Queen of Blood and Vengeance (Secrets of the Faerie Crown #4)

12. Cyara

12

CYARA

Taking him back to Veyka’s quarters was a risk, but it was also where she had the least chance of being disturbed. Unlike the communal sitting room or the bedchamber Cyara shared with Lyrena on the other side of the suite, no one dared to enter the royal bedroom. Cyara saw to all of the queen’s needs herself, including changing the sheets and cleaning the room. Back in Baylaur, she’d shared the duties with her sisters. Since Gawayn and Roksana’s massacre, she’d seen to it on her own.

The memory of Carly and Charis’ deaths bolstered her determination. Carly. Charis. Parys. Her father. She would not lose another beloved friend or family member. She would not lose Veyka.

Percival stood only a few feet into the room, waiting as Cyara closed the door behind them, staring around the bedchamber but rooted to the spot. He’d never been invited in here, Cyara knew. At least he wasn’t pissing on Veyka’s bed or something equally ridiculous. To say there was no love lost between the man and the queen was a gross miscarriage of truth.

“Sit at the table.” Cyara softened her order by walking to the tea station set up to one side of the uncomfortable wooden throne Veyka avoided at all costs. “I will make us something to drink.”

From the corner of her vision, she watched Percival move woodenly to the small round table positioned in the corner of the room. He took the seat that Arran had occupied mere hours before.

A flick of her fingers and a flame rose beneath the kettle. She turned her back so he could not see as she retrieved the bottle she’d slipped into her pocket while perusing the priestess’s collection. He was none the wiser as she tipped a palmful of leaves into her mortar, crushing them along with the rest of the fragrant blend. She set it to steep.

“Have you and Diana made any plans for where you will go?” Cyara asked with feigned casualness, her hip resting against the straight wooden throne.

Percival’s eyes narrowed. “I was not aware we were at liberty to do so.”

True enough. But she wasn’t intent on an argument about those particulars. “If you could, where would you go? Back to Avalon?”

She did not have him at her mercy yet; he was perfectly free to lie to her. But she’d asked these same questions of Diana in passing. And while they technically shared their witch blood, Diana contained none of her brother’s predilection to prevaricate.

“A return to Avalon is not possible.” Percival left the second half of his sentence unspoken— they will not have us .

An internal clock refined by thousands of pots of brewed told her that the tea was ready. She poured them each a cup. “The human realm, then?”

Percival accepted his and drank without hesitation.

Bile rose up in the back of Cyara’s throat, but she did not lift the tea to her own lips to stifle it.

“Somewhere deserted. Far away from any beings that might be infected by the succubus.” Percival set down his teacup. “Human or fae.”

It was a clever plan. Percival was clever, for all that his good judgement had been impeded by his desire to protect his sister.

He realized quicker than Cyara estimated.

“You are not drinking.” His eyes darted to her untouched cup. Then back to her face, one hand falling to his stomach, where the first pangs of pain were surely making their presence known. “What did you give me?”

“Hellroot. In small doses, it merely causes indigestion. However, the amount in your tea will be fatal within the hour,” Cyara said calmly. She lifted another vial. “If I do not administer the antidote.”

Percival’s eyes flashed with anger, but he did not try to get up or get away. “What happened to chains? Were they not sufficient to have me at your mercy?”

She tucked the vial of antidote away in the heavy folds of the gown she’d crafted herself. It was not as comfortable and airy as the ones she’d worn in Baylaur, but it was infinitely better suited to the snow that had begun falling outside of Eilean Gayl.

“This might take more than three questions,” Cyara admitted. “I need to know about the Sacred Trinity, and I do not have time for half-truths or bartering.”

Percival made a sound halfway between a growl and a sigh. “Then you’d better be quick about it.”

“Will you tell me the legend of the Sacred Trinity, as you learned it in Avalon?” Cyara asked. Her voice did not shake.

Neither did Percival’s as he answered, without hesitation, without fighting the compulsion in his blood— “Yes.”

He picked up the teacup again, swirling the dregs around and around. For someone whose stomach was roiling with poison, he took several breaths before he began to speak. When he did, it was with the monotone syllables of recitation:

“The Sacred Trinity was forged in Avalon so long ago that not even the priestesses know the original creators. Tens of thousands of years. Long before your Great War. It took great power to forge the sacred objects—the power of all combined. Faerie, witch, and human. The sword will only present itself to the worthy wielder. No other will be able to pull it from the stone. The bearer of the scabbards shall be protected from injury. Not a drop of their blood may be spilled while they wear them. The chalice gives life. Drink from it once, and you are healed of any ailment. Sip from it forever, and you shall never die. It is said when they are united, the bearer will be master of death.”

Cyara did not interrupt him, though a thousand questions sprang to her mind.

She compartmentalized her anger as she began to ask them. “That part about power combined—faerie, witch, and human—why have you never mentioned it before? You were there when I was scouring the priestess’ collection of journals for any information about the Sacred Trinity.”

She expected an irreverent shrug. Instead, Percival frowned. “You did not have all three items. I did not think it was worth divulging extra information that could be of used to barter for Diana’s life later.”

Honesty. He’d answered her honestly. Cyara swallowed down a lump of emotion. “Did you mean what you said before? That you believe there is a connection between the ‘master of death’ and Veyka’s void power?” It was the question that had haunted Cyara’s every breath since they’d found that last stone in the ring of monoliths—the one that declared Veyka must die to banish the succubus forever.

Percival nodded. Whatever anger he felt about her ruse with the poison, there was none of it in his eyes now. The dark brown orbs were intent, emphatic, in a way Cyara had rarely seen except when he defended his sister. “It cannot be a coincidence that she already bears two of the sacred objects. And she even spoke of the third, the chalice. About one in Baylaur.”

Cyara recalled the conversation. The chalice where Veyka and Arran’s blood was joined during the Offering.

It cannot be that easy… The chalice was in Baylaur. True, the goldstone palace was overrun with succubus. But with her void power, Veyka could be in and out in a heartbeat. Even if it necessitated a search, surely it was worth the chance at saving her life…

Another thought dawned in her mind.

“Why do you know so much about the Sacred Trinity? We have never even heard about it in Annwyn, yet you can recite the tale word for word.”

This time, Percival did sigh. It was so heavy, so full of regret and pain and anguish that for a moment, Cyara regretted the poison. He and Diana were caught in this war as well, against their will. And nearly powerless to defend themselves.

Powerless, except for the witch blood in their veins.

“There was a time in my life when I sought out any connection to my witch heritage,” Percival admitted. He still stared intently at the tea—the tea that would kill him soon. But his words remained unrushed. “Even the brief mention of a witch’s power combining with that of the humans and the fae was enough to hold my interest.”

Cyara handed him the vial.

Only after he had swallowed it down did she ask another question. One he could answer or ignore of his own free will. “How did you and Diana come to Avalon?”

His chest moved in a soundless, joyless chuckle. “Annwyn may have cast out the witches, but in the human realm many still worship them. Every year a sacrifice is made. Men compete for the privilege, to be the one to cross the strait and present himself on Tirbyas.”

Cyara envisioned the map she’d studied of Annwyn in her youth. “Tirbyas. The Isle of the Dead?”

Percival nodded, now inspecting the empty vial rather than his teacup. “It has the same name in the human realm as it does in Annwyn.”

She did not want to ask; but she’d begun this. “What sort of sacrifice?”

Percival lifted his eyes to hers. “The sort that bears children born without fathers.”

“I see.” By habit, trained by years of comforting herself, she almost lifted the poisoned tea to her lips. She stood and dashed it into the fire. “You are twins, then?” she asked.

Percival rose, dumping the remains of his cup as well. “Born of subsequent years. Children born of such couplings are rare. Twice in as many years… it was a special circumstance. Or so the priestesses thought. Our mother did not give many details when she deposited us as babies on the lakeshore.” His voice hollowed out as he spoke. “Witches do not make good mothers.”

“I imagine not,” Cyara said softly. If she’d thought for a second he’d accept her comfort, she would have reached for him. But she had no right to even offer it, not when mere moments before she’d poisoned him. Something he was taking uncharacteristically in stride.

For several minutes, there was only the sound of the crackling fire and the soft rustle of her wings.

Percival and Diana’s origin was interesting and heartbreaking. But as far as Cyara could tell, it had no bearing on the current struggle with the succubus, nor on the quest for the Sacred Trinity.

Finally, Percival stepped away. He retreated for the door and Cyara made no move to stop him. But when the door opened, yet did not close again, she lifted her eyes to find him staring at her.

“You could have just asked,” he said. “You wouldn’t have even needed the poison.”

Then he broke her gaze and left.

Cyara dropped to her knees before the fire. She had no tears left to cry, but she pressed her face into her palms nonetheless.

She did not move when she heard the door open—the one that connected Veyka and Arran’s bedchamber to the main sitting room. The one that had been ajar when she first led Percival into the room.

“You heard everything,” she said between her fingers.

“Yes,” Osheen said, coming to stand beside her. His boots were black leather. “It might not be the right chalice. And even if Veyka bears all three, it might not be enough. It is a guess, and a tenuous one at that. This could change nothing.”

“Or everything,” she said softly.

Osheen did not argue. She let her hands fall away. One of the legs of his trousers was torn at the edge. The loose fabric had been dragged through mud that had dried to a thick brown slash.

“Was it worth it?”

Cyara bit her lip. She knew precisely what he meant.

The cost to her soul, to do such things—to poison someone who had done her no harm? Her answer was unequivocal. With careful movements learned from a lifetime of counterbalancing her heavy wings, she rose to stand. She looked directly into Osheen’s eyes as she answered. “If she lives, then yes.”

Face to face, they were much closer than she’d realized. Mere inches separated them. If she were to light a fire with her fingertips, it would surely incinerate the charged air between them.

Osheen’s gaze slid from her eyes, down the column of copper plait that hung over her shoulder. “You stopped braiding pearls into your hair.”

“I try not to look too long in mirrors these days.” She swallowed. “I am afraid of who might look back at me.”

“War changes everyone. Those that survive it.”

Osheen lifted his hand as if he would touch the end of her braid. When his eyes came back to her face, she knew that touch would be just the beginning.

She wanted to let him. More than anything in that desperate moment, Cyara wanted to tilt her cheek into his palm, to let the caress she’d imagined a hundred times in her dreams finally become reality.

But war changed everyone, as he’d said. And she had already been changed irrevocably by her part in it. How that fit with another being, Cyara was not sure. She did not know if she would ever be ready to find out.

She stepped back. “I must go.”

There were a thousand excuses she could have offered. Tending to Veyka’s belongings. Assisting Lady Elayne, who was busy rearranging the castle to provide long-term accommodations to the elemental refugees. The Ancestors knew she ought to look in on her mother, who despite her endless strength was still grieving.

But Cyara gave none of them. None were sufficient to ease the ache or longing. So instead she walked out without another word.