Page 122 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Dalca shakes his head, a faint smile on his lips. It hasn’t hit him that something has gone wrong. “The Great King is gone?”

“We do not have the power to kill a god.” Regal authority shines from her, even as she sways on her feet. “And yet you have freed me. You have given me the greatest gift of all, my son.”

I glance at Casvian, who looks as lost as I feel. What is it that we have done? Where is the Great King?

I press my thumb to my wrist, feeling my pulse and the Great Queen’s curse beating underneath. I’m missing something important, something I need to understand. What’s the Great Queen’s intent?

A glance out the window shows the Storm as massive as ever. Lightning streaks lazily through its depths, giving no answer.

The woman who was once Regia, the woman who was named Nayeli Azerad Illusora, smiles with all the warmth of a pale sun on a winter’s morning. “Take me to my husband. I should like to see him.”

“Anything you wish.” Dalca offers her his hand as she walks with the slow care of a woman determined not to fall. He glances at her every few seconds, joy and pride warring on his face.

She murmurs to him, an endless stream of words spoken too quietly to make out her meaning, but the cadence of her speech is strange, desperate, broken like that of a creature tortured for too long.

Dalca hangs on every one of her words like he’s rolling them around his mouth, savoring them, slotting them away into his memories to save them for later.

Casvian and I follow them, and a handful of ikonomancers and Wardana trail after us.

Our peculiar procession parades through the empty halls of the palace, toward the secret wing where the cursed are hidden. Where Dalca’s father lives.

We arrive at the mural, and Dalca presses the poma that opens the secret door and helps his mother across the threshold.

Casvian hesitates, as if waiting for Dalca to give an order. When Dalca doesn’t, he turns to us. “All of you, wait here.” His eyes narrowand his tone grows dark as he considers. “If any one of you breathes a word of this, I’ll have you all strung up.”

The ikonomancers and Wardana meekly obey. I move to stand with them, but Casvian stops me. “You don’t get to sit this out. Come with me.”

He fixes his pale eyes on me. In them I find the fear I expect to see, and something I don’t expect at all: trust. Casvian gestures for me to go before him.

The long hallway is empty. In the atrium, a healer ushers someone back into their room, but he pauses when he catches my eye. One of the stormtouched Wardana. I don’t remember if I ever got his name.

The Queen’s curse rises in me, a pounding throb running through my veins. With it, I sense a tangle within him—not unlike the casket within Dalca—and a thought comes to me:I could undo this.Instinctively, I reach out with hands that are not my hands and touch it. A flood of self-loathing and fathoms-deep sorrow bowls me over, and I let go, gasping for breath, clutching my chest.

Those feelings didn’t come from me. Something stirs in me, telling me to reach out once more.

But the door shuts behind him, and I don’t dare disturb him, not after that.

Only one other door is open, and soft voices sound from within. Silently, I pad closer, and more of the room comes in view: the corner of a headboard, a man lying on a bed, with skin that’s mostly stone, the Regia kneeling before him, her head on his unmoving chest, the rest of his blanket-covered body. The curse has inched up his body; even his lower lip is stone.

Dalca stands at the base of the bed, angled away from them, as if hewants to give them privacy but can’t bear to be farther away. His hands tremble. I inch closer until I get a view of his face. I stifle a gasp. I expected tears, but instead his eyes are alight with burning intensity.

I back away. Dalca is no fool. So why does he act as if everything is going perfectly? It’s as if he can’t even conceive that we might’ve failed.

Casvian touches my elbow, and together we stand with backs pressed against the atrium wall.

The Regia’s words still reach my ears. They fall like a torrent, as if she feels she must say everything she has to say in a single breath.

“I love you,” she says. “For years and years, I lay awake in some tiny corner of this body, listening to the echo of the love I held for you. The song and shadow of the love we shared. I could never let it go, though I suffered for it. Perhaps, if I had forgotten you, I could have given myself fully to the Great King.”

Her voice breaks. I knuckle a tear from my cheek, hoping Casvian hasn’t seen. He passes me a handkerchief.

“Can you hear me, my love?”

“He can, Ma, he can,” Dalca reassures her, his voice thick.

She begins to weep. There’s a rustle, and Dalca emerges from the doorway, shutting the door behind him. He turns to us with an exhilarated expression and comes to stand beside me, tilting his head back to rest against the wall. His eyes close, sealing away that intensity, the muscles of his throat shifting as he swallows.

I touch his wrist, and he takes my hand. Where is his fear? Does he not know what we’ve done? That one day, his body will be painted with golden lines, and the Great King will look out at me through his eyes? That one day, he’ll be trapped in some small corner of his body, alone?