Chapter Thirteen
I miss my child. When I hid him during the war, I never expected for him to be taken. I hope he knows one day how much I love him. How I never intended to abandon him. That he was loved by me and his father. That we would have done anything for him.
Tabitha Wysteria
Silence crept through the hall like a living thing as Mal studied the man before her.
Her uncle, and yet also the one who had once tried to end her life.
She had no memory of it, of course; she had been nothing more than a babe.
Still, she searched herself for understanding, for any reason an uncle might wish his own blood dead.
None came. And so she waited, allowing him the space to speak.
Morthos cleared his throat, his finger continuing its restless tapping against the table, as though the rhythm might steady his thoughts.
‘I’m not entirely certain how to begin this tale,’ he said at last, weariness threading his voice.
‘The beginning is usually best,’ Mal replied, leaning back against the stone chair.
She tried, and failed, not to glance towards Ash.
He was watching Morthos with unnerving focus, like a predator assessing its prey.
The image that rose unbidden was that of a cat toying with a mouse, taking pleasure in the illusion of safety it allowed its victim.
Mal straightened at the thought, unease settling deep along her spine.
‘I am known in this lifetime as Morthos Blackburn,’ her uncle began, drawing her from her spiralling thoughts. ‘Son of King Tenebris and Queen Vespera. But I was not born with that name. I was born Malrik Blackburn.’
Mal frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I am the son of Hadrian Blackburn and Tabitha Wysteria.’
Her entire body went still. Mal’s gaze flicked to Ash, and found no surprise there. He already knew. The faint inclination of his head confirmed it, sealing the truth of her uncle’s words.
‘You’re the child Tabitha Wysteria lost during the Great War,’ Mal said quietly.
Morthos nodded. ‘I became one of the most renowned wyverian warriors of that war. And Hadrian’s father, the king, married me to his eldest daughter, who later became queen.’
‘Your aunt.’
Morthos shrugged. ‘We didn’t know.’ He rubbed the back of his neck in a nervous, unconscious gesture, then caught himself and stopped. Reaching for the goblet on the table, he drained it in one swift pull, red wine spilling down his chin.
Mal arched a brow, watching with detached curiosity as the wine dripped onto the table between them. Unbidden, her mind twisted the image—wine becoming blood, her uncle’s blood, pooling and flowing like a slow, dark river.
She forced the thought away, cursing herself for it.
‘Selara and I had three children,’ Morthos went on. ‘Your grandfather, who later became king, then our secondborn, Thana, and our third, Corvus.’
‘Did you know?’ Mal asked quietly.
‘No,’ Morthos said, wiping the spill of wine from his chin. ‘I lived as any mortal would. I aged. And then I died.’
‘And yet,’ Mal said softly, ‘here you sit.’
‘And yet, here I sit.’
‘How?’
‘I was reborn,’ Morthos replied with a weary sigh.
‘That is my curse. The curse of Malrik Blackburn. My true name. I am the son of a mortal and a goddess. Half-mortal. Half-divine. I live as other mortals do: I grow old, and I die. But our mother’s curse refuses to let it end.
It drags me back, every time, reborn as a child of the Blackburn line. Of the royal family.’
Mal tilted her head, awe threading through her disbelief. ‘So when you die in this life… you will return?’
Morthos nodded. ‘I will be born again, as the child of either the king or the queen of this land.’
‘My sister Haven is dead.’
‘But your brother is not.’
Mal gave a short, humourless snort. ‘So you would return as one of Kai’s children?’ The thought nearly coaxed a laugh from her, but it died the moment she looked at Ash. His expression stole the breath from her chest. He had already seen it. Already knew such a future.
Her heart tightened painfully at the realisation.
‘So you and I…’ Mal cleared her throat, steadying herself. ‘You are my uncle, and yet at the same time my half-brother. We share the same mother. Hecate.’
Morthos inclined his head in confirmation.
‘And my mother’s curse,’ Mal continued quietly, ‘the one Hades and Hecate passed down to me, in which I fall in love with…’ She glanced towards Ash, then exhaled softly.
‘It did not pass to you as it did to me. I am cursed to be reborn, as Hadrian and Hecate were. Ash as well. But we are cursed to love one another.’ She glanced back at Morthos. ‘And you…?’
‘I am only half-god,’ Morthos replied, lifting one shoulder in a faint shrug. ‘So I inherited only half the burden. I am cursed to return again and again, but I am not bound to love.’ There was something in his tone that suggested he might not have minded bearing the full weight of it.
Mal looked down at her hands, at the neat line of her nails, trying to marshal the storm of thoughts colliding inside her mind. Once more, the world felt as though it were closing in, tightening its grip around her ribs. Could she trust Morthos? Could she even trust Ash?
She wanted the answer to be yes. Desperately so. But when she lifted her eyes to Ash, those golden eyes so full of devotion and wonder when they rested on her, she saw something else beneath the surface. Something cold and inevitable.
A promise not of love, but of ruin.
There was doom in that stare.
‘Why did you try to kill me?’
Morthos exhaled slowly and let his gaze wander the vast, empty hall, as though the space itself might lend him the courage to speak.
Mal did not rush him. Her own attention drifted instead to their surroundings.
It was a beautiful place, in its way, with arches and stone shaped with care, but it had been abandoned to decay.
Left to rot. She found herself wondering whether the room was a mirror of the Blackburns themselves: a family eroding under the weight of its own mistakes.
Perhaps she was not the only one cursed. Perhaps the rot ran through them all.
‘Your father, King Ozul,’ Morthos began at last, ‘told me and our brother, Morwen, that the god of death had visited him. He said the god foretold that the queen would fall pregnant again, with a fourth child. And that this child would need protecting at all costs.’
Mal listened, unmoving.
‘Morwen was against it immediately,’ Morthos continued.
‘He wanted you gone. He claimed the gods were playing dangerous games with mortals and that we would all be destroyed by it. Your father and I argued with him fiercely. At first, I wanted to protect you. With everything I had. You were my brother’s child.
A blessing. Never before had the wyverian royal line known a fourth child.
I did not see a curse where Morwen did.’
‘So what changed your mind?’ Mal asked quietly.
Morthos sighed and lifted his cup again, taking another long swallow. Mal found herself wondering whether there was any wine left at all.
‘When you were born, our mother Hecate, came to me,’ Morthos said at last. ‘She told me everything. Who I truly was. What I was. She said she had remained close all this time, watching over me, waiting for the moment we might become a family again.’ His jaw tightened.
‘But she twisted it. She told me you would come between us. That one day you would grow into something dangerous. That you would be the end of everything. Of me, of her… even of the world. And that I could prevent it. I only needed to—’
‘Kill me,’ Mal whispered.
She ignored the creature behind her as it began to cackle softly. Ignored the way her chest constricted at the realisation that her own mother had asked for her death. Her own mother. Whatever love Hecate possessed, it had never been meant for Mal.
Her hand drifted to her stomach, resting over the quiet life growing there. She forced herself not to think too far ahead, not to dwell on her daughter, on what her birth might one day mean.
The end of Mal.
And yet, she would risk everything for this child. She would not become her mother. She would not repeat the same cruelty, the same fear. She would never raise a hand against her own daughter to save herself, no matter what fate awaited them both.
‘Liar,’ the creature murmured at her ear.
Mal rose abruptly, the heavy chair screeching as it dragged across the stone floor. Ash’s eyes widened, concern flashing across his beautiful face. And still, Mal could not be certain whether that worry was meant for her…
Or for the child she carried.
‘He will always choose her,’ the creature whispered. ‘They all will. And you will become the villain, Mal Blackburn. In their eyes… you will be evil.’
Mal tried to swallow the knot tightening her throat, her hand curling protectively over her belly. Tears threatened, burning hot behind her eyes, but she forced them back and pressed them down into some sealed, shadowed corner of herself she dared not open. Because if she did…
She turned away, walking towards the windowless arches that overlooked the dark, restless shore.
‘I kidnapped you,’ Morthos continued, his voice trailing after her.
‘I managed to hide with you for days. Your parents were shattered by it. I still don’t know how your father found us…
though I suspect the god of death, Thanatos, revealed our location.
’ He dragged a hand down his face. ‘Your father took you home. He banished me here, though I deserved execution for what I’d done.
He never asked me why. But I think he knew, deep down…
’ Morthos rubbed at his brow, as though the weight of memory ached there.
‘We never spoke again. I have lived in this keep ever since, twenty-four years of isolation. Your father tasked me with raising and breeding wyverns. I send him beasts from time to time, but…’ His voice faltered, trailing off into the vast, echoing silence, one thick with regret, rot, and the long consequences of fear left unanswered.
Mal stared out at the sea, its black waters heaving like the outstretched hand of a god reaching for her.
For a fleeting moment, she wondered what it might feel like to surrender—to stop fighting, to simply let herself sink.
But the pain and fury had already taken root in her black wyverian heart, festering beyond mercy.
She would not rest until Persephone was dead.
Until every god still drawing breath was silenced.
She would become queen of the Underworld.
And she would be the last god left to walk the world, so that no one would ever have to fear them again.
Mal ignored the creature’s laughter, though some part of her knew it rang with bitter truth. As if it understood that this vow was a lie she told herself.
That her sacrifice was not what it pretended to be.
Not selfless.
But selfish.
That, in the end, the creature knew what her husband had always known.
She was never meant to be the hero of this tale.