My fangs descend, and I take a deliberately threatening step toward him, far easier now that the light is diminished to a gentle beam from the open end of the hide. “How do you know?”
“Because I saw her once.” Bright starlight continues to play across my vision as Maxim adjusts his hold. “She met with my aunt in secret when I was a boy.”
My lips draw back. “In the Ember Kingdom?”
Maxim gives a nod, difficult to see behind the renewed bright spots in my eyes, the starlight streaking across my view every time he shifts even a little. “I was only seven years old, but I will never forget the face of the most powerful Vividari to ever walk this world.”
I take a threatening step toward him.
My mother’s power was stronger than any Vividari before her. But if he saw her when he was seven, then it wasn’t long before I was turned.
Now he’s confirmed that somehow, she stayed alive. Sheisalive.
But how?
I scratch and claw at the memories I’ve long buried, the flashes of mindless thirst on the night I was turned against my will, the splashes of blood, her running form, the moment she tripped—or appeared to—before she scooped up a dagger and struck my heart, and after that…
I came back to myself covered in blood.
The bodies lying around me were unidentifiable.
Whatever power kept my mother alive, however she came to be here in this tunnel, becoming a source of light in this oppressive darkness…
A source of light in the place I would have had to escape into if the dagger she plunged into my chest hadn’t halted the spread of vampyric poison…
My chest squeezes. My heart had no hope.
And then Thyra came into my life.
Fuck… Thyra brought me right to this tunnel. The first time Iever ventured inside the bloodlands, she led me here. And then she brought me back here.
When I was at my darkest point, Thyra brought me to this light.
My knees buckle and I fight to stay upright, reaching for the tunnel wall, my suddenly extended fingernails scratching against the rock.
Maxim approaches me, mere steps away now, a startling move on his part since I could try to take my mother from him.
Mother.
A word I’ve misapplied for too many years.
A word I can’t seem to speak aloud now, not even at a whisper.
Maxim watches me carefully. “I heard about how your father treated her.” He remains exactly where he is as he clarifies, “Not when I was little. I heard about it later. When my aunt considered that I was old enough to understand. What he did was beyond me. But then, my father was no fucking better.”
He drags in a breath. “Have you ever asked yourself: what if that’s our future? What if this fucking curse will devour our hearts and minds, and we’ll become what our fathers became? Dishonorable. Greedy. Tyrants.”
I’m barely listening, and I’m certain he knows it. I fight my buckling knees, fight to accept the burn of starlight.
I don’t know if my mother’s sleeping, unconscious, or in some kind of hibernation.
She may never wake up.
Maybe I did kill her.
Maybe a final surge of her power allowed her to crawl into this darkness, enter this state of perpetual light, and?—
But I can’t know anything for certain, and the questions will only tear me apart.
