Page 46 of The Princesses of Ruin (The Princesses of Ruin #5)

Chapter forty-two

Alyse

S ilver-blond strands slide through my fingers like silk.

I listen to his dream absently as I consider the mask in the corner of the room.

Urictsa often develop patterns and quirks that seem like personality, like the behavior of a sentient being, but until days ago, I was firm in the belief that they were never truly alive.

That mask is alive .

And it wants Kazimir all to itself.

Herself . She uses my voice like a siren, convincing Kazimir to wear her and make them close enough for her to get hooks in him. I don’t know if her intent is to live alongside him, a willing passenger in a symbiotic relationship, or if she wants to control him.

Her recent behavior shows the latter, yet either option is unacceptable. I will not share him.

I glare at the mask. “He’s mine.”

It titters in my voice, too weak without his magic fueling it to do more than that.

Kazimir has a particularly violent interlude in his dream. It’s the night he freed himself and Adrik from slavery. I tweak the flow of his thoughts, leading him gently away from the sanguine hell and back into the soft embrace of my body .

I look down, showing him resting in my lap, my fingers threading through his hair. I show him the little swell of my belly, whisper to him that he’s resting next to his daughter. His bandaged face relaxes as serenity drags him into the black void of unconsciousness.

The mask sends a psionic shiver through the room. It wants to be worn. I slide a pillow under Kaz’s head and slip out from under him. The mask I’d come to see as part of Kazimir sends a wave of revulsion through me.

I hover my hand over the metal and push a tendril of magic into it.

You can’t have him.

“He needs me. He craves me.”

The distorted version of my laughter makes me grit my teeth. How fucking dare this mask mimic me to control him. It should be destroyed. Useful or not, it’s too dangerous to exist.

I grab my shawl and throw it over the mask, then wrap it tightly in the material. My body wants to storm, but I tiptoe quietly, not wanting to rouse Kazimir. The dragon is on the other side of the door, slouched in the hall with his eyes shut, but he’s not sleeping.

“Raenkor.”

His eyes snap open and he looks up at me. His skin isn’t quite a normal color, but he’s hidden his tail, wings, and horns. He’s also dressed himself either out of imitation or modesty, I’m not sure. Perhaps the cold was getting to him in his man-form.

“I need your help,” I say, holding out my hand to him.

He scowls but accepts my offer, rising beside me.

We walk the dark corridor quietly and take the stairs down, down, down to the final level of the dungeon where Zephrom hides. I set the bundle on the ground and pull back the layers of my shawl.

“I need to destroy it. ”

“Why?”

“I’m worried for the safety of the child if he puts it on again,” I say, cradling my stomach.

His nostrils flare as he watches my hand caress my belly. His eyes dart up to my face. “What do you think I can do?”

“Your magic damaged the runes.” Specifically, the one used to seal the mask to his face, but he doesn’t need to know that. “You can damage the others that make the mask urictsa.”

He shakes his head slowly. “It’s not as simple as you say. The runes don’t make it urictsa.”

I’m well-read. I know what makes an object urictsa. It’s the runes designed to harness and capture arcane essence. But perhaps the dragon knows something I don’t.

“What makes it urictsa?”

He cocks his head as he looks down at the mask. “It sounds like you.”

“One of its many dangerous properties,” I say.

He crouches and grabs the mask, inspecting it closer. He’s about to put it on when I gasp. He looks back at me, his brow furrowed.

“I may look like a child, but I am not stupid.”

He takes a heavy sniff of the metal, then…licks it. The mask whispers something derisive. He tosses it back into my shawl with a disgusted shiver.

“It is of Eyzanth. Chaos. It craves pain and blood. Nothing else. This is what makes it live.”

“What has made it this way?”

“What made you this way?” he parrots.

“Everything, I suppose.”

“Everything, then. ”

Kaz and Adrik poured their magic, fear, and hopes into this mask long ago, when it was their only option for escape.

The dark manipulator, Sybil, was their master’s favorite enforcer.

She was only a teenager, but keeping the other children in line kept her from the worst of the abuse, so she did it.

There was no escape if Sybil could control them.

So they made this abomination that relishes anguish, craves agony, and protects the wearer from psionic attacks like Sybil’s. Like mine.

Like Ashai’s.

If only “killing” the urictsa wouldn’t remove its magical properties. Without this mask, Kazimir will be as good as dead against her. That’s idiotic…I couldn’t let them go without me, mask or no mask. My power is stronger when I’m close and they all need me, not just Kaz.

But the battlefield is no place for me, especially now. I’m no physical match for any of Ashai’s soldiers, and pregnant, I’m no better than a costly distraction.

“What do you want to do?” Raenkor asks, snapping me from rumination.

“It’s a useful tool, but it’s too strong. I fear Kazimir will use it out of desperation and be lost to it. Can it be tamed?”

Raenkor laughs coldly, his boyish stature not detracting from the indifference of the gesture.

“You want to tame the god of chaos?”

“Zephrom,” I call to the goddess stalking us in the shadows. She’s always near in the Nest, but most accessible down here.

She whispers into shape, just a shadow of what she revealed to us weeks ago. Raenkor takes two steps back, then bows deeply. Zephrom notes the motion with smug appreciation .

“Does this urictsa still have a role to play in the coming conflict?” I ask, trying not to tread on her manufactured rules about revealing the future.

“That’s up to you,” she says, her ephemeral voice attempting to calm me.

Fucking gods and their bullshit.

She hasn’t brought enough of her essence forward for me to sense her thoughts, only her vague feelings. She’s not concerned for the mask, or the outcome of my decision with it—or perhaps she’s shielding from me. She is a goddess, after all.

“What will happen if Kazimir wears it again?”

She giggles. “Child, the threads of the future do not weave at my behest.”

What a nonsensical answer that means absolutely nothing. Gods, experts at shitting all over your life and then giving you a metaphor for a bath as if it helps clean things up.

“Raenkor, can you destroy it?”

We’ll see if Zephrom truly doesn’t care about its fate.

“I can destroy its form, but the urictsa may remain,” he says.

“If it’s not a wearable mask, it can’t hurt my child,” I say, holding my belly tighter.

Raenkor’s posture shifts and he becomes stern, nodding. “Stand well back.”

I move toward the stairs, sensing Zephrom’s growing unease. Her form takes on more solidity as she watches Raenkor set the mask against the wall.

Playing us all like marionettes, goddess?

Her dark gaze snaps up to me.

“This is a dangerous game, child.”

Raenkor looks at me for confirmation .

“Destroy it.”

“Stop,” Zephrom says.

Raenkor is torn, and I’m glad for it. His loyalty to a goddess is less than that of his mate’s mother. His loyalty to my daughter will be beyond measure.

Her body fully emerges from the plane between where the gods hide. She takes the mask from the ground and runs her fingers over the eyeholes. There’s a war raging inside her. The mask does serve some purpose in the coming battle, and later, too. Later is what’s most important to her.

I worm my way inside her, hunting for the answer I need. It’s so important it survives , I whisper as softly as I can.

Flashes of Kazimir, scarred and grizzled, disappearing into the night. It’s her birthday. Raenkor’s taken her.

It’s so important because…

We’re fighting. I tell him she’s safe, that Raenkor would never hurt her. He puts on the mask.

And he’s lost to it forever.

He becomes a nightmare that stalks the skies, hunting for anything his mask deems worthy of their brand of worship. Just blood, pain, and terror.

It’s still not reason enough. I don’t want to lose him, but why?

Why do they need him to choose the mask?

Because?

Ten of us stand around Ashai. Her body breaks under the strength of our power and her arcane lineage is sewn into the stars.

They fear us.

We challenge gods, and win. Leaving us together—leaving any of us together—is too dangerous for all of them. They are aligning the threads to separate us one by one. Even us sisters will have our hearts sundered.

My fingers dig into the meat of my belly, and I glare at Zephrom, my resolve firming. They will not ever tear my family apart.

“Destroy it, Raenkor,” I say, firm authority in my voice. I don’t command him with my power, because I want his trust, but I could . I think he knows it, too.

“Goddess, please step back,” he says.

Zephrom stares at me. “We will still find a way.”

And I will never stop fighting for him. You’d do well to just let us be.

She watches me for another moment, rage rippling out from her in blackened waves. She wants to kill me right here in the dungeon, but she knows she can’t. She knows she needs me for the fight against Ashai, and the other gods would cast her out for ruining that chance.

I smirk. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

Her lip peels back in a snarl. “Your arrogance will not serve you in the future.”

“Neither will yours,” I say, power swelling around me. My gold whips at her black, battling her back. I infuse my voice with an unshakable order. “ Let us be .”

Zephrom flinches as if struck. She hisses in a shadowed breath that transcends the planes of existence, reaching all the way to her true domain. I sense her body there, the thing made immortal through the cultivation of the original arcane essence…the one they all hoard for themselves.

Her body recoils from my magic and I’m ejected from the space. I grin overwide. It has the desired effect, ruffling her feathers. Her visage glares at me, wild-eyed and panting in fear.

Yes, bitch, I can touch you. So you’d best leave. Us. Be. All of us .

She puts the mask against the wall, giving me one last withering glare before she explodes in a wash of black magic. I encircle us in gold, effectively negating whatever it was she was trying to do.

When the black mist settles, Raenkor looks at me with awe.

“You fight the gods,” he whispers. “Is this not…evil?”

I straighten my spine, staring into the darkness where Zephrom’s eyes linger.

“Sometimes you must do evil to defeat evil.”

The words belonged to my mother…to Ashai. I remember her saying them after a diplomatic meeting gone wrong. A treaty with Seter had just condemned half a city to starvation because the king refused to lower the cost of importing krysanthem. In return, she cut off their grain.

She didn’t flinch. Just poured herself a cup of blood-red wine and looked at me like I should understand. Like it was the easiest choice in the world.

I say those same words now with gold in my throat, fury in my bones, and life growing inside me.

Maybe that’s the difference.

Maybe not.

But if I must become a villain to protect my family, then I’ll choose the shape of that monster myself.

“And the mask?” Raenkor asks.

I glare at the vile thing.

Chaos cannot be tamed…but it can be tempered, when in the right vessel.

“Do you have any experience with forging metals, Raenkor?”

He shakes his head.

“Neither do I.”

I pick up the mask. It whispers dark curses at me. I curse right back.

“I think I’d like to learn.”