Alora smirked, leaning into the venom. “Ah, you gave me the gift of tears as reprisal. What was it again? Oh yes. ‘May she always flourish in beauty, even when she weeps.’ How poetic.”
Delphi’s mouth twisted, the gloves on her hands creaking as she clenched them. “You were already gifted grace by Zinnia, and your mother’s song besides. What more did you need but tocry pretty? You were a fitful child, always wailing. I paid for that gift in full.”
Alora’s smirk sharpened into something colder, though her heart soured at the venom laced through Delphi’s words.
A gift born of spite.
It explained so much.
“And you could not bear it when your sisters surpassed you. One became Thornbearer and the other Queen. And what was Delphi to be? Perhaps as poisonous as her own ambition.”
The air tightened.
The vase of flowers on the table shriveled and the ceramic vase cracked as Delphi’s magic surged like a miasma of toxic smog.
“Salvia should never have borne you,” Delphi hissed, surging to her feet. Her violet eyes burned like coals in the half-light. “She made a deal with the darkness, and it cost her life!”
Alora froze where she sat, her breath caught in her chest. Looking at those dark, cold eyes filled with disgust and remorse, she knew the truth.
“You killed her…”
Delphi’s started at her wide eyed, her chest heaving. “She… she left me no choice.”
The confirmation made Alora’s heart stop a moment.
A brief relief sank into her bones to know she wasn’t the one who harmed her mother, but then hot rage replaced it. Threads of white fire lashed out, splintering the table in half. Fruit burst and red juice splattered the ground like blood.
“She was your sister.”
Delphi’s mouth trembled. “Yes… and I begged her not to go to the Ruins, but Salvia could not escape her need for a child as she could not escape the evil she defied.” Delphi looked away. “Vorak broke her mind when she broke her vow. Her suffering was terrible and she begged me to end her life.” Delphi’s gazemet Alora’s, eyes shining with bitter tears. “So, I did… and I resent her for it.”
Brutal. Cold.
But… a mercy.
Drawing a shuddering breath, Delphi smoothed down her disheveled hair, letting her gaze fall on the hearth. “I gave her a poison that would grant her a painless death, but she still chose to suffer for years to watch you grow.”
Alora clenched her jaw, fighting the burn in her throat.
A memory, blurred and half-buried, surged up unbidden. Her mother writhing in bed, skin tinted a sickly green, stretched so thin it clung to bone. Her hair had withered like desiccated moss, her voice breaking between sobs and screams that made no sense.
Some nights, Salvia had clawed at the air, shrieking about shadows in the mirrors and eyes in the dark. Others, she lay silent, her gaze hollow, slipping further and further from the world as her lungs wheezed for breath.
Vorak had not merely cursed her.
He had tormented her, day after day, year after year.
“On her deathbed,” Delphi murmured, softer now, “Salvia bade me swear an oath: to send you to the Midlands where you would be safe.”
Fae oaths were binding, but only to the letter spoken.
Delphi had kept hers by sending Alora away, and Zinnia by sheltering her under enchanted grace. Yet Salvia, half-mad with pain, had not been lucid enough to demand they keep her there. They could not gainsay Laurent’s command when he summoned her home.
Perhaps they had even hoped her marriage to Eldrik would resolve everything. Arthal’s magic being much more potent, would have hidden her from all entities. But things changed once it was obvious what he was after.
“A fortunate turn for you regardless,” Alora murmured.
“Yes,” Delphi admitted softly, almost weary of the crown she wore. “That it was…”
