Page 207 of Commanding Blood And Bonds

“That wasn’t an answer.”

God, I hated that he was smart. Hated that he could read the space between the words as easily as I spoke them.

“I can’t provide answers I don’t have.”

“But you know where the crown is.”

“I do.”

“Were the light-wielders guarding it?”

“Why are you asking?”

I could feel Carrson tracking every word, but I didn’t take my eyes off Cyrus.

A muscle in his jaw feathered. He looked down. Looked back. The air shifted as understanding clicked into place.

Some glimmer in my mind whispered one word. Mercy.

Clearing my throat, I guessed, “Charles thought the two were connected.”

Carrson flinched. Like hearing the name made him ill. His hand wrapped around Cyrus’ wrist like he could anchor him to the present.

Voice low but steady, the prince replied, “The answers to today’s problems almost always have mirrors in the past. History is cyclical. Damned to repeat itself until we learn.”

He pointed upward. “Sol—the God. He was just a Solskari. A king with too much power. Death erased his people.”

“You’re telling me the Grim Reaper wiped light from the world?”

I studied him, watching for cracks. He just stared back—longer than I liked—and something unfamiliar stirred in my chest. I fought to crush it.

This wasn’t a place for emotions.

Only logic. And leverage.

Finally, Cyrus said, “I suspect death is no more an element than we are.”

“You sound mad.”

“Notice you said mad, not wrong. Which means that even if you won’t admit it, some part of you knows I’m right.”

“Orrr, I don’t wanna piss off the insane.”

Ignoring me entirely, he pressed on. “We might know little, but we do know this: Death doesn’t act without preamble. The Solskari genocide must have been triggered by something that pissed him off.”

King Khaos. Ruler of the necromancers. He’d emerged from solitude to rally surviving Bellpost descendants—and wipe the Solskari from the planet. Cyrus was taking his hierarchy’s interpretation of the tale quite literally.

“Every war has a catalyst. Like, maybe, the theft of one of his objects of great power.”

“The Solskari war was already raging when I last served your mother.”

“Right. But how long before you came here did you steal the crown?”

I stepped back as if his words had formed a noose around my throat. “Are you…Are you insinuating that I caused Khaos to wipe out an entire bloodline?”

“No!” he blurted, stepping forward. “But if you unearthed it—moved it—in your last life, maybe he sensed that. Where did you find it?”

“There was an entire ocean between me and that war.”