Chapter 30
thirty
Iwouldn’t let myself fall to my knees in defeat, but that didn’t stop them from weakening when the guards parted. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help but suck in a quick and uneasy breath, and in a moment of weakness bit my tongue. It was all I could do not to gasp.
It wasn’t some god that sauntered out, or some deity wrapped in light or magic. It was my father, but not the same one I remembered. He had the same dark circles and surrounding crows’ feet, but where there used to be bright blue irises, he now bore ice-colored voids.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t him.
The crowd collectively took a knee, but not me. I would stand before him. I wouldn’t crumble.
“Arthvur,” I called. His head cocked in response—something so predatory it raised my hackles.
It took me off guard. I hoped to provoke him, to get him to react. But I was running out of ideas for keeping the upper hand, considering I had no weapon, and Mourn still writhed with exhaustion.
“Arthvur—” I tried again.
“Stop speaking his name. You know what I am.”
Ice pierced my veins. With every word, sapphire light poured from his jaws—as if his very being was lumen. But I couldn’t show fear. “Where is he?”
“You’ll not find him here.”
“Then where?” I searched my side for a nonexistent weapon, every passing second closer to an icy eternity.
“Inside.” A toothy grin spread across his face. “He was weak. I expected more of a fight from the great traitor once the barrier dropped.” He sucked in a lungful of air but it seemed so unnatural, as if he’d never breathed a day in his life. “But you… You smell like him. His scent is all over you.”
“Whose scent?”
“Me. My magic. The lumen. Of my son.”
My blood froze, colder than the surrounding everwinter and deeper than the iced river. I swallowed and searched for the correct thing to say. But as much as I tried to hide it, the shock must have shown.
“You didn’t know.” Another step closer. “He didn’t tell you.”
His sharp-toothed grin grew until there was no space left on his cheeks. “He lied.”
The wind shifted, and flakes pelted my face, along with it his stench—brimstone and the pungency of sulfur. It reminded me of Aelen. How horrid.
“I’ve come to kill you.” And I’d enjoy it.
His smile remained unchanged. “Did he not tell you that either? That you cannot kill a god? I wonder what else he hid.”
“That explains why he didn’t die when I put a knife through his ribs,” I muttered under my breath.
His orbs lit a shade brighter. “Oh, Maelindiir is pitifully mortal, and quite murderable. I tried when he threw me from my kingdom. But he merely succumbed to my lumen curse—no death. A tragedy.”
A flush of heat ran across my chest where the lumen used to be. It ripped at me and filled me with fire. “You wanted to kill your child? What kind of monster are you?”
“My child tried to dethrone me, and I’m the monster? He was doomed from the day he murdered his mother in birth. A mortal cannot carry the weight of a divine, and doomed her from conception.” He grinned a horrid smile. “The monster… is him.”
My stomach churned, and my tongue burned with bile. He’d lain with an I’phri woman and let her carry his burden. “You knew!” The words shot from me. “You knew she’d die and did it anyway. He never knew her!”
“It wasn’t in the cards of fate. Arthvur knew me well and still betrayed me. He craved power. Your beast craves worse… vengeance.”
“You consumed the I’phri.” Everything condensed in my mind in a perfect picture, a blasphemous and mournful painting. “That’s why he threw you out, you were eating them!”
“Not body—soul. And they were mine to have,” he bellowed, his voice barreling into me like an icy gale.
The rage heated my chest and poured into my hands, but when I searched for the lumen, I found none. “Mourn,” I called, and glanced at him. He was still at my heel, but his lids drooped heavily with exhaustion. He flexed his talons and languidly scraped them across the stone.
But I needed him. So I sang of frost climbing over the few emerald trees of Eltide.