“What?” I whisper as my body starts to shake, and I curl my hands into fists.
“They told me she broke the vow your family had promised the gods to keep. The vow was simple...never use the cursed rune, only ever protect it, and Ingrid used it on you. You died as a baby when you were born, and Ingrid could not bear to lose you, so she forced the magic out of the pendant and into your tiny body. You came back to life, and the rune was impossible to remove from your soul without killing you,” he claims, leaning closer. “Only one of your bloodline could take the magic, but when I figure out a way to kill you, which I will, I will have the power I want. You don’t deserve it.”
I climb up off the seat, taking a few steps back, feeling the world closing in on me a bit. “What happened to my grandparents?”
His smile is vicious. “I ripped them to pieces.”
And it feels like the world is knocked away and I’m floating for a second. Having a feeling my mum is dead is one thing, knowing it is another. Refusing to deal with the desperate clawing emotions in my chest, I focus on the anger—the only thing I’m willing to show this man.
“If I didn’t hate you, I would thank you for that,” I growl out.
He shrugs his shoulders and crosses his leg over the other as he stretches out. “I enjoyed killing them, but it was not enough. I made it enough by making a deal with the reaper queen to destroy your race. The Unseelie screams, the deaths, the amount of suffering helped me deal with the loss of Ingrid. One day, no one will remember your grandparents.”
“I’m not Ingrid, and I can’t replace her. You do know that, right?” I question.
He stands up and walks over to me, catching my chin with his hand. “You look like your mother, but your hair is your father’s. Your stupidity is your father’s as well.”
“My father was clearly not that stupid. He got my mother when you failed to,” I reply, and I start to laugh. His eyes burn with hate before he slaps me hard across the face, and I fall to the floor. I don’t stop laughing as I climb up and meet his cold gaze.
I did deserve that.
“I’ve been hit much harder. If you wanna make an impression, you will have to do better than that,” I suggest, well and truly pissing him off. I can see why my mum didn’t like this asshole. “And for a man who says he loved my mother, trying to kill her daughter one minute and suggesting she will be his bride the next isn’t a way to honour her memory.”
“If I can’t have her, I will have you,” he counters. “You will enjoy my company in time, and we will have an heir before I kill you.”
I’d rather die.
“I highly doubt your plan is going to work unless it involves me stabbing you until you bleed out over your throne?” I sarcastically ask. “A throne I’m going to destroy. A throne I’m going to get rid of so this world can be free from you.”
He looks so angry for a second and something else? It isn’t fear, but it’s almost acceptance, before he cools his features and steps back. “Why didn’t you ask about the four runes? Aren’t you curious?”
I brush off the sudden change of subject, even though I am interested in his strange reaction.
“Yes, but I figure one rune is more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t need to know about the others,” I reply.
“But you do,” he replies and clicks his fingers at the guards before turning back to me. “They involve you.”
“How?” I question, taking a step back. “Being honest with you, I want to get the hell out of the Otherworld and back to my apartment on Earth. Everything has been insane since I joined that damn academy.”
“I’m sorry to tell you that no matter what you did or didn’t do, this was always your fate,” he counters with a smug smile. “Your very existence was written by the gods, and they created the godless runes to stop you.”
“Stop me?” I ask, almost wanting to laugh. “The gods don’t think they can’t beat me on their own?”
I mean, I’m confident about my badass skills, but fighting a god is another matter.
“On your twenty-first birthday, the Otherworld will give you a gift,” he replies, stepping closer, and I move back. “The first child who takes the cursed rune will be blessed with the greatest power in all the worlds. She will be blessed with pure destruction.”
“Destruction sounds like a shitty gift,” I mutter, needing to lighten the tone even when I’m freaking the hell out inside.
“You will destroy everything and everyone in your path. You will destroy worlds. It is predicted, it is seen by so many, and the deaths you will cause will never be forgotten. The only way to stop you will be with the runes. The divine rune, the forsaken rune and the forgotten rune. They can take the cursed rune from you, to join them, and make you weak enough to kill.”
“You can have the damn rune! I don’t want it or this gift!” I ask just as the door opens and a man I never thought I’d see again stumbles into the room. “Holy shit.”
My whisper catches his attention, and my uncle sharply turns my way, his eyes widening when he knows who I am. I guess I do look different than I was so many years ago when he saved my life. My uncle looks thin, worn down and grubby, but I still see past it all. I see the uncle who told me fairy tales, who taught me about flowers in the garden and climbed under my bed to prove there was no monster under it when I was scared in the night. I’m running to him before I’ve thought about it, and he catches me in his grip, holding me close to his chest like he used to. He smells worse than shit, but I never want to let go.
“I prayed to the gods every day that you were safe,” he whispers. “It seems I have failed now you are here.”
“Nothing matters but the fact you’re alive,” I whisper back. I’m not alone anymore.
“As touching as this is…” The dickhead behind me has to interrupt. “Arthur, do tell your niece how you knew about the cursed rune. How you let her mother walk to her death. How you spent years pining after her only to let her die.”
Uncle Arthur pulls me behind him, and I try not to swear from the movement and the pain it causes my stomach. “I told Ingrid not to go, but, Daesyn...well, she wasn’t right. She glowed when she slept, she accidentally killed animals that came near the house, and she kept repeating strange things in a trance.”
“I did?” I whisper. Arthur looks down at me, his eyes soft.
“Yes, but I believed it was the Otherworld and its connection to the cursed rune. The runes were all made here, and the magic is so strong. I bet things were better on Earth?” he asks.
Well, except for the demon babysitter...and all the assassin training.
“Kinda.”
“Good. We knew the mortal realm was the best chance, and I was meant to come with you. But that didn’t happen,” he sadly replies before turning his gaze back to Einar. “We both failed Ingrid, it seems.”
Einar roars, and a blast of fire explodes out of his body, hitting us both hard in the chest. With no way to protect myself or my uncle, I fly across the room and hit the door hard. Embers and smoke surround me as I cough, rolling onto my side, the room spinning as I hold in a scream from the pain.