A pang of guilt settled in my gut. My father had driven a wedge between us long before the day she’d been executed.
“Because I am a daughter of Isleen, my child, as are you. I am the reason your father had visions, the reason he thought himself an Oracle. Your father’s prophecies were never his. I made him hide the boy and train him.”
Her words shattered everything I’d thought I knew about my childhood.
“But Caym found me all the same. So long as he thought me naive about my power, I was safe.Youwere safe. But Mortag discovered what I had been doing and...”
“They killed you...”
My mother nodded. “The tea Mortag served us stifles our power—muddles it to a dim portion of what we are capable of. But the garrot root helped you stay well.”
That’s what he’d been doing with the tea.
“He was our healer for years—why didn’t he just kill us?” I asked.
My mother’s cold hand found my cheek. “At first, he did not know what we were—who we were. And then…he could not.” She looked at Lymrasi.
The serpent spoke. “My mother’s bargain with Caym had one caveat. He losesss her power if he killsss a child of Isleen. It’s why, instead, he coveted me, why he turned us to ssstone instead of killing us. He can tear the world down around you, but he cannot kill you or your child himself—try as he might.”
“I only hoped that you would remain unaware until you were ready,” my mother whispered. “I ran out of time to prepare you.”
“I’m still not ready,” I snapped back, feeling like the petulant teenager I’d been when she left me. “I don’t understand what I should be readyfor.”
My mother rubbed my cheek once more. “You are.Itwould not come to you now if you were not. You are ready to face him, ready to prevail today so that your daughter can one day end his reign.”
My daughter.
She spoke in such absolutes.
Something gleamed at my feet, and when I looked down, a sword rested there. “What is this?” I asked.
My mother answered, “It is the sword Isolde crafted to defeat Caym. It is one of three relics your child must wield against him. It can stop him tonight.”
Isleen’s serpent head nodded as she tasted the air.
I reached down and picked up the sword, assessing its weight. It was oddly familiar—mostly steel, but the handle was cut with gold. Rubies encrusted the guard. My hackles rose to see a deathmark on the very bottom of the pommel. This was not just any sword...It was Emmerick’s broadsword.
The one he denied naming after me.
“I made him hide the boy and train him.”I’d always found it odd that my father had been so willing to train the baker’s son. He hadn’t been charitable with his time when it came to me.
“It was you,” I gasped. “You protected Em. You made Father protect him. Father gave him this sword...” My eyes welled, tears threatening to spill over.
“Yes. Your father never knew what weapon he’d gifted young Mattock. And neither did Caym. Even after he put his awful mark on it, it still longs to destroy Death—and because Caym built that bond to the sword, it can now find him. All you must do is ask it to.”
I stepped toward my mother and reached out with my free hand, longing to take hers. The luster of her felt like cold air as my hand went through her. “This can kill Caym?”
“Ssstop. Not kill,” Isleen corrected. “He will rise once more. But do as you can to delay him until your child has all the relics.”
“Then how do Ikillhim?”
“You will not,” Isleen hissed back. “Only a child of my lineage and the fifth heir of Shadows will know the way.”
My head tilted. “And if no child comes?”
But something warmed within me. I envisioned Krait as a father; he held our swaddled daughter to his chest and looked down at her with a smile that I’d never seen him wear before. It flashed like a memory I had not yet made.
My mother’s voice seemed to grow farther away as she cut in, “There are many ways to fulfill a single prophecy. The path you carve is uniquely yours.”
