“Your mother escaped” is all he said after he returned from the Queensmoot.
“I’m not entirely surprised.” When I had a choice between killing myself, killing my mother, or finding someone with the power to break the curse she’d cast on me, there was a reason I chose the latter and sold my soul to the Mother of Night, so to speak.
My mother didn’t become Queen of Asturia through chance. And she hasn’t held onto that position for over a thousand years out of kindness. Or weakness.
I’m not strong enough to overthrow her, but there was a part of me that hoped he was.
“She cursed me,” Thiago growls, his voice roughening as he lowers his fingers to his sleeve and starts unbuttoning it. Smooth skin reveals itself. Tugging the linen up his arm, he bears his forearm. “At first I thought nothing of it. I thought she’d missed. But this started appearing a week or two after we returned.”
Dark ink starts to penetrate through his skin as if it’s rising from deep within. Or no, not ink, but a shadow. A curse written deep within his veins. It starts at the pulse point of his inner wrist and curls its way up his forearm, like a twining bramble aiming for his heart.
And he hid it.
Everything within me turns to ice and I grab his shirt, tearing his sleeve open over the heavy bulge of his biceps. “How far does it go?”
There’s no emotion in his voice. “Shoulder. It’s been working its way slowly up my arm for weeks.”
If it hits his heart, I’ll lose him.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
A growl echoes in my throat. “Stop. Trying. To. Protect. Me. Do I look like some poor innocent maid who needs you to make her life all sunshine and roses? I’m not afraid of the truth.”
“It had nothing to do with shielding you from the truth.” Shadows darken his green eyes. “You need to focus on finding the crown.”
“We need to focus on stopping this! My mother’s spells kill, curse you!”
“It’s not meant to kill me.”
“Oh no, it’s just a nice, friendly little kiss she slapped you with. Maybe you’ll start growing daisies in your hair. Or fur. Maybe I’ll wake up one day with a bane in my bed.”
“I’m not going to grow fur. It will hit my wards. It’s meant to fracture them and unleash the Darkness within me.”
Dark shapes whirl across the skin that’s exposed. Savage, lethal shapes that bite and snarl. I can never see them in their entirety and that’s probably a good thing.
Thiago sighs, and then golden runes stamp their way up his skin, glowing from within as if he’s stripping his illusions away, inch by inch. “These are my wards. They were inked into my skin with an old magic in order to contain the Darkness within me.”
The curse writhes its way between them, and though I can see hints of golden-red where it seems to be eating its way through some of those runes, the rest of them trace stoic patterns over his olive skin. They’re like a supernova of light painted over his skin, a tangled web streaming between each point as if to capture something and contain it within him.
I don’t recognize any of the markings.
They’re nothing like the runes marked into the Hallow stones.
Nor are they anything seelie, and I’ve spent months searching through books about old lore, so I should know.
“Your mother hit me with the type of curse that was designed to incapacitate me and me alone. It’s not meant to weaken me, but to strengthen the daemons inside me. She knows what I am, Vi. And she knew exactly how to try and destroy me from within. If I was weaker, if my wards were simpler, then she might have gotten to me already. They might have broken free.”
“They?”
“These,” he replies, placing his hand over one of his tattoos. “The souls I carry within me. Thousands of years ago they were an ancient primordial race that hunted the night. If they worked together, they would have consumed every mortal soul on this world, but they don’t. They fight among themselves and hunt each other down. The first I knew of them was when I was eighteen and this creature of darkness attacked me. It nearly killed me, but I was drawn to the light within its chest. I… consumed it somehow, and the shadows swarming me evaporated. I could feel it within me though, yearning to be freed. Desperate to feed. It was a constant battle to keep it contained.”
“The Darkness,” I whisper.
“Yes.” His lashes lower, obscuring his eyes as if to hide the flash of hatred I see there. “Others came. I consumed them all. And I began to realize I could sense them out there, because there’s a heart of Darkness within me too. It yearns to hunt for those of its own kind. The more you consume, the greater your powers bloom.” Anguish touches his face. “I was young. I was foolish. I wanted strength. And I didn’t realize that with such power comes temptation. The more you take, the more you want. It’s a constant grinding ache. Hunger. Need.” A little flame flares to life in his dark irises. “The creature inside me grew stronger. Sometimes I would wake in a strange place with no recollection of how I got there, and I would be covered in blood.” He stares at his palms as if seeing something else. “I had to contain it. I had to contain them. And so I went to the Morai, and they told me of a blood mage who might be able to ward it all away within me.”
Until now. “But Mother’s curse is eating away at your wards.”
He meets my gaze. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I had it under control.”
“You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means. That curse has
