“Your mother was always a wise woman. I don’t know what they discussed privately, but in the months before her death, she seemed more worried, maybe even… scared. Looking back now, I think she knew what he had planned, and I think she knew he needed fae powers. I believe she took precaution, because she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop him outright. I think she hid your powers—and Bennett’s—so Axel couldn’t get a hold of them.”
The words strike something deep inside me.
My mother always told me magic was a gift, but one that came at a price. Bennett’s magic should have manifested before mine. But it didn’t.
Maybe because of my mother. Maybe it had been stolen from him before it ever had the chance to bloom. Just like mine.
I grip the arms of my chair as a sickening thought takes root. “She hid them in the dagger.”
“The dagger she gave you?” he asks.
“I think so.” I don’t go into my powers manifesting, no matter how messily. There’s already too much to process, and it’s not all sitting in my stomach well.
The reoccurring nightmare enters my mind. My mother coming into my room at night, bleeding. The dagger in her hand.“I’m sorry. I can’t let him take it from you.”It makes so much sense now. A sharp chill washes over me. Flashbacks of my mother’s frightened face enter my mind. Tidbits of muffled voices, fights I wasn’t supposed to hear.
Wait. She was bleeding when she came into my room.
“You said she was scared,” I say to my uncle. “Were they fighting?”
“They never fought in front of me,” he answers. “But I could see the tension between them.”
“I don’t think it was only Bennett’s and my powers she hid in the dagger,” I tell him. “I think she put hers in there, too.”
If my mother took such drastic measures—it means she feared him. Not just as a ruler. As a man.
I struggle to breathe past the tightness in my chest. “Uncle, do you think she fell down those stairs by accident?”
Kormak’s gaze darkens. “The servants and guards confirmed that he was in another wing of the castle when it happened.”
When she died.
But a king can get his people to say what he wants them to.
A part of me finds it hard to believe that not one of them would speak up if it weren’t true. But something about the situation nags at me.
Oh, gods.
I don’t want to say it out loud, but I see it in my uncle’s eyes. He has the same suspicion.
“Uncle Kormak,” I start, a slow, creeping dread crawling up my spine, “what do you think really happened?”
The room is engulfed in silence. A silence that tells me everything before he even says the words.
He exhales sharply. “Celeste… I can’t prove it to be true. But I believe your father killed your mother.”
Something inside me shatters.
ChApter
Forty-One
The stone walls of Ivystone loom ahead, their familiar presence both a comfort and a weight pressing against my ribs. The gates are already open for us, the flickering torchlight catching on the damp edges of the courtyard as Sir Holden and I dismount, the clatter of hooves fading behind us.
The journey back from Delasurvia was swift, the road a blur beneath my horse’s hooves. But my mind was not still. It was a storm—a relentless, churning force of thoughts too tangled to unravel.
Sir Holden walks beside me as we step into the castle, his gloved hands resting lightly against his belt. He’s quiet for a moment before he finally speaks.
“Are you all right, Your Highness?”
