Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thyra
My mouth forms the word I can’t yet utter as the hatred in Antony’s eyes threatens to consume me: Why?
But before he can speak again, an answering rage pours through me. “Why do you hate me? I’ve done nothing to you.”
“Nothing?” His anger doesn’t lessen. “You—she—destroyed us.”
He hasn’t taken his eyes off me, but the only other female figure in this room is the statue, so I can only assume he’s talking about her.
“I don’t know who she is,” I grind out. “I don’t know what she did. Even if I did know, I am not her.”
Antony’s eyes search mine, the hatred draining from them, leaving a shocking emptiness behind. “No, you aren’t her.”
But he immediately shakes his head, his anger seeming to re-surge. “How can I believe you’re ignorant of the curse that broke the kingdoms into three?”
It’s my turn to shake my head, my brow deeply furrowed, because he isn’t making sense to me. “That wasn’t a curse. That was greed.”
He scoffs. “Greed?”
“Yes, greed,” I snap, because I know this story well.
I heard it over and over from the villagers. Every village my father and I lived in repeated the same story of how the three kingdoms came to be. My father never corrected it.
“The Serulian King’s three generals rose up against him, killed both him and his heir, and then started a war with each other, each vying for ultimate power.”
“Such a simple story.” Antony laughs, a cruel sound. “Is that what you believe?”
I glare at him. “It’s what happened.”
“No,” he says, his voice chilling me. “It isn’t.”
Slowly, he slides me back to the ground. Until this moment, he was holding me so tightly that I was barely aware he’d suspended me off the floor against his body.
His left hand tangles in my hair, gently tugging my head back as he continues to search my eyes.
Again, he shakes his head, as if he doesn’t find what he seeks. “You’re either the most skilled liar I’ve ever encountered, or you really don’t know what the first female Oracle did.”
I try to find a way forward. “What can it hurt to tell me?”
His eyes narrow, and I wish I could see more of his face to understand his true thoughts.
“You’re right. It only costs time, and we have all night.” He slides his hand away from my head, and I’m surprised by how carefully he moves so he doesn’t pull my hair.
The circlet clanks softly as he raises that same arm to point at the statue of the woman.
“The False Queen, a female Oracle—your ancestor—seduced the Serulian King into her bed and gave him a son.
Patiently, she waited until her son came of age.
When he reached his twentieth year, she convinced the Serulian King to cross the border into the east, where the lands were bountiful, not dust as they are now.
“Before the army left, she gave her son the Dragonstone Blade. Unknown to him, she had tainted the blade with her blood, drawing dark magic and malice to it, creating in it a murderous desire.
“In the middle of the battle, the prince turned on his father and killed him. The three generals tried to stop the prince, and in the fight that followed, the prince, too, was mortally wounded.
“When the army returned to Serulia, the Oracle tried to claim power. It was her plan all along.” Antony’s voice conveys the twist in his lips. “But the three generals sensed the dark magic on the blade. They refused to endorse the Oracle’s claim to power.
“In a rage, she snatched up the blade and cursed it. This time, her curse was powered by the royal blood of both the Serulian King and the Slain Prince, binding the curse to their kingdom.
“The curse split the kingdom into three, raising mountains and swamps between them. The northern land was covered in snow, subjected to endless winter, the southern land was turned into a waterless desert, and the central land—what became the Iron Kingdom—fell into darkness. The land in the east, where the king and prince had died, was scorched until it became nothing more than dust. But worse, the curse flooded the generals’ hearts with malice, causing them to turn on each other. And so the war began.”
His voice trails off. “Endless fucking war.”
He falls silent then, and it’s too quiet after everything he said. A story I’ve never heard before.
“What happened to the Oracle?”
“She disappeared and took the blade with her. The generals didn’t even look for her. The malice of the curse kept them focused on war. It wasn’t until two generations later that the search for the Oracle and the blade began.”
I consider what he told me. The story he believes to be the truth.
I have no tangible facts to refute it. I don’t know anything about the blade.
My father kept it hidden, even from me. When I did finally hold it, the pain I felt was beyond anything I’d ever experienced.
Since then, the energy within the blade has surged at unpredictable times, taking over my mind and body in ways I can’t control.
If the dagger’s history is this dangerous…
And now it’s embedded in my body with no way to remove it other than to cut off my own limb…
A wave of cold and sudden panic billows within my stomach, forcing me to push back as hard as I can. I can’t succumb to it. I also can’t take Antony’s story at face value. Not when he’s a self-professed liar.
“You told me you would weave your lies with the truth so I couldn’t tell which was which.” I press my left hand to my stomach, trying to quell my panic. “We, neither of us, can believe the other.”
His response is to jolt away from me, his action forcing me to follow him.
At the fierce glare he gives the chain, it seems he’s only now realizing that the ruby circlet may bind me to him…
But it also binds him to me.
He glances at the door and then at the statues in the back of the room.
“Come with me,” he says, as if he has made a decision. “I will show you the truth of it.”
With that, he moves toward the back of the room, and I follow, the chain stretching taut between us as he walks fast.
It soon becomes clear that the wall behind the statues of the Serulian King and the Slain Prince is only a partition, leaving a gap on the left side.
Behind it, a spiral staircase rises up through an opening in the ceiling, although it’s impossible to see where it leads from our current location.
“Up,” Antony says, and that’s all before he tugs me toward the stairs, ensuring I ascend them in front of him.
Around and around I go, climbing higher through another level, this one also lighting up as we pass.
I catch sight of shelves full of scrolls and a simple wooden desk before we ascend to the next level.
Here, the staircase lets out into a small room, similar to the entrance building at the top of the forge tower.
But this one has only three sides; its front is completely open to the elements.
The hairs on my arms rise as Antony urges me out onto the wide, flat roof beyond the covered area, and I step through what feels like a magical shield.
Whatever magic is at play within the temple, it keeps the wind out.
Now, I welcome the fresh breeze that plucks at my hair, taking deep breaths, trying to expel the cold panic that lingers at the edges of my thoughts.
Inhaling and exhaling, I focus on the rustle of leaves in the forest around us, the calm in the air, and I embrace the safety of this moment, even if it’s false.
Like the platform at the top of the staircase beside the forge tower, there’s no railing around the roof’s edges, but Antony doesn’t ask me to move beyond its middle.
In the distance, far into the west, the sun has descended to the horizon, its final rays fading across the sky.
Sunset is only moments away.
The sun is about to go down on the day my father died.
My shoulders slump, but it’s only a moment later that the hairs on my arms rise again.
A cold chill settles at the base of my spine.
My sense of panic re-surges horribly, swirling and unwanted, but stronger.
Within the forest comes the sudden rush of running animals, and I’m startled when a herd of the creatures I saw from the air thunders past the temple, their heads forward, eyes wild and panicked.
It looks like they’re running from something, but I can’t make out a predator behind them. Nothing visible.
I take a step back, knocking into Antony’s chest, at which his arms wrap around me, holding me close.
His command sounds in my ear. “Look up, Oracle, and don’t look away.”