Page 109 of Crown of Darkness
“You wanted to know who your father was?” she calls, and despite myself, my steps slow. “Then I will give you a gift. He was once called Arion, many a moon ago, when he was still mortal. And he too yearns to be freed for more than two nights a year. You could know him, Iskvien. Your mother may have turned from you, but she’s not the only line you come from.”
I can’t let her keep speaking.
This is only manipulation.
She’s been in my head; she knows what lies in my heart.
“Wake up,” I whisper, closing my eyes and drawing on my power. “Wake up.”
And then the shock of feeling like my head is being forced underwater makes me gasp. I see a Hallow emblazoned with torches. I feel a hand pressing me to my knees as the crowd writhes and chants. And I see the priest come forward with a knife in his hand and a bowl of polished stone to catch my blood.
I barely have time to realize I’m not in my head—I’m in hers—and then I lift my chin and stare proudly at the priest.
“Make it swift,” I whisper. “Let me see my family again.”
And the priest nods behind his feathered mask and steps behind me.
I don’t see the knife.
But I feel it as it slashes across my throat and spills my lifeblood to the ground of the Hallow.
* * *
I sit up with a gasp,palms slapping against the cold stone floor of the Hallow in Ceres, even as the Mother of Night’s laughter echoes in my ears.
You could know him, Iskvien….
A line of fire burns across my throat, but when I clamp my hand there, there’s no blood. Merely the ghostly sensation of a knife being drawn across my skin, and a part of me realizes she gave me one last gift: The gift of her final mortal memory.
Every inch of me shakes, and I can’t hide the tremble in my hands.
My mother, the otherkin, my father….
I don’t even know what to believe anymore.
Except that I am dripping wet and my clammy nightgown clings to my skin. “Definitely not imagining it,” I whisper to myself.
“Not imagining what?”
Soft footsteps echo up the last few stairs of the stairwell as I shove to my feet, and then Thiago slinks into the light, his eyes watchful and a frown on his brow as he watches the last of the Hallow’s glyphs fade.
“Vi?” There’s a wealth of questions in that one word. “What are you doing down here? Why are you wet?” The muscle in his jaw throbs. “Where have you been?”
“I was trying to find answers.”
“Answers to what?” he snaps, gesturing me to step free of the Hallow, as if he’s afraid to step over the lines marked in the floor. “You went to her, didn’t you?”
“I need to know how to defeat my mother,” I whisper. “And I thought… the crown—”
“Forget the fucking crown,” he explodes. “What in the Underworld were you thinking? The Mother of Night has trapped you once. You don’t have the power in her world. If she locks you away down there….”
I push past him, my bare feet slapping on the cold stone and my heart racing in my ears. “Something is happening to me and I don’t understand it. You can’t explain it to me. But she can. And maybe, just maybe, if I learn to control these new gifts, I might be able to save Lysander.”
Thundering down the stairs I head toward our rooms, hearing his feet behind me.
“I said Lysander will wait,” he calls. “Hexes take time to unravel.”
I spin on him. “Do you not think I know that? Me? I feel like I fight for every memory I unearth. It’s been months and I’m still unravelling myself, Thiago. What if he never recovers?”
