30. Sybilla
Chapter 30
Sybilla
D usk darkened the bedchamber. I hadn’t seen Krait all day. Begrudgingly, I’d taken the day off from training, but his absence had done nothing to clear my mind. Krait and Ryn were right about my needing rest—I felt weighed down by bricks and had been unable to get out of bed until well into the afternoon.
After the announcement of our engagement, the maids had removed the cot. I stared at the two leather chairs, now returned to their spot in the cot’s place.
I’d agreed to let Krait sleep in the bed rather than on the floor. With pillows between us.
It hadn’t mattered. He refused to enter the room while I was awake. The only evidence of him this morning had been a rumpled pillow.
It was for my own good.
I’d been mentally undressing the King of the Sahlms since having arrived here. Part of me wanted to get the inevitable over with. We’d eventually fall into our marriage bed, and I wanted to be headed back to Luz with an heir on the way sooner rather than later.
That was what I wanted, wasn’t it?
A lump grew in my throat at the thought, unable to imagine a child growing inside of me, unable to picture myself holding a swaddled babe in my arms. Stuck between an ache for that future, and my anxiety toward it, I was glad for the time alone.
I needed to get out of the bedchamber, so I decided to spend my evening scouring the tomes in Krait’s hole. Still in my robe and slippers, I carried on down the hall and into the cool, dim library.
I’d never been bookish, but something about putting together pieces of a puzzle appealed to me.
There were three envoys.
Killing them could delay Caym’s path of destruction…
Not an option.
Not if Emmerick was one of them.
Trailing a finger over the leather and canvas spines, I sighed. I spent time leafing through texts. The floor became littered with dusty tomes.
I could read a bit of Phynnic, but most of the books were in Brennac and therefore useless to me. One Phynnic volume caught my attention. I stepped up on the library ladder and reached for the dust-saturated green linen cover.
Stepping down to sit on the chaise, I opened the volume in my lap. As soon as I did, the pages began flipping themselves. I gasped and raised my hands away from the book.
The pages came to a halt as though something was guiding my reading to a specific section.
The Sethe Curse
To curse any soul to wakeless sleep. When cast, one must premeditate a length of time for the cursed to rest. The cursed must be awakened before their time expires, or they will remain forever asleep.
Glancing around, I wondered what magical interference had just occurred, but sensed no threat here.
My mind reeled with the possibilities. What if we could trap Caym with this curse? My chest clenched. That might mean subjecting Emmerick to the same fate.
The bell tower above rang eight times.
I hugged the text to my chest and carried it back to the bedchamber.
Entering the empty room, I ground my teeth as I kicked off my leather slippers. The cool, multi-colored terrazzo tile against my swollen feet was a relief.
Why was I disappointed Krait wasn’t waiting here?
I hid the tome beneath my side of the bed.
***
After tossing for hours, I gave up on sleep.
I swiped a bottle of port and a chalice from the desk and padded out of the room. The ache in my hands and feet needed dulling.
I could push through...
The hallway was dark, but sconces lit the tile walls just enough to allow my vision to adjust. Umber House was much quieter at night than the Palace of Luz. Outside of a few guards, most staff here did not live in the residence and returned to the city at night. I wandered, poking my head into the drawing room, the kitchenette, the throne room.
I passed the door to the bell tower quarters. Surely it wouldn’t be easy to unlock.
I backtracked—testing the doorknob. Locked.
Surely Krait would be in here. “In the Shadows we trust.” At my whisper, the deadbolt clicked, and the door creaked open.
“Krait?” I called. No answer.
Curiosity won out, and I slipped inside the room.
There were so many candles. That was the first thing I noticed. I saw a spiral staircase to my right, which I assumed led up to the bell. Then my gaze landed on a platform to my left with hundreds of dancing flames around it. A fire-lit form hovered over me.
I jumped, spilling some wine from the chalice, before realizing the form was made of bronze.
Just a statue. I breathed a sigh of relief.
The craftsmanship captured every detail of her delicate hands, which reached out toward a crescent moon. Her hair was braided back at the crown and the rest hung loose over her shoulders, catching the non-existent wind.
Freya.
I recognized her face from the portrait in Krait’s library—also it so resembled Ryn’s.
A pang of grief settled in my chest. If she’d been anything like her brother, then the lands had lost a ruler worth mourning. A candle beside her foot had blown out, so I set down the bottle and picked up a candle to relight it.
“It’s no wonder you won the heart of such a surly asshole. You’re breathtaking,” I whispered to the woman in brass. There was a footstool that looked meant for kneeling. Groaning, I lowered myself onto it and straightened the cream-colored robe around my knees.
I tipped the chalice of port up toward Freya in silent acknowledgment before taking a drag. The flicker of candles held my attention. What would she have accomplished by now had she not been beheaded?
It was known that the last Princess of Phynx had fallen out of favor with her father just before the attack on their kingdom. Likely for some bullshit reason or another—that was always the way with royal men.
I didn’t know what compelled me to say, “My mother was beheaded too. I was there when they—”
This was the silliest fucking thing I’d ever done—talking to a dead woman as if the spirits cared about our living struggles.
I sighed and continued, “I was fourteen. I’ve never spoken of it. It seemed easier not to mourn her when everyone else was so angry with her. To show sympathy would have just turned their wrath toward me. It was rumored that she had committed adultery.”
I took another gulp of port; the drink meant to be sipped was being thoroughly chugged.
“I knew they were wrong.”
Freya seemed to gaze down on me, egging me on.
“The last words she ever said to me were ‘Don’t have children, Sybilla,’ which I obviously took as an insult. But then she said, ‘The world will only serve them disappointment.’ Funny, isn’t it?”
Even still, part of me longed for a palace full of laughter, full of love. Yet each time I had been presented with a suitable betrothal…I couldn’t go through with it.
“That’s the furthest thing from funny that I’ve ever heard,” a grave voice answered from the darkness behind me. Fucking Shadow traveler. My veins were so warm from the port that my reaction time was lacking—his presence hadn’t even startled me.
I huffed and set the chalice down on the ground before leaning back on my palms. “Why?” I challenged.
“Because true or not, that is a shit thing to say to a child.”
“Now we’re berating the dead?”
He grunted and crossed the room to relight another candle that had blown out. “No—I just mean that you shouldn’t have had to hear, or see, any of that.”
“Ah, so you’ve been eavesdropping the whole time then.” I shrugged, watching the muscles of his arms as he set the candle back down on the mantle. “Life is not all rainbows and sunsets, is it? My mother wasn’t wrong. Bringing children into the world is to hold confidence in the future. She held no such confidence.”
Krait was silent, his hand still held the candle. He seemed uncomfortable with my being here, yet he didn’t ask me to leave.
“She was beautiful,” I said.
He hummed, but glanced away from the flames. “She was.”
The room was rather dreary, with thick drawn curtains. There was minimal furniture aside from a desk on the far side, which had a glass case on top of it that housed a large tome.
It was no place to honor the dead.
I wished for more light for her, for her to see the moon that she’d once commanded.
Krait cut through my thoughts. “You speak of children as though you’ve made up your mind against them. Yet you told your cousin that you’d have a dozen children to keep him off your throne—is that what you actually want?”
I wondered why he was asking and tried to slip through the back door of his mind. Either he really wanted to keep his thoughts to himself, or I was too exhausted to push through.
“Nice try.” He confirmed my latter suspicion.
I let my head rest on my shoulder. “I want to secure my Corridor’s safety—to know that there is someone to rule when I die. But that seems like a terrible reason to bring a child into the world. Sometimes it sounds nice. Marriage, children, grandchildren, a palace full of laughter for generations to come...but that laughter isn’t guaranteed, is it? Any heir of mine would be born shackled to a crown they may or may not even want.”
Biting the side of my cheek, I realized I’d never voiced that fear before to anyone.
He remained guarded and hard to read.
“Is that how you feel? Shackled to your crown?” he asked.
“Am I being interrogated for something?” I was too tired for this.
He sighed. “You’re in a quarter you shouldn’t be in, drunk, chatting with my dead wife—I’m not interrogating you. I’m trying to understand you.”
When he put it that way, I knew I didn’t have the moral high ground in this argument. “Fine—yes. I have often resented my position, resented my parents. That does not mean that I don’t love my people or that I will not continue to do everything in my power to protect them.”
He made a sound that resembled a grunt of agreement. “We have that in common.”
Thinking that was the end of this bizarre conversation, I grabbed the bottle of port and the chalice and poured another glass. Rising and stepping up beside him, I extended it to him.
“Does marrying me change your view on having children?” The question came out blunt as he took a long sip of the port I offered him.
With wine-loosened lips, I answered, “Here we go with the breeding fantasies again.”
He smirked.
“Any children we conceived would be both Reverist and Source-wielder, would they not?”
“Reverist and Source Origin,” he corrected.
My brows lifted. “How could that be? I thought you were the Origin.”
The candlelight warmed his otherwise cold gray irises as he met my stare. I wasn’t sure when my hatred for him had begun to melt away. Something about being under his gaze now made my stomach flutter in a stupid, reckless way.
“When Caym led the Reverists to betray the other Origins, his brother, the Shadow Origin, Desidero, bargained with him for his life. Caym agreed, but he didn’t want Desidero to ever grow strong enough to be a threat to him. He let him live but under a curse.”
My head tilted as he backed away from Freya’s altar and motioned for me to follow him to the desk, where the glass case sat, a giant text within it with frayed binding.
“That curse meant that Desidero and his descendants would each only have one child. Upon doing so, they pass the role of Origin and their immortality down to their only heir, and their power slowly transitions to their child. It was my twentieth birthday when my father wielded his last Shadow.”
I balked. “You will become mortal if you have a child? That...that is...” I stammered before shaking my head.
“That is what is necessary,” he mused with a sad smile.
I shook my head again, unwilling to believe what he was saying. “That is quite a sacrifice. And if it makes you feel better, it is not one I would require you to make. I can find another way—someone willing to...”
His brow knitted and his fists clenched as though I’d misstepped.
“There is another caveat...” He looked down at the glass case. The tome beneath it was leather bound, and the cover was carved in a language I did not know. “This is the true Book of Isolde , the one that names you in its prophecy. My ancestors long ago discerned meaning from the texts that I’ve been reading you.”
Stepping up to the glass, I instinctually raised my fingers to the cool pane. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He opened the glass and carefully flipped to a page he seemed to have memorized. “This here, it reads: ‘You must listen, Fifth Heir of Desidero: Find the Last Daughter of my dearest Isleen. The heir you bear together will be both Origin and Reverist. Your child is the key to ending Death’s reign—the key to setting us all free.’”
It didn’t immediately sink in. I could feel the crease in my brow as I stared at the section he pointed to, unable to read it. My arms crossed over my chest. I searched my thoughts for why this sounded familiar.
His words when he’d told me he was the Shadow Origin. He was the fifth heir of Desidero.
I gasped out, “You? And me?” Taking a step back to put distance between us, I looked him up and down. “You have read me this passage before, and that is not what you said.”
He stood there with his arms at his sides as my composure evaporated. Between the port and my growing fatigue, I could barely stay standing. The whole room spun.
He said nothing—no denial, no remorse…
“You knew...you brought me here knowing.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know at first, didn’t think it could possibly be you.”
“What did you intend to do?” I couldn’t help the hurt from creeping into my voice as I backed away from him. “Did you...Were you going to force me to—”
“No,” he growled. “I told you—no one touches you if you do not want them to. Including me. I have never lied to you.”
My back hit the door, and I reached for the knob.
“Lying and withholding important truths are two of a kind. Sources...you have played me for a fucking fool.”
It felt like a dagger in my chest was being twisted. I hated that this was what I’d done to Em—I’d withheld so much for far longer.
Krait looked up at the ceiling for a moment before pinching the bridge of his nose. “I was scared.”
Krait being scared of anything seemed like a ridiculous concept. “ Scared? You can’t expect me to believe that. Scared of what?”
“I lost everything,” he said and waved his arm toward Freya’s statue. “From birth, I was prepared for this. But it was always supposed to be with her. Then she died, and I couldn’t imagine carrying out the prophecy without her. We’d always planned to raise my heir together.”
It was preposterous. I’d walked right into it...
He’d intended to raise his heir with Freya regardless of who I’d been.
I reeled for balance and white-knuckled the doorknob.
“And what of this heir now, what would we do? Raise them together and split their time between Luz and Sahlmsara? When were you planning to discuss this?”
The only thing that kept me hovering at the door was my desire to believe Krait was better than all the horrible assumptions of him running through my mind.
He took a deep breath. “Until meeting you, I’d never considered your involvement.”
My free hand impulsively found its way to my neck—visions of what had happened to my mother surfaced.
Disposable.
Removable from the situation.
A husband who grew tired of me.
An heir who resented me for the heavy crown they wore.
I’d heard enough. I stepped out and slammed the door behind me. What he’d admitted was a gut-wrenching reminder that he could not be trusted.
Krait Darvanda may not have been the enemy I’d once imagined him to be, but he’d intended to use me and that crumbled my prior confidence that his motives were altruistic.
Bile rose in my throat as I thought about the ways I’d opened myself up to him already. I’d agreed to marry the bastard before knowing he’d deemed me a broodmare—before knowing my fate fully. And he’d let me.
With shaking hands and a drunken gait, I forced myself down the hall.
I didn’t know where to go. Halfway back to the bedchamber, Elsedora found me.
She wasted no time with pleasantries and grabbed my hands. “The deathmark—it is on King Emmerick’s broadsword. Right on the pommel,” she gasped. “I saw the light leave his eyes, and the transition happened right before me. Something is very wrong in Helos. King Mattock no longer acts entirely of his own accord.”
“Did you hurt him? Did he hurt you?” I sputtered.
“No, of course not. I’m fine. But Sybilla, you cannot go near him. Promise me. Not until we figure out a way to rid him of Caym.”
I grew dizzy. El held my shoulders to steady me. Maybe the swaying was from the port, or my waning health, or the shock of having my worst fears confirmed.
Every stone of a carefully built tower was coming crashing down around me. Yet the puzzle was snapping together.
I was a daughter of Isleen.
Krait was the fifth heir of Shadows.
Our child could stop the Death Origin.
The Death Origin had his grasp on Emmerick.
I swallowed hard.
I should have insisted we went straight to Krait...but propriety was lost to me now. After what Krait had told me, my respect for his boundaries had worn thin as glass.
He expected a child? I expected safety for all of my loved ones.
We needed to help Emmerick. We needed to stop the Death Origin before it was too late.
I knew my friend. Even angry, Emmerick would not betray me without outside influence. He would not turn on me the way he had in that council meeting.
But was it already too late? That was a doubt that I didn’t allow myself to linger on. The King of the Sahlms might have deceived me, but he could still be useful for the time being.
Strong strategies could sometimes take root in soft soil. I didn’t trust this realm or its ruler. But I did trust that he would keep me safe...until I gave him what he wanted.
Tears rolled down my cheeks, and El squeezed my arm with raised brows. I crumbled, bending at the waist. “Maybe we should ask King Darvan-dick what to do. He seems to have plenty of plans I have not been privy to.”
“He told you.”
Elsedora’s thoughts raced. “Oh shit. She’s going to leave.”
“I’m not leaving. Yet, ” I said, answering her internal worry.
El’s whole body slackened in relief. “I told him to tell you weeks ago.” She sighed. “You must understand—we have been searching for you for so long. It killed me not to be able to share the truth with you sooner, but as you know, he’s a dick when his mind’s set on something.”
I smiled weakly through tears. “For the time being, can I please stay in your quarters? If not, I may smother him in his sleep.”
“Of course,” she answered while brushing a tear from my cheek with her thumb.
We walked through the halls arm in arm. Fenris’ sister could be flighty, but one thing she wasn’t was cruel or scheming. The hope in her voice when she’d spoken of searching for me warmed my cold shock.
I may have been part of some grand plan for Krait, but Elsedora cared about some of the people closest to me and that was a link in a chain I wouldn’t easily break over a man’s dishonesty.
Other people’s lives were at stake.