Page 7

Chapter four

“ T he queen,” I repeated slowly.

Gemma nodded.

Too stunned to speak, I closed my eyes in an attempt to reject all other stimuli beyond her words.

“I mentioned there were two men.” Gemma’s voice lowered. “The other is named Molochai.”

Is . She had said is, not was . My apprehension spiraled. This had to mean Molochai was still alive after four hundred years, just like Simeon. And if that wasn’t enough to churn my stomach, his eerie name did the trick.

“Simeon preferred to work with his herbs, potions, and spells. He was— is —by the book, while Molochai has been more… experimental with the magic. Back then, they worked well together, and the new world wanted for nothing. But eventually, Molochai found he wanted the one thing he couldn’t have.”

My stomach curdled at the dread in Gemma’s stare.

“Simeon had a sister,” she continued, “ten years younger than him and Molochai. Her name was Christabel. She was angelically beautiful, and while Simeon and Molochai were worshipped like gods, they let Christabel be the queen of the people, loved and unconditionally revered. Simeon—even Molochai, at the time—knew they needed to rule differently than those before them in order to gain the peoples’ trust. The males in the Rexus family had been ruthless, and they felt Nyrida would be far more amenable to a woman in charge. ”

“Or at least, the appearance of a woman in charge,” Finn added, tipping his mug at me. “They made most of the decisions themselves but made Christabel the figurehead. As long as there was a female alive in the bloodline, a female would rule.”

“A ruler with a softer heart,” added Caz, resting his hand over his chest. “Less chance of a revolt.”

“They used her?” I asked, gut churning.

“She agreed to it.” Gemma shot both Sinclair brothers an annoyed look.

“And Molochai loved her—was obsessed with her—but the moment she was old enough to know love, she gave her heart to someone else. And while Molochai treated her with gifts, with magic, with anything she could perceivably want, she didn’t love him back.

Her heart belonged to someone else—a young, well-respected soldier in the small but growing cavalry.

When Christabel married him and became pregnant with his child, whatever goodness that kept Molochai at bay was destroyed.

His rage was unleashed. After she had the child, Molochai killed Christabel’s husband, and then he killed the babe.

Stabbed it through the heart at only a few days old. ”

Bile rose in my throat. The kind of evil it would take to kill a child, an infant…

Gemma paused to let the information settle, searching me warily.

I looked at Caz and Finn across from me, Ezra beside me, all three sitting quietly with their hands folded in their laps.

Though their expressions were solemn, they seemed otherwise unperturbed, as if this was a story they were hearing for the hundredth time.

A morose yet inescapable part of history.

“Why am I just hearing this now?” Resentment gripped my heart in its angry vise. My nostrils flared. Instinct drew my attention to Smyth, whose mouth was pressed into a line, jaw firmly clenched, rage imprisoned. Perhaps on my behalf. I soaked in the welcome sense of solidarity.

“Because your parents have been trying to protect you.” Gemma stood from the table and paced back and forth across the kitchen.

Only three steps each way, it was so small.

“You see, killing Christabel’s child was not enough revenge for Molochai.

He went back to the place he and Simeon found their magic, and he took more.

He took something dark and evil—all-consuming shadows.

He cursed Christabel with a horrific illness that forced her to die a slow, agonizing death.

She died sixteen years later, childless, at thirty-seven years old.

Simeon’s by-the-book spells were no match for Molochai’s shadows, and he was forced into hiding. ”

“So Simeon, a four hundred-year-old man, got my mother pregnant and now Molochai wants to kill me,” I concurred.

Gemma sighed as if she had the right to be just as overwhelmed as I was, then continued.

“It’s believed that when Simeon and Molochai unlocked that power within Nyrida, it latched onto their families.

Christabel began to have visions of the future.

Within the last few years of her life, those visions proved to be legitimate.

Three days before she passed, she woke in the middle of the night and summoned Simeon into her room with one final premonition. ”

I stared out the window and tried to remember hints of this story in the hopes Phillip and my mother had told me something.

That they hadn’t kept me in the dark. And maybe they hadn’t, not before the accident, but since then, my memory had been gone; any attempt I made to remember was futile.

Whenever I got close to anything whole, it was torn back by some mysterious force, as if whatever injury I’d sustained—whatever constraint kept my memories from me—was alive and actively fighting me.

“What was the premonition?” I asked.

Gemma cleared her throat. “‘The young queen born of ancient blood will abandon a life of solitude, wield her gods-blessed power, marry the prince of the people, and resurrect this world from Molochai’s darkness.’”

Young. Ancient blood. Abandon a life of solitude. Power.

Oh. no . No, no, no.

These people thought it was me .

My eyes widened while Gemma’s words played on a loop in my mind.

Was that why Phillip and my mother had kept me here, to shelter me from all of this until I was old enough?

Would I ever be old enough? Ready enough?

Had they wanted to give me a normal childhood?

That might have worked had I remembered any of it.

Had Gemma been sent to our home just to socialize me?

After waking with no memory at seventeen, I had begun to withdraw.

But to give me a friend just to take her away… Something felt off.

Especially when I looked down at my frail hands.

“No.” The filthy old mirror on the wall mocked me with the reflection of my growing unease. “That’s not right. I don’t have any power.”

“Ary.” She stopped pacing. Her tone slowed and softened like I was a three-year-old about to throw a fit.

“You’re far from alone in this. When Simeon went into hiding in a small village in southern Warrich, he met a family called the Wintertons.

Together, they traveled south into Avendrel, gathered a resistance, and built a community under a mountain.

The stronghold has grown exponentially over the last four hundred years.

” Gemma bent down and took my hands. “From the horror Molochai wrought upon our people came solidarity. Molochai still controls most of our regions to the south, but for now, we hold the north. And the Winterton Caves—that’s where your mother is now,” Gemma added.

As if news of my neglectful mother would make it all better.

“Our leader, Alistair Winterton, and his wife Ophelia, are currently in charge there. This is why we’re here.

To escort you to Simeon. He will train you in your power, and then you’ll go to the Caves. ”

I shook my head, but she squeezed my hands, nodding, attempting to comfort me. “Over a thousand people are waiting for you, ready to fight at your side, ready to serve you.”

Ezra cleared his throat and gave Gemma a pointed look. She shot a glare of warning right back.

“There’s more?” I choked out.

She sighed in resignation and cringed. “The ‘prince of the people’ in the prophecy? He’s Alistair Winterton’s grandson, Elias. He’s the commander of your army, and he’s going to be your husband.”

Husband . The word bounced around in my head like a prickly burr. It stuck in all the wrong places, and I couldn’t escape it.

“Why?” I trembled, looking frantically between each of them until landing on Smyth—the man that gave me an unexpected sense of safety—in a final, desperate plea for help. “I don’t… I don’t want a husband.”

How could I? I wasn’t yet nineteen. Had never lived, had never even been kissed.

Smyth’s broad shoulders sank with a heavy sigh, and out of his tortured eyes poured unexpected compassion.

“Because you need his army,” Gemma answered, drawing my attention back to her. “The people will fight best under a united front.”

“And I have to marry him to be a united front?”

“Simeon made a deal with the Wintertons.” Ezra shrugged. “And it’s in Christabel’s prophecy.”

Finding Phillip and Oliver dead with their throats slit had nearly destroyed my sanity. But not completely. No, my troubled mind was still lucid enough because if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have heard the audible snap as the rest of it burst in my chest.

I was prophesied to destroy the darkest, most powerful sorcerer in the last four hundred years. And I also had to get married to some random prince in golden armor. Gemma mentioned my marriage like… an afterthought. As if giving my heart to some man I didn’t know was a reasonable expectation.

My heart raced. My breaths grew shallow.

Tears swelled behind my eyes. I could try to run.

If Gemma, Ezra, or the Sinclair brothers didn’t catch me, Smyth would.

Only an imbecile would think they could run from a man like that.

Perhaps I’d rather be an imbecile in place of this— anything but this.

But something urgent tugged in my chest, begging me to weigh the options more carefully before letting my flight response take over.