Dolian
I feel Nox slip the letter from my shaking hand as I lift my head up, tears lining my eyes. Sitting on the desk in front of us is a box of black stone, the dancing spelled flames reflecting off of its sides and top. In my panic to make sure Nox was okay, I hadn’t even noticed it there. Now, however, it screams at me like a ghost making its presence known.
“Do you know what is in there?” I ask him, as his hand wraps around mine.
“I do, and I don’t think you need—”
“Show me.”
Nox doesn’t move, doesn’t speak until he takes a deep breath. “Rhea—”
“Please,” I whisper. I need to confirm what the darkest corner of my mind is already certain of. I have to see it—the unknown consequences of my actions. The cost of my supposedfreedom. There will be no saving me from this, and despite what Nox says, thisismy burden to bear.
He hesitates another few seconds before clearing his throat and letting go of my hand to lift the lid off the box. My lip trembles as a rotten stench pours out into the room. Air rushes in and fuels a sob that splinters out of my throat. There, lying ona bed of golden silk as if it truly were a present, is the head of the owner of Immie’s Inn.The woman whose name I now realized was short for something else,Immelda. She was the lead servant who took my mother in from the streets, according to King Dolian’s story. It explains how she knew who I was right away. Alexi had told me that I looked just like my mother, and Immie’s recognition of me all but confirmed that.
Tears trace warm trails down my cheeks as I force myself to stare at her mutilated face—her eyes missing and lips sewn shut.
Nox’s voice buzzes in my ear, but I can’t hear what he says. Not over the way my sadness and guilt and anger scream within me.
Before the sun has risen the next morning, on the ceremonial grounds of mage ancestors and past mage queens, Nox, Sadryn, Alexandria, and I lay Immie to rest. I watch as they sprinkle loose dirt over her small grave, my fingers woven tightly together as I squeeze my hands. They tingle as the blood flows back into them when Nox untangles and holds them in his own. His worried gaze finds mine, but he doesn’t offer words of solace. I don’t want them anyway.
Nox stands with me, even after his parents leave us, my gaze stuck on Immie’s grave marker.
“What are you thinking?” he asks quietly, adjusting his hold so that his arm is wrapped around my back.
“I’m furious,” I whisper, afraid the uncomfortable feeling burning within me will ignite the very grounds around us as my world flashes gray for a moment before righting. “I think Iwantto kill him, and that makes me even angrier.” Because I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want to have those feelings.
“One day, you will have your vengeance, Rhea. Whether it’s by striking him down yourself or through actions taken as queen. Whatever you decide, we’ll do it together.”
I lean against him, my hand resting on his chest as I nod my head. Perhaps this angercouldbe the fuel that leads to that. Tovengeance.
I just needed to be strong enough to follow through.
Chapter Fifty-Seven: Rhea
I had always thoughtof grief as something unchanging, something stagnant. I had so little to hold on to in my life that when I actually lost the parts that mattered the most, it felt like utter anguish. It was like leaping on rocks to avoid a raging river, only to discover that the next one I had jumped to was nothing more than a mirage. I plunge into the icy waters below and get swept away with the current until I’m nowhere to be found.
I was in pieces after Alexi’s death. Those pieces shredded further after Bella’s. Yet, since then, I have come to learn thatgrief is just as multifaceted as life. I hardly knew Immie, but I mourn her senseless death. My grief is jagged; it stings the sensitive, still healing parts of me as if it were a dagger slicing beneath my skin and into the scarred muscle below. A woman was murdered because we happened to stay at her inn—because my uncle isobsessedwith creating the love story with me that he never had with my mother. This sort of grief is different than the kind I feel over Alexi. Over Bella. Different from what plagues me over the two lives my shadows had taken that night in the Mortal Kingdom.
But I am also different now.
I have begun to turn weakness into power and anguish into peace. I have made friends and found a home. I am in love, sodesperatelyin love, that I often think that the agony of the first twenty-one years of my life has been worth it if it all leads to Nox. I would relive it over and over again to end up with him. It doesn’t erase the way my heart drops when I close my eyes and see Immie as King Dolian’s victim, but it does remind me that I’ve come too far to let this break me.
I mourn Immie’s death, but I will notlet myself succumb to the darkness that took months to crawl out of. That doesn’t honor her life; it just gives my uncle the control over me that he so desperately wants. Never again will I lie down and let a monster devour my soul piece by piece until I fear there is nothing left to salvage.
Never again.
“We don’t have to do this today,” Nox says as he ties off my braid and wraps his arms around me from behind. He had already postponed the meeting by a few days. “If you need more time, I’ll get it for you.”
“I know, but I don’t want to delay it any longer. It feels like we’ve been stuck in the shadow of the council for a long time.” I spin in his arms to face him, my fingers sliding into his hair as I gently drag my nails over his scalp. “I want to do this forus.”
Nox brings our foreheads together, closing his eyes as he leans into my touch. “When the meeting is over, I want you right back here in this room with me.”
“And why is that?” I ask, a breathless tease to my voice.
“Because,” he drawls slowly, kissing my temple and cheek before dragging his mouth to my neck and the space beneath my ear, “it’s been too long since I’ve worshiped you on my knees. Too long since you’ve come on my tongue—my name on your lips as you do.”
“You have the filthiest mouth,” I whisper, tugging on his hair until his eyes meet mine. “And it’s only been a few days.”
