55. Thyra
Chapter Fifty-Five
Thyra
My head spins as I look up at Stellen and Antony, where they hover protectively at my sides as if they’d pull me to safety, even though the danger is literally in my own hand.
“You’re telling me that this blood bind…and the hammer crumbling into dust…may have saved my life?” I ask.
“Only because we thought we should break the blade,” Stellen replies, his voice frosty with tension.
“Which we believed,” Antony says, “because the blade’s own cursed energy showed you an image in the Chronicle and told us to do it.”
I press the balls of my feet to the floor, trying to ground myself. Despite how much Antony and Stellen and I have talked for the last few hours, there are still things of which I haven’t spoken.
“When the blood bind transferred to me and the hammer was crumbling, a blade vision struck. The False—” I falter. “Are we still calling her that?”
“For clarity, we probably need to,” Stellen says.
“Well, the False Queen’s spirit told me, and I quote, ‘Accept the gifts I’m giving you.’ She spoke of the blood bind as if it were a gift.”
Both men sink into their chairs, hunched forward in their seats.
“She warned that if she recalled the curse, it would consume her,” Stellen says. “She felt the curse cleave her heart. With her blood in the blade, part of her soul could have been trapped. And then corrupted by the curse.”
“Her spirit turned malevolent,” I say.
Stellen presses a finger to the False Queen’s portrait. “But possibly trying to fight back.”
Antony growls. “The altered blood bind protects you, Thyra, but it harms us, the ancestors of the men who wronged her.”
Stellen grimaces. “Well, except that it also protects us.”
Antony’s eyebrows shoot up. “How so?”
“The heart threads connect us to Thyra,” Stellen says. “If the blade breaks, we could die too.”
Desperate for answers, I rub my temples. “But who altered the blood bind? It happened during Aeliana’s lifetime, not the False Queen’s lifetime. Was it Maxim’s mother? If so, when did she do it and why would she want to? How could she have even known what the False Queen wanted?”
Another groan drags from my lips as questions continue to pour out of me. “Why would Maxim’s mother create runes to drain your power and tie the ivory ribbon to my arm and by doing so, both harm and protect you? And how did she—”
Oh.
“Thyra?” Stellen prompts me when I stare into the distance for a long moment.
I run my fingertips along the blood bind, following the curved lines, the sharp lines, and all those that flow in between. “Maxim has too much fire.”
Could it be that simple?
“He spoke of an early death,” I whisper. “He implied to me that his fire was killing him.”
The crease in Stellen’s forehead eases and he gives a slow exhale. “Damn.”
Antony takes glances between us. “Enlighten me.”
I tug my bottom lip between my teeth, mentally churning through all of the unanswered questions. “I could be very wrong. There are so many unknowns. Too many ifs and maybes, and this theory could come unstuck for any number of reasons…”
“Thyra.” Antony’s fangs appear, and I completely understand his impatience, but at the same time, a theory like this only raises more questions.
Quietly, I say, “She did it to protect her son.”
Antony’s snarl fades and now he’s the one staring into the distance. “Draining Maxim’s power could keep him alive.” Then he grumbles, “Too fucking bad about the rest of us.” But the furrow quickly returns to his brow. “Does that mean binding the ribbon to your arm was just a coincidence?”
“Possibly,” I say. “She couldn’t have known about breaking the blade because that message in the Chronicle was revealed only to me. At least, as far as I would assume.”
Stellen is nodding. “Miriam and Aeliana were already liaising back then. Isha could have overheard something about the hammer and decided to act on that information.”
“If that’s so, why did the False Queen’s spirit take credit for the blood bind?” Antony asks.
For once, he’s the one poking holes in my reasoning, a role usually performed by Stellen.
“A valid question,” I say on a soft exhale. “So many unknowns. But if any of this could be true, then this blood bind is all about Maxim.”
As are the binds on his arms and possibly even the blood bind on his golden serpent.
Stellen reaches for the blank page and the scroll, carefully folding the page and rolling the scroll up again.
“We need to speak with Miriam and Aeliana. Find out what else they know about the blade, the curse, and the blood bind. They’ve vowed to help you, Thyra.
I studied the documents in my possession for years, but they could have other crucial information. ”
“Pieces we need to put together,” I say.
“In the meantime, we have to make damn sure the Dragonstone Blade remains intact,” Antony says, rising to his feet and reaching for his axe.
“What about Maxim?” I ask.
My question falls into a sudden silence.
Both men are like stone, both half-turned away from me.
“I used his warmth in the Frost Kingdom,” I continue quietly. “How much harm will he experience now that I’m not draining his power?”
Still, they’re silent.
Then, Stellen says, “A question that pits our lives against his.”
Damn.
My shoulders slowly sink, but I don’t flinch away from facing this harsh truth.
Antony and Stellen told me that I’m the kingdom for which they would lay down their lives.
I’m the heart of their worlds. But they also promised to question and challenge me, as they should when my choices could hurt them.
At least, by choosing to stay together, they can take control of their own wellbeing and ensure the blood bind’s purpose will be thwarted. Only with their full agreement and their geographical separation could the bind start draining their power again.
That doesn’t diminish the dread rising within me, a dread of which I had rid myself for one blissful night.
“The sun will rise in a few hours,” I say, my voice tight. “I need some air while it’s still cool.”
After that, I’ll need to get some sleep before meeting Miriam and Aeliana tonight, but for now, there’s no chance of settling my mind enough to rest.
Neither Antony nor Stellen argues with me.
Pushing back my chair, I attempt to shake off these new fears rising within my heart.
I hurry up the stairs and past Nara, who gives me a worried growl before she follows me, resolutely stalking my steps as I push open the trapdoor and exit into the fresh air.
While I take deep breaths, she nudges my back, and then her cold nose brushes my cheek, a soothing touch.
“Hey, Nara.”
The last stars are twinkling in the sky, the moonbeams soft. On the other side of the border, artificial stars gleam while across the dunes, hundreds of lights bob and sway.
My eyes widen as I home in on lanterns. Hundreds of Ember Fae have gathered across the distant dunes.
Stellen’s quiet voice sounds at my back. I wasn’t oblivious to his approaching footfalls, as subdued as they were. Or to Antony, who stops in the shadows of the tower behind us.
“At night, Ember Fae leave their underground homes and converge on the surface,” Stellen says. “Stop me if you already know this?”
I nod. “Miriam described the celebration for Maxim’s birthday as being aboveground, but I wasn’t sure what that might look like.”
“Sounds like merchants selling their wares.” Stellen peers into the distance, his statement indicating he’s accessing his sharp hearing, just as I’m now accessing mine.
“Highborn and lowborn are mingling,” I say. “I hear…games for children and…celebrations for those who are approaching adulthood.”
“From what I heard from the Ember warriors,” Stellen says, “they don’t build structures on the surface because the sand quickly covers those structures.
Instead, they spend hours each night setting up just to take everything down again.
This is the first night since the battle at the border that they’ve come out again. It’s a good sign.”
A hopeful sign. The first for days.
But where I would have taken comfort from this before, now a darkness looms within my heart, a sense of foreboding.
“I was going to walk, but can I take Nara?” I ask Stellen. “I’ll be back before sunrise. I won’t endanger her.”
A smile tugs at the corner of Stellen’s mouth. “Nara chooses her own path now.”
The white wolf nudges my back again before plonking herself down on the rock, making it easy for me to climb on, even though she knows full well I could leap onto her back without assistance. While she’s running at full speed, no less.
Once seated, I bend over her neck, murmuring, “Thank you, Nara.”
Before I can urge her into a run, Stellen’s whisper arrests me, his smile now vanished. “Maxim was the one you saw.”
I know exactly what Stellen’s talking about.
“When I read the Chronicle.” I bury my hands in Nara’s fur. “He pulled me clear of flying metal shards, like you pulled me away from the edge of a rooftop and back to safety.”
Not only then. When I was lying across Stellen’s chest at the gravesite in the Frost Kingdom, fighting to survive the snowstorm’s power, I saw Maxim in a blade vision then, too.
“You saw him.” Stellen’s posture is unreadable, his pale eyes betraying nothing of his true thoughts.
Even his heartbeats are too steady to reveal his emotions to me.
“You and Maxim are connected in ways we can’t yet know or understand.
Whether by fate or by power, I pray the answer doesn’t destroy you, Thyra. ”
My right hand burns. In this hand, my blade hand, I held a ribbon steeped in murdered blood that Maxim burned, and now a shadow lingers at my back.
I close my fist, attempting to put a stop to the burn as Nara breaks into a run and I welcome the slap of the night air, wishing it could erase my fears.