Page 1 of Curse of Darkness
1
ISKVIEN
“Iwould wait for you in the Darkness.”
I stare at the enormous pyre waiting to be lit, and suddenly I can’t move.
My heart doesn’t skip a beat. There is no lump in my throat, threatening to choke me. I am simply dead inside, my chest scooped out and empty, waiting to be filled.
“Your Majesty,” says Maia’s high priestess.
It sounds like it comes from miles away.
All I can see is the empty pyre where my husband’s bodyshouldlie.
There is nothing to burn.
When we were forced to flee from the Black Keep—and the newly risen Horned One—Thiago was already dead. I see him falling again and again—I see it every night in my nightmares. And I hear the sound his head made as it struck the slate floors. A sharp crack he wouldn’t have even felt because he was alreadygone, and yet it splintered my heart and cleaved it open.
I’ll never feel him in my arms again.
I’ll never wake to see his smile.
I will never—
“Mama?” whispers a little voice and then a hand slips inside my own.
There’s the fist to the solar plexus. There’s the knife to the heart. Suddenly, it’s beating again, all for her. Amaya is the only thing tethering me to this mortal plane at the moment. Her hand is warm, so warm. Warm where his is cold.
I reel out of the nightmare, realizing thousands of faces watch us.
This grassy knoll overlooking the city is where the people of Evernight honor their dead. I never expected to be here staring at Thiago’s funeral pyre, even though his body doesn’t lie upon it.
It burned to ash in the implosion of the Horned One’s Hallow.
I’d like to think the entire city turned out to honor their prince, but though thousands of them crowd around the base of the hill, not all of them welcomed him as their ruler. Some of them say he slew their rightful queen and overthrew her sons, and I want to scream the truth to the skies—that he was Queen Araya’s last-born son and he honored his mother to the very end.
But that was not my secret to reveal.
As much as I want to draw the curtains that shroud his mother’s portrait so the people canseethe truth—that Thiago was their rightful prince and worthy of their respect—I will not spit upon his final wishes.
“It’s fine, Amaya. I’m fine,” I whisper, squeezing my daughter’s hand. A part of me didn’t want her to be here for this—I want to protect her from every danger and ounce of pain I can—but again, it isn’t my choice to make.
She’s nearly nine years old, and I’ve only known of her existence for a week.
I will not lock her away from the world.
I will not shroud her in secrets and lies.
She will never know what it feels like to peer through closed windows at the world, wondering what she did wrong.
And when I asked if she wished to be here for this ceremony, she gave a solemn little nod and said, “Yes.”
“I never knew him,” she whispered, “but I would like to say goodbye.”
Her choice. Always her choice.
“Your Majesty, if you would light the pyre?” the high priestess says, and it sounds like she’s repeating herself.
