Chapter Sixty Thyra
Chapter Sixty
Thyra
What use is hope when it can be shattered?
Antony spoke of hope as a dangerous thing, but I pushed back, believing that faith would always see me through.
Now I’m facing a crushing defeat delivered by a single, carelessly penned letter.
“Blood Fae are extinct,” I say. “We will never find a fae who can break the blade.”
Horribly, startlingly, a part of me is relieved.
When the hammer crumbled in my hand, I fought overwhelming confusion and a deep sense of failure. I felt responsible, even though I had done nothing to make the hammer disintegrate.
But if a descendant of the fae who forged the blade doesn’t exist, then the hammer’s destruction is not the catastrophe I thought it was.
What matters more is the blood bind it imparted to me.
Stellen reaches for my hands, gently turning my right hand palm up. Only the blade’s hilt is visible across my skin right now, the remainder of it hidden beneath my training suit.
“We talked about the possibility that the False Queen had a Blood Fae at her disposal,” he says. “Someone who placed a blood bind on the hammer, specifically designed to adhere to you.”
I draw a sharp breath. “Which you already knew.”
When we spoke about it in the Alak-Teah, he phrased it as a hypothetical, leading me to the conclusion that the False Queen had foreseen my birth and put into play mechanisms to thwart me from breaking the curse.
“By having a Blood Fae forge the blade,” Stellen says, “the False Queen could tie the blade to her bloodline. It would explain why the weapon embedded itself into your arm as soon as you touched it, triggering it to become part of your body.”
“And why blade visions can physically control me,” I say. “My father told me to unwrap the blade and my path would be clear, but unwrapping the blade and touching it did this to me.”
I can’t keep the bitterness from my voice because a clear path has certainly not presented itself to me.
Stellen’s brow is suddenly furrowed. “He told you what?”
“‘Unwrap the blade and your path will be clear.’”
Stellen’s lips purse. “Did you?”
The answer yes rests on the tip of my tongue, but I take a moment. Of course I unwrapped the blade, but… “What do you mean?”
“When I first saw you, the ribbon was trailing from the blade,” Stellen says. “It was trapped between your palm and the blade’s hilt. The material was singing freely, but it hadn’t fully unwrapped. It never fully separated from the blade.”
My breathing catches as I realize it’s true.
“I didn’t fully unwrap it.” My focus flies to my arm. “And then…the blood bind pinned the ribbon in place.”
Stellen’s lips form a forbidding line. “Which we’ve already established seemed timed specifically so I can’t help you.”
‘Help.’
His forehead creases as if he’d realized what he said, but he doesn’t try to take it back.
It’s impossible to fight my small smile, even though it quickly fades. “My very first blade visions influenced my choices when I first met you. I didn’t know what the visions meant or why they were happening to me or how devastating they could be.”
Stellen pulls my chair to his, leaning forward to wrap me up in his arms, his cool cheeks easing the rising heat of my helplessness.
“Thyra.” The melody of my name rolling off his tongue demands my attention. “Do you remember when we spoke about the game the False Queen was playing with your fate, and I asked you: will you play for yourself or for the fate of every fae in the three kingdoms?”
I nod against his chest and give him the same answer I gave him then. “Both.”
“Both,” he says. “But you can’t do both at once. First, you must play for yourself.”
I tip my head back. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve spent the last week training hard. By doing so, you’ve taken steps to increase your chances of survival no matter what situation you find yourself in. This is good. But your next step has to be in service of removing this blood bind.”
“Which is impossible without a Blood Fae,” I whisper.
“Or if you can’t remove it, altering its purpose,” he continues, as if he won’t accept defeat.
My forehead creases. “How?”
Releasing me, Stellen reaches for the ornate box, lifting its lid.
It contains two objects. One, a scroll. The other, a small, circular container, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.
“This is the most ancient scroll in my possession,” Stellen says, pulling the parchment from the ornate box and carefully unrolling it. “It was written and illustrated by Ferocie Scribes.”
The shimmering depiction of the False Queen makes my eyes widen. “May I?”
He passes it to me and I take it carefully, testing if the parchment will come alive at my touch, but it seems that only happens with the Chronicle.
The False Queen’s image is familiar to me now but no less mysterious. Dark hair blows across her face and her features are concealed behind those strands, as if she could be anybody. Even the color of her skin isn’t clear depending on which way the light strikes the page.
Within the text on this page, one line repeats what my father told me: she is all things to all people.
“This artwork is infused with magic,” Stellen says, “but the magic begins with the ink. White ink, to be exact.”
White ink.
Why does that make my senses buzz?
“Ferocie Scribes would first sketch in white ink because it became invisible on the page,” Stellen continues. “Like a draft upon a draft, a layering of magic, the scribe would continue with white ink, each version more perfect than the last, until they were ready to draw in color.”
“Wait…” I force myself to breathe. “You think a Ferocie Scribe could layer a design over these runes and change them?”
“It’s possible. Blood Fae worked with blood to infuse their dark magic into their runes, but their rune artwork was essentially a twisted version of Ferocie magic.”
My thoughts fly to Emiliana. She’s descended from Ferocie Scribes. But reaching her will be difficult and the chances of her wanting to help me are slim. She didn’t exactly warm to me…
“Thyra?” Stellen draws my focus back to him. “Your thoughts are loud, but even with all my power, I can’t hear them. Talk to me.”
“There’s a Ferocie Scribe in the Iron Kingdom. Her name is Emiliana. She was…maybe still is…one of Galla Vividari’s ladies, but not by choice.”
“Would she help you?”
Again. Help.
Just hearing him say it mends some of my fragile hope.
“I don’t know. Her family has suffered greatly because of the curse. She’s the only one left, and she didn’t take kindly to me at all. I’m not sure if… Oh.”
White ink.
“Fable.”
She’s the shapeshifter who tried to attack and kill me. She was with Brunkil when Stellen and I left the Alak-Teah.
I saw a part of Fable’s childhood in an Oracle vision that helped me stop that attack.
Stellen’s gaze is now piercing. “You said you saw Fable’s mother dripping white ink onto Fable’s arm.”
“She drew a feather, which is no longer visible.” My hope quickly sinks. “Fable was a little girl then. It was clear her mother was leaving. I doubt Fable learned those skills—assuming she carries that magic. And again, she won’t want to help me.”
Stellen nods. “From what I’ve read, shapeshifter magic consumes all other magic.
That is, if either parent is a shapeshifter, the child will be a shapeshifter.
It’s very unlikely Fable carries the Ferocie power, even if her mother tried to teach her the skills.
Her mother, on the other hand, could help you. ”
“Assuming I can find her.”
“Assuming we can find her,” Stellen says. “You won’t have to do this alone.”
He reaches now for the trinket box, nestling it in the palm of his hand while his chest rises and falls with a deeply indrawn breath.
When he twists off the lid, I understand why he took a moment.
A yellow ribbon rests coiled inside the container.
The song rising from it brings tears to my eyes. It’s peaceful and nurturing. The kind of quiet humming that…
A mother and child sitting on a blanket in the snow. She sings as she braids her child’s hair…
I try to catch my breath as the image presents itself to me so clearly that I’m not sure if my Oracle power has been triggered, or if the love injected into the song is so powerful that I can see it.
Opposite me, Stellen murmurs, “I wish I could feel what you’re feeling right now.” And then, even more quietly, he whispers, “Even though it’s better that I can’t.”
I swipe at the tears falling down my cheeks. “Whose ribbon is this?”
He gives me a small smile. “It’s mine.”
Slowly, he pulls the ribbon from its case, revealing that it’s as long as my arm.
Holding it carefully while he reaches for my braid, he asks, “May I?”
I nod, even though I’m not entirely sure what he’s asking permission to do.
Carefully, he begins unwinding the bottom of my braid, speaking as he works.
“When my sister was born, my mother used the last of her Lethian silver to sing protective amulets for us. But silver was valuable, and all jewels belonged to my father, so when she finished her work, he took the amulets from us.”
Stellen begins winding the ribbon into my braid. “So my mother sang simple ribbons for us out of cast-off yellowed threads since he wouldn’t want those. My sister wore her ribbon wound multiple times around her wrist. I wore mine in my hair. My first warrior’s braid.”
He ties off the ribbon, his fingers lingering. “I can’t give you love, but I can give you this.”
I let my quiet tears fall. I want to speak, but silence can be powerful. His silences matter. And now I want to make mine matter too.
Leaning forward, I press my forehead to his forehead, rest my palm on his heart, and close my eyes.
Carrying this song means more than he could know.
I lost my mother too.
“Thyra,” he murmurs. “There’s something—”
Tension suddenly ripples through his body, palpable beneath my hand before he says, “Juniper’s coming. Her heart’s pounding. She’s worried.”