Page 107 of Crown of Darkness
And it feels like she stabbed me through the heart and my body is only just starting to realize the injury it took.
“If you wish to destroy your mother,” the Mother continues, “then you must become the future she fears. You must become a dark queen full of ambition and power. You must rise. And you must crush the little girl inside you who still calls for her mother.”
I press the heels of my hands to my brow. It’s too much to consider. I breathe a wretched laugh. “I came here to find answers, and you leave me withthis?”
“You came here because you know the answers, but you don’t want to face them.”
I lower my hands. “I wish I’d never made that bargain with you.”
“Do you?” She arches a brow. “Never regret, Iskvien. Regret is the weakness that chokes the mighty. Your husband was fated to die three months ago. Your mother would be settling his crown on her head as we speak, as her armies sweep through the southern kingdoms. One thing averted fate. You. Your choice. Your bargain. You are the child of destiny, Iskvien. No fate can ever be set in stone with you walking through the world.”
“I will not free you and your kind!”
“Come,” she says, pushing to her feet. “I think you need to see something.”
I stare at her back as she walks away from me. Did she even hear me? Or does she simply not care what I said?
The island reaches a precipice, and it’s there at the top that we find an enormous well, filled with fog and glistening lights. It’s even colder up here, and I swear some of those lights pause in their slow circling of the misty waters as if they sense they’ve caught my attention.
I remember everything my childhood nurse, Nanny Redwyne, told me.
Don’t look to the lights.
Don’t let them know you can see them.
Don’t listen to their whispers.
“Let me show you who the monsters truly are,” the Mother of Night says, holding out her hand.
I eye it like she’s gifting me with a snake. “No. A thousand times no. I’m not entering that water.”
“You want to know the truth about me and my kind? These are the waters of the past. And they will show you what you wish to see. You want to know me and my kind, Iskvien? Thenopen your eyes.”
I steel myself.
On one hand:Don’t look to the lights.On the other:Know thy enemy.
I stare at her hand for a long time.
“Promise me thrice that no harm will befall me and that you will lead me out of those waters safely within the hour. And then you will release me back into my own world.”
The Mother smiles.
And then she promises.
Thrice.
The second the fog closes over our heads, the darkness of the cave vanishes. Every step makes that chill water creep higher, until my lungs clench in shock and I can’t quite get my breath.
A hand closes over my head, and then the Mother shoves me under, and just before I open my mouth to scream, I stagger into a new world.
A figure sits by the fire, wearing a crown woven of iron thorns and little daggers. He’s playing a woodland flute, and in front of him, dozens of dancers leap and twirl. I see the little horns in their hair and the cloven feet on some of them. Otherkin. Worshipping in a Hallow somewhere.
“When the fae arrived in Arcaedia, they named us monsters,” the Mother of Night muses as she stares at her kind, “and our words and customs were twisted until we became monsters who deserved to be slaughtered. But these were my children, little queen. They knew love. They knew kindness. They knew peace and happiness. Until your forebears arrived.”
I swallow hard. “There were blood sacrifices—”
“There were.” Her eyes darken. “The land requires blood to power the Hallows. Have you not felt them weakening?”
