Page 26 of Curse of Darkness
“Come,” she whispers, drawing me down into the fog.
I take a deep breath as icy-cold water laps at my knees, at my hips, higher—
And then she shoves my head under, and we both step through into another world.
Music erupts. Creatures spin to life in a forest, breathing joy into pipes and dancing around a fire. They’re not fae. Little horns peer through their hair. Some of them bear wings. Other sport the legs of a deer, or the eyes of a goat.
Otherkin.
The creatures who ruled this world before the fae arrived.
The ones who lay with fae before the wars, birthing the unseelie into the world. I can’t stop looking at one of the otherkin sitting in a tree. He has wings as black as a raven’s, made of long elegant feathers. Horns peep through his hair, and his eyes bear the savage golden gleam of a hawk’s.
Thiago was Darkyn, but I can’t help looking at the otherkin’s wings and wondering.
“I’ve seen the past,” I whisper.
“This isn’t the past. This is now. These are my people,” she whispers, gesturing to the otherkin around us. “Or what is left of them. They pray to me still from the secret nooks and lairs of their forests. They beg for mercy. They beg for protection.” Anger clouds her face. “And I cannot help them. Not from here.” She turns to me. “I cannot break free, Iskvien, because I am trapped here, and the locks to my prison are inyourworld. To be freed, one would need to either use one of the great keys—the Sword of Mourning, the Crown of Shadows—and break the locks on the Hallows. Or sacrifice someone of a royal bloodline. Someone powerful enough to shatter those wards. And I would needyouto do it.”
The same way I broke the Erlking free.
“Please,” she whispers. “War is coming. My people will die if we are not there to protect them. The Horned One will slaughter them.”
“Are they not his people too?”
She turns the ruined side of her face toward me. “He has forgotten who he is and where he came from. He has formed new alliances now and gained the power and prayers of Angharad and her unseelie. He will crush my kind in his quest for vengeance against the seelie and barely even notice. We want the same things, Vi. Peace. Freedom. And the Horned One dead.”
“How can I trust you?” I whisper. “When you lied to me? When you’ve been whispering in my daughter’s fucking head?”
“I never lied to you.”
“‘If you go to the Black Keep”—I throw her words right back at her—“a part of you won’t return.’ You knew. You knew he would die. Why should I trust you? How do I forgive you? What if this is another trick? Another lie? Another manipulation?”
“Because you have never understood me.” Anger darkens her face. “There was a choice to be made. If you walked into the Black Keep, then one of you would die. You. Amaya. Thiago. It was inevitable. So I gave fate a little nudge. I could see it all play out in my waters. No matter what I did, the Horned Onewouldrise. One of you would die. And so I did the one thing I could do to thwart him. I saved you.You, Vi. You’re the key to everything.”
“What in the Darkness does thatmean? I am nothing. And he—”
He was my everything.
Her face grows cold. “I offered him the choice. I could save one of you. And he chose you.”
That’s even worse. Tears stream down my face. I knew he went too easily.
“You haven’t been listening,” she whispers, grabbing my shoulders. “You haven’t been listening to me. You haven’t been listening to Lucere—”
“Lucere?” I look up sharply, dashing the tears from my eyes. “What does she have to do with this?”
“Everything.”
She hauls me toward her, and we vanish back into the fog. I gasp as she drags me from the well, its frigid waters sluicing off me.
The Mother of Night follows, limping slightly. A single flick of her fingers, and water drains from her hair and clothes, leaving her dry. A shiver runs over my skin as she bestows the same gift upon me.
“Look out into the lake.”
I do, and as she lifts a hand, the earth beneath our feet begins to tremble.
Pale rocks appear, rising to the surface of the lake. They form a pathway out to where bubbles hiss to the surface.
