Lyr’s pounding on the door boomed through the cavern.
My mother sighed. “The human? Who cares? Aenor, I didn’t come here to kill you. I came here to rip Salem’s spine out of his throat and burn him to ash, to scatter him in the Mediterranean. I’ll do that soon enough. But Lyr is more important, I suppose.”
I stared at her. “Where the fuck is Gina?”
“Language!” She chided me.
“The fuath you control have been trying to kill me, you know.” Slowly, the pieces started shifting together in my mind. “Did you tell Melisande she could be queen of Nova Ys?”
She shrugged. “I needed someone to help me access the knights. She wouldn’t kill Lyr, but she helped me break the magical barriers in the fortress. I promised her she’d be queen. I told her that all I wanted was my athame. She believed me.” She chuckled at her own genius. “I look forward to killing her. I wanted to rip off her wings first. But it seems you got there first. You and I are very similar in some ways.”
My heart was twisting in two. Here before me was my mother, corrupted and warped by death. I felt like a little girl again, but one with a broken heart. “You shouldn’t be alive.”
She frowned at me. “What in the gods’ names happened to your accent?” Her gaze swept up and down my body. “And where are the rest of your clothes? Are you drunk again, Aenor?”
I took a step away from her, staring at the brown bloodstain on her dress. Once, it had been as familiar as home to me. A gruesome comfort. This was, after all, the woman who’d soothed me when I had nightmares, and threaded my hair with flowers when I wanted to look beautiful, who’d sweetened my water with mint when I was feeling sick. And that macabre dress had always been a part of her.
Now, the stain on her dress just seemed twisted. “I don’t understand why Lyr didn’t tell me you were alive.”
I said it more to myself than to her, but her eyes brightened. She flashed me a small, sad smile. “Well, he didn’t know, did he? He brought me back from the dead, because he knew I was the true ruler of Ys. He was always loyal, Lyr. He always believed in me. He knew that Nova Ys needed me to rule. I was the true queen. But after he brought me back, he decided there was something wrong with me, the fool. An abomination. Do I seem evil to you?”
“You do, yes.” I shot a quick glance at the door. Was Lyr going to break it down?
“Lyr decided I was too evil for this earth,” my mother went on, “and he killed me again. He’s as bad as Salem. He cut my head off. I plan to do the same to him.” Her brilliant smile gleamed in the dim light, its heartbreaking beauty almost making me forget what she really was. “But I didn’t stay dead, did I? The rules don’t apply to me anymore. I’ll rule over Ys even more brilliantly than I once did. I’m a queen with unlimited power. And it will be even better when I control the sea.”
The Daughter of the House of Meriadoc.
The prophecy rang in my mind. It wasn’t about me. It was about my mother. That little green stone that Lyr possessed was meant to stop her, not me. Lyr hadn’t understood, because he thought she was dead.
“Where is Gina, Mama? She has nothing to do with Nova Ys, and you should not be using her as leverage.”
“The fuath told you. If you delivered Lyr to me, I’d return Gina to you. But you didn’t give him over, did you? I knew you were capable of it. You’re a Morgen. You could have enchanted him and shot him with iron. Again. But you didn’t. So if anything were to happen to Gina, you’d only have yourself to blame.”
Her beauty hides her true nature. Her heart turns to ash, her soul infected by evil.
It wasn’t my dad’s blood poisoning me. It was the crime against the gods, poisoning Mama.
BOOM BOOM BOOM. Lyr’s fist pounded against the door.
She of the House of Meriadoc will bring a reign of death.
The door started to splinter with the force of Lyr’s pounding. She glanced at it, completely unperturbed. “Did you know that the Ankou has been ruling in my place? He wears a crown. The gall of him. I think I’ll nail him to a tree like his mum.” Her laugh was like two rocks rubbing together. “Let’s see who’s the abomination then.”
“Definitely the one nailing someone to a tree is the abomination, so that wouldn’t disprove it, like, at all.”
Her green eyes flashed with rage. “In any case, perhaps then he’ll tell me how to get to Nova Ys, when I’ve hurt him so much he can barely remember his name. Then I’ll get my kingdom.”
Mine, a voice in my mind roared. My kingdom.
My mother was a living nightmare, and her body was beginning to glow with a powerful, pearly magic.
Lyr’s fist was fracturing the door, and she smiled at it. “I came here for Salem, and so did you, even if you didn’t know his name. I came here to kill him. You came here to get your athame back. It seems he’s drawn us all in, like planets orbiting a star. We’ve all converged. Either Salem is a force of nature, or the gods are blessing me by giving me everything I want at once.”
What she wanted was to nail Lyr to a tree until he told her the truth. And he was coming right to her.
“Lyr!” I shouted. “Run!”
I didn’t want to see what she’d do to him.
He didn’t listen to me, because listening to me wasn’t his style. The door shattered, and he rushed in.
“The stone!” I shouted to him. “I need it.”
The indent in the athame’s hilt was the perfect size for the stone.
Without asking a single question, Lyr tossed the green stone to me. I snapped the stone into the hilt, and power charged down my arm.
Enraged, my mother started to run for me, but Lyr stepped in front of me protectively.
Golden light beamed from Lyr’s body, wrapping around her in tendrils like vines.
I started chanting in the dialect of Ys, working on the most powerful attack spell that I knew. “Egoriel glasgor lieroral—”
My mother cut me off, shrieking a spell of her own, and murky magic stained the air around her, like ink sliding through water.
Her spell’s impact hit me immediately, and nausea began to climb in my gut. It felt like she was making us rot from the inside out. Her magic revolted me, and I clutched my gut.
I stepped out from behind Lyr, working on my spell. I would need a clear shot at her, shooting the magic through the athame.
Now that I was closer to her, I could see her eyes weren’t the same color. They were the murky green of seawater, and the light in them moved like phosphorescence of the deep.
“I should have killed you at birth,” she hissed.
A flash of light filled the room as Lyr’s spell strengthened, the magic wrapping around my mother’s neck.
“I’m sorry that I brought you back.” Lyr jerked her up in the air with his magic.
“Egoriel glasgor lieroral ban—” The spell started to charge down my arm, crackling with ancient power.
But my mother wasn’t done. She threw back her head, opened her mouth, and screamed, a high pitched song—music to curdle your blood and turn your bones to ash. With her voice, my nerves exploded in pain.
Gods have mercy, make it stop. Lyr was trying to crush her throat, and his grip looked brutal, but it didn’t seem to stop her shriek.