Page 4 of Curse of Darkness
Finn brushes past me, one hand on his sword hilt. “Let me go first!”
But every inch of rage within me dies when I see the male kneeling by the dais.
We stare at each other, and I’m not so lost in grief that I don’t see the change in Edain’s demeanor. Once he was a pet leopard, leashed at my mother’s feet. Once he wore silk robes that revealed a healthy slice of his chest, with glittering rings on his fingers and a curved dagger at his hip. To look at him was to see sex and sin and all manner of wicked vices.
None of that remains.
Instead, a stranger tilts his head back, his shirt ripped and stained and his black hair raked back off his face. There’s a sheath at his hip, but no knife, and claw marks leave dried blood on the back of his hands.
Old blood.
My steps slow. “What do you want?”
If he mentions Thiago’s death, I swear I’ll kill him.
Instead he tips his chin up, wincing a little in the light. “I have nowhere else to go. Your mother’s cast me out—”
“And you thought you would be welcomehere?”
Silence settles over the room like a mantle.
The stiffness leaches out of Edain’s shoulders. “No. I did not think I would find welcome. I wouldn’t have come if I weren’t desperate.” There’s a hint of his old bite in his voice as he meets my gaze once more. “You didn’t ask why your mother cast me out.”
I should have. I’m not thinking as clearly as I once did.
Edain is my mother’s pet.
A toy, in her eyes. Her dearest weapon.
My mother would never discard such a weapon when he was so useful. She would forgive him murder. She would forgive him any lie. She would forgive him almost any betrayal except for the one I once taunted him with.
“Where’s Andraste?” I whisper, ice settling in my heart, in my soul, in the room. It suddenly sheets across the audience chamber floors, plunging the temperature of the room to arctic levels. “Where is my sister?”
“Vi!” Finn skids on the ice.
It’s everywhere.
I’ve been able to shield the world from my burgeoning powers, but I can’t control this. I can’t control the rage that ignites my magic. Where once there was heat and flame, now there’s only ice.
Because ice doesn’t hurt.
Ice has no heart.
“Your sister is gone,” Edain says, pushing to his feet and shifting warily as hoarfrost creeps up the walls. “Your mother discovered Andraste had a hand in stealing her crown and giving it to you. She wanted to punish her—”
“What did Motherdo?” I would know if my sister was dead. I would know. Wouldn’t I?
“Your mother sent her north to the goblin clans.” Finally, I know why his eyes look so fucking wretched. “She’s to be the bride of the goblin king. And I can’t rescue her by myself.”
2
“Bride?” Dubiousness fills Finn’s voice as we all gather in the council chamber Thiago used to brief his circle of confidantes. “It’s been a long time since the goblins came looking for brides within the alliance.”
I wrap my arms around myself as I stand by the window staring out over Ceres. I know what Finn’s not saying. The goblin clans haunt the mountains north of Evernight, though they keep to themselves. They struck an ancient treaty with our people citing peace, and while they despise both the seelie and unseelie, to break the peace means to spit in the eyes of their ancestors.
It doesn’t mean there haven’t been incursions.
The goblin clans are wild and unruly. They were once ruled by a long line of stern kings, but the last king was murdered, and the clans tore themselves apart, with his heirs proclaiming themselves “kings” left and right.
