Page 23 of Curse of Darkness
A shiver runs through me as Thalia squeezes my hand.
“I need to know more—for Amaya’s sake, if nothing else.” I squeeze her hand back. “But I trust you. More than I trust anyone else in this world.” She’s been there for me at every step of the way, backing me even when she didn’t entirely trust me. “If I find something… if I find him… then I will take no step you haven’t approved.”
Thalia presses a kiss to my cheek. “I’ll set my demi-fey to hunting any word of this. If there’s a threat to Amaya… well, we’ll be ready for it. Now, come. It’s time for dinner.”
I push my wretched thoughts aside. “Thalia.”
“Three slices of peach and half a dozen grapes is not enough to face your mother. Go and fetch Amaya. I’ll make sure dinner is served.”
* * *
As I climbthe tallest tower in the castle, stepping onto the parapet, I realize this is the first time I’ve seen the sun in days. The clouds are finally clearing.
Amaya sits on the parapet, staring toward the north with her knees drawn up to her chest. Grimm nods at me from where he’s watching her from a distance. He doesn’t hold my gaze long, lowering his face to lick his paw.
Traitor.
The first time I found Amaya up here, my heart was in my throat the whole time. The courtyard seemed miles below us, and all I could think of was how close she sat to certain death.
This child of mine is wild and fae. She was raised in the north, in a house full of changeling children who were left on stone altars in the woods by their parents, left to either die or be raised by Old Mother Hibbert. I cannot even imagine what she’s known, though little comments she’s made have given me a hint of her life.
She was a hunter, one of the children who went into the forests in search of prey to bring down in order to feed all those hungry mouths.
There’s a fierceness to her that’s hard to penetrate, an ancient look in her eyes.
The more I pushed at her to be careful in those first few days, the more she would square her shoulders in defiance.
And as Finn said to me three days ago, she has her father’s gifts.
“She yearns for the wind, Vi,” he murmured to me as Amaya fled inside with a slam of her bedroom door. “She cannot shift shape yet. Or at least, I don’t think she can. But it’s inside her. That longing. This is where she feels safe.”
Those words do nothing to settle the jagged fist lodged right up under my ribs, but I’ve given up on trying to rein her in.
I have to build a relationship with her first.
“Hey,” I murmur. “Have you eaten?”
“Finn brought me a tray,” she says, though her nose wrinkles. The palace fare is like nothing she’s known, and we’re still trying to discover what she will eat. She prefers soups and stews and thick crusty bread with warmed butter. Pudding, if we have it.
At least she’s inherited one thing from me.
I sit myself on the edge of the parapet beside her, though I face the other way. I have not her—and her father’s—lack of fear for heights. “Why didn’t you tell me the Mother of Night was coming to you in your dreams?”
Amaya rests her chin on her knees. “She told me you weren’t ready to hear it.”
Of course she did.“You cannot trust her. She’s not our ally—”
“She’s beenmyally ever since I can remember,” Amaya cuts back.
What?“How long has she been coming to you?”
“All my life,” Amaya replies. She shrugs. “I hear her voice sometimes. At first it was when I was in danger and didn’t know it. I’d hear this voice, warning me to run. I didn’t know who it belonged to until this last year, when she started visiting my dreams.”
The shock of it leaves me breathless. I don’t even know where to start with this revelation—that my daughter has been in danger so many times that she can speak of it with merely a shrug, or that the Mother of Night has been watching over her all these years.
What in Maia’s name does thatmean?
The Mother told me I was theleanabh an dan, but there was another one out there if I refused to heed her call.
