While I was no longer hidden behind a layer of ash, there was also no Celestial Court.
Which meant there was nothing protecting Lumnara from me.
So, while my existence was needed to save our planet, it could also doom us all.
There had been countless moments in my life over the past year where the rug had been pulled out from under me. Where my world had shifted. And while becoming fae was one of those moments, none of them were as life-altering and world-shattering as this one. I’d thought my life perversely unfair and complicated, but next to this… it paled. It was one thing to be hunted for your powers, to which the solution was simple—stay out of the hands of my would-be captors. It was another thing entirely to understand the magnitude of what Caius was saying.
Stars, at this point I’d even taken back the mere responsibility of being the key to a simmering war. But Gods above and damnation below if the fate of Lumnara and all who called her home didn’t dwell within me.
What had Endymion said?You can create worlds or end them.
A shiver ran through me. The next thing I knew, I was staggering forward, arms outstretched to catch myself on the sun-kissed steps. Elbows resting on my knees with my head in my hands, Caius’ hulking figure blotted the sun before he crouched down so that he was lower than me.
Lifting my head from my palms, I looked down at him, suddenly aware that I was trembling.
“You had no idea, did you?” His words were heartbreakingly soft.
“No,” I managed.
“Would it help if I told you that we believe the Celestial Court still exists?”
On a breath, I closed my eyes. A few tears escaped their confines as I pondered his question and the very real possibility that they were nothing more than hopeful thoughts born out of desperation.
Looking at him through watery eyes, I said, “I honestly don’t know, Caius.”
He looked at me with a pained expression for a long moment. “This isn’t your burden alone, Nyleeria. We carry it too, and understand the pain of sacrifice because of it.”
I searched his features only to find deep sorrow staring back at me. “What do you mean?”
“My father,” he said, the lump on this throat working before he continued. “He didn’t believe in the Celestial Court at all. Thought it was a fable, at best. But Endymion had reason to believe that not only did it exist, but that it went dormant like the spark. So, I believed it too.
“We’ve spent a greater portion of our existence scouring for any trace of the spark, of you. And the day you were born, when the snow fell, even with his own eyes, my father refused to believe it. To believe the danger we were all in. Even when High Fae we’d known for generations were affected, he still refused to believe. He was willfully blind, and one day we got in a terrible fight over it.
“That’s when he called in The Right.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means he challenged me for Lordship. As his heir apparent, I was at an age where my magic was becoming exponentially more powerful, even though he was the reigning High Lord—which is extremely uncommon. Though, it’s been known to happen.
“The Right is rare enough that while it can be invoked, you’d have to go back generations in any court to have witnessed it. So, when he called it in, I didn’t understand what was happening.
“You see, as a son of a High Lord, we’re born to a kind of bargain we have no choice in. When he called it to bear, his words burned the sacred rite into my skin. Only then did I know what it meant.”
“I thought bargains had to be entered willingly,” I said.
He cocked a surprised brow. “True. And although it works like a bargain, we’re bound to it by our bloodline.”
“That’s awful.”
A humorless chuckle escaped him. “That’s not even the worst part. The Lordship Right is a contest of magic versus magic—to the death.”
Eyes wide, I leaned back slightly, searching his features as if looking for him to take back his words. My chest constricted as I realized he wouldn’t. “The fae have a Lordship Right that forces patricide?”
“Or filicide, yes.”
It took a few heartbeats for my mind to fill in what my heart didn’t want to register, because I already knew it wasn’t filicide that happened that day. No, the fact that Caius knelt before me was proof of his father’s tragic end. Dread, and pain, and heartbreak for the kind male looking up at me filled my veins. I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe as I let myself understand the full magnitude of what I was being told.
My breathed words were a mere whisper. “You won the Rite.
