We took our seats at a table in the back of the outdoor seating area, a secluded little spot up against a small garden. “You’ve been rather quiet this morning, dear,” Morgana said, covering my hand with hers on the table. “Is everything alright?”
My stomach churned. It was now or never, I supposed. “Actually, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” I licked my lips, swallowing my nerves. When I took out my pouch and sprinkled a bit of blackthorn ash for a silencing spell, her brow creased with worry.
“I received a message from His Majesty last night,” I started, and Morgana instantly went still. “He said he wanted to speak with me, so I met with him in the west tower.”
I didn’t think my aunt was breathing. Her face paled as she pressed her lips together. Beau glanced awkwardly between the two of us over his chocolate muffin.
“And what did His Majesty have to say?” Morgana finally asked, her voice tight, eyes focused on her steaming tea.
“He said he grew up in Feywood.” When Morgana hummed, I pressed on. “And that he knew my father.” Nothing but a raised eyebrow as she took a sip. I crossed my arms, my temper and stubbornness flaring. I wanted to give her the chance to confess, but she was making it difficult. “I’m surprised you never bothered to tell me you were friends with the emperor, that’s all.”
“We were no friends of his,” Morgana hissed, slamming her porcelain cup down.
“But you knew him!” I cried out. “You knew what he was—what heis. To me.” My voice broke on the last word. I gripped my tea cup tightly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her eyes pleaded with me. “Rose?—”
“Tell herwhat, Ma?” Beau asked.
I licked my lips. “That Emperor Gayl was my father’s brother.”
Beau’s cup clattered to the saucer, a bit of chocolate falling out of his open mouth. “What?” he barked.
“This is not the place for this conversation,” Morgana said in hushed tones, glancing around at the nearby tables.
“If not here, then where?” I countered. “I cast a silencing spell. Nobody can hear us. I want to know why you and Ragnar never told me about this.” Realization struck me as I spoke, and I leaned forward. “Wait, wasthiswhy you didn’t want me to come here? Why you tried to convince me to stay home?” She didn’t respond, which only bolstered my anger, a venomous heat burrowing under my skin. “This whole time, I believed you were my last living relatives, and that everyone on my father’s side died in the pandemic. What else have you kept from me? What else have youliedabout?”
“Nothing!” she said in a barely-controlled whisper. “Your grandparents—Hamilton’s parents—didperish from illness. We didn’t lie to you about that.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Your father made us promise not to tell you about Theodore. He didn’t want you to know the sins of his past, dear. The mistakes that stained him and his brother’s youth.”
Confusion swirled within me. “What are you talking about? Whatsins?”
“Your father was a good man, Rose. You must know that,” she began. “But Theodore…he was never like the other children, from the stories we heard. Ragnar and I didn’t know him personally. He was a bit older than us, and left Feywood when we were still young. But…people talked.
"He was dark. Troubled. He mostly kept to himself, constantly sequestered in his room researching and creating unnatural spells. He liked to experiment on others—wild creatures from the forest, even children of the village. The things we heard…” She shuddered. “He hid bones of small animals under his bed, kept vials of hair and nails and skin in his dresser, and was often seen with cuts along his hands and fingers. It was all rumors at the time, of course. I actually pitied him when I was younger, although I’d never spoken a word to him. He seemed…lost. But then your father toldus the truth. Theodore had been practicingblood magic”—Morgana lowered her voice and snuck a glance at Beau, as if scared for him to hear the words—“for years, ever since he discovered it as a teenager.”
The air seemed to chill several degrees. Blood magic was strictly forbidden in Feywood, though I would be foolish to believe there weren’t some who practiced it anyway. It was incredibly powerful magic, so potent it could increase the effects of a normal incantation by tenfold. But its consequences were just as devastating and frighteningly unpredictable.
Twelve years ago, a man not too far from our home had used blood magic to raise his wife from the dead. It had worked, to an extent—her corpse had indeed risen, but not her spirit. She’d become a lifeless, soulless husk who slaughtered her husband in front of their child with the very knife he’d used to shed his own blood. I remembered Ragnar and several other leaders of the village being summoned as the animated corpse rampaged the street, stopping her only after she’d killed three other innocent people.
They burned both her and her husband’s bodies. I’d smelled the lingering scent of burnt flesh and sickly sweet, decaying magic for weeks.
It was dangerous. Iknewit was dangerous—but my thirteen-year-old self had still been somewhat…curious. A morbid fascination with this family and how it had gone so terribly wrong.
“And…he taught Hamilton how to wield it, as well,” Morgana continued.
I recoiled at her words, pulled back from the memory. “My father practicedblood magic?”
Morgana worried at her lip, her fingers tapping anxiously against her cup. “This was why he asked us not to tell you. He was so ashamed of this part of his life. Hamilton was barely into adulthood when their parents died, and was susceptible to his older brother’s machinations. He couldn’t bear for you to know the dark things he did.” Her voice dropped even lower. “And we didn’t wantyou to remember him that way. He changed long before you were born. He and Theodore had a terrible falling out, right before Theodore fled Feywood and moved to Veridia City.”
My mind couldn’t keep up with all I’d learned over the past twenty-four hours. What had my fatherdone? What sort of magic had he and Gayl performed? I was intrigued and horrified at the same time. The memories I held of my father seemed to merge with a version of him I’d never known, making me question everything.
“What was their falling out over?” I asked.
“Hamilton didn’t want to walk that path any longer. He tried to convince Theodore to stop practicing such magic, and Theodore refused. Things became heated. Your father never told us the specifics, except that they fought and Hamilton decided he wanted nothing to do with his brother if he continued in that lifestyle. Theodore left the next day and was never seen in Feywood again.”
The timeline lined up with what Gayl had told me. He left for Veridia City, changed his surname—which made sense now, given what he was running from. Made his life in the capital and never looked back, not even when his brother got married or had a child ordied.
My stomach roiled at the sympathy I’d begun to feel for the man. He’d pulled my father into his dark magic, convincing a grieving, impressionable mind to participate in who knew what kinds of wicked deeds. It was safe to assume he hadn’t stopped practicing, given the fact that he brought Leo Aris back from thedead. I should’ve realized it when he told me last night—blood magic was the only thing powerful enough. And he had to besignificantlypowerful for it to work, as opposed to turning Leo into a breathing corpse the way the man from Feywood had.
