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

52. Cyara

52

CYARA

“Tell us.” Cyara used every decade of her elemental upbringing to keep her voice even so she did not spook Diana. Although the woman had been uncharacteristically calm since their arrival on the island, Cyara was loath to push her. The pressure might break at any moment, and who knew how long it would take for her to recover.

“A witch at your mercy must answer three questions truthfully,” Diana said as her fingers moved slowly along the perimeter of the circular altar. Percival’s expression was more than skeptical, though his eyes followed her fingertips, clearly tracking her progress. Whatever she felt or saw, it had meaning to her. That was enough for Cyara.

“The seeker of the grail must put themselves at the mercy of the witches who forged it. To prove yourself worthy, you must offer three truths freely.”

Cyara’s wing twitched, but she did not feel the pain. “And then?”

“That is all it says.”

Cyara swallowed, turning over the instructions in her mind. The witch-altar was a sort of vengeance for the curse in their blood that required the witches to give truth against their will. In order to gain their most precious object, the Grail, the seeker would have to offer freely what the witches had been forced to give again and again for thousands of years.

“Any truths?” Percival lifted one dark brow, the moonlight softening the red undertones of his ochre skin.

“Three truths offered freely,” Diana repeated. She folded her hands neatly in front of her, as she always did. Cyara suspected it was an affectation learned in Avalon, reminiscent as it was of the priestesses.

“They must be significant truths. Hard truths,” Cyara mused. Otherwise, there would be no challenge.

Merlin had said that only the worthy could retrieve the grail. She had also implied that it did not have to be Veyka herself who retrieved it in order to wield the Sacred Trinity in its entirety. Which meant that Cyara would not leave the cursed island without it.

“The chalice was forged by and entrusted to the witches,” Cyara said. “Originally.” Before the fae Ancestors had stripped them of power and their sacred object. “One of you should try first.”

Perhaps that was the reason Diana had felt called to this place. Perhaps it was her destiny to retrieve the grail. With every moment that passed, as the moon climbed in the inky blue sky and the stars appeared in full force, it was more and more difficult for Cyara to suppress her excitement. Her stomach bubbled, her wings twitched. A lifetime of elemental training was quickly melting away.

She was trembling as she laid a hand on Diana’s forearm. “You are strong.”

It was the truth. But it also felt like a manipulation. Cyara needed to keep Diana from faltering in this moment more than any that had come before.

Diana licked her lips. “Before I was stolen from Avalon, I was apprentice to the Lady of the Lake.”

Cyara’s mouth popped open.

That was a truth. And one she did not plan on telling Veyka about.

Percival harrumphed, his disapproval clear. But Diana continued.

“I am banned from returning. But I still wish to be a priestess.”

Once, Cyara’s heart would have broken. But now the painful admission only kindled hope for her own friend in her heart.

Diana laid a hand on the flat sandstone top of the altar.

“I still have nightmares of the months I spent in,” she paused, her throat bobbing. “In captivity.”

Cyara’s breath caught in her throat. She waited, expecting… something. Anything. For the stone to start to glow, for the altar and the temple to transform into the glowing, magical edifice that Diana had described.

But nothing happened. The surface of the altar remained unbroken. No grail appeared.

Cyara looked up at Diana, then Percival, hoping that perhaps they saw something she did not. But the latter jerked his head to the side.

Cyara braced herself for Diana’s reaction, curling her fingers into her fists and tightening her wings. But the woman simply stepped back and turned her face to her brother. “You must try, Percival.”

Percival stared at her as if she had suggested he sacrifice himself on the altar, lifeblood and all.

Cyara lifted a brow in challenge. There were two ways to get Percival to do anything—for Diana, or for his own pride. “Afraid, Percival?”

The stare he’d given his sister turned to a glare just for Cyara. She took it easily, without even a flicker of her wings.

“I abhor chocolate.”

Diana made a little squawk of disapproval.

Cyara carried a small knife attached to her belt. It was her only weapon, other than the talons of her harpy. Her fingers itched to stab it into Percival’s smug face.

She waited for the reaction, for the softer part of herself to respond to that urge for violence. But her anger only sharpened.

“Take this seriously, or all of your sister’s suffering has been for nothing .”

His upper lip curled, but Cyara did not miss the color draining from his cheeks, leaving his skin ashen in the cool-toned moonlight.

But he did not flinch from meeting her eyes as he gave his second truth. “I dream of what it would feel like to kill every person who has dared to hold my sister captive.”

The harpy inside of her screeched, tearing at the surface. How dare he threaten Veyka, Osheen, Arran, Lyrena, even her? There would be no stopping the monster this time. Cyara felt her wings flare wide, her fingertips curling at the push of the talons—

“These truths are meant to be painful,” Diana said softly. Her hand landed on Cyara’s arm, soft and light as a feather, but still there .

The harpy receded instantly, leaving a hollowness in her place. She was the one who’d fallen apart—and Diana had provided comfort. Her reality had been shifting for months now. But as Diana’s hand fell away, Cyara felt the final pieces begin to slide into place. She listened through a veil as Percival offered his last truth.

“The fate of this realm does not concern me. Only that of my sister,” he sucked in a breath, “And myself.”

No one moved.

The grail did not appear.

Cyara did not wait for the surprise or disappointment, because she had not expected Percival to be successful. If either of the siblings was capable of earning the grail, it would have been Diana. But the chalice had not come forth—they had not been judged worthy.

The only thing that Cyara felt was panic.

If they were not enough, then she certainly was not. A year ago, she would have felt differently. Before she’d lost her sisters and her father, before the harpy had awoken within her, before the soft, pure parts of her soul had withered away to darkness.

Her mind began to jump ahead. When she failed, she would have no choice but to use the communication crystal and admit to Veyka that she’d disobeyed her orders. She would beg her queen to come here, to this cursed isle. Maybe if she begged, Veyka would listen. Maybe if Veyka understood what her death, her obsession with sacrifice, would mean to those who loved her… maybe she would be willing to try for the grail herself.

Veyka would never regard her the same. But Cyara could bear that shame. She could not bear her friend’s loss.

One hand slid into the pocket sown into her gray tunic, finding the thick shape of the communication crystal and closing around it.

Neither Percival nor Diana had been able to retrieve the grail. Cyara had thought that their witch-blood would give them an advantage, a natural affinity. But maybe the opposite was true. Maybe it would only answer to a non-witch.

Or to someone whose soul had fully descended into darkness.

There was only one way to find out.

“I have poisoned, betrayed, and lied in service of my queen. My first truth is that I do not regret any of it.”

Cyara’s voice shook, but somehow she managed not to trip over the words. That precious elemental calm deserted her completely, replaced by every emotion she’d kept carefully suppressed for the last year. They gnawed their way out, insistent, demanding, until her lips trembled and tears spilled down her cheeks.

“My second is that she did not ask it of me. Every action I have taken has been of my own free will.”

No one had forced her to become the harpy. Gawayn murdered her sisters. But when the harpy awoke inside of her, Cyara had welcomed her. She’d been fire and light her whole life. When the darkness came, she let in willingly.

She lifted one hand—the one that did not clutch the communication crystal—and laid it on canter of the sandstone altar. Her lids lowered until they closed. A thousand truths swam behind her eyes, each more terrible than the last. Each a fragment of a broken soul. But there was only one worth giving.

“I will sacrifice everyone on this island to get the grail and save my queen.”

She felt Percival shove Diana behind him. Heard the woman gasp as the female she’d considered her friend gave voice to the betrayal that had become a part to her. But Cyara did not move.

She did not have to.

The altar did—bathing her in a blast of warmth, lifting her hand.

Cyara did not dare to open her eyes, afraid that what she felt under her fingers was another trick. But the gasps of the two humans told her the truth. The rim she felt beneath her fingers was real.

She opened her eyes to watch her own fingers curl around the grail.