Chapter 15
If I thought the steps down to the cellar of stars were long, ooh boy, this was something else entirely.
Darkness closed in the moment I stepped through the menacing, gaping mouth of stone, but it was the silence that made all the hairs stand on the back of my neck.
One moment Ryvan and Aerona were bickering, the next true and total quiet enclosed me.
Weirder still, it was pitch black but I could see my arms when I raised them in front of my face. I saw the blue cuffs wound around my wrist. I saw my leg when I lifted my foot and descended a step. Magic surrounded me for months now, but it still came as a shock sometimes.
I sensed Xiona behind me, but when I looked back I couldn’t see her.
It was like I was completely alone, and yet I knew if I stopped dead on these stairs, she’d slam into me.
I wondered if the others had entered the mausoleum behind us, wondered if Kier was pulling his hair out to be separated from me.
I could sense his displeasure through the bond, but it was hazy, like a blanket thrown over the sensations so I could make out the shape but not see what lay beneath.
“Maybe entering a dragon god’s mausoleum was a bad idea,” I murmured.
I only realised I expected a reply from Xiona when only silence answered me.
We couldn’t see or hear each other. Fantastic.
I walked deeper into darkness, taking each step carefully since I was completely screwed if I slipped with my hands bound.
Except when I raised them, there was no dark, constraining sapphire wrapped around my wrists, and my hands were free to brush the necklace around my throat. Five hammered gold teardrops. My heart skipped. I hadn’t worn this necklace since I discovered the truth about my sister.
It reminded me of Natasya, of all my happy memories—if you could call starving and turning to thievery and crime just to afford a roll of bread happy—now tainted from what I knew of her.
My sister, who took care of me when I caught a virus and was so sick I couldn’t breathe.
My sister, who stole the stone of power keeping a child alive.
My sister, who let that kid die.
My sister, whose body I found slashed to ribbons, bled out from so many cuts I couldn’t count them.
I recoiled so hard, the back of my head hit the wall, suddenly fighting for breath, the memories hitting me with brutal accuracy. I could usually fight them off, wall off that part of my mind I didn’t want to go anywhere near, but now it was inescapable. I could almost hear her voice, her outrage.
You saw what that monster did to me, and now you love him? What kind of a sister would love someone who did that?
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it grew too big.
He cut me to shreds with his claws, tore apart my organs, left me smeared in the dirt like trash, and you married him.
I shook my head, raising my hands to cover my ears.
“You killed a kid,” I croaked, as if her words hadn’t found their mark and sunk deep, drawing blood from my heart. “You’re not innocent either.”
He tore my skin, ripped me inside out, and left me for the carrion birds to feast.
She was right by my ear. Her voice was so close I couldn’t escape it even as I flinched into the wall. The physical pain pounding through my skull was nothing compared to the agony tearing apart my chest.
She was dead. She wasn’t here. But why was her voice so clear?
“You married my killer,” she accused, venom lacing every word. Clearer, louder.
“For revenge,” I choked out. “To avenge your death and make him pay for what he did.”
Natasya’s laugh was the snide, mean laugh I’d only heard a few times, and never directed at me. All the fine hairs stood on the back of my neck, and when I blinked a tear free, I could see her.
She stood on the step above me, red-haired and livid, her face a carbon copy of mine but with less freckles and a finer edge to her cheekbones, a straighter slope of her nose. People had always known we were sisters because we looked so alike, spoke alike, had the same mannerisms, the same humour.
I couldn’t swallow the lump in my throat, couldn’t breathe through the stickiness in my nose, couldn’t see through the tears that shimmered across my eyes before bleeding down my cheeks.
It had been a year since I saw her, since she’d stood like this in front of me.
And even with hatred in her green eyes, it struck me like a punch to the gut to see her again.
I pushed off the wall, my arms stretched out for an embrace, needing to hold her even if it wasn’t real, couldn’t be real because I’d buried her. Natasya’s flat palm slammed into my solar plexus and shoved me back. I grunted, splaying against the wall, an ache pounding where she hit me.
“You think I want you near me?” she demanded, upper lip curled back, nose wrinkled. “You fuck that… that thing and you think I can stand to have you close? You’ve always been a disappointment, but this is so far beyond that, Letta.”
Not real, not real, I reminded myself. But there was no avoiding the blow. Her words sank pain far deeper than her hand against my chest. I swallowed hard, nodding, trying to bat them away like they were nothing.
“You know mother never wanted you. Why do you think I was the one who raised you, even from the beginning? You were a mistake.”
“Low blow,” I grunted, dragging air through my nostrils, trying to find the inner strength that had got me through her murder, through losing Kier, through Zaugustus’s death.
“Didn’t I teach you better than to side with goblins?
” she demanded, shaking her head at me. “Look at you, not just infiltrating them to kill the prince—though I have my doubts you’d ever be capable of that—but befriending a whole gang of them.
You make me sick, Letta. Your whole life you knew they were the enemy, but now you’re flouncing around like you are one.
As if they haven’t slaughtered thousands of humans. ”
I opened my mouth to justify it, to point out that we’d killed thousands of them, that no side of a war was ever right, but she sensed a weakness and went for it.
“No, you’re worse than that,” she said with a bitter, hateful laugh, like she couldn’t believe what I’d become.
“You don’t just want to be one. You’re using magic like you’re a goblin, helping them fight their battles, fucking the worst of them all.
You’re no better than the whores in Seagrave, opening your legs for men whose hands are stained with blood.
Isn’t it enough to betray your people by living among goblins?
Now, you’ll turn broodmare for them, help them breed the next generation of soldiers to slaughter Lunarians—”
“Enough,” I yelled, my voice ringing around my skull, around the dark staircase. “Shut your fucking mouth, Natasya Stellara. You want to talk shit about the potential of making halfling babies? At least I don’t kill children. Some lines shouldn’t be crossed.”
“You’d know all about crossing lines,” she fired back, and it was like so many arguments we’d gotten into, both of us quick with our replies, insults cutting deep.
But never this deep. She never aimed to truly wound my heart.
Now, it was like she wanted me broken. “You don’t just endure my killer’s attention, do you? You actually like it.”
“God forbid I enjoy sleeping with my husband,” I spat.
“And yes, I’m well aware he’s your killer.
I have never, for one second, forgotten what Kier has done.
I never forgot what you did either, Natasya.
You made your bed. Even the Greenheart bitch manipulating you is no excuse.
You were perfectly okay with the senseless death of an eight-year-old. ”
She scoffed. “An eight year old monster.”
I lunged across the stairs and threw her into the wall before her words finished ringing around my head.
Goblins were no more monsters than humans; every last one of us was capable of brutality and unspeakable crimes.
The colour of their skin and the addition of horns and claws didn’t enable those horrors.
Monstrosity wasn’t skin deep, it was buried in the soul, and I’d seen Lunarians do far worse than I’d witnessed of goblins. I’d had enough of Natasya’s hatred.
I’d had enough of my own shame.
“I wrestled with it for months now,” I told her, hissing so viciously that tiny flecks of saliva hit her face.
Good. She deserved spit-face. “What you did. Why you did it. The secrets you kept. You want to know my biggest secret, my biggest shame? It isn’t loving Kier.
It’s being glad you died. It’s thinking you deserved it for the ruthless murder of a child—and all the other children you’d kill if it suited your end goal.
You have no morals, no code, and I am so ashamed of you.
Not me. Not who I love. Not who my friends are.
You. Because if you’d spent five fucking minutes with any goblin, you’d realise they’re just like us. ”
Natasya scoffed. I drove her head into the brick, on fire with it now—with offense and rage and hurt and shame.
“The Greenheart dicks who want to peel the skin off our bones and roast it over an open fire for a tasty snack? They’re no different than the leering pervs who’d shout vile things in the pub, or make us cross the road. Different end goal, but same tone, same taunting words, same predatory gleam.
“The nobles who live in Kier’s castle? No different than all the figureheads who trained at Seagrave, flouncing around in their ruffles and pearls and bonnets. Same air of entitlement, same noses stuck in the air, same sticks rammed up their asses.”
She tried to shove me off her, but strength poured into me and my heart quickened when I felt Valour trying to rise. She couldn’t leap free of my ring, but she was here, right under my skin, a snarl shaking my soul.
“What Kier did to you in retaliation for Danette’s death?
That is no different from what I planned to do in revenge for your murder.
You might not like it, and you can deny it all you want, but Kier and I are the same.
The same violence, the same fire, the same love and loyalty.
If Danette was my sister, I’d have killed you, too. ”
I shoved her and stepped back, my head spinning.
Natasya opened and closed her mouth, at a loss for words, and I slumped back on the step, the world seeming to ripple around me. My ears popped. Vivid blue light erupted in the staircase, and Valour leapt into being to snarl at—the empty wall.
I splayed against the opposite side, panting, my head whirling and my heart smashed to pulp. I gave myself two minutes to cry my heart out, to sob until I was able to grab all the hurt and shove it back into its box, lock it back in the corner of my mind.
I might have been a monster, but so was Natasya. I had to live with that every day.
Valour brushed against my thighs, her growl turning into a rumbling purr that brought a weak smile to my face.
I buried my fingers in her velvety fur, so fucking relieved that she was here, that she was healed and okay, even as the pain Natasya drove into my chest didn’t fade.
Maybe it wouldn’t fade for hours. Maybe it never would.
Valour’s purr grew louder, like she knew I needed it, and she sent me an image of the mausoleum vision I had in the cellar of stars. Well, less a vision than a sense of immense power.
Right. We were here to claim whatever this place hid, so Cleodora couldn’t get her greedy hands on it.
I dragged my hands over my face, glancing up the dark staircase to search for the others, but it was just Valour and I.
Eerie. Had they been sent somewhere else?
I frowned up at the stairs I’d already scaled, wondering if a single doorway could lead to multiple places.
But that just made my head hurt so I shook it and focused on the rest of the steps downward.
I’d come this far; I might as well keep going. If I found the power the Greenheart Queen wanted, I could use it to destroy her. Or at least leverage her into removing her control from my head.
I ignored her laughter as it rippled through me. Lovely, she was still listening. She probably watched the whole saga with my sister and roasted popcorn over the burning bodies of her enemies.
Close, she said with a silken glide of amusement. Very, very close.
I didn’t care. I locked eyes with Valour, silently ordering her to stay close as I resumed my descent.