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I sucked in a breath. Amate recognizes Koen. So she hasn’t completely put her human past behind her. Which means she recognized her name when I said it earlier.
Koen started walking toward her. Amate’s forces tensed further, ready to stop anyone from attacking their leader, but she held up a hand for them to stand down.
“You had to know I would eventually,” Koen said. His voice was soft, covered in nostalgia. Even from a distance, I could see the imploring look in his hazel eyes, silently pleading with her to remember her human life. “I would always return to you, Maer, even if it means putting my life at risk.”
Amate scoffed, not a single human trait in sight. “So it’s true. You do still love me.”
Koen’s gait faltered. “Y-yes. How did you...?”
“Bas!”
The whisper made my attention shoot to Tess and the other Kairos members. They were armed to the teeth. Part of me was thrilled that Koen clearly disobeyed Leysa’s orders to gather a small force to rescue me. But how did Tess join them? Then I noticed one of the witches beside her was the one who had taken her away earlier. Internally, I sighed in relief. She was never in danger.
Emalyn was beckoning urgently. It was another big relief to see her well. “Get over here,” she hissed. “We need to leave.”
Obviously, Agana and Aeros heard, too. They both grabbed my arms and held fast. “You’re not going anywhere until you’re dead,” the Bloodfrost leader snarled in my ear.
“‘Bas’?” Amate repeated with a disdainful snort, turning away from Koen—much to his disappointment—to eye me critically. “That is what they named you?”
“Bastian,” I corrected desperately. “Bastian Hayes. Hayes was just a made-up name to protect me. I really am your son. You’re my mother. I know because I’ve seen your memories. You were a Gladiator in Moros. I felt your hate and fear and rage and sadness as if it were my own. Galen Shayla helped raise me, too. She helped you once. I...I saw you kill Cirillo. You took revenge on him for the awful things he did to you—”
Amate’s eyes flashed, and she parted her lips to show just a hint of her fangs in warning. “Stop,” she said, dangerously softly. “That is enough. I do not want to hear from you anymore.”
Recklessly, I ignored the command. “I know who you are. You’re not Amate. You’re Maer Whisler, and—”
Earlier, when I said her name, my imbricatis barely glowed because I had said it so quietly. Now, when I announced it for the entire Square to hear, the triangle tattoo flared purple light. Nearby vampires hissed and raised their arms to shield their eyes. Agana and Aeros released me.
As if it was a signal, the first sliver of sunlight pierced through the black circle. It shone down. Whichever vampires happened to be in that shaft started to burn. Their bodies smoked and then went up in flames like tinder. Their screaming and thrashing inside the penagrum traps was a horrible assault on the ears. But no one, especially not their coven leaders, moved a finger to save them.
They just wanted to save themselves.
Amate predicted that. She pointed a clawed finger toward them. “Trap them in shadow.”
Agana and Aeros tried to run, but Amate’s witches trapped them with impressive speed. They slammed against the invisible wall in a shaded area where the sunlight couldn’t reach them. For being in the desert, there were a surprising amount of trees that covered the city.
As more and more of the sun revealed itself and the eclipse waned, Amate remained in the shadow. But she had no intention of fleeing. Ciel, however, wanted to make her escape.
Without an order, Amate’s witches acted again. Several targeted Gideon, hurling spells at him, so many and with such impact that he was forced to drop the ward around him and Ciel to engage. Ciel shrieked and hid in the doorway of a building. A penagrum immediately surrounded her.
A spell blasted Gideon in the chest, sending him flying back. As far as I knew, there was no witch-trapping spell. But apparently, there was. He scrambled to his feet only to smack his forehead against a semi-transparent wall, standing upon a circle that had drawn itself into the cobblestone. There wasn’t a five-pointed shape within it; however, there were two concentric circles within the outer one.
“A curse,” I heard Tess whisper.
The eclipse was almost over now. The screaming hadn’t ceased. The smell of smoke and burning flesh overpowered the blood. I had no idea what was going to happen next.
“I would have assumed,” Amate began conversationally over the wails of the dying, “that a future-teller would have been among your army, Agana, Aeros. An oversight, I suppose.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the former leaders. They looked stricken with embarrassment. It was almost amusing to see them completely opposite of how they had been just hours before. Gone were the cocky, ruthless Sanlow king and queen hellbent on destroying Amate and reclaiming what they lost. Now, they were cowering in the shadows, trapped, seeming on the verge of begging for their lives.
Feeling a sudden rush of cockiness myself, I said to them, “I wish I had a mirror to show you how mouse-hearted you both look.”
Despite their situation, they were still quick to anger, baring their teeth and slamming their fists on the trap’s wall. But I didn’t flinch; I knew they were sealed up tight.
“What did you come for?” Amate asked them. “And how did you think you would come out victorious?”
Surprisingly, Agana answered, though she seemed surprised by her own words. “An ambush and then a trade! The eclipse was the perfect cover to catch your city off-guard during the day. We would use your child as leverage to ensure our immunity from your raids.”
“We have a future-teller,” Aeros said. He clamped his hand over his mouth.
I narrowed my eyes in confusion. Were they not speaking of their own volition? My gaze swept the crowd for a sign of someone manipulating the leaders. Was it a witch ability, or did Amate have a vampire—pureblood or a half-blood blessed with an ability—to make Agana and Aeros spill their plan?
Amate smirked in amusement. “Then you clearly did not utilize them well enough.”
Everyone turned their attention to the sky as the last bit of darkness ebbed. Now, there was only sunlight; the sun was just past its highest point. All the screaming had finally stopped. Only Amate, Ciel, Agana, and Aeros were left alive.
“Get out of the sun, Bas,” Tess implored.
I realized belatedly that I was already overheating. I took a few steps back into the shade.
“Do you remember me, Maer?”
My heart lurched at Koen’s voice. He had resumed his path toward Amate despite Sloan’s outcry to get back here.
“Do you remember my name? Koen Blackwood,” he answered himself without waiting. “It’s been seventeen years... I kept my promise to you. I protected your son! Bastian. I kept him safe from this world for as long as I could. I helped raise him with Sloan to be kind and strong.”
Amate’s jaw clenched, glaring at Koen venomously. “Oh, I remember.” She shot a brief glare at the small group of rescuers. “But I did not want to remember. Kill them all.”
“No!”
The shout came from several people, one of them being myself. Koen and I rushed toward them, but of course none of them needed our protection. Ward within ward within ward spewed outward from several witches of the Kairos, Tess’s proudly the most inner one. Amate’s witches’ spells bounced harmlessly off them.
Koen skidded to a halt, but we were closer to each other now. Without thinking, I veered toward him. But we didn’t embrace each other in a reunion I wanted. That would have made us too vulnerable.
Yet Amate didn’t order us to be targeted. Nor did she reinforce the kill-them order.
Did she still care for Koen? Did she accept—at least a little—that I was her son and she didn’t want to kill me?
Instead, Agana tried to give an order to Amate, though it seemed against her will again. “Kill the half-breed! You swore to eliminate all the Sanlow leaders and their heirs—” She smacked her hand over her mouth.
“I did,” Amate said coolly. “It seems like you are asking to be killed.”
Agana’s pride was too strong to allow the mocking. “No!” she yowled. “I want to live. I want my life back! I want to be a queen. I want to drain the blood of my Bleeders until they are dead in my lap, watch Gladiators beat themselves to their last wit—”
Amate clicked her tongue admonishingly. “Oh, Agana. You know I banished that. Humans are slaves no more. Your will is weak to my loyal truth-speaker. Aeros, please explain how your raid strategy was so pathetic and mediocre.”
The truth-speaker—whose ability was clearly making someone reveal their thoughts—did not show themselves as Aeros blurted, “We put our faith in the wrong allies.”
“Indeed you did.”
Silence reigned over the Square. No one, not even Ciel, seemed keen on continuing the conversation. The frenzy of the fight had left everyone’s bodies.
Now what?
I looked at Koen, who was still watching Amate—Maer, who she would always be to him, even now when there was so little humanity in her eyes. “We should go,” I told him quietly. “You said what you wanted to say. I think she’ll kill Ciel and the leaders, so we should go before she changes her target us.”
Koen dragged his gaze to me. The pain in it broke my heart. What was it like to lose someone you loved twice? “I’m sorry, Bas.”
Now really wasn’t the time for a heart-to-heart, but I couldn’t help but pretend it was. “What are you sorry for? You kept a promise for almost twenty years! You raised me as if I were your own and trained me to be a formidable warrior with a just cause. You don’t need to apologize for anything.”
“But I lied to you for almost twenty years.”
The guilt in his voice was unbearable. To see such a resolute, cheerful man reduced to his former self—a teenager escaping a vampire stronghold by the skin of his teeth, protecting his sister and Maer with his life, both of whom he loved with his whole being—made emotion swell in my chest, tempting me to act recklessly if it could solve anything.
I dared to look at Amate. She was still in the doorway, half-hidden in the shadow of it. Her sharp eyes were glaring between me and Koen as if she hoped to behead us with just a stare. There was still no humanity in her, even if she did remember the boy who tried to save her. At the same time, she refused to believe the possibility that I was her child.
My jaw tightened. Koen wanted to appeal to the humanity that didn’t exist anymore. Revenge and misplaced justice had poisoned her to the core. She was a vampire; only bloodlust mattered to them. Vampires had no space for love.
There was no saving her.
“You did what you had to,” I said quietly. But I wasn’t sure who I was saying it to.
Amate didn’t react, but Koen rested a hand on my shoulder. “All right, then. Let’s head back home.”
None of the witches made a move as Koen conjured the moving ward and we returned to the rest of the Kairos. Amazingly, his ward melded with the others, and then we were all in the same bubble.
Tess and Em hugged me fiercely. I should have felt comforted, but all I had room for was disappointment. My entire life I wondered who my mother was, what she was like, dreaming up scenarios where she was alive and I could reunite with her.
Never in the infinite lifespan of vampires would I have envisioned her as a vampire.
Everyone told me she had died giving birth to me. Yet there Maer Whisler stood, in the limbo between alive and dead. Undead. Technically, she died. Without any life in her eyes, she might as well have.
“I wouldn’t leave just yet,” Amate called suddenly.
We all turned to see someone appear beside Amate. She was immediately recognizable. Shock rocked through the gathered Kairos.
Koen’s heart lurched. I had to grab his arm to stop him from running to her. “Rhetta?”
Rhetta’s alter ego, Letti, conjured a thick, leatherbound book into her hands. She didn’t even glance our way as she handed Galen Shayla’s spellbook to Amate.
The mystery that plagued us for weeks: who stole the spellbook from where Tess had hidden it in the underground outpost before Redfang captured us?
Rhetta.
She wasn’t in league with the Kairos or any of the former Sanlow leaders.
She was working for the Bloody Liberator.
