Page 158 of Curse of Darkness
I can almost smell the blood as I blink out of the moment. “It thinks it would look lovely with both the Asturian and Evernight banners hanging in my throne room.” And then I add, “It also thinks the throne room would look better if your throne was removed and only mine remained.”
Thiago cuts me a look.
“Never,” I swear to him. “I would never do that to you.”
“I know.” He can’t help smiling. “I just hadn’t realized that when it was planning on conquering the world through you, it saw me as a weapon to be wielded and thrown away.”
I can’t help thinking of my mother. The saithe oracle showed me the origin of her power: The moment where she vanquished the Briar King with Angharad’s help and claimed his throne. I will never forget the look on her face as she stared into her mirror and set the crown on her head. “I sometimes wonder if that’s what drove her mad.”
His face hardens. “Some fae are born hungry. Nothing will ever fulfill them. I think the crown takes what is at your core and emphasizes it.”
I arch a brow. “You think I want to rule alone?”
“Sometimes what we think we want is a mask for the thing we need.” A thumb brushes against my cheek. “I think… you have spent your entire life striving to please your mother. You wanted to be named her heir, you wanted power of your own in order to please her…. The throne represents that. Maybe there’s a hint of longing for acceptance within you. Maybe the crown took that shadow image and used it to entice you.”
I capture his wrists, bowing my head and resting it against him. “I never want to rule alone again. I hated it.”
He captures my face in his hands and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Never again.”
What do we do?
“She’s going to kill him,” I whisper, “and if she has Theron, then she may know the truth about May.”
I’ve never seen anyone hold their secrets against my mother’s inquisition.
“You want to rescue both of them.”
“Politically, it would be a disaster.” The world keeps reminding me of that. “He’s an assassin, and not even one loyal to us. And May is….” I can’t even say it. She’s a little girl. She could be Amaya. She could beme. Maybe, in some ways, that’s where this compulsion to rescue her comes from, because I begged the world for someone to rescue me. But no one ever came until I took matters into my own hands at that long-ago Queensmoot. Instead, I meet Thiago’s eyes. “Mother always used to say my sense of compassion was my weakest point. She knows what this will do to me.”
“Your compassion is precisely the reason I fell in love you with you. The world doesn’t need another Adaia. Nor another Queen Maren.” He captures my fingertips in his hand. “It needs a queen who knows what loyalty means. It needs a queen who sees the littlest members of her kingdom and considers their lives to be just as important as her own. Don’t lose sight of that, Vi. If anything is going to hold that bloody crown at bay, it’s that.”
“If I don’t rescue him, then Theron suffers and she’ll send me his head. Who knows what she will do to May? If we come for them, then we’re walking directly into a trap. Either way, she wins.”
His face hardens. “Let her play her games. War is coming, Vi. She might win this skirmish, but we’ll win the war.”
“Unless….” I blow out a breath. “Maybe the crown… has a point.”
“What does that mean?”
I think about the way the land quivered beneath my foot in that vision. It wasn’t conjured from nothing. I felt Asturia reach for me the night Thiago and I tried to steal the crown from her. Mother claimed the lands using her sacred oak—the one Andraste burned down—but Ifeltthat link with the lands. I just wasn’t strong enough to do anything about it. Then. “Maybe it’s time to give my mother a taste of her own medicine. Maybe we spring the trap. And we take back what’s ours. We take back everything that is ours.”
* * *
There’sno time to lose.
I sit at my writing desk, biting my lip as I think of everything I mean to write.
The Duke of Thornwood is the key to ruining all of mother’s plans. Iknowit. Now I just have to convince him of it.
“How are you feeling?” Thalia sits her bottom on the edge of my desk.
“Slightly murderous,” I admit, sprinkling sand over the ink of the page to set it.
“That’s possibly the only way to feel when it comes to your mother.” Her expression darkens. “She’s such a bitch. Do you want me to send a force to put poison ivy in her bed?”
Leaning over, I give her a hug. “Tempting. But I’m thinking about something more… inevitable.”
“As long as you shield your own back, Vi.” Thalia looks serious as she draws back. “I don’t trust her. I don’t trust this challenge. Your mother will stop at nothing to hurt you. Remember that.”
