Not her face, not her touch, not the soundless hum of comfort she must have offered in the dark. I would have cried in her arms. Slept against her chest. And now – nothing. Not even a shadow of her left in me. She had given everything, and I had carried on through a life built on the absence of her. I hadn’t even known I was missing someone until she was handed back to me in Maeve’s deep grief.
A deep line tightened between Maeve’s brows. “But Signe saw more than the Queen intended. She realised, too late, what it was Mowgara had planned. That she had no intention of raising a daughter. She meant to raise a vessel.”
She paused, as if the weight of it all needed space to settle. And as it did, something sharp rippled through me, slow and certain, like a key settling into the lock of a door I hadn’t known was closed. Not anger, but the foreboding of it.
“Mowgara feared the old gods still – just enough to avoid their wrath. So she would not strike you down, not while the mark of their favour still was on your skin. But she watched you, waited. Let the power inside you stir, just enough. Then she bound it.” Maeve’s gaze flicked to my shoulder, to the place I still refused to look. “Through your mark.Through blood and spell and fire, she wove her claim into you like a hook in the gut. And when it was done, she told you the power had never stirred. That you were a hollow child.”
The silence that followed wasn’t calm but tense – like the brittle pause in glass before it shatters.
“And when the binding wasn’t enough,” Maeve went on, her voice fraying now, “she threw you to the barracks. Let war wear you down. Let the blades of others risk what she would not dare. It wasn’t mercy. Just… distance. Enough to keep her hands clean.”
She shifted against the cold stone, the movement slow, as if the years she carried had settled deeper in her bones. “Signe feared she wouldn’t live long enough to send more. She begged me to stay safe, stay hidden and to remember who you were. Who your mother had been. And to wait – for you, perhaps… or for Alaric, or for another of the Mothers who fled to find this place. But no one did, not until now.”
I don’t know how long I sat there. I must have blinked, must have breathed, but I remembered none of it – only the thrum in my ears and the dull echo of Maeve’s words clawing at memories I’d long buried.
Mathias said nothing, only shifted closer. His hand was still on my shoulder, but now his thumb moved in slow circles near the curve of my collarbone, as if the motion might draw me back from wherever I’d gone. I let my head tip slightly towards his, not quite resting, not quite pulling away. Something in me had splintered, and he was helping me hold the pieces until I could see what still fit.
The blade in my lap caught the light. My fingers had slackened, yet the hilt still pressed into my palm as if it belonged there. I stared until the weight in my chest gathered into a shape I could no longer ignore. Many things had broken tonight, but this pressed hardest against what remained. A face rose in my mind – steady, sorrowful – the man I had let be condemned to the fire. The one who had looked at me like he knew what I was doing and why I did it.
“I led him to his death,” I said. The words were brittle, colourless. “At Irongate. I thought he was a traitor, someone who had earned the wrath of my Moth….” I swallowed, though my throat ached. “The Queen. The old man in tattered robes. Alaric.”
Maeve didn’t look shocked. Only sad. Only old.
“You didn’t know,” she said, and it wasn’t a comfort, but it wasn’t a condemnation either. “How could you have known?”
“I should have,” I whispered, though I knew it wasn’t true. Still, the guilt sat like old wine gone sour, seeping into everything. “He looked at me like—” I stopped. I had no words for what had lived in his gaze. “Like he knew,” I said instead. “And he let it happen.”
Maeve’s voice was softer now, but no less sure. “Because he believed you’d live. That somehow, some part of her hadn’t taken everything from you. Because even if he couldn’t save you then, he’d rather die trying than become part of her lie.”
My chest ached, sharp and deep, like something had cracked open and let the cold in. “He was my father.”
The words caught in my mouth even as I spoke them – too small for what they held. A cold flush crept up my neck, and for a heartbeat, I wasn’t in the ruins of this old temple at all. I was back in the square, watching the fire take his robes, and feeling nothing that made sense.
“He was my father,” I said again, but this time, I could barely hear it.
She nodded. “And the first true Speaker of the old gods since their voices fell silent.”
I turned toward her slowly, the words unmoored in my mind. “Speaker?”
“Not a priest in robes and rituals,” Maeve said. “Not the kind that comes from doctrine or decree. Alaric was touched. Not by flame, not by blood – but by something older. He heard them. In dreams, in storms, in the still places between. He was the first in generations tofeel their gaze again.” She paused, letting the thought settle. “And they answered him.”
The fire cracked behind her, its light catching in the lines at the corners of her eyes. “He and Eleonora were bound long before you were born. And together, they carried hope that maybe the gods hadn’t turned from us entirely. That something might be salvaged. And the Queen hated them both for it. Not just because they defied her, but because they made her rule feel fragile.”
I listened, though the air in my lungs still felt frayed. But something twisted in me then—like heat, whetted and bitter. I wanted to strike something. To scream. To drag her name down into the dirt where she’d left the rest of them. Instead, I swallowed it – the anger, the sheer horror of it all – and let it settle in my chest like cinders.
“When Eleonora fell,” Maeve went on, “he must have believed the child had died with her. And Mowgara must have let him believe it. It was her cruellest kindness. And so he turned his back on the lost fortresses and the wars and vanished from the Queen’s grasp – but not from the world.”
She drew in a breath. “He walked the continent for years, preaching in whispers, never to crowds. Tying ribbons to ruined shrines. Speaking the old names in places where the gods might still be listening. His words travelled further than he ever did—even here, to the end of the world, to my ears. There were those who began to listen, quietly, cautiously. Not many, but enough to give him hope. Enough to make Mowgara nervous.”
“But he found out,” I murmured. “Somehow, he knew I lived.”
Maeve nodded slowly. “Years later, there were whispers. A girl in the capital, golden-haired but without flame. Raised by the Queen but never claimed in full. Alaric would have heard them and realised the treachery of Mowgara. He could never reach you – not without risking your life or those protecting you. But he watched. Waited. And whenthe time came, he made his choice.”
My hands had curled again around the dagger, the edge of the hilt biting faintly into my skin. “Haedor.”
“Yes,” she said. “He let them catch him. Let himself be dragged in chains, wrapped in shame and death. He knew what the Queen would do. She burned him to silence him, to stop his words from spreading and to show all who followed him what became of those who defied her.”
“And he let her.” My voice felt distant, like it belonged to someone watching from the edge of a dream.
