Chapter 39 #2
He laughed, the sound passing through me like a cold spirit.
“I’d hoped you may believe my facade. We could have used you, but you have always been too smart for your own good, Ophelia.
And apparently my son’s brain has not been as addled as I intended.
” His casual shrug had my blood roaring in my ears.
“Very well, I shall tell you the full tale.” A sneer twisted his lips. “Then, I shall dispose of you both.”
My grip around Malakai tightened. Lucidius was a skilled fighter.
If it came to that, could I survive the battle with him and escape with his son?
Malakai’s heartbeat quickened beside my head, waking a fierce determination within me.
As long as the stars shone, I would not let that heart stop beating.
Lucidius’s voice was harsher when he spoke again, as if the confession unleashed the truly sinister being hidden within him.
“You are correct that I knew about the war before it began, but this plan has been in the works for decades. Much longer than either of you have been alive. It begins with my mother.” His scowl deepened.
“As a young warrior, barely a century old, she grew restless. She had not traveled since her summer exchanges as an adolescent and was eager to see the world, but she never made it past the Engrossians.”
My brows cinched together, and Lucidius saw my confusion.
“No, she did not die there. But she did have a brief dalliance with a highly ranked Engrossian soldier. Nothing more than one night, but thus—I was born.”
“You’re…you’re half Engrossian?” If that was true, he did not have the right to the Revered title of his Mystique father’s bloodline.
Lips curling into a grin, Lucidius prowled around us as he spoke.
“I am. But my mother hid it from everyone, especially the man I thought was my father. She went home and convinced him that the child was his. I was born with her tanned skin and dark hair, so there was not much question. Though, my eyes always favored those of my true father.” He gestured to his face, and I swore I saw a bead of pride in those eyes—the ones Malakai had inherited.
“My mother died when I was only sixteen, but not before sharing her secret with me. And unaware of the truth, the Mystique man raised me as his own.”
My mind raced to rewrite the history I thought I knew while also figuring out how this led to where we were today.
Lucidius continued, “I tried to force that other part of me away. The Engrossians were our rivals, after all. I grew up detesting them and their thirst for our power.” His voice slithered over those last words, nothing but admiration in his tone.
Based on the slight tremors rocking his body, I knew that Malakai heard it, too, and was as disgusted as I was.
“But I couldn’t deny it.” Lucidius remained lost in his tale, unfazed by our reactions.
“I wanted to know the other half of my heritage. I wanted to see if I could fill this void within me that had formed when my mother told me the truth. So, a few years after her death, I started taking annual trips to the Engrossian Territory under the pretense of diplomacy. My Mystique father never would have let me go otherwise, for I had outgrown the age of summer exchanges, but I learned their history, their culture, and their strife, directly from my biological father. And that was when I met Kakias.”
Lucidius’s eyes turned a hungry green, so deep it was almost black. Barely darker than his son’s, but in them I saw an emotion I recognized.
“It was more than just a treaty,” I breathed.
The end of the war, the diplomacy he masqueraded behind in signing that agreement, it was all a farce.
The relationship between Queen Kakias of the Engrossian Warriors and Lucidius Blastwood, Revered of the Mystiques, was—could it be called love?
Something rooted in such vile goals, manifesting into such atrocious actions, was surely a different kind of burning passion.
“I believe you two understand. A connection that deep cannot be explained, nor can it be severed.” His eyes flitted between us, narrowing at the Bind on Malakai’s chest. “She was everything to me, but only for that month of every year. For the rest of the year, I was to remain in the Mystique Territory, learning to rule from my false father’s hand. ”
“If you were truly loyal to the Engrossians, how did you ascend to a full warrior?” The Undertaking surely should have killed him.
His answering smile was spiteful, as if he had been waiting for me to ask. “The pools of magic in the Engrossian valleys are rife with dark secrets.”
Bile coated my throat. He had fooled our most sacred ritual. Made a mockery of it. Though I did not want to believe it, with each piece he revealed, his story became more irrefutable.
“The years went on, and it was clear that my father intended for me to marry another woman of a great Mystique bloodline.”
At the sneer on Lucidius’s face, Malakai and I both released low growls. Akalain.
He scoffed at our reaction. “She was beautiful, yes, and a talented warrior. She would make a good match for a future Revered, promised strong offspring, but my heart was elsewhere. When I told Kakias, she offered to kill the other woman—no questions asked—but we both knew that was a temporary solution to our larger problem.”
His face softened a bit as he spoke of the queen, but my stomach rolled. Akalain was a true warrior, not this monstrous woman whose legacy was coated in unnecessary bloodshed.
“Kakias’s mind is a wonderful thing. So ambitious.
We found our solution. I would marry whomever my false father appointed, become the Revered Mystique Warrior after him, and Kakias would be the queen of her people.
After decades of strife between Mystiques and Engrossians, my wife would die, and I”—he took on a tone of mock sadness—“the poor widower”—his voice turned cold again—“would propose the idea to unite the two most powerful clans, bringing honor to our Engrossian bloodlines that had been shunned for generations.” He panted as his plan formed fully before my eyes, his chest rising and falling with unhinged aggression.
They’d been planning this for decades. Every clash between our clans in that time—it was all calculated. They’d created strife only to give them cause for a union when the time was right. It was cruel, calculated, a plan fitting of the queen I’d heard rumors of.
But somehow it had gone wrong. My mind sped ahead of the story, grim understanding spreading through me, making my limbs heavy with sadness for the man I loved. “But you messed up. The marriage was consummated, and you had a son with Akalain. A son and heir to the Mystique Warriors.”
He nodded, his eyes shifting to Malakai.
“I’d successfully avoided an heir for so many decades, until twenty years ago.
” He paused, and I could not read whatever emotion flitted across his face.
It almost looked like uncertainty, but he masked it.
“You were never intended to exist. You were the foil to our plan.”
Anger flared hot and deep within me. It was an effort to remain where I stood.
Lucidius turned his eyes back to me, as if his son truly did not matter. “Kakias and I had a son the same year Malakai was born. A warrior who is three parts Engrossian and one part Mystique.”
That final, key piece of information slid into place in my mind, and I gasped. The bastard-born heir to the Engrossian throne was…Lucidius’s son.
Malakai’s half-brother.
We had seen him before. Fucking Spirits, it had only been in passing during exchanges, and rarely for long enough to speak, but I dragged his face to mind now.
The untamed black curls, the strong jaw and shoulders…
if it wasn’t for his mother’s sneering grin and icy skin, he could have been a twin to the one I loved.
I scrambled to put my thoughts in order, shove away all emotional reactions to unpack later.
As unbelievable as this was for me to discover, I knew it was harder for Malakai to hear.
He had been so still as his father spoke.
The only sign of life was his pounding heartbeat, but I squeezed him tighter and reminded myself why I needed to focus.
I no longer doubted Lucidius’s threat to kill us.
“You staged a war—slaughtered thousands of innocents—in order to get this child into the Revered’s position.
” I thought of the unrest now brewing within our territory.
“Do you even care for the dozens of Mystique cities that are now going hungry, living in devastation thanks to your greedy grasp for power?” And for what?
He already had power; he just could not share it with the woman he desired.
Desperation born of love could truly turn you rotten.
“Don’t you see? They need to suffer before they can be liberated by their future king. My true son will save those that survive.” His true son. As if the one that stood with us, sharing his blood, meant nothing.
“So, you thought that by faking Malakai’s death you would be able to usurp his title, place this other child into Mystique rule and unite the two clans?
After the war it would look like a show of good faith to restore peace.
You would send the people that make up half of your bloodline into such turmoil, take their honor away, to what end? ”
He’d planned it all. The dismantling of trade deals between cities and clans.
The lack of funds for quicker reconstruction.
It all went back to Lucidius. I wondered if he was somehow involved in the disruption of the forest creatures and appearance of the beast that had attacked us, in the fae strife.
He’d likely known of the talks of rebellion.
That’s what he’d wanted—to drive Mystiques to such desperation and then send in his new heir to save them.