CHAPTER FORTY-THREE #2
“No one is born evil, Verena. Sometimes the darkness chooses us and sometimes it forces our hand. But it’s not a birthright, it’s a stain.
One that can be washed away or covered by something stronger.
” Her tone was maddeningly convincing. “There’s always a part of us that remembers the light, the heart that knew kindness first.”
Like it was so simple. Like I hadn’t been fighting the Viper’s hunger every breath for the last eight years.
I exhaled. “So, what happened between you two then? Isolde found out, forbade you from ever going near Audra again?”
Nezra’s laugh came bitter. “Isolde didn’t care, not at first. She was too obsessed with reaching for power to be bothered with her daughter.” Her raven shifted as her smile thinned. “It was Jadis, Isolde’s mother, who warned us it wouldn’t last.”
“She was against it?” I asked.
Hair brushed across her jaw as she shook her head.
“No, but she knew her daughter. I was a Liraern, born of salt and storm, not court and titles. Isolde had plans, and they all included Audra. Plans with alliances and power and a proper match. Love wasn’t part of that design, neither was happiness.
Isolde never had it herself, so she would make damn sure her daughter didn’t either. ”
“Why was she so miserable?”
“According to Jadis, Isolde wasn’t always like this,” Nezra stated.
“If anything, she was like Audra when she was young. Curious. Radiant. And so loved.” She paused.
“But the world twists things. Corrupts them. And still, somehow, she found love despite it. Audra’s father was devoted to Isolde, loved her fiercely through all of it.
But once Audra was born, Isolde handed her straight to Jadis and barely touched her after. ”
Elva shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and Nezra looked at her for a moment before she continued.
“Jadis told me she sometimes caught Isolde looking at Audra, and for a moment she’d see her face soften.
Like she was trying to remember how to love.
Audra’s father thought Isolde could be reminded, could escape the darkness that festered.
But in the end Isolde burned his blood and killed him.
No one stood against her, not even Jadis. Not without their magic, at least.”
“Gods.” My breath snagged, my own position suddenly way too compressed. “Did Audra know any of this?”
“Not then.” Nezra stood, pacing back and forth before stopping in front of the window. “But time peels deception away. Jadis couldn’t shield her forever. She told her before Audra guessed it on her own.”
I leaned back, my mind catching on one delicate detail. “So Jadis doesn’t agree with how her daughter rules?”
“The witches aren’t all evil,” she said. “They’ve just been poisoned, changed.” She turned, eyes flicking to me then. “Even the strongest, brightest soul can sour if the wrong venom takes root.”
The Viper hissed in the hollow of my chest. It brought an idea forth that was more brash than brains. “We should go talk to Jadis.”
Nezra scoffed, the beads woven into her hair clattering against each other as she stormed toward me. “Are you mad?”
Alright, here it goes.
“I have reason to believe Obrann and Reve are using witch-forged magic. Their rings, the power they radiate, it isn’t natural. Reve was human, and someone turned him. I think it’s the rings he wears that sustain that power. The same with the king and with Perseus. Before I killed him, I mean.”
Such a fond memory.
The teacups rattled as Elva set one before me, perfumed steam curling between us like a veil. “Have you found something in your tome that would suggest that?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear—then did it again, even when it stayed.
I groaned, waving at the volume abandoned in my lap. “Just more cryptic nonsense about the divinity stones.”
“Obrann believes those stones hold immense power,” Elva murmured, her tone deceptively calm as her words dripped with implication. “He nearly executed his entire palace staff for losing the sword of Ryuu.”
Nezra stiffened, her posture tight. I almost forgot, almost buried, the vision she’d shown me of the gods forging the stones. But her eyes caught mine now as she gave the smallest shake of her head. A subtle warning.
Why had she shown me that at all?
That vision hadn’t been chance, it was intentional. Knowledge buried for centuries, slipped into my hands like a secret seed waiting to flourish and spread.
Ask her, the Viper demanded. Force her to answer. You were born to carry this truth, not let it rot in your throat.
I wasn’t sure if Nezra was keeping me from danger or from destiny, but either way, pressing her now would unravel something I don’t think I was entirely ready for.
Inessa finally lowered the novel from her face, and, of course, it wasn’t the historical tome we’d assigned her. No, the gilded cover and the flushed look in her cheeks gave it away instantly.
Pixie smut. Figures.
“Well, do they?” she asked.
“Of course they do,” Nezra scoffed. “It’s why the gods lent them to the kingdoms to begin with.”
“If Isolde is aligned with Obrann,” my words trailed, “then we have a much more radical problem than we thought. If we can find Jadis, maybe we can reason with her. Show her the witches are about to end up on the wrong side of history again.”
Nezra was not fond of that idea. “Just because she doesn’t agree with her daughter doesn’t mean she’d go against her. That’s coven blood, Verena.”
“We have to try.”
“That’s a death wish.” Her hand slapped against her thigh. “You don’t just stroll into a witch’s coven and say, we’d like to form an alliance.”
The door creaked open, a gust of air following Ford as he ducked inside. “We’re making an alliance with the witch queen?”
“Ford,” I groaned, throwing my hands up. “You really are so nosy.”
“Excuse me—” He planted his hands on his hips, and—were those leather pants? Fates help me. “I was just coming to say I found something important, and instead I hear you plotting tea with some ancient crone. Which,” he jabbed a finger in the air, “I am firmly against, by the way.”
“That is not what we were saying—” Nezra began.
“Well...” I cut in.
“No,” she snapped, fast and final.
My hands flew up. “Don’t you want to see Audra?”
Her voice went cold. “Isolde will kill you the moment you walk into her territory. And she’ll enjoy every messy second of it.”
“So maybe,” I drawled, too exhausted for subtlety, “we pretend we have something she wants first. Gain her trust, then propose an alliance with her, get information from grandma, kill Obrann, and then, I don’t know, backtrack and stab Isolde right in the empty pit where her heart should be?”
I felt a tug on the bond, a warmth spiraling up my spine.
“You are not forming an alliance with the witch queen,” a firm voice rolled from the doorway.
Smoke curled around Ronan as he entered, steady as his gaze, wrapping around the weathered fabric of his wonderfully revealing unbuttoned tunic.
The humidity had coaxed his curls into soft waves, and Elva’s precious oil, which she had bullied both him and Elysian into trying, left them gleaming like spun midnight.
“What do we even have to offer her?” Nezra had taken off her cloak, now pacing in only her leather pants and thin fabric top, as if I had made her overheat with the suggestion. “Why would she break an alliance with the king for a group of mutts and outlaws?”
“No one else is offering a plan,” I muttered.
Ronan’s glare cut through the room as he asked, “Isolde is in alliance with Obrann?”
“We’re offering reality, Verena,” Nezra said, softly now, like she was trying to soothe me back into place.
I hated that. Heat crawled up my throat, all the way to my skull, scraping its fangs down my bones. My vision blurred, funneled, shifting between its gaze and my own.
“And yes,” she added, this time to Ronan.
His expression hardened, fury drawn tight and silent as his fingers drummed against his leg. The bond pulled tight, and I felt it, that coil of rage thrumming just beneath his skin.
“Why does that make you so angry?” I asked him.
His eyes snapped to mine, black flame simmering deep in them.
The Viper hissed in delight, coiling closer to the heat of him. Press him. Tear it out. He hides more than you know.
The bond went quiet as Ronan exhaled through his nose, steady now, contained. “We will not waste thought on why the king crawls into bed with witches, if that’s even true. It changes nothing. Our task is the same.”
But that silence in the bond screamed clear enough.
“It is true,” I stated. “I can’t seriously be the only one who noticed the rings they’ve all been wearing. That’s not suspicious to anyone else?”
“The witches don’t have magic anymore,” Ronan retorted. “And there is no way for them to get it back unless the gods themselves hand deliver it. So, while it is odd for them to all bear rings, it likely means nothing except some useless show of hand that they belong to Obrann.”
“Odd?” I sneered. “That’s the only word your prince brain could come up with?”
“Are we sure Obrann just isn’t overcompensating for something?” Ford asked, eyes hovering over Inessa. “Or, be honest, would a pinky ring make me look more intimidating?”
“Yes,” Ronan answered, Ford’s face lighting up at the thought of new jewelry. “Odd is the only word.”
Ford’s face fell straight back into ogling Inessa’s novel.
“Ford.” I motioned toward him, desperate for a diversion. “Your important discovery?”
He blinked up. “Right. Me and—” Turning, he realized the space beside him was empty. “Where the hel did he go?”
Wells shimmered into view beside him, the air bending to reveal his form. “Here.”
“We,” Ford flung a hand toward him, flustered, “found something worth noting. Remember how the Brightwalker’s killed the pixie leader?”
“Maerin.” I stood, folding my arms across my chest in hopes no one could see the crack that had been added. “And we don’t know she's dead.”