Page 40 of Curse of Darkness
There’s horror in his eyes as his gaze slides to the length of steel. “Vi—”
“I hear that fucking crown whispering in my head every night.” My voice comes in a rush. “I feel it now, urging me to not pass this over. To take up both sword and crown. Sometimes I think things—see a future I would never imagine in a thousand years—where I sit on a throne at the head of an empire that rules the world. So don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m asking of you.” I take an unsteady breath. “I know what temptation whispers. I know the fight. Just as I know that if there is one hand that can stay temptation, it is yours. You, Finn. One of my husband’s most loyal warriors.”
His jaw stiffens, his eyes downcast.
And then he slowly looks up and holds out his hand.
This is the moment in which we test the truth: Few can wield the Sword of Mourning.
But as Finn’s hand curls around the hilt, our gazes meet, and then there’s another shock of cataclysmic ringing in my ears. The sword seems to vibrate. My fingers fight the urge to curl around the hilt and rip it back from him, but it’s too late—
He has the sword.
“As my queen commands,” he rasps, pushing to his feet and lifting the cursed steel.
10
North again. Our passage through the Hallow is effortless and leaves us standing in a world kissed with snow.
The Hallow is shielded by the curve of the valley. There’s no wind down here, and it’s a little eerie. It feels like we’re standing on the edge of the world—the farthest Hallow north, and one where visitors rarely return from.
“These are the Shadowfall ranges,” Finn mutters, breathing into his cupped hands as he takes a few careful steps through the Hallow stones. “They stand at the very edge of the world. No one has gone beyond them—or at least, no one has ever returned. They say if the cold doesn’t get you, then the monsters that lurk here will.”
I press my hand against one of the enormous standing stones that circle the Hallow. The top of it is sheared off and might explain the odd buzzing sound I heard when we finally arrived. The Hallow didn’t fight us, but there was definitely a moment where the magic pulsed and I wondered if it was going to spit us out into the middle of nowhere.
“What sort of monsters should we expect?” It’s so fucking cold I can’t stop shivering. Easing out a breath, I still my mind and then reach for the dark flame within me. It’s getting easier to access my fae magics the more I use them, as if the curse my mother laid upon me is finally disintegrating. I forge heat into my cloak and clothes—just enough to still the seeping cold.
And then I grab Finn’s cloak and do the same for him.
“Thanks,” he mutters, though he doesn’t take his eyes off the surrounding forest. “And I’d really prefer not to find out. I only ever came this far north once, andsomethingwas hunting us, but I didn’t stick around to find out what.”
“Us?”
He passes between the stones. “Long story, Vi. An old story.”
And one he clearly doesn’t want to speak of. I follow him, boots sinking into the snow. It’s nearly a foot deep, and so soft and pristine that it’s clear we’re the only ones who’ve been here for a while.
Maybe even years.
“There was an Old One tied to this Hallow,” I murmur, “from what I saw in Imerys’s book about the old myths.”
Finn surges ahead. “Do I really want to know?”
“A figure dressed in ragged furs. Wolfbrother, they called him. A child left out in the snows who was found by a pack of wolves and raised by them. He became their master—their alpha—and his howl used to echo through these mountain ranges.” I chance a glance beneath the nearest snow-clad fir. “He was unlike the rest of the Old Ones. The only ones who prayed to him were the wolves and local fae who offered him and his pack animal sacrifices so they’d leave them alone. The book said he slipped from memory, from this world long ago. He became more wolf than otherkin, and they say eventually he learned the gift of slipping skins until he truly ran on all fours. Nobody’s seen him in over five hundred years, but the wolves in the north here hunt in the dozens together.”
“A skinshifter. Curse it. I knew we should have brought Baylor.”
“Have you ever seen him shift shape?”
Baylor and Lysander were born somewhere in Unseelie thousands of years ago—they’re the oldest among us. They were bound to serve the Grimm, the Old One who rides with a pack of hounds, though I seem to recall a drunken night, long ago, where Lysander let slip that they’d been enemies of the Grimm. He turned them into hounds and they were forced to ride at his will for thousands of years, until they became more beast than fae. I don’t know how they escaped him, but when I mentioned that I was destined to break open the prison worlds and restore the Old Ones to the world, Baylor grew a little pale.
“Yes,” Finn says. “He becomes an enormous silver wolf-like creature, and let’s just say I would rather stick my hand in a fire than be hunted by either of them. They have teeth the size of my index finger.”
“I’m fairly certain they’d never hunt you.”
“Baylor’s not so certain,” he finally admits. “I think you scared him, Vi, when you said the Mother of Night wants you to free the rest of her kin. He escaped the Grimm once, but if he’s free again, then they’ll hear his call. It’s a siren song, Lysander once admitted when he was deep in his cups. When the Grimm forged them into his hounds, he laid his mark on them, and they’ll never truly escape it.”
The same way Thalia fears the Father of Storms if I free him. She has just enough blood from her saltkissed father to wonder if she’s going to be bound to the Father of Storms’s will.
