The next day, Thiago leads me to the chambers that house the Hallow. It’s in the second-tallest tower of the palace, overlooking the sprawl of city below.
I peer through the arched windows, hungry for the sight of his city. Golden Ceres is known as the City of the Dawn, and with its rough-hewn sandstone, golden banners, and gleaming blue rooves, it looks it. The sea glistens in the distance, and gulls wheel through the air. It teems with life, a stark contrast to Valerian.
“This is the political center of Evernight,” the prince muses, resting a hand on the arch at my side, his body caging me in the open window. “Though I often feel more at home in Valerian despite the snows and the wraiths.”
“You feel like you belong in your City of the Dead?” It’s a strange confession to make.
He glances toward me, the sharp lines of his cheekbones giving him a feral sort of beauty. There’s an untamed wildness to his features that’s both alluring and unnerving. I can’t help feeling as though he’d shed this skin if he could, with all its courtly trappings, and reveal the real man beneath.
“Ceres was built by my queen,” Thiago says softly, turning his gaze back to the city. “Those golden banners aren’t mine. If you look closely, you’ll see the rising dawn emblem upon them.”
My gaze returns to them, understanding exactly what he’s not saying.
This city may belong to him, but some of the fae here will never accept him.
“Some of the city folk call me ‘abomination’ when they think I can’t hear them.” His voice drops to a soft croon. “Sometimes I walk the city in a cloak of illusions, and I hear them talk of the old days when the queen ruled. Of her legitimate sons. Prince Emyr was a monster, and Prince Arawn no warrior, but to hear the fae speak of it, both were heroes. They forget the day Emyr had forty craftsmen strung up for protesting the new taxes. They ignore the little girl he rode over when she didn’t move out of his way fast enough. Everywhere he went, he filled the ground with coffins and the streets with blood. His mother despaired of ever breaking him of his arrogance and cruelty, but she merely sent him to different posts in the hopes he’d stop. That’s the monster they call the True Heir.”
“History often softens the stark reality of the truth.”
“And I’m an impure bastard who murdered the rightful heirs and stole their mother’s throne.” This time, his smile holds edges. “When Emyr was a golden-haired warrior with a smile that could light up a room.”
“I think your Emyr would have made a wonderful consort for my mother.” I wrinkle my nose. “It’s always the blonds.”
“You bear a grudge? It wouldn’t have anything to do with your very blond mother and sister, would it?”
He’s caught me out.
“All my life I hated my hair,” I admit. While Andraste looked like a perfect little replica of Mother, I was the ugly, dark cuckoo in the nest. “I paid a travelling peddler forty gold pieces when I was twelve to chant a spell that would strip the color from it.”
“What happened?”
“The color faded and the peddler moved on. I was delighted. Until I woke the next morning to find my hair had fallen out. It was all over my pillow, and my mother was furious at my stupidity.” She’d ordered me shaved bald, and I was locked in my rooms, with only a nurse for company, until it grew back. “If it’s any consolation, I find myself partial to green eyes and dark hair.”
Thiago’s gaze darts to mine. “Do you?”
The tension in his shoulders softens as I press my back into the stone of the arch, turning my entire body toward him. “Do you think I’d stand in an open arch with my enemy behind me if I wasn’t bedazzled by his pretty eyes?”
“I thought we were past the ‘enemies’ part of this?”
“I’m still considering the notion. I don’t know what comes after ‘enemies.’”
“That’s easy.” His voice grows rough. “We kiss. We argue. We fall into bed. We fuck.”
My cheeks heat. I’d wondered if he’d mention that.
Thiago brings his hand to my cheek, brushing his knuckles against the smooth skin there. “But you’re the one who makes that decision. I won’t steal into your bed, Vi. You’re the one who’s going to have to do that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You only just woke to the truth; you’re entitled to feel confused about it all.” He gives a sly smile. “And for every day you make me wait, I’ll repay you with an hour of sensual torture.”
Help.
I stare at him breathlessly. “Doesn’t that behoove me to make you wait longer?”
Thiago leans closer, stealing a soft kiss from my lips. “That depends.” He takes a step back, finally giving me some space to breathe. “On whether your willpower is stronger than temptation.”
It’s not.
I know it’s not.
I want to throw up the white flag of surrender right here, to taste more of that kiss he barely gave me.
And some part of it must show on my face, because he draws back and laughs. “Willpower, Vi.”
It’s a smoky sound that curls inside me, as though he’s somehow infected me.
“I’m trying to remember why this is a bad idea.”
“Oh, it’s not. It’s a very, very good idea,” he croons. “But we’re supposed to arrive in Stormhaven within the hour, and an hour’s not long enough to do any of what I have planned.”
I close my eyes. Images dance there, of the pair of us tangled together on heated sheets. “That isn’t helping.”
Thiago chuckles under his breath. “It wasn’t supposed to. Come. Kyrian will be waiting for us.”
I can’t help watching him as he strides toward the center of the Hallow. Thiago wears power like a mantle, but there’s a hint of old wounds showing beneath his careful words.
I wondered why he surrounded himself with the misfits and outcasts like Eris and Baylor. In my mother’s court, they would have been shunned and despised, regardless of their powers.
Now I know.
Because he’s an outcast himself. Even here, in the city he rules, they know him as the enemy.
Thiago activates the Hallow.
It’s unusual to have one here, inside a building. They’re usually found in mossy forests or atop old barrows. The stones that guard them like silent sentinels are still here, though the columns line the circular room.
“Ready?” Thiago asks, reaching out to take my hand.
For the Prince of Tides? Never. But I nod anyway.
Thiago gave me two weeks to help find this leanabh an dàn. I’m not going to let one of my mother’s worst enemies bar me from helping.
Thirteen Hallows were created to lock the Old Ones away, but once their other use as portals was discovered, more were created. Not merely prisons, but means of transport between kingdoms.
This is not an origin Hallow.
It’s clear this was built after the wars.
The world flashes past in a shimmer of green as the glyphs light up, and then my stomach starts to turn.
There’s an odd hum within the portal. “Is that supposed to be doing that?”
Thiago frowns.
Power washes over us. Not so much like a soothing tide, as usual, but a raging sea. It sends me spinning, tumbling through a vortex of magic unlike anything I’ve ever known.
Waves of pure magic crash over me, drenching me in its warm liquid gush.
We’re thrown forward, tossed about like jetsam caught in the barrel roll of a wave. I lose Thiago’s hand, tumbling endlessly, endlessly—
This isn’t normal.
It’s never felt like this before.
A hand plucks at my hair, and then a woman appears before me, crafted almost singularly of seafoam. Green seaweed forms her hair, and her brows are dark and frowning over fierce eyes. “You are not welcome here, miatha lin.”
She bares sharp teeth at me, lunging toward my throat.
I scream as her teeth sink into my tender flesh and punch her directly in the side of the face. It’s enough to tear her loose long enough to break free. And then I’m spinning again, churned about like clothes in a copper wash pot. Salt water washes up my nose and down my throat, until it’s all I can taste.
The portal spits me out on a rocky shore, coughing and gagging on seawater.
I’m still fighting, trying to wrestle my way free, only to discover the firm hands locked on my shoulders belong to Thiago.
“Vi!”
I spit out a mouthful of salt, only to find his fingers have captured my chin and he’s tilting my face to the side. I slap it away, but he holds up bloodied fingers.
“What happened?” he demands.
The prince, as usual, looks like he just sauntered out of a bedroom. No sign of wet clothes, only slightly tousled hair. I’m sure I look like a drowned sailor.
“Did you see her?” I gasp, scraping bedraggled hair out of my face.
He offers me a hand. “See who? And what happened to you? Why are you wet?”
I tell him about the woman who tried to drown me, but his eyebrows merely draw together in a frown. “That’s impossible.”
“What’s impossible?”
He glances at the jagged stones that stand on the rocky beach like solitary sentinels. “She sounds like one of the saltkissed, but they were banished along with the Father of Storms.”
The saltkissed.
“But they’re trapped.” I look around. “Here. They were trapped here.”
I know enough of my history to know where each of the Old Ones was trapped. The Father of Storms made his final stand on this beach before being lured between the standing stones.
Thiago presses his hand against the nearest stone. The tattoos on his throat writhe, so I know he’s using his power, but nothing else manifests.
He shakes his head and lowers his hand. “I can’t sense anything, but this is troubling. The portals take us into the World Between Worlds for the brief moments it takes for us to travel. If one of the saltkissed managed to manifest there, it might mean the prison walls are weakening.”
“Do you think this has anything to do with Angharad?”
“I don’t know.”
We stare at each other.
There are a few too many troubling details coming to light of late. It can’t be coincidence.
First, Angharad starts toying with Mistmere. Then we hear whispers that a child of one of the Old Ones might be walking the world. And now, the Hallow on Stormhaven Isle is reacting weirdly.
I reach out to touch one of the stones and hear the hiss of the saltkissed woman in my ears.
Yanking my hand back, I swallow hard.
“What did you feel?” Thiago’s at my side in an instant, his callused hands capturing mine.
“I heard her again. It’s as though… the Veil between both worlds is thin here. And she’s waiting on the other side for me.”
“Why you?” He searches my face.
“She called me miatha lin.”
Instantly, he frowns. “It’s the language they spoke on this world before we arrived. The language of the Old Ones. ‘Promise of one,’ I think. I haven’t spoken it in several hundred years. Perhaps Kyrian will have a better grasp than I do. He loves to lock himself away up there with his library and his brandies.”
I stare at the stony cliffs that shear into the blue skies. Fierce, winged drakon soar through the skies and hover at cave mouths in the cliffs above us. They distract me for a second, but I’m not here for the fauna.
“What if there’s something wrong with the Hallows?”
It’s a question neither of us have dared broach.
Thiago’s eyes darken. “Then we pray and hope that Maia hears us.”
Stormhaven rests on a rocky crag overlooking the Innesmuch Sea. Though I’ve heard of it, I’ve never been here before.
Unless… I have.
That’s a disconcerting thought.
The lord of the Kingdom of Stormlight has never been on good terms with my mother. Though really, who is?
And while Queen Adaia and Thiago might be bitter enemies, the enmity between her and Prince Kyrian is the stuff of legends. It’s said that he loved a maid of the sea once, only to lose her when the oceans called her home. My mother had her minstrel compose a song about it to mock him, and Lord Kyrian sent her the minstrel’s tongue and fingers in a box.
“Are you sure I should be here?” I’m not looking forward to it.
“Don’t worry,” Thiago drawls. “He doesn’t bite.”
I stare at the long, stone staircase that wends its way up the cliff face. “Do we have to…?”
“Yes.” Thiago flashes me a smile. “Consider it your exercise for the day.”
“You seem remarkably cheerful.” I look at those stairs again. I can already feel my thighs groaning. Curse it.
“Here,” he says, setting foot upon them. “I’ll even go first, so you can stare at my ass the whole way.”
“How very thoughtful of you.”
I set myself to the climb. As suspected, it’s brutal and merciless and I hate the prince more and more with each step. “This isn’t helping your cause,” I mutter as we near the top. Or at least, I hope it’s the top. Every corner we turn, my hopes fade when I see another rise. “Why couldn’t Kyrian have installed lifting platforms? I’ve seen them at Greycliffes. They’re marvelous devices.”
“Because,” calls a voice rich with melody, “it amuses me to see my visitors huffing and puffing up my stairs. Especially if they’re enemies. It takes a bit of the fight out of them.”
I follow Thiago around the next curve of the cliff, and the stairs finally flatten out into an expansive balcony overlooking the seas. Stone sea serpents wend their way along the edge, forming a natural rail. I swear their polished brass eyes watch me as I pass between them.
“Thiago.” There’s a tall, lean fae male waiting there, clad in leather from top to toe and wearing a pirate’s swagger. He flashes a dangerous smile as he clasps Thiago’s hand and claps him on the back. “It’s been a long time, my old friend.”
“Not long enough, you bastard. I remember now why I don’t visit more often.”
Seeing the two of them standing together is either a woman’s best fantasy, or a gift from the Old Ones.
Kyrian’s dark eyes flicker to me, his smile thinning a little. “Princess Iskvien, you’re as beautiful as the stars say you are.”
“Are you on speaking terms with them?”
“Every night,” he purrs. “Haven’t you heard me whisper in your dreams?”
“One can hardly compete with the stars,” I mutter. He’s not what I expected, at all. Nor is he the man haunting my dreams.
“Don’t make me throw you off this cliff,” Thiago says. “Vi’s not the only one who had to climb those fucking stairs.”
“If the rumors are true, you wouldn’t have had to.”
“What rumors?” I ask.
Thiago’s brows darken. “Ignore him. He’s been sniffing the sea breeze for too long. Empties his head.”
Kyrian throws back his head and laughs.
There’s a certain sense of earthy rawness to the sound, as if the sea has given him a raspy undertone. Though his face is formed of near perfection—those lips a little too full, and his lashes a little too long—there’s also something feral about it. Not for him a court full of polished courtiers and bowing sycophants, I suspect. No, he looks like he’d be just as comfortable on the swaying deck of a ship as sitting on a throne. Comfortable anywhere he stood, even if it was a prison cell.
I wish I felt the same sense of confidence.
“Come this way,” Kyrian calls, turning and striding toward the stone arches that seem to lead directly into a castle hewn into the rock. “I’ve had my servants send for refreshments. You seem as though you need them.”
Kyrian sinks onto the enormous carved stone throne in the middle of his audience hall, kicking his legs over one arm and snapping his fingers for wine. “So tell me, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“You’d know that if you bothered to show up for the alliance meeting.” There’s nothing to say Thiago is angry except for the cool, supercilious arch to his brow.
“I had better things to do rather than waste my time watching three petty bitches try to put me in my supposed place.”
Servants spring forward, a pair of women wearing gowns of berry red that drape at the throat, leaving their backs and spines bare. Though they offer us refreshments, there’s a fierceness in their eyes that leaves me in no doubt that they’re not merely servants, and I’m fairly certain the golden ornaments in their hair have sharp ends.
“As much as they irritate me too, we need them,” Thiago replies, accepting a glass.
“It’s debatable.” Kyrian’s eyes flash fire and he glances at me.
“She knows.”
There’s a faint softening of the Prince of Tides’ shoulders. He rubs his finger around the rim of his wineglass. “Year by year, it all plays out the same way. You must be weary of the game by now, old friend.”
“Would you be weary? If that was Meriana?”
Kyrian’s finger stills on the glass.
“No. I would not be weary. I would spend a thousand summers hunting the seas so I could cut that bitch’s heart from her chest while she watched.”
Meriana.
That was the name of the woman he’d once loved.
But it’s clear that whatever emotions he felt toward her have long since faded.
“And I would spend a thousand winters waiting for my wife to recognize me, if that was what it took,” Thiago replies in a deadly soft voice. “But she’s right here, so perhaps you can stop talking over her head as if she’s not.”
Kyrian shoots me a disdainful smile. “I used to think love was a gift, but it’s not. It’s a poison, slowly ingested over years, and it’s ultimately fatal. Remember that, Your Highness, when you must return home to your mother again. Because you’re leading him to a slow, steady death as surely as the sun will set in the west, and I don’t think the bastard has the strength to avoid his fate now.”
The words stun me.
I think I understand Eris’s anger toward me—she cares for her prince. But Kyrian’s anger feels more personal, as if he’s seeing another face painted over mine and his words are intended for her.
That doesn’t make them feel any less personal.
Or true.
I don’t know what I feel toward Thiago—the entire revelation was such an upheaval I’m still finding my feet—but I know when he looks at me, he sees his entire world. It makes me feel safe and overwhelmed and nervous.
Nobody has ever loved me.
It’s all I ever longed for when I was a little girl, and it feels as though that dream has been delivered on a gold platter, but I somehow missed the steps leading up to it.
I wanted someone who would never turn away from me. I wanted strong arms I could curl up in when night fell and I was alone with all those little thoughts that eat at me sometimes. I wanted someone to protect me, someone who would fight for me, someone who would always be there for me.
But what if I get him killed?
What if all I do is take and take and take, until there’s nothing left?
Those dreams were a child’s dreams, but I’m a woman now, and I know sometimes the world can be cruel.
“If you felt any sense of love for him, you would set him free,” Kyrian continues. “Or you may as well put a blade in his heart right now and end it mercifully.”
Those words keep hammering at me.
Because they echo my own thoughts.
And the only way to quell them is to lash out. “I can’t remember what happened to this… Meriana, or why you feel such vitriol toward her, but perhaps what you felt for her wasn’t love, if you think of it as poison. And if anyone did the deed, then you did it to yourself.”
His eyes drop to half-mast, heat flaring in their amber depths. “You dare?”
I sip my wine. Perhaps I can thank my mother for granting me the grace to face such malice with no reaction. “I thought we were exchanging insults? Did you want me to sit here in silence and shed a tear at your words? Perhaps I should simper a little?”
“You know, I never did see a resemblance to your mother until this moment, but you’ve well proven your—”
“That’s enough,” Thiago says in his midnight voice, the one that expects to be obeyed. “The both of you.” He turns to Kyrian. “We came here as guests. As friends. And this is how you greet us?”
Kyrian’s fingers twitch. “My apologies, Princess. I did not mean to offend you.”
It’s a lie, and we both know it.
But I’m genuinely sorry for my part in it. There’s a deep reservoir of anger within me, a hot coal slowly gathering heat. But he’s not the target. And I shouldn’t take my anger out on him. I need to save it for my mother. “I’m sorry if my words caused you pain.”
Kyrian waves the apology away. “Well, let’s hear it. You didn’t come all this way just to offend me.”
Thiago wastes no time. “Angharad’s been seen in Mistmere, trying to resurrect the Hallow.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know,” Thiago replies. “Hence, why we’re here.”
Kyrian stares into his wine a little moodily. “Surely that bitch has better things to do than dabble with the Mother of Night.”
“She’s also looking for something she calls leanabh an dàn.”
“Child of destiny,” Kyrian says.
Thiago tells him the theory about a child belonging to the Old Ones, and how he thinks Angharad wants to use it to access some of the Old Ones powers.
“This is… troubling. I’ll see what my sources have to say,” Kyrian murmurs, pushing to his feet. “In the meantime, why don’t you both enjoy the pleasures of Stormhaven? I’ll have rooms prepared. Or is it just one room?”
There’s no malice in his eyes, but the words are a challenge.
“Two,” I say, just as Thiago says, “One.”
We both look at each other.
“Two,” I repeat in a softer voice, because I don’t know that I have the willpower to deny him if we’re forced to share a room.
And a bed.