“Cyrus is no brother of mine,” Vikal spat, furious at the very idea that he may have been considered a mole. “Let’s make that real fucking clear, right now. That asshole threatened to send Carrina to those—those?—”
He struggled to finish, and he certainly earned points for that. His disgust and horror were too genuine to be faked. Carrina pressed her forehead into his shoulder, and his hand came up to the back of her head, holding her to him like someone might try to rip her away.
The sympathy and understanding I felt shook me. I didn’t want to be sympathetic or understanding to someone who sat back and did nothing for so many years.
But… I sighed internally. Hewasyoung. Not even one hundred yet. It took me many more years before I finally woke up to the horrors of slavery myself.
“And are you prepared to help stop your brother now?” Asteria asked, her hands on her hips as she stared him down with a sharply raised eyebrow.
My mate had spent a not insignificant amount of time spying within Dusk’s court, and that included Vikal. She was the one who reported that he kept himself out of politics and the squabbling for the throne. But this was no longer a matter of mere politics.
“Of course I am,” Vikal responded, grinding his jaw in aggravation. “He’s gone way too far, and now everything is threatened because of him. I never liked that humans were enslaved to begin with. I always got along better with humans than I did any Fae.”
That tracked with what Asteria had observed of him. I knew Nithe wouldn’t have brought him if he wasn’t sure, and his instincts were rarely wrong. Still, this was too important, and we’d had to skip so many of the usual steps for vetting newcomers for expediency’s sake.
“Good.” I nodded, looking to Asteria. She smiled slightly back at me. “Then I suppose we should get updates out of the way first.”
“Yes, please do!” Harpina practically erupted, clearly impatient. “What the Tartarus happened in the Otherworld?”
The others all looked at us with wide, expectant eyes. I couldn’t blame them. Had I not gone myself, I would have similarly been dying to know what it was like.
“We had to face several trials along the way, as well as several meetings,” I began, choosing my words carefully with so many present. “We wound through both Tartarus and Elysium, and finally accessed the city of the gods.”
“What kind of trials?” Eryx asked, his eyebrows creased enough that I could practically see the different scenarios running through his mind.
“What kind of meetings?” Delia spoke at the same time, garnering Eryx’s full attention immediately.
Asteria tried to stifle her giggle at the two, especially as Delia’s face flushed, her eyes looking down briefly in embarrassment. Eryx’s longing stare was only broken by his expectant look back at us.
We explained the trials briefly, answering all the expected questions, while trying to keep the more personal parts private. Explaining the meetings was definitely a more complicated matter.
“You saw mother and father?” Ndrita’s voice could barely be heard across the table, it was so subdued. Her eyes shone with a strange mixture of longing and forced indifference.
“We did,” I told her quietly, and I looked to Liviana, who didn’t seem very surprised. I wasn’t sure if she’d seen it in a vision or just wasn’t as impacted by the news. “I’ll meet with you two later to tell you more. They passed along messages for you both before we left.”
Ndrita looked ready to pull me out of the room and demand answers now, but she schooled herself quickly. We’d lost our parents when Ndrita was so young, but she’d been old enough that she still felt the loss deeply. Liviana, on the other hand, didn’t have any real memories of our parents. But Ndrita had never truly gotten over their loss. I’d done my best to be both brother and parent to her, but it had been overwhelming for both of us.
I didn’t want to get into all our family’s interpersonal drama in front of everyone here, however. Ndrita would never forgive me if I made her cry in front of all the lords of Night, and practically half the realm besides, I thought, looking around the packed room.
“We spoke with all of the gods,” Asteria said, getting to the point quickly. “They warned us that Cyrus is being influenced by another god who they imprisoned years ago. The god of blood created the Vampyres and had them running wild, and now he wants to break out and turn this realm back into his bloody paradise. The more Cyrus tips the balance toward chaos, the closer we get to this mad god getting free of his prison.”
A beat of pure silence met her words before everyone exploded at once in pandemonium. I raised a hand to try to bring some order back to the group. Having them all yell out their questions and objections to the facts would get us nowhere.
“Asteria speaks true. The gods are relying on us to stop Cyrus, and thus prevent Cruach from breaking free,” I told them firmly, my hands on the table as I leaned forward, staring everyone down. More like glaring, admittedly. “It puts more urgency on our mission. Should we fail, it won’t just be Cyrus who takes over this realm. Cruach will rise and decimate this world.”
The looks of fear around the table were met equally by looks of resolution, thankfully. They were warriors, and they wouldn’t falter at the task before us. Those of us in Night who bore the warrior’s mark felt that even more deeply than most. We all swore an oath to Nox, Erebus, and Anann, the god of war, that we would protect this kingdom and its people to our last breath.
“We already knew we needed to stop Cyrus,” Asteria began, looking every inch the queen she was as she surveyed our people. “Now we know he is being influenced by Cruach as well. Rationality already left him a while back, but now we need to prepare ourselves for a harder fight. Cruach is no doubt amping up his bloodlust, and that’s in tandem with chaos infecting him. The more blood magic he uses, the worse it gets. Every single use of it pushes this realm closer to the brink of chaos.”
“We know he had plans for iron weapons,” I said, looking to Nithe and Vikal. “What can you two tell us about the current status of those?”
Nithe stepped forward a bit, nodding at Asteria and me. “Cyrus has been keeping his operations very hush-hush when it comes to that. While he has no problem flaunting his camps full of human prisoners, he ensures that what goes on in them beyond standard torture and death is kept secret. Only a couple of men know the full picture, alongside the workers who are smelting the iron, but they are kept in isolation to keep the secret.”
I spotted Vikal shaking his head in dismay, holding Carrina close to him. Her shudder confirmed that Cyrus had indeed threatened to take her to one of those camps. The fact that he would hurt his own family in such a way was something I would never understand.
“I was able to slither my way in and to see what was truly going on,” Nithe continued, a faint pride in his eyes for a job well done, but it was all but drowned out by the horror of everything he’d witnessed. “The blood taken from the humans is being distributed in two ways. It either goes to Cyrus for brewing blood magic, or they use it for crafting iron. It seemed to be mostly smaller pieces they were crafting. I heard rumors of larger plans, but nothing that could be substantiated.”
“So if we hit him now, we may be able to take him out before he creates weapons big enough to—” Lord Ergun began, but Titan shook his head and cut him off before he could finish.
