Chapter Forty #2
Kormak meets my gaze, unflinching. “As far as I know, he is.”
My breath shudders out of me. A brother. I have a brother.
The thought crashes into me, ice and fire at once, setting my pulse into a spiral. I press a hand to my chest, as if that might stop the unsteady thudding beneath my ribs.
“Did Bennett know?” I ask, barely above a whisper.
Kormak shakes his head. “No. Your mother intended to tell you both when the time was right. But then…” His voice trails off. He doesn’t have to say it.
She never got the chance. She died.
Something inside me cracks.
I blink rapidly, but the tears spill over, anyway, slipping hot down my cheeks. I don’t sob, but my breathing becomes uneven, my fingers trembling against my lap.
Kormak moves before I can retreat into myself, reaching across the space between us. He crouches down and takes my hand, his grip steady, grounding. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I was sworn to secrecy. I couldn’t tell you.”
I swallow hard, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment, trying to gather the broken pieces of my world into something recognizable. But nothing looks the same anymore.
Kormak exhales slowly, his fingers still curled around mine, as if afraid I might slip through his grasp.
“This is extremely sensitive, Celeste,” he says, voice low, edged with something grim. “No one else can know. If the tsar were to find out that you are third-born—” He stops, his jaw tightening. “The target already on your back would change dramatically.”
A bitter laugh slips from me, quiet but sharp. “Because I could be the one to end him?” I swipe the dampness from my cheeks, inhaling through the knot in my throat.
Could the prophecy really be about me? Not only as the one the tsar needs to rule the world, but also as the one who could destroy him? It does seem like a sardonic paradox.
“Well, then I can end the slaughter.” I straighten my shoulders. “I’ll march into Dulcamar and tell the Shadow Tsar that I’m the one he’s looking for, that the prophecy is about me and he can call off his fucking monsters and stop terrorizing the realms. It can all end.”
“No, Celeste.” He rubs at his neck. “That’s not how prophecies work. He can’t know, because—father or not—he will kill you if he finds out. And if he kills you—the one who is supposed to end his reign—then our hope is lost. And the precious realms will die, anyway.”
Frustration boils within me. It feels like the right thing to do, a simple way to end the massacres.
No more attacks. No more sacrifices. But my uncle is right.
If the prophecy is about me, if I’m the one who is supposed to end the tsar’s reign, then I can’t just march up there emptyhanded.
He’s got a whole realm protecting him. He’s manufactured an entire species of creature to do his bidding.
I need to have a plan. An army. I need to figure out how to destroy his whole undertaking, and I won’t be able to do that on my own.
“The thing is,” my uncle continues, “it wouldn’t surprise me if your father turns out to be the tsar, because he showed signs of desiring power, spoke of expanding his reign, even before your mother died.
” He stands and starts to pace. “It’s part of the reason he was against the sirens.
Their mind manipulation would have been a problem if he’d ever wanted to take Messanya. ”
He lets out a deep breath, as if he’s not done turning my world upside down yet.
“Your mother was always a wise woman. I don’t know what they discussed privately, but in the months before her death, she seemed more worried, maybe even…
scared. Looking back now, I think she knew what he had planned, and I think she knew he needed fae powers.
I believe she took precaution, because she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop him outright.
I think she hid your powers—and Bennett’s—so Axel couldn’t get a hold of them. ”
The words strike something deep inside me.
My mother always told me magic was a gift, but one that came at a price. Bennett’s magic should have manifested before mine. But it didn’t.
Maybe because of my mother. Maybe it had been stolen from him before it ever had the chance to bloom. Just like mine.
I grip the arms of my chair as a sickening thought takes root. “She hid them in the dagger.”
“The dagger she gave you?” he asks.
“I think so.” I don’t go into my powers manifesting, no matter how messily. There’s already too much to process, and it’s not all sitting in my stomach well.
The reoccurring nightmare enters my mind.
My mother coming into my room at night, bleeding.
The dagger in her hand. “I’m sorry. I can’t let him take it from you.
” It makes so much sense now. A sharp chill washes over me.
Flashbacks of my mother’s frightened face enter my mind.
Tidbits of muffled voices, fights I wasn’t supposed to hear.
Wait. She was bleeding when she came into my room.
“You said she was scared,” I say to my uncle. “Were they fighting?”
“They never fought in front of me,” he answers. “But I could see the tension between them.”
“I don’t think it was only Bennett’s and my powers she hid in the dagger,” I tell him. “I think she put hers in there, too.”
If my mother took such drastic measures—it means she feared him. Not just as a ruler. As a man.
I struggle to breathe past the tightness in my chest. “Uncle, do you think she fell down those stairs by accident?”
Kormak’s gaze darkens. “The servants and guards confirmed that he was in another wing of the castle when it happened.”
When she died.
But a king can get his people to say what he wants them to.
A part of me finds it hard to believe that not one of them would speak up if it weren’t true. But something about the situation nags at me.
Oh, gods.
I don’t want to say it out loud, but I see it in my uncle’s eyes. He has the same suspicion.
“Uncle Kormak,” I start, a slow, creeping dread crawling up my spine, “what do you think really happened?”
The room is engulfed in silence. A silence that tells me everything before he even says the words.
He exhales sharply. “Celeste… I can’t prove it to be true. But I believe your father killed your mother.”
Something inside me shatters.