Page 75

Damond usually brought me breakfast in bed so I could take my time adjusting to the stiff discomfort of sleep before rising, but this morning, I’d joined him in the main living space.

There were more windows in this cabin than the one in Warrich.

More light. Everything was bright oak—similar to the inn in Brinnea.

I watched the waves of the Brinnean sea wash up and recede on the shore of our little inlet, mesmerized by the fog hovering in the air.

Damond’s voice broke me out of my trance. “You seem… decent this morning. ”

I shot him a perturbed glare, turned away, and poured myself a mug of green tea. “My only companions for the past three weeks have been you and a cat. Don’t flatter yourself.”

Damond chuckled softly and tsked. “You’re not very pleasant when you’re angry, Ary.”

I took a sip of my tea and thought of how much had changed since Tovick.

“Fuck being pleasant,” I grumbled. “I’m not sure pleasant is something I can afford to be anymore.

” With that, I pushed off the wooden counter and took the seat opposite Damond at the two-person dining table crammed into the small kitchen.

“I was an idiot, running to Molochai to sacrifice myself. I thought I was doing the right thing, the easiest thing for everyone, but my decision was based on information and people I should have second-guessed.”

Damond sighed, his eyes sad. “Love makes us do stupid shit.”

“I don’t lo—” My jaw snapped shut before I could say what we both knew wasn’t true.

I loved him. At least, a part of him. Whether I wanted to or not.

But… never again would I make choices based on untested assumptions. Never again would I be so reckless and impulsive, even for the benefit of those I cared for. Never again would I lie to myself or let myself be lied to. Never again would I trust so easily.

I had accepted so many things that turned out to be lies.

No more.

Molochai had killed something in me that day: my blind optimism. I had grown a new heart, and despite the longing and love that remained, I needed to decide if I was willing to give this one away. To anyone.

I tightened a blanket around my shoulders and shifted in my seat. Shera brushed against my leg, sensing my distress. “Can you love and hate someone at the same time?”

Damond took a sip of his coffee and shrugged. “Two emotions rivaling each other in strength… I would guess so. ”

I swallowed hard. “I should feel nothing but disdain for him, and I am angry—I am —yet all I want is for there to be a reason to… forgive him.” I shuddered as the self-hatred ripped through me.

“Why do I want to forgive him, Damond? I should want to kill him. What’s so terribly wrong with me that I want to forgive the man who killed people I love more than I want to hate him? ”

Damond eyed me curiously. “Do you believe that he had any choice in killing them?”

If I hadn’t gone to whatever plane of existence where Oliver existed after death, I would have said yes.

But I didn’t think a man with a choice to kill a child would have been nice.

Would have given him that toy horse. The agony Molochai had caused me with just his shadows…

a power so great could accomplish terrible things.

When I’d found Phillip and Oliver, they’d looked so very peaceful. Like they hadn’t suffered, despite the blood and horror. Their calm was a detail I could never forget.

“No,” I whispered. “No, I don’t think he had a choice.”

Damond looked at the letter Gavin had left me. I had left it on the table weeks ago and neither of us had touched it. “Have you read it?”

My throat worked through a swallow as I shook my head. “I have to go to those Caves, but I won’t go blind. I go on my terms, but those people—most of them,” I added, thinking of everyone who wasn’t Simeon and Elowen, “are innocent. I can’t abandon thousands of people.”

And whatever was in that letter would make finally taking up my role a whole lot harder.

An uncomfortable pause split the air between us.

I watched as Damond fidgeted with his thumbs.

With a heavy sigh, he reached into the folded letter and pulled out a small piece of paper, featherlight, and set it before me.

The scrap of paper was old and the writing barely legible.

But I read it once, twice, again. Seven words had never held so much weight .

It was Simeon. Do not follow me.

I recognized the sharp curve of the S, the fat loop of the lowercase F, and how it read with some letters in cursive and some not. Those, among other traits, had always been consistent. I would know, because that handwriting was quite familiar.

That handwriting was mine.

I drew in a long, deep breath and whispered, “I wrote that?”

Damond nodded, his dark brow furrowing behind his round glasses. “You left it for Smyth after Simeon took you from him. Four hundred years ago.”

“And he… followed me.”

“Yes.” Damond huffed out an awestruck breath and pushed both the note and letter closer to me. “Yes, Ary, he followed you.”

I had told him not to follow me to Molochai’s camp. He had anyway. And then…

“I swear on every star, every sky, every soul that has passed through this world, I will follow you…”

Even in death, he promised.

“Tell me.” I looked up at my curly-haired friend—friend, I finally decided at that moment.

Not an enemy. “Tell me everything you know—every detail. My old life. Tell me about him, what we were. Who I was. I need to hear it from someone who isn’t him.

And then I’ll decide what’s true.” Or try to decide.

Damond sighed in relief and leaned forward in his seat like he’d spent the last three weeks preparing for this moment. “You’ve been told how Molochai and Simeon unlocked hidden power from within Nyrida to overthrow the old rulers? The Rexus dynasty. Tyrants.”

I nodded.

“The two of them made Christabel queen in their belief that the people would be more amenable to a matriarchy. ”

“Yes. And Christabel fell in love with another man, married him, and it drove Molochai mad.”

“Yes,” said Damond. “But years before Molochai turned completely to the dark, while he still pursued Christabel and continuously failed to win her heart, he found ways to take out his… frustrations. One victim was a young servant girl named Louisa. Vulnerable, early twenties. She became pregnant. Something went wrong while she delivered the child, and she lost too much blood. The child survived, but she did not. Louisa had one older sister, but the sister and her husband rejected the bastard. Luckily, an older woman named Eden, who’d assisted Louisa in delivering the baby, decided she couldn’t abandon an innocent child.

She and her husband, Isaac, a blacksmith, took the child and raised him. That child was Smyth.”

Eden and Isaac. He’d told me about them.

“I have loved you since the moment you walked into my blacksmith’s shop…”

Damond’s words were the loom pulling Gavin’s truth together.

“She was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen…”

When he’d said that, he’d looked at me.

“Three and a half years later, Christabel had her husband’s child,” continued Damond. “And that finally broke Molochai. He killed her husband. Then he found the infant, a baby girl, and thrust a dagger through her heart at only three days old. And you now know… that child was you.”

My fingers brushed over the two-inch-wide scar over my heart. The mystery scar that was no longer a mystery. Why else would Elowen have kept it from me?

“Only you didn’t die. You survived, revealing traces of power so incredible that your mother and Simeon kept you locked up in that castle to protect you and keep Molochai from ever learning you were alive.

That you were able to survive a dagger to the heart at a few days old…

” Da mond shuddered. “They loved you, but they were afraid of you. And though you were harmless at the time, just a baby, Simeon knew if Molochai could sense your power, if he found you, there was no telling what he’d do.

Either try to kill you again or use you.

So he kept you locked up and then decided to use you himself. For… the greater good.”

And there it was. The other villain in the story of my shattered past—Simeon, my uncle. Not my father but my uncle, my real mother’s greedy older brother who’d sought control in his own way and held me captive for centuries.

“I’m one of the last people to defend that manipulative prick,” Damond continued, “but I know—at least I think —that Simeon has always had good intentions. Smyth’s even said so himself, though I don’t think he’d hesitate to kill him if he could.”

When I met Simeon, I wasn’t sure what I would do to him myself.

“If Simeon and Molochai are equal in power, why hasn’t Simeon tried to kill Molochai?”

“Because they’re not equal in power,” Damond answered.

“Simeon uses spells—like the one he used to erase your memory—and wards on all the large cities like he placed on Tovick and Brinnea. Molochai pushed the boundaries of the power they once shared. His darkness—those shadows—that’s something more corrupt than the power the two of them found four hundred years ago, and that’s why Simeon needs you . ”

I shook my head. There was time for all of that later. I couldn’t process it, not now, so I shoved it away.

“Gavin said I came to his blacksmith’s shop asking for a weapon, and that’s how we met.”

Damond nodded. “When you were sixteen. He was nineteen. He loved you, he pursued you, and you spent four months sneaking around together before Christabel finally succumbed to her illness. The curse Molochai placed on her. The city was sacked. Simeon had found out about you and Smyth by then, had forbidden your union, but instead of staying in that castle as he commanded, you ran away. To Smyth. You were married, and he brought you here.”