Chapter 27
Dreven
Nyssa stalks back towards Marrow House, her spine rigid with barely contained frustration.
The blade still glows faintly in her hand, reacting to the residual magic clinging to her skin from the fissure.
She won’t know it’s there, but I notice everything about her, which is becoming a problem I can’t afford.
“You’re staring,” Voren murmurs beside me.
“She’s volatile,” I reply, not bothering to deny it. “Someone needs to monitor her.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?” Dastian adds, falling into step on my other side as we follow her up the hill. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re one heated glance away from pinning her against the nearest vertical surface.”
I don’t dignify that with a response, though he’s not wrong.
One taste of her wasn’t enough. The truth is, Nyssa Vale is a complication I didn’t anticipate.
She was supposed to be a tool—sharp, effective.
But tools don’t argue back. They don’t smell like rain and defiance.
They don’t make my ancient, carefully controlled power respond like a beast straining against its leash.
“We need to move faster,” I say, forcing my thoughts back to the matter at hand. “The Devourer won’t wait for us to coddle her sensibilities.”
“About that…” Voren trails off, his gaze pinning mine. “We need to tell her.”
“She will kill us, starting with me, and then what?”
“The realms die, and we are none the wiser,” Dastian says matter-of-factly.
“And dying after several centuries doesn’t bother you?”
“Oh, it bothers me. I intend to finish what I started with her in the lake, even if it kills me.”
“She, you mean,” I grunt. “Even if she kills you.”
“You are too cautious, old friend,” he murmurs, serious for once in his fucking life. “She will kill us if we don’t tell her.”
“I am not your friend,” I point out. “Not anymore.”
“Oh, okay, diva-Dreven. Being elevated after Mummy’s death to the god King didn’t go to your head at all, did it?”
“Fuck you,” I snarl. “I am no King. The realm is not mine.”
“Not yet.”
“Not while we stand on mortal soil, arguing about a slayer who is the only creature who can get her hands on the anointing crown.”
“Then what are we arguing about?” Dastian asks, spreading his hands wide. “We tell her the truth, or we all die anyway. The maths isn’t complicated.”
“She’ll understand,” Voren says quietly, reading my hesitation with the accuracy of someone who’s known me for far too long. “Eventually.”
“Eventually won’t help if she stabs me in the face when she finds out the rest of it.”
“Then don’t give her the chance,” Dastian suggests, his eyes glinting with mischief. “She’s far less stabby when she’s distracted.”
I shoot him a look that could freeze blood. “Your contribution to this crisis has been noted and dismissed.”
“Suit yourself.” He shrugs. “But when she finds out—and she will—don’t come crying to me when she’s using your intestines as decorative bunting.”
The three of us reach the front door of Marrow House just as Nyssa disappears inside. I can feel the pull of her, like a compass needle drawn to magnetic north. Every instinct I possess screams at me to follow, to ensure she doesn’t do something reckless in the next thirty seconds.
“She’s going to do something reckless,” Voren observes, reading my expression.
“Undoubtedly.” I move through the door, letting the shadows carry me into the entrance hall, where Nyssa is pacing like a caged animal. The illusion Dastian cast is flickering at the edges now, reality bleeding through in patches of rot and decay. She doesn’t seem to notice.
“Right,” she announces as we file in. “Since we’re all here and apparently invested in keeping me alive long enough to fetch your shiny crown, I have questions.”
“Shocking,” I mutter.
She ignores me, ticking points off on her fingers.
“One: Why does the crown have ‘wraith’ in the name? Two: If you lot are so bloody powerful, why do you need me at all? Three: What aren’t you telling me about this Devourer thing?
And four—” She pauses, her amber eyes locking onto mine with unsettling intensity.
“Why do I get the distinct impression that you’re hiding something that’s going to get me killed? ”
The silence that follows is deafening. Voren shifts his weight. Dastian suddenly finds the crumbling ceiling fascinating. I hold her gaze, weighing my options. The truth will fracture whatever fragile alliance we’ve built. A lie will only delay the inevitable.
“It is called the Wraith Crown, because the Wraith King forged it. Many millennia ago. No relation to Voren, in case you are wondering. Kings and gods are two entirely different things.”
“So how does a kingly crown become a divine artefact?”
“The Wraith King, as suggested, was a wraith. An immortal being that ruled over the dead here on earth. Voren is the Wraith god, who rules over all.”
“Yet they are separate?” she asks with a frown.
“Yes. It really has nothing to do with anything,” I say, shaking my head. “The point is, Aethel, the goddess of Light, wanted to rule the dead. For that, she knew she couldn’t kill Voren’s father, but she could usurp him by gaining more power over the dead on earth.”
“She was the goddess of Light?” Nyssa snorts. “Ironic.”
“Power taints.”
“So it does. I’m assuming Voren’s dad is dead?” Her gaze shifts to Voren.
“What makes you say that?”
“You are the god of Wraiths. There can’t be two of you.”
He smiles, slowly, and it chills her. She takes a step back. “Your ancestors killed him.”
She gulps. I half think she is going to apologise, but she doesn’t. She raises her chin defiantly, daring him to make a further comment. He doesn’t.
“Back to the Wraith Crown. This King died and was what? Contained in the crown? His power? Him? What?”
“His essence,” I say, knowing this is going to unravel quickly. “The crown holds his essence, his power over death itself. When a god or being of sufficient power wears it, they become the arbiter of all, living and dead and the voids. Aethel wanted that power. She hunted for it her entire reign.”
“The Devourer,” Nyssa says slowly, her eyes narrowing.
“Yes.”
“It is a wraith?”
“Of the void variety but much more malevolent.”
“It is the Wraith King?”
“Wow, you are smart,” Dastian says with a snort. “You pieced that together fucking quickly.”
“But not all of it,” Voren says, his gaze boring into me as I ignore him and stare at Nyssa.
“Then what am I missing?” she asks to me and me alone.
I can’t lie to her. I should, but I can’t. “The Devourer is my father.”