because it was starting to feel like I’d been working for a monster. That couldn’t be, and yet…

“I’m afraid there’s something else I need from you.” She actually sounded apologetic. “But perhaps the trip will give you a chance to clear your head. I know I just piled a lot on you. It’s natural that you should need a little time.”

I forced my back straight and inclined my head. I was the Night Queen’s Shadow. I didn’t get to be Bastian Marwood. “What does my queen need of me?”