Page 218 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

Raihn and I stared down at it.

“Well, fuck,” he whispered.

Fuck, indeed.

Inked over the back of my hand, in a triangle formed between the ring and the bracelet, was a map.

62

ORAYA

All this time, I had been trying so desperately to decode my father’s past, my father’s secrets, to find the power I needed to reclaim my kingdom.

How fitting that in the end, it was my mother who gave me the answer.

Raihn and I hastily set up the mirror, dripping my blood into it and summoning an extremely relieved Jesmine. Vale, Mische, and Ketura joined her, and we called Alya into the room too, showing her the map on my skin.

Once the initial shock wore off, Alya seemed equal parts proud and sad when she pieced together what she was looking at. It was a spell, she explained, forged into the metalwork of the jewelry, only to be activated once all three were worn together by its intended bearer.

“My sister’s magic,” she said softly. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”

She touched the bracelet—an affectionate caress.

“Too smart for her own good, that one,” she muttered. “Always was.”

“Wouldn’t Vincent have known if the ring was enchanted?” I asked. “He was a powerful magic user, too.”

“Of Nyaxia’s magic, yes. But he wouldn’t have had enough experience with Acaeja’s to know what to look for.”

A lump rose in my throat, my thumb sweeping over the little black ring. The one token he’d allowed me to have from my former life. Little did he know.

The map on the back of my hand depicted the House of Night, or at least a small part of it—Vartana in the bottom left corner, Sivrinaj in the upper right, and a little star marked at the top center, right over my knuckle. No town or city existed there. It was right in the middle of the desert, nothing but ruins.

Ruins that still managed to be uncomfortably, dangerously close to Sivrinaj.

“Do you have any idea what this could be?” I asked Alya.

I knew what Ihopedit could be. I didn’t want to dream. It seemed like too much to possibly wish for.

Alya tilted her head, thoughtful.

“In the end, she was scared,” she said. “Scared of whatever she was helping him do. I remember that. She never would tell me the details, but I know my sister. I think—I think she was growing afraid of what that kind of power could do in the hands of someone so distrustful, especially if he was the only one who had access to it. Perhaps, she may have given you a path to that power too, just in case, knowing that your blood may allow you to wield it.” A barely-there smile—a little sad, a little proud. “I can’t say for sure. But I can imagine that.”

I let out a shuddering exhale of relief, and with it, a flood of affection for the mother I barely remembered.

She saved us. Goddess, shesavedus.

“That’s if Septimus hasn’t already gotten to whatever this is,” Jesmine pointed out. “Whatever power he’d given Simon wasn’t of this world. I’m certain of that.”

But Alya shook her head firmly. “Based on what they described, what you saw wasn’t any creation of my sister’s. It sounds like cobbled-together magic. An activator hacked apart to force it to work with something it wasn’t intended to.”

“An activator,” Raihn repeated. “The pendant.”

Mische looked proud of herself—because this had always been her suspicion.

“From what you’ve described, it sounds like it,” Alya said. “I’d assume that Vincent would have created multiple activators with Alana’s help. And any of them, used with the right magic, could be twisted and modified to work with a power similar enough to their intended target. But it would be ugly, and it would be dangerous. Probably deadly to whoever used it, eventually.”

I remembered Simon’s glazed-over, bloodshot eyes and shuddered.

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