Page 134 of Curse of Darkness
Thiago laces his fingers together. “Adaia won’t launch an offensive until she’s certain she can win it. She can’t afford to lose. The border lords in the north of Asturia are unstable—or unwilling allies—and her hold on the south of the kingdom relies upon the myth of her power. The last time she went to war against Evernight, she was soundly defeated. She assumed we were backwater unseelie monsters with little coordination or battle experience. She learned from that moment. She won’t risk it again until she is certain of victory. Or else her southern lords might start questioning whether she’s truly an untouchable queen.”
“If they dare, then she’ll simply slaughter them.”
“True. But that will not help her cause in the long run. It will even erode it, perhaps. The myth of power is a valuable weapon,” Baylor murmurs. “Take Eris, for example. They call her the Detroyer, and bards sing stories of her cruelty and her viciousness all through the south. She’s Evernight’s secret, most dangerous weapon. When she walks onto a field of battle, armies break at the mere sight of her and orderly lines shatter as their foot troops scramble to escape. For four centuries, she’s barely had to fight, because everyone remembers what she did at the fields of Nevernight.
“Fae warriors come to try their hand against her, hoping to conquer her and force her into a marriage. With every defeat, the legend grows. But what happens if one of them beats her? What happens if someone on the field of battle manages to wound her? Or some male defeats her and wins her hand? The myth shatters. Suddenly, she’s no longer a vengeful god to be feared. She becomes mortal in more ways than one. And the next time she walks onto the field of battle, her enemies will not flee. They may tremble, but they will know shecanfall.
“The same is to be said of Adaia.” Baylor’s silvery lashes flutter down over his eyes. “She’s spent centuries shoring up her reputation after her last defeat. She rules her court with an iron fist, and her courtiers bow and scrape because she breathes fear into a room merely by walking into it. But thirteen years ago, her reputation suffered another blow. You, Vi. You escaped her. You defied her. Suddenly, all her vassals mutter among themselves. Is the queen vulnerable? Could they take a tilt at her throne? Could she fall against Evernight? She has to win this war. She needs to, if she’s to hold onto her power. And so she will wait until our backs are against the wall.Destroy her myth and you destroy her power.”
I can’t help thinking of my mother and the last time I saw her—the night we stole her crown from her. Maybe he’s right, because, although the memory of her voice can still make me flinch, I have hope now.
My mothercanbe defeated.
“We could destroy her,” the crown whispers. “It would be so easy to make her grovel.”
I close my mind to its evil.
“Here’s some good news,” Thiago says, reading a message. “Prince Kyrian is offering as much assistance as he can afford to offer. Twenty of his ships are sitting off the Asturian coast—precisely as many as the Seelie Alliance states he may have, without crossing treatise restrictions—but he’s made no other move yet. He says he’ll continue to hold them there until escalation.”
“What does that mean?” I lick my porridge off the spoon.
“It means that if he joins us too soon, then it will be seen as an act of aggression within the alliance,” Thiago says with a sigh. “But he’s got my back. It’s probably the reason Adaia hasn’t sent her troops across the Firenze river yet. If she does, then she’s waging war on another kingdom within the alliance, which means Kyrian—through right of his alliance with Evernight—is free to attack her ports.”
“He’s what?” Thalia sets her own reports down. “How long have those ships been sitting there?”
“Weeks,” Thiago replies, running his fingers through my hair and massaging my scalp.
Her lips press firmly together. “And he didn’t deign to inform us of this before you returned?”
Thiago arches a brow and glances at his missive again. “There appears to have been some sort of miscommunication…. Something about ‘I sent an envoy. He was returned post-haste.’”
“That son-of-a-selkie.” Thalia’s chair scrapes back as she stands. “His envoy sneered at me, called me a ‘saltkissed bastard’ and then told me Prince Kyrian demanded to know how we’d gotten you killed. What else does he say?”
“Not much. Though there is a pointed question about how the fuck did I come back from the dead?”
“I am going to murder him with my bare hands,” she growls.
“After the war,” Baylor says calmly.
A fluttering demi-fey launches through the window, sagging as it carries something heavy in its hands. It drops the letter in Thalia’s lap, before collapsing beside the tiny bowl of milk she has sitting on the table beside her for precisely this reason.
Thalia’s face pales as she notes the signet pressed into the seal on the letter.
“What is it?” Thiago barks.
“Trouble.” She says, slitting the seal and then reading the scroll. Her face pales further, if that’s possible.
“Trouble?” Thiago stops playing with my hair.
Thalia hands him the letter.
The seal on it arrests the breath in my lungs. It’s the Askan seal; a golden serpent coiled on a dark green background.
“What the fuck does Maren want?” Thiago sits up, almost dislodging me as he runs his thumb under the seal and tears it open.
The expression on his face tightens as his gaze scans the letter.
“What is it?” I ask breathlessly.
