Page 191 of Death of a Mortal

The male just looked at each of us once more, as if hoping we would refute what Drayce had just said.

When we didn’t, he just swallowed. “Thank the godsyou all made it out.”

Drayce nodded at the male as we walked by. We were stopped several more times as we made our way slowly through the port city, all with the same questions. Drayce repeated that same answer so many times walking through Fallorian that the words no longer shocked me by the time we reached the horses.

The aerial unit had flown ahead when we had been about two days out to alert a stable hand back at the base of our imminent arrival and to help ready the horses to meet us.

We mounted and began the ride back to base, me still seated in front of Drayce. No one seemed in any rush to get back, knowing we would bring confirmation of the devastating news to our rebels and face the same haunted looks and stares of disbelief.

How was it that only a few months ago we were on this same route, bringing me to base for the first time? It felt like more than a lifetime ago, as if I were an entirely different person now.

Drayce slipped an arm around my waist from behind me in the saddle and rested his forehead on my shoulder.

“I’m here, Naci. I always will be, through fire and shadow and whatever else comes.”

I entwined my fingers with his and squeezed, but still said nothing. Had I even spoken since we left the castle?

* * *

In the weeksafter we returned to base, I receded into my mind and shadows, finding comfort in the absence of emotion there. I often stayed at the Arcanum house, seeking solitude in the library’s underground darkness. At first being there made me angry, made me think of Sevrin and his betrayal. But after a while, that seemed the least devastating of the revelations from that day in the throne room.

Here, sometimes I read, sometimes I stared for hours in silence at the glowing glythyrs on the wall.

I left my dampener ring on all the time now. I feared that if I slipped into my vey form that the rage and hate I felt for Malvina justmight be the world-ending catastrophe that had been a possibility in the prophecy.

In my solitude, I thought often of all the lives she had ruined—mine, Keryth’s, Nella’s, Varyn’s, Caedryn’s. Cassius’s... For nineteen years, since I was just a year old, Cassius had been controlled by Malvina’s wicked magic. Maybe one day I would go back to Briarstead and see if amends were possible now that I knew the truth. I wondered briefly how he and Aemilia were faring back home—probably just fine now that it was just the two of them, if he was still under Malvina’s mind-control. I wondered if he would even care that one of his daughters was dead, and the other was, well…me. Would he feel enough emotion to break through her magic? See clearly for the first time in nearly two decades?

Drayce was worried about me, I knew, but I wasn’t ready to face reality yet. One day, I’d have to reconcile my feelings about Cassius. It was hard to grow up being abused and mistreated, only to find out he had no control over it. But I wasn’t ready for that yet either.

I also obsessed over the prophecy that Sevrin had recited, playing it over and over in my head. The parts about the blood moon and saving or dooming Caelia made sense, but it was the second half that I pondered and sought desperately to understand.

Duality and circumstance. Connections and broken bonds.

I’d felt for so long that I had an evil, hateful beast inside me, warring with my own thoughts—which certainly sounded like what the prophecy meant by duality. Or maybe it meant my mortal upbringing versus my true fae nature. Growing up a mortal could certainly make me sympathetic and influence my desire for retribution. Or maybe it was the fire and the shadows? Alone, they each weren’t inherently bad. Controlled shadows could be used to protect my loved ones, and my fire to forge instead of burn. But together, the black flames…maybe those were inherently bad. But I could choose not to use them?

Did I really have a choice when in my vey form, when my evil nature had control?

Drayce refused to slip into his vey form out of fear of what it was capable of. Maybe I could choose that too. I had to believe I had some choice in these matters, that the prophecy was open to interpretation.

It bothered me, though, that wordcircumstance. That didn’t sound like a choice. I didn’t have a choice in the connections or broken bonds in my life. I’d had no control over Nella or my mother’s deaths, no control over Varyn’s betrayal…

I thought of him down here too. Had he really betrayed me, or was Malvina the cause of everything that had happened from the moment I set foot in Ashthorn? I wondered what he was doing now, with his father dead and Malvina on the throne. Would he fight to overthrow her, or would she control him the way I’d been controlled?

The worst of it, though, was the ever-persistent anxiety over her last words to us. What did she know that we didn’t? What game was she playing where we were just pawns? What could she possibly be planning that would make any of us go back to Ashthorn, except to kill her?

She’d asked me to join her in a partnership, and I had a horrible, sinking feeling she would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. She’d already ripped one family apart, tampered with a child’s heart and magic, killed a queen, then made a king kill himself… all just to be Ashenholt’s sole queen. She really was willing to do anything.

These thoughts chased each other around in my head day and night, awake and in my sleep. My head felt too full.

Noxie spoke to me daily, mostly just to check in, as I never said much. Some days, he came into the house and sat with me in silence. Some days, he gave me the space I asked him for.

I was detaching from all that I knew.

It was Aerie who came to visit me one day in the Arcanum house, finding me at my favorite spot among the books nearly a month after the throne room.

“Hey,” she said gently. “You up for making some dinner for us? You spoiled us, and now we can’t eat Orrin’s boring-ass food.”

I looked up at her, seeing the concern and sadness lining her face. I hated to see them fret over me like this, but they didn’t understand the burden I carried with all that had happened, all that was said.