I gesture to the sky now filled with stars. “If your mother has this immense power over light, why doesn’t she destroy the bloodlands? Stop the vampyrs once and for all?”
“She can’t. Even the strongest Vividari light can’t illuminate the bloodlands. They remain forever dark. A constant threat. Until the curse is broken, we won’t be free of them.”
A curse he wants me to break.
We’re actually talking. He’s answering my questions freely, without doubt or suspicion. I don’t want to return to the subject of the curse, but there’s no way around it.
“Why do you think I can break this curse?”
“Because only another female Oracle can do it,” he says. “You’re the first female Oracle since the False Queen.”
I hold my arm upright, turning the inked image of the blade into the starlight.
I can only pray he’ll hear me out.
“You have no reason to believe me,” I begin. “Just as I have no guarantee that you’ll tell me the truth. But before this morning, I had never touched this blade. My father forbade it. What’s more, he refused to tell me anything about it. I knew nothing of its history or where it came from. I had no knowledge of any curse. And worse, I don’t…”
Antony hasn’t interrupted me. It looks as if he’s listening, but a cold light enters his eyes that warns me he won’t believe me. When it comes to the curse, he seems to think I’ll lie and cheat, and trick him.
Still, I’m determined to speak the truth. “I don’t know?—”
“Do not tell me you don’t know how to break the curse, because I don’t believe you.”
I try to breathe in the face of his anger. His certainty that I’m lying.
“Do you truly think me to be so hateful that I would rather leave the three kingdoms at war? That I would leave the Iron Kingdom to face vampyrs every night, than put a stop to it?” I jab my upturned hand toward the sky. “How does that benefit me? I’m a prisoner because of it! I’m in danger because of it. If I knew how to break this curse, I’d do it.”
His response is savage, and at first, I don’t follow his meaning.
“We call her the False Queen,” he snaps, “not because she wasn’t the Serulian King’s rightful wife, but because her heart was false. If your heart is also false?—”
“Then cruelty is my only aim,” I finish for him, quickly understanding his point, closing my eyes against the bitterness that rises within me. “No matter the pain I might cause myself in the process.”
I wonder what cruelty he experienced that made him see the world this way. That he could believe I’d gladly hurt myself as long as it causes pain to others.
I wonder if this is the damage his father caused him.
Or even, given how he speaks about his mother, what she might have done to him.
Either way, I don’t know how to move forward.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
Unwrap the blade, and your path will be clear.That’s what Father told me before he died.
Well, my path isn’t clear. Nothing is fucking clear.
My voice rises with frustration. “This damn blade is part of me!” I tug on the chain, pulling hard, but all it does is force my arm to extend, outstretched between me and the Iron King. “I didn’t choose this. I didn’t ask for it. I don’t want it.”
My skin pinches as the chain bites into my wrist, and the pain should alarm me, but a scream is building within mychest.
I have nowhere to put my frustration. Nowhere to put my anger.
I jerk backward, the chain only yanking more harshly against my wrist, and I’m barely aware of Antony’s response when the blade’s image flashes, blinding golden light spears up my arm and across my vision, consuming everything around me, including Antony’s form.
No.
Not again.
