Page 160 of Curse of Darkness
“I’ve seen you in action,” he points out. “You took on my father without hesitating. You’ve faced Angharad. The Horned One. The Mother of Night. All of them without even flinching. All of them, because they dared to threaten someone you love. You are at your fiercest when you are protecting your friends or your family. If your mother put a knife to my throat, then I know you wouldn’t hesitate. You’ll obliterate her.”
Thumbs stroke across my cheeks. “But today I want you to fight foryou. I want you to protect yourself, Vi. I want you to use all that fierceness, all those protective instincts, and I want you to channel them for you. For the little girl who should have been loved. For the little girl who deserved to be protected by someone. Anyone. You need to start treating her as you treat others.”
The flush of tears threatens to take me by surprise. Every time I think I have this worked out….
Somehow I nod. “For me, then.”
And he’s right.
Because I did deserve better.
Idodeserve better.
“Then hold on,” he whispers before he launches us into the skies.
* * *
Thiago setsme down outside the grove of oaks that serves as my mother’s link to the lands. The Hawthorne Castle Hallow pulses not too far away. It calls to my blood, to the cut across my hand.
Yes,it whispers, reaching for me. Yearning for me to reach back.
To complete the loop.
The Hallows are linked by the leylines. If I close my eyes, they’re a glowing, shining network of magic I could tug on if I so chose.
“Ready?” Thiago whispers as he lowers his arms from around me, his wings falling into shadow as he rouses his glamor. He vanishes behind his veil, but I’m not alone. Never alone.
I nod. I can’t quite speak in this moment.
Be brave, Iskvien.
Each step I take carries its own weight.
The woods shudder.
Squirrels flee through the branches.
And even the wind whips up as if it can feel my rage.
“Contain it,” Thiago murmurs to me as he ghosts along in my wake. A shadow named Death. “We don’t want to give her warning.”
“She knows we’re coming.”
Mother awaits us, standing by one of her oaks. Golden chainmail glitters over her body in the form of a dress, and the hood of it hides all her hair, so that her oval face and the vicious seven-pronged crown she wears remain the feature.
A queen gilded for war.
But it’s the look on her face that grounds me.
Rage. Jealousy.
But I’ve never seen true hatred before.
Not directed at me. Not until now.
“Ah, Iskvien,” she says, rings glittering on her fingers as she caresses the oak. “You’re late.”
It’s the voice of my youth, chiding me for any one of a million small grievances.
