Page 101 of Crown of Darkness
I’ve seen his wings, his horns, and his eyes when the Darkness rises within him. My mother always called him “Unseelie” and spat when she said his name. And though he uses his illusions to hide the wings and horns, there’s always a hint of the otherworld about him.
“Your father?”
Thiago’s face shutters. “Is unimportant.”
“If he was unimportant,” I point out, “then there would be no reason to hide the truth.” I squeeze his hand. “I know this is hard for you. If you don’t wish to speak of it, then I won’t ask again.”
Thiago turns toward me. “The creature who sired me was one of Queen Angharad’s bannermen, and I don’t believe my mother was granted the… the choice to submit to him. She was captured in the north by his warband and imprisoned in Falkirk for a month. I don’t know the details, because once my mother escaped, she never spoke of the ordeal again. She locked herself away in Valerian and ruled for the next year from the north with only her most trusted by her side, and it’s said that when she returned to Ceres, she would not speak of the past year.”
A year.
A year in which to hide a pregnancy and—
“And you?” I whisper.
“I told you once that Old Mother Hibbert accepts all lost and abandoned children and raises them herself.” His thumb rasps down my cheek. “I never knew my mother when I was a child. All I remember is a little cottage in the wilds and dozens and dozens of children.” He glances up at the painting, the stiff line of his shoulder betraying him. “They say she was strong and ferocious in her youth—a battle hungry queen—but by the time I arrived in Ceres, hoping to win her attention, she’d become a shade of her former self. She preferred to pretend her court was gaiety and light and ignore the shadows around its edges. She would not hear of trouble in her lands and often retired to her chambers of a night with her wine.”
“And so your brothers had free rein,” I guess.
“I don’t know if I can even blame them for looking for power. They lacked in attention, and so they sought it elsewhere.”
“Why hide her painting? She should have been honored to have you as her son, and perhaps the townspeople won’t… won’t think you an outsider.”
Or her murderer.
Thiago presses his fingertips to the oils of her robes before he turns away with a sigh. “I don’t know. Habit, perhaps. Or perhaps…. All I’ve ever known are the shadows. It’s safer there. If others knew of our link, then there are ways that information can be used against me.” He looks up at the portrait one more time before he draws the curtains closed and seals the wards with his blood so none may peek. “Besides, if I announce our kinship to the world, there will be questions asked about the other side of my heritage, and I want her to remain untainted.”
He shouldn’t be forced to bear this burden. “You’re not tainted.”
Thiago smiles bitterly, holding out his hands. “You’ve barely seen a glimpse of the truth, Vi.”
I take them and stretch up onto my toes to kiss his lips. “If you were tainted then you wouldn’t have spent thirteen years patiently trying to win my love, only to have me forget you the next time we met. And I’m more than a match for your darkness.” I smile at him. “Evil mother, remember? Possibly an evil father too.”
It steals a half smile from him.
“Oh, Vi. Everything is so easy when it comes to you. Come.” He drags me toward the fountain in the center of the courtyard, where the moon hovers, fat and bloated, on the silvery waters. We walk hand in hand until Thiago gestures for me to sit on the edge of the fountain.
He seats himself beside me, our knees touching, and then he dips his fingers into the fountain. “Do you remember Cian? The unseelie prince I met in the wyldwoods near Valerian last winter?”
I have more recall of my most recent stint as his prisoner in the north—before we broke the curse—than of earlier years. “How can I forget? I thought you were working with Angharad and he was her spy.”
“He’s my foster brother,” he says, “and he’s my spy, not hers.”
“Your foster brother?”
Thiago looks down at the waters. “We were both raised by Old Mother Hibbert. Cian was shunned by the other children, and I made them uncomfortable, so we bonded together. When it came time to leave—when I was forced out—he came with me.”
“Why were you…?”
His smile twists. “My father came looking for me. My kind live alone, but they can sense another from miles away. We were never born to interact; we were born to kill each other and claim their souls. It gives us power and strength, but it also increases the… the killing urge. And my father sensed me.
“Old Mother Hibbert kept us on the move for months, and we were always one step ahead of him, but I knew he was out there. I knew he would kill all the younger children, simply because he could. If I stayed, I was sentencing them to death, and when she looked at me one day, I knew she knew it too.
“She does her best, Vi. But she was no match for my father, and so it wasn’t a choice. She gave me an old sword she had wrapped in the bottom of a trunk, a warm cloak, and as much bread and cheese as she could spare. And when I left, Cian came with me.
“We were on the run for years. I could always sense my father over my shoulder, but if I kept moving, sometimes he would lose me for a few months. And that’s when I went to the Morai for the first time. I needed to know if I could shield myself from him. I needed to know how to escape him. I needed to know how to control the creatures inside me.”
And they’d cast him out, prophesizing ruin if he ever returned.
