Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
GAVIN SMYTH
I forgive you. For all of it. I don’t even know if there’s anything to forgive, because so much of it wasn’t your fault. I understand why you did what you did and why you kept it from me.
Please. Gods, please just come back to me.
Whatever it takes.
—UNSENT CORRESPONDENCE FROM QUEEN ARYELLA I TO THE BUTCHER OF NYRIDA
391 Years Ago
I was insane to come here.
Only the gods knew what kind of horrors I was walking into. I was terrified, and the small, rational part of my brain urged me to turn and fucking run , but I didn’t listen to it.
Nothing was more terrifying than never seeing her again.
It had taken me a month to travel from northern Warrich to southern Tugaf, then another few weeks to acclimate to the desert climate and find Molochai’s palace of crafted onyx sand.
Tall and darkly elegant, it was even larger than the Whitlocks’ white stone castle in Brinnea.
The castle I still thought of sometimes as her home.
But her home was with me . It always would be.
I stood at the end of a long path leading toward the dark fortress.
Rivers of sweat trailed down my neck as I waited for two guards cloaked in red to approach.
The oppressive midsummer heat in southern Tugaf was unlike anything I had experienced.
There wasn’t a single cloud in the desert sky, and my linen shirt was plastered to my skin.
By the time I realized I needed some sort of covering, both my neck and scalp were burnt to a crisp.
I had even thought about shaving off my beard, it was so fucking hot, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“Name?” demanded one of the guards at the tall, spiked metal gate.
“Smyth.”
“State your purpose.”
“I’m here to propose a deal with Molochai.”
The other guard let out an obnoxious snort. They both turned to go.
“He’s my father,” I called after them, the words like shards of glass on my tongue. They paused their retreat, then turned back.
“Your father,” one said.
“Yes.” Fear made my pulse thunder in my ears, even though I was bigger and likely more lethal than they were. I’d taught myself a lot over the last nine years. They stared at each other for a few seconds before seemingly coming to agreement.
“Try anything,” said the other as he unlocked and opened the gate, “and your head will be a feast for crows on one of those spikes.”
I hid my relief and followed them down the long path to the castle, doing my best not to dwell on the fact they acted like being a monster’s spawn was a privilege, not a curse.
When we reached the palace doors, an eerie chill crawled up my back. It felt like evil was skittering over my skin on its way to embed itself in my spine and take control of me. Evil wanted me , but if she was in my heart, it couldn’t have me. Not fully.
I was led through dark, damp, and empty halls into a throne room with a dais and a throne crafted of shiny, black wood. My boots echoed on dark polished floors beneath high ceilings with pointed arches and ribbed vaults.
The closer I came to the throne, the more that evil pull increased in strength. Shadows swirled and shifted, and a tall male emerged.
It was him. I felt it in the blood we shared. We had the same brown eyes. Same dark hair. His was slicked back, nearly black. My beard was thicker and wilder, and I was taller. Otherwise… fuck, I looked just like him.
“You claim to be my son?” His angry, rogue shadows trailed behind him like a soul-sucking cape. They whispered . Incomprehensible, but urgent and pleading. They begged to escape and destroy, just barely restrained by his grasp.
“My mother was a servant in Simeon Whitlock’s palace thirty-one years ago,” I answered. “My name is?—”
“I know your name, boy. My shadows heard you on your way in.” He circled me like a predator. “Your mother. Blue eyes, black hair? A thin beauty with long legs? You must forgive me. I don’t recall many names.”
Bile rose in my throat. Her name was on the tip of my tongue, but he didn’t deserve to hear it. “I don’t know what she looked like,” I said through gritted teeth. “She died in childbirth.”
“That’s a shame.” He fucking laughed . “She had some spirit at first, though she was willing enough once she understood the consequences.”
My body stiffened, fists clenched and ready to fly.
Aryella Jay Smyth.
Raging shadows crowded my own vision. I repeated her name to center myself.
Aryella Jay Smyth.
I couldn’t kill him. I needed him to get her back.
Aryella Jay Smyth.
Besides, fists were no good against a sorcerer.
“My… son .” He scanned my form, looking unnervingly impressed with what he saw. “Perhaps I’ll keep you around for a little while, after all. What are you here to request of me?”
“I need to be immortal,” I hurried out. “I need to be stuck in time, like you.”
His curiosity piqued. “And why is that?”
“I have my reasons.” He thought she was dead, and it had to stay that way. I would die before I gave her up.
“I am capable of granting your request,” said Molochai, “though I require payment.”
I had suspected as much. “What kind of payment?”
“Kill for me.” Shadows danced excitedly around him and in him. His eyes darkened to a cavernous black. “Be my executioner.”
My remaining scraps of morality and conscience shrieked at me in warning.
Don’t do it…
This isn’t what she’d want for you…
Run…
“I love you.”
“Only once.” I heard her soft voice and silenced my conscience. “No innocents.”
His response was immediate. “Agreed.”
Once was easy if the target was guilty. Perhaps I was more like him than I thought.
The life of another was a fair price for her freedom.
I couldn’t accept a future where no one put her first and she was used for power.
Where her smile was directed at someone else and her soft body moved beneath the hands of another.
Her beautiful mind was erased and controlled.
Her pure heart dragged back and forth through a vicious storm of manipulations and lies.
I remembered all the times that she showed me the most vulnerable pieces of her, and I saw the quiet plea for freedom trapped inside of her.
“I don’t get to choose what I want!”
“I have a responsibility, Gavin!”
And I’d heard the secret terror behind those words. I had felt her fear in every crevice of my heart. Her fear of being alone, misunderstood, used, abused.
I remembered my promise to her.
You will never need to know a world without me.
Unbound hope had peered up at me through those gold-speckled green eyes. I had given her many promises. I had meant every single one of them. But one promise gripped me like a vise I would willingly die in if I had to.
I will never, ever let you go.
The thought of her, full of pure light and life, darkened by confusion, despair, and loneliness was my gravest fear. She had given herself to me, wholly and without reserve. I knew in my soul that she hadn’t wanted to leave.
“Promise you’ll never let me forget who I am.”
I would not abandon her. I would not leave her terrified, used, and alone.
I had promised.
Whatever it takes.
“Do it,” I uttered.
Molochai withdrew a dagger, opened his palm, and made a straight, slow slice through its center, then gestured for me to give him my left hand.
I offered my hand. The blade sliced slowly through my palm, but it wasn’t the physical pain that made me flinch. Rather, it felt as if any natural goodness of my own was evaporating out of my skin and was now suspended in the air, defying gravity just to escape me.
“Repeat after me.” He reached to clasp my hand in his. “I grant you the magic to live forever, frozen in your current state. When I give you a name, you will kill them.”
“You grant me the magic to live forever, frozen in my current state. When you give me a name—” I pressed my bleeding palm against his, flinching at his cold fingers as we sealed the oath. “—I will kill them.”
I felt the oath snap into place and my soul break into pieces.
I mourned the loss of each piece, even though the strongest one would always survive in this world as long as she existed.
I had given it to her, along with my heart, the first moment I saw her.
With her it would stay, sound asleep, safe wherever she was.
I just prayed that when the time came, I wouldn’t be so far gone that any attempt to take that piece back would obliterate her, and us. I shouted that final, desperate plea to the gods.
Then I offered my soul to evil and never looked back.