53. Thyra
Chapter Fifty-Three
Thyra
Ipress the heel of my hand to my heart, unable to keep reading, although I have the presence of mind to keep a finger pressed to the parchment.
“This must be a lie.” I expected Stellen and Antony to be in an uproar already, pacing the room as I want to pace, exclaiming and shouting as I want to shout.
They’re deathly silent.
“She sounds afraid,” Antony says, planting his hands on the table.
“Her voice is not what I expected.” Stellen reaches for the satchel and draws out a yellowed scroll, flattening it for us to see. “This is her.”
My breath catches at the beauty of the illustration of the False Queen, even though, as always, her features are concealed by a curtain of her hair.
“It’s difficult to see what color her eyes are, or her skin, or her hair,” Stellen says, slowly tilting the scroll in the light. “Her features appear different depending on the slant of light. Even her height is difficult to pinpoint. But on the back of this page are descriptions of her.”
He turns the page over to reveal a full page of text. Not cramped. This writing is neat and unhurried.
Stellen points to various parts of the text.
“Her beauty is described as beyond compare, her power breathtaking. Here it’s said that no assassin could touch, and here, she’s described as generous and kind.
Those nearest to her are said to have been unbreakably loyal.
” He leans back, returning to my side. “I always considered these attributes to have been a consequence of her shrewd cunning and ability to deceive. We can’t take anything at face value, but these are the words of the Ferocie Scribes who lived during her reign. ”
I speak carefully. “During my last blade vision, when her spirit revealed the blood bind’s purpose, I asked her why she was doing all of this. She said, ‘Because I’m owed.’”
I take a moment, remembering the pain in her voice. The first real hints of emotion.
With a deep breath, I continue. “She said, ‘They took and took until they took too much.’ She vowed she wouldn’t allow them to do that to me.”
“‘Them,’” Stellen says, “As in: us.”
I nod. “The three kings.”
His focus falls to the page in front of me. “Her letter implies that the Frost General and Iron General betrayed the prince.”
On my other side, Antony speaks again, far more quietly than I expected at this accusation against his ancestor.
“If we consider the possibility…and I’m not saying I believe it…
that she didn’t curse the blade, but she was blamed for it, then whatever happened to her after she wrote this letter could have changed everything for her. ”
Stellen hunches where he stands. “This letter represents a point in time. Anything could have happened after this. A single event can turn a fae away from reason and make them a monster.” His voice strained. “I have lived this.”
“As have I.” Antony, too, hunches beside me.
I stare up at him with wide eyes. He was the one who first told me about the False Queen and the curse. When he spoke of it, he was angry and distrustful. He didn’t believe a word I tried to speak in my defense.
But a lot has happened between then and now.
Lies have spilled out into the open. Heartache has been revealed. And now both he and Stellen stand at my side, a bond between us that I never imagined could exist.
“Is there more, Thyra?” Antony asks.
“The entire page is crammed with writing. I’m only halfway through.”
“Can you continue?” This question is from Stellen, whose heart beats calmly but whose voice betrays the worry he feels for me.
I give him a nod and once again, I begin to read.
I did not curse the blade.
Judging by your reaction to reading this, I have uttered a heresy and must conclude that history will reflect what I fear: the generals have attributed the curse to me. For some part, I do not blame them. What other being could deliver a curse so powerful as to tear my husband’s kingdom into three?
Truly, I ask: what other power? This question has left me sleepless and fearful in my grief.
I heard the curse. Those dark words cleaved my heart at the moment I witnessed my son’s death. I saw the gleam of a heart thread extending from his chest, a powerful connection, but to whom, I don’t know.
As he fell, I heard a scream, not his and not my own.
A woman’s voice was screaming in the ancient dragon tongue, the language of shadows wrenched up from the darkest of pits and even now, I am deathly cold to recall it.
I cannot… I cannot think on it or those dark words will consume me… The consequences consume me…
I have no other children. I have no male relatives.
I am the last of my line. Now that my son is dead, at the moment of my end, the Oracle power will leap to life in a new bloodline.
I know not whom, only that it must have happened because there you are, Thyra.
Proof that our power will not die with me.
The weight on your shoulders must be unbearable.
I don’t know how to break the curse. But I can offer you hope.
The Dragonstone Blade was forged in love and kindness. My love forged it for me with honor and loyalty in his heart. A drop of my blood and a drop of my son’s blood are contained within its hilt and within that blood is power.
The blade was created to be both a weapon and a conduit. A way for my son to speak with me and me with him, as though we were not separated by thousands of miles, both of us subject to my husband’s warmongering ways.
Now I fear I did not foresee all that the blade could become: a vessel for a curse that has cast sunlit country into snow and fertile land into desert and verdant mountains into dark land where bloodthirsty beings scream with hunger.
I have done what I can, in the time that I have.
My love has already cast runes onto the hammer, which he keeps close to his side. If you reunite the blade with the hammer, these runes will transfer to the blade.
My love had already done this even before I began to See you, in case anything happened to him. He has drawn a record of these runes on the other side of this page for the Vividari to protect. They are loyal to me and will hide the hammer should anything happen to us.
The hammer’s runes are filled with love and courage, the only possible antidotes to the darkness of the curse. I fear they won’t break the curse, for dragon magic is the most powerful of all magics, but I pray these runes will enable you to See through the blade’s darkness.
I can’t See your arm right now to know if you have done this, but…
I stop reading. The whole time I’ve held this page, my forearm has faced down. If she’s foreseeing me from my right, the runes won’t be visible to her.
With a pounding heart and still gripping the page, I turn my arm over, forearm up, exposing the black runes, and then I continue to read aloud the final sentences on the page.
No. I don’t understand. Those aren’t the runes! Oh, no. I don’t know what has happened—
They’re here. They want the blade and think I have it, but I don’t. I don’t know where it is. Gone like my son’s body. Gone like shadows.
There’s nothing more to read on that page. Turning it over, I discover the golden energy has already illuminated the runes and the message on the other side for the Vividari.
Very different runes to the ones I now bear.
My hands tremble as I finally let go of the page. The parchment settles back onto the table with a quiet rustle, becoming blank again.
“I don’t know how to comprehend this.” I turn my forearm over again, the Dragonstone Blade and runes facing up as Antony and Stellen sink back into their chairs on either side of me. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Then let’s unravel it,” Stellen says, his logic and strategy seeming to prevail. “Before the blade was cursed, the queen used the blade to communicate with her son. That matches with the blade visions pulling us to you, even if the curse and the blood bind have messed up how that works.”
Antony nods. “She also said she saw what she called a heart thread and it sounded like that was unexpected. We’ve experienced those threads.”
“Her son’s heart was connected with someone,” Stellen says. “A woman who screamed the curse when he died.”
My throat constricts. “Who?”
Stellen taps the table, the most unsettled action he’s shown so far. “Someone who knew the ancient dragon tongue.”
“Fucking dangerous magic,” Antony rumbles. “Only a powerful being could control dragon magic.”
Suddenly, he and Stellen are exchanging intensely silent looks, broken when Stellen murmurs, “The prince died in the east. The Serulian army was invading that land.”
“The land where dragons originated.” The tips of Antony’s fangs appear, a sign that sets me on edge as he continues. “That’s where the ancient dragon tongue was spoken. The fucking tree is there, too.”
“All of this connects,” Stellen says, but he’s suddenly glaring at Antony. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Stop,” I say, keeping my voice low, gratified when their attention immediately turns to me. “Think about what?”
Antony’s dark gaze settles on me. “We need to know what kind of magical being struck the curse. The answer will lie in the east, and if we need those answers, I should be the one to get them.”
His hand shoots to mine before my rebuttal can reach my lips, the darkness in his eyes stopping me cold.
“I’m the one who has been forced to watch you float beneath that tree swarming with shadows,” he says.
“I’ve torn my heart apart to reach you. There is nothing I won’t do to protect you, Thyra.
Besides, I’m uniquely placed to survive in dark places and I can fly on my own without endangering a loyal creature like Nara. ”
My rebuttal resurges. “But—”
“But I’m not leaving you,” he says, his expression softening.
“You just said…”
“I’m not leaving. Yet. For now, you need two of us together. When it’s safe, then I will go.”
Despite his logic and his reasons, a deep pit of dread has opened up in my stomach, threatening to suck me down.
“Does it really matter who struck the curse?” I ask. “If we can get the blade out of my arm, then we can break it—”
“No.” Antony and Stellen both speak at once, united so completely that I’m left blinking at them.
“No?” I ask.
“We’re fucking lucky the hammer crumbled,” Antony says. “Fucking lucky the anvil wasn’t accessible and Maxim’s heritage wasn’t known to us sooner because, had all the pieces come together, I’m certain we would have tried to break the blade by now.”
“Not luck,” Stellen says, his voice strained. “The blood bind stopped us.”
I glance between them as I repeat, “The blood bind needs to be removed. I have to get rid of it and get this blade out of—”
“No.” Again, they’re united, and it’s fucking scaring me.
“Why not?”
“Because dragon magic is stronger than any other magic,” Stellen says, “and breaking the blade could kill you.”