Chapter 25
èLLIA
If secrets were like blades, then èllia had lived with one pressed to her throat since the day she was born.
Blood shimmered in a perfect circle on her floorboards, each line humming with the spell that almost bled her dry. The copper scent still clung to her senses.
She tightened the ribbon around her palm, though the wound still pulsed, each heartbeat a reminder of what she’d offered to open the gate.
The portal sighed, alive now, veiled in a light that bruised the air purple.
And so she waited.
Waiting was always the worst part—when the silence stretched thin enough for fear to crawl through. Would he come through the rift? Or send something else? Would he praise her—or decide that failure tasted sweeter?
Her breath misted. The blood circle stirred. Somewhere beyond the veil, her father was coming.
She gripped the back of her armchair, her stomach twisting with dread.
What if she’d been wrong? What if she hadn’t found the right book?
She stared at the portal. They were such difficult, temperamental things.
One little mistake and a doorway could tear open the palace like a wound.
Sometimes they let creatures in or swallowed up buildings.
Even a master of portals could never fully predict the outcome.
To her father, èllia was a master at doing them.
But to her, she was something else entirely.
He didn’t know the half of what she had learned in secret, twisting the curse he bound her with into something darker and more powerful.
If her father ever discovered the truth, he would kill her for good this time.
A bird squawked from across the room. èllia flinched and turned to the silver cage half-shrouded by a purple blanket. She kept the cage as far from the portal as she could. It felt obscene that something so small and bright should be close to the one who ruined her.
“Quiet,” she warned, “or I will feed you to the cats.”
Her father would kill the bird if it made a sound. It rattled its bars in irritated reply. èllia walked over to it and opened the gate. Even after ten years, she hated the bird.
Hated it because it reminded her of her own captivity.
And yet, she could never bring herself to let it go.
It was the only gift she’d ever received with nothing demanded of her in return.
There had been no name or note left with it.
Once, when she had asked Daigen if he sent it, he’d laughed at her and said a lover must be trying to win her back.
But èllia only had one lover at the time.
Him. And how she’d loved him recklessly. A mistake èllia would never make again.
“How alike we are,” she whispered, rubbing a fingertip along the bird’s wing until the feathers fluffed and stilled. “Both trapped in cages. Both pretending we can still fly.”
Not even death could spare èllia from her father.
He refused to let her die until she had served her purpose to him.
After the fiftieth attempt, èllia had stopped trying to kill herself.
Her father always brought her back, and each time he did, a sliver of her soul became lost and tainted beyond repair.
Now the chain on her ankle—disguised as an anklet—bound her to her father more tightly than metal ever could.
The circle of blood began to glow as she watched. Dark veins of shadow crawled up from the lines, lifting like spilled ink in water.
“Stay quiet,” she whispered to the bird as she covered the cage again. “You’re all I’ve got left.”
Droplets of her blood gathered and began to take crystal form, merging together into a veil that shimmered. èllia hurried back to the chair and gripped it, her knuckles white, as her father stepped through the portal, his black silhouette devouring the light.
“The book. Where is it?” Her father’s tone was sharp, as it usually was with her, but he could not hide the brush of excitement that caressed it.
She flicked her gaze to the dressing table. A leather-bound tome lay there, wrapped in black silk.
“I believe it is the one you were looking for, Father.”
“Pray it is, girl. For your sake.”
He ripped off a gauntlet, flung it aside, and pressed his bare hand to the unusual glyph carved on the front cover.
Stars shimmered beneath his palm. He sucked in a breath and turned the first page.
He flipped the rest of them slowly and carefully, as if they might shatter to dust in his hand.
For the longest while, he did not speak.
èllia forced herself not to flinch at the leap in her chest when he murmured, “Well done. You have pleased me.”
Even now, even after everything her father had done to her, she still craved his approval.
“Thank you, Father.”
He turned another page. “How did you find it?”
She bit the inside of her cheek. She could not tell him about Nakólys, the archivist who had risked everything to help her smuggle it from the Sunstone Queen’s vault, nor that she had traded her crystal for his freedom. It was better her father thought her ruthless than disloyal.
“I found it locked in a vault. The vermin guarding it did so poorly. They did not see me coming,” she said coolly. “I summoned the portal as soon as I returned.”
It wasn’t quite a lie. èllia had summoned the portal, right after she dropped off Allowyn’s cloak. That trick turned out to be far more worthwhile than she’d expected.
“Were there survivors?”
“Only gutter rats to feast on their corpses before the tide sweeps them out,” èllia said.
Her father's lips curled, satisfied. “Very good.”
She kept silent as he bent over the pages again, his short, midnight-blue hair falling over his temple. For a moment, he looked so much like her little brother. She thought of Vasten—dead only a few days ago. She had never loved him, but at least they had shared her childhood terror.
Now she was alone even in that.
“There are rumours, Father, of the Bloodstone King’s visit,” she probed, carefully.
Her father did not look at her. “Mm.”
“They say Vasten was among the dead?”
“Indeed.”
èllia's heart lurched. “Is it true, then, that Daigen killed him before you?”
At last, her father looked up, his cold, ice-blue eyes slicing through her.
His smile was thin, derisive.
“Your brother never did learn when to keep his bastard tongue behind his teeth.” He turned back to the book, his temple throbbing. “His death was merely expedited. Do not speak his name again.”
“Yes, Father.”
Her stomach knotted. One day he would speak of her the same way, once she stopped being of use to him. It horrified her that she should even care.
Her father’s hand froze on a particular page. Whatever he sought, he’d found it.
èllia strained to glimpse the words, but the letters swam across the pages, jumbling together. A charm meant to keep them hidden from prying eyes.
“Have you found it?” she dared ask.
Her father only nodded, and èllia could not resist.
“Does it concern… her?”
Her father’s blow struck her instantly.
Pain bloomed across èllia's cheek, blood dripped to her lip. She did not wipe it. He stood in front of her, his face void of emotion, yet the fury in his eyes—it forever made èllia tremble. He’d used his gauntlet hand to hit her.
“You were sent here to whore and spy, èllia — not to question me,” her father hissed, his voice low and lethal. “Do not forget your place.”
Terror clawed its way up her throat as she lowered her gaze quickly in deference.
“Forgive me, Father. My only wish is to serve you.”
That, at least, seemed to appease him. He sighed and beckoned her with open arms.
“Come here, Poppet.”
Every instinct demanded that èllia run. It was a trap. But she obeyed and went to him, letting him take her into his arms.
“So like your mother, you are,” he said, healing her cheek with a brush of his palm. Something he rarely did when he hurt her. “So delicate and soft.”
His hands slid down her shoulders, guiding the straps of her gown aside as if he were inspecting an asset rather than a person.
èllia froze, hating the weakness that crawled into her body. She fixed her gaze on the birdcage, silent now beneath its blanket, as horror and shame rose inside her.
She would not cry. She would not feel.
“So tainted,” her father said, clicking his tongue. “It has been a while since I’ve purged your impurities. Let me see.”
He stepped back and surveyed her slowly, calling the invasion of her privacy a cleansing—an elaborate humiliation dressed as so-called duty.
èllia knew better. She’d stopped fighting him.
This was what she deserved, he had taught her: punishment for being born.
There was no use in running. He would always find her and make her break.
He removed his other gauntlet and set it on the floor with a dull clang.
“Turn for me, Poppet.”
èllia turned. She closed her eyes and began counting down from a thousand.
A thousand heartbeats and this would all be over.
“Now,” her father said, playing a cold hand at the nape of her neck. “Recite the Oath I taught you. Proclaim your fealty to me.”
She sank to her knees, and, head bowed, spoke the words she’d been forced to recite over and over again. èllia had come to hate a great many things in this realm, but if there was one thing she hated most—it was herself.
If she worshipped anything now, it was the darkness that kept her alive.
A darkness she prayed that one day would finally let her die.