Chapter 42
HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO
The Queen of Death. It has a nice ring to it.
I drape one leg over the other and absentmindedly sketch my firebird as the silver-haired King of Winter walks the narrow strip of carpet to my throne.
He’s devastatingly handsome with his full lips, strong jaw, and piercing blue eyes.
A silver crown rests on his head, and the pale strands of his hair brush the sharp tips of his ears.
Most gods are striking. But there’s something about him…
something that makes it difficult to look away.
He bows before me, then rises. “Goddess of Darkness, Queen of Death. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last. I brought you some flowers.”
He holds out a bouquet of rowan blossoms.
“Thank you, God of Ice, King of Winter.” I sigh. “Must we really burden ourselves with all these formalities?”
He cracks a grin that sends a flutter through my stomach. Interesting. I rarely feel like that from something as simple as a smile.
“I suppose not.” He gestures toward the double doors leading to my cliffside garden.
“Walk with me? There’s something I’d like to speak with you about.
I’ve heard some unsettling rumors about a group of apprentices who failed their trials.
They’re angry at us—at all the gods for depriving them the gift of magic. And I hear they’re plotting revenge.”
I arch a brow. “Tell me more.”
“They call themselves the Order.”
The memories surge further back, then forward again, spinning so fast I can hardly make the shape of them.
His body over mine. His mouth against my skin.
“I love you so fucking much,” he breathes into me, and I arch beneath him as his lips come around my breast.
He stands before me now with his hand outstretched. There’s a bright spark in his eyes that lights me up in a way I’ve never felt. So much of me is given to darkness and death, and but he has brought me back to life.
Our allies—the gods who walk this earth—fill the upper tier of the Observatory. Above us, the stars glimmer through the open dome. Garlands loop from wall to wall, and rowan blossoms fill every spare surface. The air is thick with their sweetness.
“Angharad Morgan,” Arawn says at our side. We requested no titles be used here. Only our ancient names, unknown to most, to speak the binding oath. “Will you take Taliesin Wynn to be your godfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in death and in life, for all time to come?”
“I do,” I whisper, tears of happiness spilling down my face. My heart…oh, it’s never been so full.
Arawn turns to my love. “And Taliesin Wynn, do you take Angharad Morgan to be your godfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in death and in life, for all time to come?”
“With every fabric of my being, I do,” he says, his voice rough with devotion.
Arawn beams. “Then I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
Fire rages through the Observatory. Fear is normally a stranger to me, but it has found me now.
The Order are a bigger threat than we ever imagined.
They knew we would all be here together and brought iron nets to numb our powers and drag us away.
I only escaped because the firebirds came for me, now screaming above through smoke and ruin.
If I do nothing…
I lift my shaking hands before me. The Order plans to strip the gods of our magic using Arawn’s harp, to funnel it into vessels for their king. To make him unstoppable.
A man with a heart of rot.
I can’t allow it. With any of our powers, he’s dangerous, but with Arawn’s in particular…
On my knees, flames roaring around me, I raise my hand to the smoke-filled sky and speak the word that might ruin us all. But at least I’ll drag the king down with us.
“Marwolaeth,” I whisper.
Magic rips through me in an unrelenting force. Too late I realize it’s wrong. Too much power is required for this. Too much is needed to break the stars. I try to contain it, to shape it into a veil, but it’s already beyond me.
It strips me down to bone and marrow.
My vision goes dark. Screams roar over the inferno that surrounds me.
And then I collapse, awake and aware but unseeing.
Strong arms hold me. I can still smell the rowan blossom clinging to Taliesin’s shirt, even over the thick, cloying stench of smoke.
He found me.
Then there’s a flash of orange against my closed lids. The roaring spit of flames. The terrifying heat of it all.
But why is there a fire? Where even am I?
Taliesin carries me away from the maelstrom. I drop my head against his chest and breath him in…
I try to ask where he’s taking me, but darkness steals me away again.
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
My puffy eyes crack open. Two figures blur as one through iron bars. Their heads are bent together—one dark, one red. Like blood against the night sky.
“I can’t believe she’s waking from her coma after hundreds of years,” one murmurs.
“What does that mean for the others?”
“I don’t know.” A pause. “But we can use her to control them if need be.”
“How is this even possible? Magic is gone.”
“Not hers. At least, not all of it. And the talisman will let us take what she has left,” one says. “We can redistribute it. Feed it into others who also have talismans. We’ll need her to keep using it, just enough to keep it from going dormant.”
“How?”
“We’ll have her resurrect rebels for us, so she can question them. Kills two birds with one stone.”
A sharp tsk. “This is an extraordinarily bad idea. She’ll never cooperate.”
“Whatever she did to the sky…it broke something in her mind. Every time she calls her magic, she loses pieces of herself. She can’t even remember her husband anymore.”
Husband?
I lift my head, and a wave of dizziness crashes into me. Chains rattle from the manacles digging into my wrists.
“There must be another way,” the other insists.
“All the other gods are gone. And the stars are unreachable for now. She’s the only source of magic.”
“Except for Taliesin Wynn.”
A low laugh. “You think he’s safer? He is volatile. And he’s affected, too. Whatever she did, it blew back on him. The best we can do is keep him contained behind the wards and pray he never breaks free. Or remembers.” A pause. “He would destroy the world for his queen.”
“Taliesin Wynn,” I whisper, but the name is gone before I can fully grasp it.
TEN YEARS AGO
In my dreams, I remember, but only there.
I try, again and again, to reach my waking self, but she’s as distant as the stars are now.
Out there, somewhere, hidden behind the veil.
The attempt to shape my power into something more than death worked.
I didn’t destroy the stars—only stopped the Order from reaching them.
But the cost was far greater than anything I could have imagined.
In trying to save the world, I destroyed it. Most of the gods died, if not all of them, along with every elven magic wielder gifted with power. And for reasons I’ve yet to understand, the waters of the Northern Sea turned poisonous.
I didn’t save the world. I ruined it. Hundreds—no, thousands—died because of me. And now the elves have the Order’s boot on their necks. The overwhelming guilt nearly crushes what remains of my soul.
Now the Order has bound me. They made me swear an oath to fight for their cause. If magic ever returns…
They will turn my vow into a weapon.
Somehow, I must make sure Taliesin and I never meet again. Everything I touch turns to ash, and he’s the last thing is this godsforsaken world I still care about. I have to warn him.
I have to keep him away…
PRESENT DAY
My eyes flip open. I’m crouched on one side of the Observatory beneath a sky full of stars.
Taliesin stands on the other. From the devastation on his face, I know he remembers everything I do and maybe more.
Rhian and the others are gone, even Seren.
I don’t know whether he sent them away, or whether they fled from the ruin of us both, but I’m glad they won’t be here to witness this.
The worst moment of my centuries-long life.
Air catches in my throat. I try to breathe, but it’s like everything is frozen within me. Taliesin is my husband. My chest aches with love so painful it feels like grief. And I broke the sky. All of this, it’s my fault. The death of all the gods. The loss of so much life.
The Queen of Death indeed.
But what’s worse—worse than all of it—is the final oath I made to the Order before I finally broke free.
I will end the exile by my own hand.
And now that magic has returned, I cannot break that oath.
Even now, the magic is spreading through my body and pulling at my limbs like invisible strings. Slowly, I rise from the ground. My hands shake so violently it feels like the building is trembling with me.
“My oath,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “They made me promise to kill you.”
“I know, my love.” And still, he doesn’t move.
“Run,” I hiss, tears streaming down my face. “Get away from me!”
“I can’t,” he says in a voice as broken as the shattered pieces of my heart. “Where you go, I go, remember? I made my own oath. I can never leave you, my queen. No matter what you do to me.”
The world seems to stop as understanding cuts through me like a scythe.
Taliesin gives me a broken smile that takes me back to the first time he stood before my throne, holding a bouquet of rowan blossoms. I’ve carried that scent with me through hundreds of years and thousands of forgotten memories, like a ballad my soul refuses to forget.
But no amount of love can break an oath bound by magic.
Not unless I bring the world to ruin. Again.
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