Chapter 11 #3
“And they despised us as much then as they do now. We called a meeting with our youngest brother. It was the first we’d seen of him in years.
We wanted to reverse the Forging spell as an offering of goodwill to the mortals, but he refused.
He believed we should kill any mortals who threatened us harm . . . and that’s what he began to do.”
I recoiled a step. “And you let him?”
“We didn’t know how to stop him,” Arboros protested, her eyes still wet with tears. “When we realized how powerful he had become, we were terrified. He said it was our destiny to rule this world so it could never be taken from us like our home world was.”
“Not our destiny,” Faunos corrected. “His. He believed that when we died, all of Emarion would be his to inherit.”
“The more he fought the mortals, the more they turned against us,” Sophos said. “We had to do something before it was too late.”
“It was the hardest decision we ever made,” Lumnos said quietly. “We were supposed to guide him. It was our responsibility to teach him love instead of hate.” Her gaze lowered. “We failed.”
No one disagreed.
“So you decided to imprison him on the island?” I asked.
“No,” Fortos said. “We decided to kill him.”
The Kindred gathered in an arc around me, their faces somber.
“The magic you think of as ours,” Sophos said, “the light and shadow, the wind and tides . . . for us, these are small tricks, limited by the world as it currently exists. Faunos can speak to animals, but he cannot create them. Fortos can kill the living, but he cannot raise the dead. The real magic lies in the force inside the heartstone. It is the power of gods—it can rewrite existence itself. Few of our kind understood how to use it. Even the nine of us were only novices. We were brought here by . . .” He hesitated. “ . . . someone else.”
“No point hiding it now,” Ignios said. “It was our parents. Our mother came to Emarion, too.”
I frowned. I’d heard countless tales of the Kindred, but never any mention of their mother. Then again, I’d heard no mention of Omnos, either.
“What about your father?” I asked.
Their faces twisted in matching torture, like the answer was a battle to give.
Even Sophos seemed to be struggling to speak.
“Heartstone magic requires more than skill. There must always be a balance. Coming here gave us a chance to live. In exchange . . .” He looked down, voice turning quiet.
“The heartstone took our father’s life as payment. ”
“A future taken, and a future given,” Lumnos said, holding my gaze with a strange intensity, “and our mother’s future, burdened by guilt for what she’d done. It was love that bound them all.”
“When our brother threatened that future, we asked our mother for help,” Sophos said. “She crafted a sword called Sorrow’s Edge and infused it with a spell to kill him.”
I froze with a horrified stare. A mother plotting to murder her son at the request of his siblings. I’d wondered once if the Descended’s long lifespans had corrupted them so badly, they no longer understood the value of life. Now I wondered if their Kindred ancestors were the real brutes to blame.
“You think us heartless,” Fortos guessed, and I couldn’t deny it. “You’re wrong. It was an act of mercy.”
“It was an act of love,” Lumnos said, still looking oddly insistent. “You have to remember that, Diem. Our mother cared for him as much as any of us. She loved him too much to let him become a thing of evil.”
“Or so we believed,” Faunos muttered.
Several shot him bitter looks, though others pursed their lips in tacit agreement.
“Before you judge us, hear the rest,” Sophos insisted.
“Our mother requested we build a tomb on the island. A way to honor his memory, and a place to keep his body safe so the mortals couldn’t defile it.
Lumnos was the only one of us he had any fondness for, so she was tasked with luring him to the island while our mother completed the spell.
Mother asked the rest of us to stay away. ”
“That,” Meros said drearily, “was our third mistake.”
“At the last moment, our mother changed her mind,” Sophos went on. “She couldn’t bear to kill him, so she cursed him instead. She placed him in chains that could only be unlocked by the blood of an heir.”
“An heir conceived in love and born of a mortal,” Lumnos corrected. “She thought that if he could fall in love with a mortal, as the nine of us had, his heart would be redeemed.”
Faunos scowled. “She spared his life, and he killed her for it. Took the blade from her hands and drove it right through her chest.”
Lumnos bristled, her eyes dropping low. Umbros studied her with a curious frown.
“Foolish woman,” Fortos grunted. “Their hearts are too soft. That was the day I decided only a man would bear my Crown.”
“And yet a Fortos Queen stands before us,” Meros said pointedly.
“And her soft heart might save them all, in the end,” Umbros said.
“Wait,” I cut in. “If your mother changed the spell, how did Omnos die? And how did Ophiucae take his place in the cell?”
Their stares fixed on me with equal bemusement and dismay.
“Diem,” Lumnos said, “Omnos is the name your people gave to our brother. His real name, the name given to him by our parents, is Ophiucae.”
I blinked. “My birth father is a Kindred?”
“You are the heir that freed him. And you may be the only one who can stop him.”