“A constellation,” I whisper, trying to calm my breathing. “How?”
“That,” Antony replies, his voice wry, “is my mother’s power.”
His arms fall away from me, finally allowing me to turnand face him.
“Your mother creates this light?”
“Starlight,” he says. “Every night. Without her, we would be overrun by vampyrs, fighting for our lives against the swarms.”
I consider the interaction Antony had with Lady Delphina and how he spoke of his mother, the tension that was clear in his tone and choice of words. And even just now, he’d said,she’s punishing me.
I also consider what he said about his mother controlling the Constellation and the Starlit Court.
“Is she the only one with this power?”
I imagine his jaw clenching beneath his armor. The grit of his teeth.
“She came from a mountain tribe that called themselves the Vividari.” He points to his face. “They all had these green eyes.”
It doesn’t escape me that he described the tribe in the past tense.
“What happened to them?”
“My father happened.” He begins at a slow pace to the side, only a few steps before the chain pulls tight and he turns back, a prowling action. “The Iron Kingdom’s only defense against the darkness was to make an alliance with the Vividari, which the original general did, marrying a woman from that tribe.
“He thought his children would inherit the power of light, and all would be well. Not so. Only full-blooded Vividari control the level of power needed to push back the darkness across the kingdom. So each Iron King married a Vividari woman, and with each marriage, the Vividari became more demanding.” Antony stops pacing. “My father didn’t take kindly to that.”
“What did he do?”
“He slaughtered them. Every last one except Mother.”
“But that’s?—”
Antony gives a harsh laugh as he draws to a stop in front of me. “My father was a tyrant. He lived for violence. He wasn’t known for thinking things through.”
I exhale slowly as I consider the pain bleeding into Antony’s voice, remembering the way he’d asked me if my father was a good man. If my father were kind to me or if he had beaten me.
I’m quiet, wishing I could acknowledge what all of this must have meant for Antony, but I don’t know how. Not when there is such a large gap between him and me, the connection between us literally formed by a shackle and a chain.
“The Vividari power,” I say. “You used it in the bloodlands.”
“Tried to.” He scoffs. “To the extent that I can.”
He had swung his weapon back and forth, the ringing iron humming in the air while a glow had built around the edges of his blade. Then he’d struck his axe upward, sending the magic he gathered around himself into the darkness, an explosion of light.
“I thought it had something to do with your axe.”
He rolls his shoulders, a hint of discomfort. “It helps if I channel the power through iron.”
I thought, at the time, that the light he created had something to do with his weapon, but it sounds like the blade was only a conduit.
“What about your siblings?”
He gives a heavy exhale. “Cassia inherited the power more strongly than we, her brothers, did. But it’s still only a tenth of Mother’s power.”
I chew my lip. “So your mother holds your kingdom’s safety inher hands.”
“She knows it,” Antony replies.
