Chapter 59
Hours drifted by without measure.
Curtains of reeds slid past, broken by islands of twisted cypress. Strange cries rose in the darkness, unseen creatures calling to one another.
Every so often I caught dark shapes slipping beneath us, the flash of a fin or the sweep of a tail. I gripped the sides until my knuckles whitened. How many Brinnekin were following us? I tried not to think about how effortlessly they could capsize the boat and drag us into a watery grave.
But nothing happened.
Why were they helping us?
At last the bog began to open. The dense growth gave way to a broad stretch of water before gradually narrowing again until we found ourselves drifting along a slow-moving river, its banks drawing close on either side.
Massive trees arched overhead, their branches intertwining to form a living tunnel.
Moss hung in long, slithering veils, trailing low enough to brush the rippling surface.
My face and mouth had mostly healed, but Rìan remained unchanged.
He drifted in and out of consciousness, his breathing slow but no longer labored.
The wound, however, remained stubbornly open.
Blood no longer pumped from it in heavy pulses, but seeped steadily through the torn flesh, angry and raw around the edges.
I soaked my shirt in the river and gently cleaned the blood from his chest. Beneath it, his skin was red and blistered, far worse than what I’d endured. I couldn't begin to imagine the pain he was in.
Wrath stirred at the thought of Thalassis. I expected guilt for what I'd done to those soldiers, but none came—and this time I couldn't blame my magic. My only regret was that I hadn't killed him.
Pelaga would have fallen, but I—I didn’t care.
I leaned back and rested my arm along the side of the boat, propping my chin in my hand, my other hanging limp with my sodden, bloodstained shirt. The air was cool against my skin. Cleansing. Renewing. It did nothing to wash away the truth Thalassis had left behind.
Noctharis. The mutilated mouths of Rìan's servants.
Aedric had done that. Not the Full Circle—Aedric. By his own hand, he'd delivered punishment upon the Dusklands.
It all made frightening sense now. Why the streets of Noctharis—and, before that, Thistra—emptied long before his arrival. Why no one emerged until he was gone. Why they didn't dare light so much as a single candle, afraid even the smallest flame might draw his attention.
I couldn't believe he'd truly done those things.
Who, beneath all those masks, was Aedric really?
"What are you thinking about?"
I looked up.
Rìan was watching me from where he rested against the side of the boat, his face pale and drawn. His body looked spent, but there was nothing weak about his stare.
My throat constricted, the words barely more than a breath. "What else did he do?"
The corner of his eye twitched. He leaned back, his gaze lifting to the interwoven branches overhead, their canopy cocooning us in green. He said nothing.
"Truth," I whispered. "You swore it."
He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut, looking for all the world as though he regretted making that promise at all. He gave a single, reluctant nod.
"He told me you were the tyrant of Elantis." I sounded hollow, even to my own ears, stripped of everything I'd ever believed. "That you invaded people's minds and bent them to your will to keep your throne. To cling to power."
He exhaled deeply, but when he finally met my stare, his gaze was unflinching and unapologetic.
"Yes. Truth."
My chin wobbled, a bitter burn building at the back of my throat, like I'd swallowed a mouthful of his iron-tainted blood.
"He told me you were evil." Each word trembled, my voice as impossible to steady as my magic. "Are you?"
He sat with the accusation in silence before asking quietly, "What do you think?"
I took him in. The hard lines carved into his face. The uncompromising set of his mouth. The vengeance burning in his eyes, and the suffering they promised.
But beneath it all lay something older. Something deeper. A sadness that had sunk its roots into the very foundations of who he was.
He'd been all cold cruelty when we'd first met—and, truthfully, he often still was.
Yet I'd seen gentleness in the hands everyone feared, a selflessness that had no business existing in a male the entire continent believed to be a monster. Slowly, other pieces of him had begun to emerge, each one hinting at how much more there was beneath the surface.
Small moments. Little glimpses.
The dimple in his left cheek when he smiled.
The laugh that escaped him when he was genuinely pleased.
The care he'd taken in unbuttoning my dress.
Each revealed another piece of him, and with every fragment the picture grew larger and larger, never replacing what had come before, only adding to it.
Perhaps that was the truest thing of all.
We were never only the best or the worst parts of ourselves.
We were every kindness and every cruelty, every wound and every mercy, carried together until they became the whole of us.
He wasn't a mask concealing another face beneath. He was every contradiction at once, each layer laid honestly over the last, until the whole of him became something impossible to separate into neat pieces of monster and man.
He never became someone different.
He simply became more.
I didn’t need to answer his question. He found the answer in my face.
"Perhaps I deserved it," he went on. "Perhaps I went too far. Maybe if I hadn't done the things I did, they never would have taken Dannis."
The mention of Dannis made my stomach clench.
He leaned his head against the worn timber. "They told me that if I didn't surrender willingly to the Moiraithe, they'd kill him. Slowly. Brutally."
He closed his eyes for a fleeting moment.
"I didn't hesitate. I agreed to their terms. But before I surrendered, I made Aedric swear that Dannis would be spared. I looked him in the eye and made him promise my nephew would live."
He rubbed his thumb absently across his palm, as though grounding himself.
"The moment the Moiraithe bound their magic to mine and sealed my fate... the last thing I saw before they dragged me into the Veil was Aedric's knife turned on my nephew." His hand curled into a fist. "He cut off his ear and threw it at Levinica's feet."
I was going to be sick.
"The last thing I heard… was Levinica screaming. And Dannis crying for his mother."
He squeezed his eyes shut, a shudder passing through him.
"Those sounds followed me into the Veil. When you asked me what three hundred years in that place was like..." He swallowed hard. "It was that. An eternity of nothing, with only the screams of the people I loved echoing through the darkness, trapped while they suffered beyond my reach."
He opened his eyes again. The anguish was gone. In its place was something cold enough to freeze the blood in my veins. "I couldn't save Levinica—but I'll save Dannis. I don't care what I have to become or how many kingdoms fall before I find him. Aedric is only the beginning."
He held my gaze, as though waiting for me to defend my mate, to justify the things he'd done.
But I couldn't.
I'd learned too much about the darkness lurking beneath the male I'd loved, and I could no longer bring myself to excuse it. Not after this. Not knowing there was almost certainly worse still buried beneath everything I'd already uncovered.
Instead, the truth sat like a stone in my chest. I knew what had become of Dannis. I knew Levinica had taken her own life after learning of his death. Rìan was searching for a nephew who was already gone.
And I'd said nothing. Because I'd wanted to save Aedric—the male who’d destroyed them all.
The feeling swelled inside me until it lodged in my throat, so enormous I thought I might choke on it.
I had to tell him.
I couldn't keep living this lie. Couldn't keep deceiving him like this. Even if telling him meant Aedric never came back.
"Rìan..."
The boat scraped against the riverbank. I startled, the words forgotten.
Neither of us had noticed the Brinnekin guiding us ashore. The boat rested half on the earth, its hull wedged above the waterline.
Rìan looked up at once. "We're here."
"Where?"
"The Barrows." Relief softened his voice.
I hurried to my feet and helped Rìan over the side of the boat. The moment his boots touched the ground, his legs gave way beneath him. He crumpled with a groan, his face contorting in pain.
I dropped beside him, helpless. He wasn't going to be able to walk.
"What do we do now?" I asked, unable to keep the edge of panic from my voice.
"They'll find us," he panted.
"Who?"
Movement drew my eye.
The Brinnekin pulled herself from the river and onto the bank with the fluid, ungainly grace of a seal.
Webbed hands dug into the mud, black claws carving furrows through the earth as she dragged her body forward.
Her gills fluttered soundlessly along her neck, opening and closing in rapid succession, like a fish out of water.
I drew my knife and leveled it at the creature.
She showed me her teeth in another warning hiss, yet continued forward until she stopped beside Rìan.
"Rìan—"
"She won’t hurt me," he said firmly.
One hand pressed over his ruined shoulder, the other resting calmly against his abdomen, he watched as the Brinnekin loomed above him, her enormous black eyes never leaving his face. The pale membrane swept across them as she studied him.
Then, she bowed her head.
Rìan raised his palm and touched it gently to her brow.
"Thank you, my friend," he murmured. "I won't let you down."
The creature answered with a series of chittering clicks deep in her throat as Rìan’s touch fell away. As she lifted her head again—
A sharp twang sounded in the brush. A shrill whistle split the air.
Crack.
The arrow slammed into the Brinnekin's forehead, right between her eyes.
Blue blood welled around the shaft, trickling down the bridge of her nose. She collapsed without a sound.