34. SON OF SHADOW #2
Nivelle, in her own defense, replied, “I do not know everything about those days. I was not alive then.” She then directed a very pointed look at the wraith. “Not all of us are gifted with a pool that grants immortality.”
Nivelle had a point. The wraith was the last living being—aside from Torin—that would have knowledge of anything that happened before they journeyed here from their homeworld.
I nodded toward the wraith. “Tell us what you know.”
She cinched the blanket tighter beneath her chin, as if a chill had set in.
As if whatever she was about to divulge consisted of memories she’d long since tried to bury.
“My father was the leader of our clan. A stubborn thing, he was.
He refused to leave with us when we were offered the option to flee with Torin and her witches.
It nearly killed my mother to leave him, but he was convinced there was no hope left anywhere but in death.
“Our world was in pieces from the war Skadi waged, and it had gone on long enough that entire clans had fallen. The witches didn’t fare much better.
” She gave Nivelle a pitying glance. “Skadi had lost her mind to greed. She sought her father’s power, thinking she could somehow harness it and wield it alongside her own.
But she could not deal the killing blow to him herself, as I’m sure you know—”
“A god cannot kill another god,” Auren said.
“That is correct. So instead, she used the witches that had abandoned Torin, and forced them to cast a spell upon Erebus, binding his power to his amulet, making it inaccessible to him. Then, she commanded her own general—a being made from her own blood—to deal the killing blow. It was absolute madness. But even though she held all of Erebus’s power in her hands, she could not use it.
Binding someone’s power like that is done by using dark magic, and only the witch goddess herself, or a witch with unprecedented power, can reverse dark magic.
Skadi was not familiar with the ways of witchcraft, and the witches that had defected to her were young and naive.
They did not take the laws of dark magic into account.
But that did not stop Skadi from pursuing her destructive path.
“Torin knew there would be no winning against her sister, not with how unhinged she had become. And she knew Skadi would come for her, and force her to unleash the hold on Erebus’s power so that she could wield it herself.
So, Torin sent a missive, offering a way out to anyone who wanted it.
Every witch and every wraith—save for my father and a few dozen elders who had lost all hope and the will to survive—heeded Torin’s call to safety.
We had no idea what was going to happen, or where we would end up, but it was our only option. ”
She swiped her foot into the water as she spoke.
“Torin opened a portal—the largest one we had ever seen.
It took almost all her strength to do it.
Some said it nearly killed her. We fled through that gateway and ended up here.
A strange, bright world—the opposite of where we came from.
The witches dwelled out in the open with the fae, while Karios found a place for them, but the mountains offered the only refuge for our kind.
“It wasn’t until we were here that we learned Torin had managed to steal her father’s amulet from Skadi in the final moments before she opened the portal.
In theory, she was doing what she thought was best: preventing Skadi from ever gaining access to their father’s wealth of power, and therefore stopping her sister from causing any more damage.
But in reality, I think she only bought herself time.
And if Skadi is here now, that means she found a way to open the same portal.
Impossible, for her. But there were witches that remained with her. If they were able to find a way . . .”
“So she has come for the amulet,” I concluded.
The wraith nodded. “To take back what she believes is hers by right.”
Nivelle remained oddly quiet. Upon seeing her face, I could tell that what the wraith had just told us was news to her as well.
“You didn’t know?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Torin has never mentioned the amulet to us, and . . . I do not think our stories have made mention of it either.”
“Why would she keep that information from you?” Aremis asked.
“I do not know.” Her jaw clenched and unclenched as something like disdain crossed her face. “I have always been suspicious that she has much to hide.”
I exchanged a look with my second.
“She will tear this world apart for that amulet,” the wraith said. “And I imagine, for you as well, once she finds out you have somehow managed to be imbued with its power.”
“But I do not have the amulet. I’ve never even seen it. And how would it even be possible for Erebus’s power to manifest in me?”
Aremis took a step forward and offered his insight.
“According to the Seidr, power can be bred, or it can be bestowed by a god—imbued, just like an object. And power that is given in that way is just as good as blood. Since no record of your power exists before Evander, that leaves us to assume a god had their hand in it. If this power ended up in you, it was deliberate. And it was done by someone who had the means to do so.”
“Do you think it was Torin?” Auren asked. “She had the amulet when she arrived here.”
“There is no way to know for sure, unless we ask her,” Aremis said.
“I do not think that would bode well for anyone,” Nivelle murmured.
Auren shook her head. “It would be counterintuitive for Torin to give it to someone else when she sought to protect it from falling into another’s hand. That would lead us to assume she still has it.”
“But she was surprised when she recognized the power,” I pointed out.
“You have visited her?” the wraith implored.
“We have. And she seemed . . . worried, to say the least.”
“Then it was not her doing. She is not my goddess, so I do not claim to know her ways, but what I do know is that she did not want that power falling into another’s hands. Not her sister’s—not anyone’s.”
Auren pressed the wraith again for information. “The High Lord who came before kept a journal. He wrote that the information he learned here would cause his court to collapse. Was this the information you told him?”
“No. I told him what he wanted to know. What you have yet to ask for yourselves . . .”
I knew the question she referenced. I had half a mind to not even ask it. But the words burned the back of my throat like acid the longer I tried to swallow them down. It was the one question that gnawed against my mind and itched as it worked its way off my tongue.
“What happens if I embrace the power to its full extent? What happens if I lose control?”
“You will either succumb to it, or become it.”
I could have sworn Auren stopped breathing.
The wraith took a curious step toward me. “When you wield that power, what do you feel?”
“That is none of your concern.”
She nodded slowly, squinting as she stared at me, as if she was hearing all the unspoken thoughts that were racing through my mind.
“Darkness, in its essence, is unpredictable. Regardless of how the power came to be in you, it is Erebus’s—there is no denying that.
While you may have control over it, it is not something natural to this world, and things that are unnatural will always find themselves at odds with the rest. You may be able to control it better than your ancestor could, but you should only hope to endure it, nothing more. You are not a god.”
Evander had succumbed to it. He only ended things himself because he was unable to control it.
Succumb to it, or become it.
Succumbing meant death. Becoming meant that something would be unleashed in this world. Neither outcomes were promising.
Letting my power slip in its entirety was not an option. Enduring until death finally claimed me in a few hundred more years seemed to be the only plausible thing that I could do. I would not bend to its will and suffer the same fate as Evander.
“For what it’s worth,” the wraith continued, “your ancestor was weak. The power was bound to destroy him. He was a vessel that could not control it. You, I sense, are far more capable.”
The power in my blood hummed at the word capable, and I fought back a shudder, disturbed by the feeling.
The wraith lifted her thin, pale hand, once more. “I have given you confirmation of your theory. Surely you will reward me with another sip of your shadows . . .”
“Confirmation?” I scoffed.
“Do not play the fool, High Lord. All you wanted was for someone to affirm what you’ve always known. Denying it will not change the inevitable.”