I swallow.
“Although I never married the man with whom I created your mother, I was married once before. To the first Faerie King. I cannot speak his name or the others may catch on, so I will refer to him as C.”
I feel her sketch loops of blood across my collarbone.
“My mother was furious, but your mate”—when she reaches the point of my shoulder, she slashes her finger through the coils, spearing them onto a straight line—“he was glad for me.”
The bloodied curlicues must penetrate, because the skin beneath them burns as though she’s painting with fire. But the rest of me . . . the rest of me is ice.
“In case you weren’t aware, he and C. were close. Your mate considered C. family, an uncle of sorts.”
Not that I ever considered Lore an open book, but Meriam is making me realize that the man I’m magically bound to is a complete tomb, one I will need to pry open once I return to him. The thought that I may be able to go home to him this very night spikes my already frenzied pulse.
Before the sun rises, I’ll possess magic.
Magic I can use to slip out of this prison.
“I imagine he’s told you that I helped C. with his coup?” Meriam’s satin-smooth voice snaps my mind back to the here and now. “But the only hand I had in overthrowing the shifters was letting the effect of obsidian slip.”
“Like you let slip the use of Shabbin bloodonobsidian?” The dig slips out before I even realize that I’ve produced sound.
Her eyes go wide; mine, wider.
Merda.
Without turning my head, I shift my eyeballs to the left, finding Dante’s blue gaze cemented to the scarlet drips on my chest. A relieved exhale balloons my lungs but snags on its way out because Justus’s grip on me has grown snugger. Dante may have missed my question, but Justus hasn’t.Focá.
“What did I say about speaking, Fallon? You mustn’t. Unless you don’t care to receive your magic and hear the end of my tale?”
I press my lips together, adequately chastised by her rhetorical question.
“I should never have told C. of their obsidian curse, but I was young and blinded by love; drunk on the dulcet falsehoods he poured into my ears. I didn’t see that he was using me for my blood. I didn’t understand that his love was tainted by greed. My mother did, though. She threatened to come to Luce to sever my union. C. suggested that I create the wards to keep her from interfering with our lives, and, silly girl that I was, I heeded his suggestion, painting a barrier between my homeland and Luce.”
Meriam studies her motionless thighs cloaked in gold, her punishment for betraying her people.
“After C. passed, J.’s father became my jailer. He was a cruel man, much like his wife. It was only after he left this world that J.’s mother had me carried from this vault to the dungeon in Isolacuori. She wanted me gone. A. appointed J. as my keeper. He’d bring me food and drink, though my cursed body required none. One particularly harsh winter, he brought me a wool blanket.”
Her eyes soften as they set on the male at my back. She cannot possibly like the man, can she?
“Don’t get me wrong, the man loathed me and all I represented, but he feared Shabbins and worried that if I perished from a common cold, my wards would perish along with me.” She sighs. “For decades, we coexisted, both mistrusting of the other. Once, A. sought me out to have a spell cast. I pretended that my curse had rid me of magic. J. saw through my lie, but he didn’t call me out on it. Thankfully, A. had had such a terrible relationship with his father that he’d never learned to shape our symbols or he may have forced my hand. Or tried his own hand.”
She adds another swirl, another line. Her blood dribbles into my brassiere, staining the silken fabric. Perhaps because I’m in too much shock, or perhaps because my body recognizes her blood for what it is—magic instead of gore—my stomach doesn’t lurch.
“Many times, I attempted to end my life, but living was my punishment. I began to think that only once my entire body had turned to gold would the Cauldron allow me to pass on to the next realm, so I willed my transformation to be swifter. That night, I dreamed of the Great Cauldron. I dreamed it was telling me that as long as a Regio lived, my curse would endure.
“The following day, Fate dropped M. into my lap. Or rather, into my dungeon. The boy asked many questions, most about his grandfather, whom he’d adulated, as opposed to his father, whom he found lacking. Though he didn’t outright speak about unseating him, I understood that he desperately wanted the throne. So I gave it to him by revealing the location of the ward stone. I told him that whoever possessed that stone possessed all the power.”
Though her irises don’t whiten, they glaze over like Bronwen’s when the Shabbins take ahold of her sight. In Meriam’s case, I believe she’s wandered into the past, reliving this memory.
“Desperate as he was, he accepted my bargain and had me carried to the lowest level of Isolacuori. Though it bore no markings, I found the stone. How could I forget the second greatest mistake I ever made? I instructed him to pry it from the wall, and hungry as he was for power, he did. He carved it right out, and the earth shook. The tremor was so strong that the stone slipped from his hands and broke. How I rejoiced, Fallon. I thought my wards were finally gone.”
Her eyes take on a faraway gleam, as though she was back in the bedrock of Isolacuori with Marco Regio.
“M. tried to annul our bargain, claiming that the stone broke. But he’d dropped it, so I had no problem calling it in. Anyways, my demand that he murder his father aligned with his ambition, so it suited him just fine.”
I suck in a harsh breath that suctions Justus’s still-clamped palm to my lips.
“M. abandoned me in the dank substratum of Isolacuori. Since I was stuck in my throne, he worried not about me escaping. I was near enough to a wall that I painted a sigil that allowed me to hear all that was happening in the castle. I found out that my daughter had come and freed your mate, and drawn a sigil to enclose Luce. I found out about her pregnancy and then I found out that A. had fallen.” Her elegant throat bobs with a swallow. “I imagined the gold melting and pooling at my feet now that the last Regio was gone.”
