The Blood Crown (The Blood Folk #2)

40. Chapter 40

Chapter 40

“ Y ou’re certain he recognized you?”

Nira’s hands were splayed across the etched moonstone table before them, her ruby eyes sweeping over the map in the council room.

Aurelia had known this conversation was necessary—imminent, but nothing quite prepared her as the facade of peace was finally ripped away.

Ven gave a decisive nod from where he stood beside her, one arm crossed over his broad chest, forefinger running along his bottom lip as he studied the map. It was an effort to drag her eyes away from those lips, a better distraction than the threat looming before them.

“Maloch knew us—he watched Aurelia kill Asmodeous. He knows the kind of power she wields, and we should assume that he knows we’ve brought her here."

A voice—dark and cold, leaked into her memory.

Karro paced at the side of the room while Seth stood at the opposite end of the table from his twin. Lean arms braced against the table, his usually bound hair was a dark cascade down his shoulders, the silken sheen as glossy as Cog’s midnight-colored feathers. She’d never realized how long it was until this moment because he always kept it in a neat knot at the top of his head.

“Tell me—again—how you killed Asmodeous,” Seth said, trying to make sense of it like the rest of them.

“At first it seemed like he was—”she gave an uncertain shake of her head, searching for the word, “siphoning my power.”

Wearing the ring had honed her magick. Sharpened it. But she knew the price it took as well—the lingering feeling that someone had been rummaging through her thoughts. But when she’d told Nira and Seth for the first time, both of them were struck silent as their matching eyes shared some unspoken understanding.

“The princes of the Void cannot create their own magick—they must consume it from others,” Nira contemplated, hooking her dark sheet of hair behind an ear with a slender finger.

Ven had told her as much—but it was another thing entirely to witness it. The feeling of her power being ripped away from her, stolen, as the white prince had leached it from her.

“And you kept your wits the entire time you wore the ring?” Nira prodded, “Your thoughts remained your own?”

She nodded.

The look on Asmodeous’ face was still fresh in her mind. His eyes widening when he realized she’d pushed him from her thoughts as her magick burned through him.

“Someone weaker would have succumbed and become one of their creatures,” Ven murmured from beside her, placing a hand on top of hers.

She stifled a shudder at the memory of Tanis—or what had been Tanis before the demon prince had claimed her as his own creature.

Nira threw a glance toward her twin. “No one has ever successfully wielded any of the relics.”

Seth’s gaze was distant as he murmured darkly, “To use one is to become another vessel—for him .”

“I watched her wield one and kill a prince of the Void with it,” Ven uttered, knuckles blanching as he gripped the table, readying for a fight.

Nira’s eyes met Aurelia’s, apologetic. “We do not doubt your memory—”

“But never before has anyone used a relic of their own volition—much less destroyed one in the process,” Seth finished.

Asmodeous’ voice rang through her memory.

Don’t you wish to know what you truly are?

Even now, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Ven the words the demon prince had spoken.

Aurelia swallowed, thinking of the slithering, oily feeling that had come over her the two times she’d worn the ring, only fully leaving once it had been burned from her finger.

She glanced down at the fully healed skin on her forefinger that had been blistered and raw from the dark magick, all evidence of it gone.

Silence hung heavy in the room.

“Lightning,” Nira murmured.

“And compulsion,” Ven added, exchanging a glance with her.

Neither of them had mentioned the new power she’d displayed in that cavern while they’d been intertwined . . .

“Shadows,” she admitted.

Karro stopped his pacing, dark brows flicking up from across the room.

“The shadows are our magick—that’s simple enough,” Nira contemplated, “And vorares are rare, but not particular to any one kingdom . . ." She turned to her twin. "Storm magick?”

“The Etheri,” Seth answered.

A fist tightened around her chest at the name. A kingdom she’d never heard them speak of.

“They could control the winds, the tides," Seth explained, his ruby eyes snagging on hers. "Send a summer squall in the dead of winter or throw a battlefield into chaos with impenetrable fog.”

“I suspected the same,” Ven murmured beside her, “but none of them could command lightning—not like you.” Pride resonated in his voice as Aurelia glanced down at her hand, intertwined with his. “They were the only ones who posed a true threat to the King of the Void.” His eyes caught on the map beneath their fingers, to the marred region beside the Allokin kingdom.

Whatever name had been etched there once was now blackened with scorch marks.

“What happened to them.” Dread sluiced down her spine, already guessing at the answer.

“Skyhelm was the first to fall in the war . . . the Dark King struck hard and fast before any of us knew of his plans,” Ven uttered.

Seth loosed a sigh. “The battle for the city was—”

“It was no battle,” Karro spat. “It was an extermination. Children. Infants . . .” Nira clasped a hand around Karro’s arm, breaking off the haunted look in the Wraith’s eyes.

“It would explain why he’s been hunting you,” Nira said.

“One way to find out,” Karro said, earning a pointed look from Ven.

He slipped his fingers inside the pocket at his chest. An iron disk poised between them.

The room was silent, save for the grate of metal on stone as Karro slid the heavy coin across the table.

Aurelia toyed with the collar of her shirt, uncertain why she felt a spark of fear as her eyes fell to it.

It would be a confirmation of what she was—what they thought she was—so why did she hesitate?

Reluctantly releasing her hold on the shirt, she reached for the coin.

Magick hummed in response as her fingers hovered over it, seeming to vibrate with recognition.

Unbidden—a flare of white leapt from her palm, disappearing beneath the age-worn surface of the iron.

Nira blanched. “How—” She jabbed a slender finger onto the moonstone. “If there had been any survivors, we would have found them—we would have known.”

Aurelia clasped her fingertips around the smooth edges of the coin, closing her eyes as she let her power speak to whatever residual magick was still contained in the ancient metal.

I know you, it seemed to say.

And for some inexplicable reason—tears lined her eyes.

She squeezed them shut, willing the emotion back into place, but before she had the chance, a callused thumb brushed away the errant tear.

Her breath hitched as the coin heated in her palm, more than body warmth.

Panic swelled as the iron scorched her, feeling as though it had been embedded in coals before being dropped into her palm.

It fell to the floor with an echoing clank, spinning, spinning, spinning until it flattened on the black stone.

Ven searched her face. “What is it?”

“It—” she looked down at her palm, rubbing the red, blistered skin, already healing over, “burned me.”

Nira’s ruby eyes studied Aurelia. “You said the First Brother trapped you—How?”

Aurelia ran her thumb over her freshly healed skin, recalling the detail she’d nearly forgotten since she’d recounted her escape to all of them. “A ring of black powder . . .”

Ven stilled at the words, his gaze sliding to her.

“Black powder?” Nira asked, her bronze skin paling slightly as she looked to her twin.

Aurelia nodded. “I couldn’t cross the circle until Cog broke it.”

“A containment spell,” Nira murmured, her words laced with disbelief. “Black basalt?” She asked Seth.

Karro stopped his pacing, shaking his head. “But that only works on—”

Seth's eyes raised to where she stood. “The demon princes.”