Chapter Sixty-One Thyra #2
He takes another step, but not toward me, angling toward the wall on his left, planting his hand on it.
“Which is why I can’t stand by now and watch you destroy yourself, Thyra.
Not for someone like my brother.” Hadrian shakes his head, his teeth visibly gritted.
“Not when he’s lied to you about his true intentions. ”
My heart thumps too rapidly, but I remind myself of Antony’s warning. Lies and liars. Even if the same applies to him. “What do you want from me?”
“All I ask is that you listen.” Hadrian raises his eyes to mine. “Once I’ve told you what I came here to say, you’re free to make your own choices.” He sweeps his hand across the air beside him, gesturing at the space he vacated. “You’re free to leave. With or without the hammer. I won’t stop you.”
Slowly, I lower my hands.
If it weren’t for Antony’s warnings, I wouldn’t listen at all.
But Antony himself told me… He would weave his lies with truths so I can’t tell which is which.
If there is any truth hidden in what Hadrian is about to tell me, I need to know it.
Quietly placing emotional shields around my heart and mind, preparing to consider with suspicion everything Hadrian says, I utter a harsh command. “Speak.”
Hadrian leans against the wall, keeping his distance, chewing hard on his lower lip before he begins. “Did Antony tell you the story about that lady? The one Mother had killed because she attracted Quintus’s attention? How Mother sent five brutish—”
“Five brutish men.”
“Yes,” Hadrian says, pausing. “Except, it wasn’t five. It was one. And Mother didn’t send him.”
My brow furrows, but before I can speak, Hadrian continues. “What about the time our father dragged Antony through the blood magic into the catacombs?”
“Your father was a tyrant,” I say, unable to keep the fury from my voice.
“True.” Hadrian nods. “But did Antony tell you why our father deemed it necessary to carry his eleven-year-old son through powerful magic that could have torn them both apart?”
I shake my head, a stiff motion. Antony told me it happened. Given what I knew of his father, the why seemed self-explanatory.
Hadrian responds with a heavy exhale. “Of course he wouldn’t tell you…” He chews his lip again. “What about the night the Vividari were slaughtered? Did he tell you what really happened to his mother?”
My eyes fly wide. “Stop.”
All I can see within my mind is Antony’s furious focus on my bloodied cheek, feel the clamp of his arms as he hurried me from the library back to the catacombs, hear the click of the shackle I snapped closed around his arm to force him to stay and talk to me…
He told me he was there the night his mother died. His father made him watch, and Antony couldn’t do anything to stop it.
Tense with fury, unable to maintain the emotional shields I’d placed around my heart only moments ago, I take a step toward Hadrian. “What are you trying to do?”
“I told you,” he says. “I’m trying to warn you.”
Wrenching himself off the wall, he advances on me, jabbing his hand at the chamber. “I’m trying to save this kingdom from the darkness that hammer will unleash. A darkness that even a fucking tribe of full-blooded Vividari wouldn’t be able to repel.”
“What darkness?”
He pulls to a stop, now only three paces away from me, close enough to grab me, but I’m ready for him.
“A darkness that will create a conduit to the bloodlands,” he says.
I can only blink at him. “What?”
“It may well be true that the hammer can break the curse,” he continues, his voice quieter than I expected. “I hope it’s true. I really do. But hope is nothing compared to the certain fact that the hammer can create a pathway for vampyrs to travel.”
A chill runs down my spine. A pathway for vampyrs… “Antony would never want that.”
“To control Galla Vividari, he would.”
My thoughts are a storm. The dark light filling the chamber to my left is immense. So thick, it reminds me of the rivers of black ooze running through the ravines in the bloodlands, rivers that could stream beyond the edge of that dark land if given the chance.
Hadrian lowers his voice. “I hate her, too. The power she wields over all of us has given her the freedom to commit atrocities. With that hammer, Antony would finally be able to control. If she doesn’t use her power, he would bring the vampyrs directly to her.”
I shake my head. “Any pathway would endanger others along the way.”
“Not if she’s here,” Hadrian says. “He’ll empty the guard tower so there’s no defense—he controls the army, so he can do that. And then he’ll move her here.”
“No.”
But Hadrian pins me with his brown eyes.
“Did you smell the iron coming from the other room? Did you see the iron cage inside it? I’m certain Mother believes it was her own idea to hold the celebration here, but Antony knows how she thinks.
Her cruelty. He wanted her here tonight.
He’ll use the hammer and take back his throne once and for all. ”
My hands tremble. I hadn’t looked into that room to know if it contained a cage, and Hadrian could be lying, but none of what he says is impossible.
“It’s okay.” His hands rise as if he’d reach out to me before he drops them again.
“After everything Galla has done to Antony, fuck… Maybe you should give him the hammer. But, Thyra, my fear is that whatever dark corridor he creates, he won’t be able to control it.
That hammer is cursed. Just like the Dragonstone Blade. And darkness deceives us all.”
With that, Hadrian takes a step back, giving me space.
I rub my temples, needing to think. Oh, there’s a large part of me that wants to take the hammer straight to Antony and give him the power to end Galla’s viciousness.
But what of the darkness that will be unleashed if I do?
Breaking the curse is the only way to guarantee the end of the bloodlands, along with Galla’s control.
If it turns out that we need the other tools, which we don’t already have, what horror could be unleashed simply by taking the hammer from this vault?
Fear claws at my heart at the possibility that vampyrs could break free from the bloodlands before I can stop the curse.
Too much death. Too much blood would be on my hands.
My heart calms, an impossible calm. “The only place the hammer won’t be dangerous is within the bloodlands itself.”
Hadrian jolts toward me. “Thyra, you can’t be thinking—”
“If I take it there as quickly as possible… If I go straight there from here… I’ll keep the harm to a minimum. Once there, I can try to break the curse on my own. If it works, the darkness will be defeated.”
“If it doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll leave the hammer where it’s already dark.” I tilt my chin. “I can go back to it. I won’t stop trying.”
His voice is a snarl as he finally reaches for me. “Not if the vampyrs tear you apart first.”
I step back before he can make contact, refusing to let him touch me. He may have expressed remorse about hurting me, but that doesn’t erase the harm.
His hands hover in the air before he drops his arms.
None of what he told me could be true.
Nothing except…that the darkness around the hammer is a threat. Of that, I’m certain.
“It’s a risk I have to take.” But now Hadrian is blocking the walkway again. “Will you let me leave as you promised?”
He backs slowly to the side of the corridor before plastering himself up against the wall.
“I will, even though I think it’s too dangerous.” His brown eyes flash to mine. “I’m truly sorry I hurt you, Thyra.”
I’m not certain I believe him.
Lies and liars.
But I won’t allow him to take up another moment of my time.
Impossible now to control my thudding heart as I step toward the dark void and reach into the chamber with my right hand, my most protected hand. I shudder at the empty cold that near-freezes my flesh before I wrap my fingers around the metal object contained in the darkness.
A terrible conviction fills my mind, a confirmation of my fears.
This hammer is destructive.
So dangerous, I should question why the blade’s power allowed me to open this chamber at all. If this hammer can destroy the blade…
Oh, but the darkness and pain this hammer could cause matches precisely the pain the curse has caused.
The False Queen’s vengeance has churned for generations, layer upon layer of pain and torment.
I will do everything I can to bring it to an end.
As I wrench the hammer from the chamber, dark light flashes from it, a blast so strong that I nearly let go before I’m knocked backward.
I have only a heartbeat to consider the object I’m now holding.
A white hammer, bleached like bone, etched with charcoal runes and pulsing with light so inky black that my blood chills. My heart stops. And my mind…
I fight back against the darkness, battling to remain lucid as dark light seeps like liquid through the air around me, pitch-black fingers extending past Hadrian, who shouts, “Run, Thyra!”
My legs pumping, I sprint past him, bleeding darkness ahead of me, behind me, above me, across the floor…
Past the room that reeks of iron. Up the winding staircase. Through the vast hall and out into the open, where Azul screeches and rears up wildly before the dark light closes around him, and all I can see are his glowing, red eyes.
“Azul!” My scream is strangled as I call him to me, the rush of air telling me he’s darting in my direction before his feathers meet my free hand.
“To the bloodlands,” I whisper, clambering desperately onto his back, nearly unable to make it all the way up.
All around me, the darkness extends.
South toward the guard towers. North toward the Frost Kingdom. East up the slope behind me. And west, streaming toward the bloodlands.
I can’t stop to consider how far it’s spreading or how fast. I have to believe its darkness has a boundary and that I can take it far into the bloodlands, removing the danger it brings.
In the distance, the sun’s rays finally disappear.
Night falls.
The shrieks of starving vampyrs slice the air as I fly toward them.