I stood, moving forward before I could stop myself, not making it more than a step. Reve’s hand clamped around my arm, yanking me back.
I didn’t even look at him. My eyes stayed locked on her. “Why wereyoucursed, Isolde?”
Her jaw flexed, that mask of control starting to crack. “Because I agreed to it.”
“Who—”
“Don’t bother,” she waved a hand at me in dismissal. “You already know who would make such a bargain.”
A name thundered in my mind. A ruler of monsters.
Isolde’s attention slid to Elva, still limp on the floor, and her tone turned almost wistful. “Her necklace?” She gestured, like this was all some exquisite jest. “It was Leora’s first. A gift from Sebastain, passed from mother to daughter, neither realizing it was suppressing what they were. Keeping their power buried. Dulling the light.”
My pulse pounded in my throat. “Sebastian knew? He doomed his own daughter and that’s why her magic never surfaced…”
Her lips curled. “Oh, it surfaced. It just neveranswered.You see, it takes two halves to wake what was buried in her. And Sebastian always knew Elvira wasn’t his. He played his part as well as he could, but his loyalties have always been to me.”
My eyes darted to Elva, the air around her hummed, faint with power straining to be born. “You silenced her,” I muttered. “You caged her.”
“Not I.” Isolde gestured toward Obrann. “Your king did.”
I couldn’t breathe. All this time…Elva hadn’t been powerless. She’d been bound.
Obrann stepped forward, snatching the necklace from Isolde’s grasp. The chain clinked against his fingers as he held it up for all to see. “The stone inside,” he said, “is no mere trinket. It’sKaida blood,laced with nix metal. Designed to cage magic until called upon.”
Ronan’s voice ripped through. “That’s why you wanted more of their blood.” His glare didn’t waver from Isolde, not once. “You needed it to create more of them.”
Elysian went still beside him.
Ronan’s jaw flexed. “You’ll never find them.”
Isolde didn’t even glance at him. “You think I care now?” Her attention turned to me, and her expression twisted into something crueler than hatred. “You wear her face,” she said. “And still, you think yourself above me. But we are the same damn creation. Only wearing different skins.”
“We are not the same,” I spat.
“Do you want to know why you were chosen to protect her? It’s not just the curse who taints your veins—”
A shudder crawled through me.
I’d always told myself that the weight in my soul was the curse gnawing for control. But in truth, I knew what she meant.
The floor tremored beneath my feet. I could feel it. The pull. The truth I had never dared name.
“My mother,” I rasped, voice breaking,” she was powerful.”
“Mother.” She gave a humorless breath. “That’s generous. But once, yes, she was.”
Was. The word slammed into me.
“She made you only to watch you die.” She paced, circling me like prey. “But guilt makes even divinity do strange things. She couldn’t kill you.” Her expression didn’t change, but something sharpened beneath her voice. “Nor couldhe.”
“My father?”
Obrann stepped into our space. “She called forth the stone. The one forged to contain what she truly was.” He turned the pendant in his hand. “She made each into a twin, a decoy, and told only your father.”
“Vivianna poured heressenceinto that one true stone. Every drop of creation, every breath of divinity. And when she placed it in its vessel,” Isolde’s finger pointed at me, shaking with fury, “it becameyoursto claim.”
The name burned through me in an ascension of breath reborn. Vivianna. The first Goddess. The primal mother. The beginning. Creation herself. She wasn’t a myth, wasn’t a dream.
