Page 201 of Curse of Darkness
Drawing me to my feet, he tucks me under his arm.
The sounds of battle have fallen silent.
Dawn blazes in the sky to the east.
I stare at it, at that faint rosy hue. It had been evening as we made that mad, rushing dash toward the Hallow. Surely the ordeal with the Horned One hadn’t taken—
“You made the sun rise early,” Thiago says. “When you rose from the Hallow, it began to rise too.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Not impossible,” says a quiet male voice beside us. The Dream Thief smiles wryly at my shocked glance. “You ascended, Iskvien, and the ripples of the Hallow’s implosion affected everything. Time. Space. Night and Day. An ascendancy—a true ascendancy—affects every Hallow in the world. We all felt it. It was the only thing that could have freed us all simultaneously. Every warrior out there on that field will have gone to their knees as time streamed past them in an instant. Fae on far-off continents will have felt the earth tremble beneath their feet as the skies flashed dark, before light exploded across the entire world. And the otherkin….” His face softens with a strange sense of peace. “They will know what it means. They will know that we are back. That they are free now.”
Tension slides through the arm draped over my shoulder, but I press my fingers to Thiago’s side. “And what do you intend to do now you are free?”
The Dream Thief stares at the Hallow and the lightning-jagged seam of gold painted into the floor. I don’t quite know what to name the look on his face: an ancient kind of sadness? Grief, perhaps? “I will do what I have always done. I will protect my people. I will steal the nightmares from their dreams and twist them to haunt their enemies. I will guard them from those who seek to harm them, and usher them back to the forests.” His mouth presses into a thin, slightly evil smile. “But first, I’m going to go and pay the Queen of Aska a visit and remind her that fae queens should never summon powerful gods from their dreams and seek to trap them in the heart of a mirror.”
“While I would love to see Maren’s face if you strolled into her court, I can’t help thinking this would start a war.”
The Dream Thief’s ancient eyes lock upon me. “How does one start a war that’s been running for thousands of years?”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“You are the Daughter of Light,” the Erlking says as he joins us. “You’re no longer fae, Iskvien. You ascended. All the otherkin will know of it. They will worship you and—”
“No.” A shudder runs through me as I seek out Thiago’s hand. “I don’t want that.”
I want to just be me.
I want… breakfast in bed, with our daughter cuddled between us.
I want boring state dinners. Argumentative council gatherings, where Finn and Eris scowl at each other over the table. I want Thalia to lob a blueberry at me when she’s exasperated. And Baylor to pinch the bridge of his nose at the mayhem, even as Lysander stirs it to greater heights.
And I want time.
Time with Thiago. I want to wake every morning in his arms and kiss him every night. I want to tell him all the boring details of my day. And shiver as he presses me down into the mattress, his tongue tracing slick circles down my abdomen.
The Erlking stares at my hand. At the final set of golden antlers imprinted onto the inside of my wrist. And then he smiles. “Why not let us try this new thing? This… thing called peace.”
“Peace?” I blurt. The Erlking—the leader of the Wild Hunt—wants peace?
He shrugs, his gaze sliding toward the edge of the Hallows where our armies await. Even from here I can pick out Blaedwyn’s banners in the forefront, and the warrior queen staring at us as if awaiting what is coming. “Peace,” he replies again thoughtfully. “A true peace, the likes of which we’ve never had. Unseelie is shattered. One queen is dead, another fled, and the final queen….” His smile turns dangerous. “Well, let us just say that in ten months’ time, the last Unseelie queen will be at my mercy.” He glances toward the Dream Thief as if they’re communing on some level I can’t understand. “Let the Old Ones claim Unseelie. They are the descendants of our people, and they will worship us again. If the fae do not want them for the otherkin blood in their veins, then let us have them. Let us protect them.”
I can’t help thinking this is going to be a mistake.
But I can see Mrog the Warmonger staring at our armies as if he barely had a taste of the fight.
And at his side, Red Mag runs a thumb along the edge of her knife.
“That is not our pledge to make,” Thiago says softly, as if he can sense the same undercurrents I can. “It would require the entire Seelie Alliance to strike such accords.”
The Erlking arches a brow. “Then call your alliance together, and we will treat. Or what is left of it. Tomorrow at dawn.” He nods over my shoulder. “It will give you a chance to reunite with your family.”
I follow his gaze to where Amaya is standing next to my sister, a battered grimalkin in her arms.
“Maya,” I whisper. I saw her earlier, when I rose, but what in the name of Darkness is she doing here? In a war zone?
Thiago’s hand in the middle of my back gestures me toward her. “I believe Grimm brought her. Something about how she needed to be here.”
