Tale of the Heart Queen (Artefacts of Ouranos #4)

Chapter 31

C HAPTER 31

W e sleep late the following day, desperately needing rest. My eyes peel open to the smell of coffee and bacon wafting up from downstairs. We had only a few bites of food before we passed out, and my stomach growls. The sound is enough to wake Nadir, whose lashes flutter as he gives me a lazy smile.

“Morning, Lightning Bug.”

“Morning,” I say, snuggling up to him.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m tired and sore, but I’m so happy you’re here,” I say as my stomach protests again. “And hungry.”

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” he asks before he lifts the covers and scoots out of bed.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back.” He digs into the pile of clothing provided by the innkeeper, finding a pair of pants and a tunic that are a bit tight for his large frame.

Then he leaves the room, and I take my turn digging through the clothing, finding a pair of soft brown leggings and a smaller tunic that fit well enough. There’s something about fresh, clean clothes and fresh, clean skin that feels like the most incredible luxury after the dirt and heat of the sand and the forest and that sweat-slicked escape I barely survived.

A moment later, Nadir appears carrying a tray laden with breakfast. He sets it on a small table in the corner and we sit down across from one another. I almost weep at the taste of coffee and how my teeth sink into the greasy ecstasy of buttered toast. I used to be so acquainted with hunger, but I’ve grown softer since then. I can’t grit my way through it like I used to, but I refuse to feel bad about that. No one should ever have to feel that way.

“So, tell me what happened,” Nadir says, and I sigh. I need to tell him so many things, but so much of it scares me. “Go back to the beginning. How about when you killed me?”

My expression drops, and he reaches over to grab my wrist.

“Lor. It’s okay.”

I rub my face with my other hand. “It’s not. I thought I—”

“But you didn’t. I’m here.”

“Yes, but I fear it made things even more complicated.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have a lot of things to tell you.”

“Okay, I’m listening.”

With my hands wrapped around my mug, I take a long sip of coffee, preparing myself. I tell Nadir about waking up in his father’s cart and everything that came after it.

“I broke through a pair of those cuffs—the glowing blue ones? Tyr was wearing them, too.”

“You mean arcturite?” Nadir asks, his eyebrows climbing.

“You had them on, too, but I suppose Zerra must have removed them.”

“You broke through arcturite.” He sits back in his chair, his voice full of disbelief.

“Your father commented on that too. He had more when he tried to recapture me. Is that a big deal?”

Nadir laughs and shakes his head. “It’s a really fucking big deal. Arcturite is one of few things that can cut Fae off from their magic. It’s technically illegal, but obviously, anyone can get their hands on it with enough money and resources. You shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

“Oh,” I say. Okay then. That’s an interesting development.

“So you have no control over your magic?” Nadir asks me next.

“I can control my healing but not the lightning. It’s just a raging torrent. All or nothing. What did you do when you helped it?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he says, “It just felt right. I could sense it spinning out, and I used mine to soothe it.”

“You might need to do that again.”

“Of course. But we’ll want to figure out how to control it without my help.”

I nod .

“And then what?” he asks. “What did you mean that killing me might have made things more complicated?”

“It’s all a blur, but meeting Zerra wasn’t the first time I ended up in the Evanescence,” I say. I go on to explain what I saw in that strange room with the seven original rulers of Ouranos. The creation of the Artefacts and the arks. And how the first Aurora King fell from grace.

Nadir is silent for a moment. “So you’re telling me my great-great many-times-over grandfather is the Lord of the Underworld.” He snorts and shakes his head. “Why . . . doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Don’t do that. You know that has nothing to do with who you are, Nadir.”

“Do I, though?” He blows out a breath. “She called me Herric. I think . . .”

“He hurt her,” I say. “Yeah. She said his name to me, too.”

I squeeze his hand and then let go as I twist my fingers together, because I’m not sure how to tell him the next part. He’s silent after I explain that I think the Empyrium want me to replace Zerra, his expression stunned.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. They said something about me being a queen without a queendom.”

“That’s . . .” He trails off. “I’m not sure what to say. If that’s what you want—”

“I don’t,” I say, interrupting him. “I don’t want that. We’ll find another way, and I will fight this with everything I have.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” he says, clutching his chest. “Because I was about to lose my mind.” His eyes darken. “No one is taking you from me.”

I give him a soft smile.

“Does Zerra know about their plan?” he asks.

“I’m not sure,” I reply. “Did she say anything?”

His expression darkens. “I think she knows, Lor.”

“Tell me what happened.”

He blows out a breath. “Your story is pretty crazy, but mine is up there too.”

Nadir then recounts his time in Zerra’s Palace as my hatred of her spirals deeper and deeper.

“She seems to have a vendetta against you and I couldn’t figure out what you might have possibly done to her. She said something about you being dead soon, and I lost my shit, but I got nothing else out of her.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “So she definitely knows. But how?”

“This Empyrium must have told her?”

“But why would they do that?”

“I’m not sure,” he says.

“What else happened?”

He continues speaking, recounting how he woke up and how he broke out of Zerra’s palace. The sadness in his voice when he recounts his time with his grandfather breaks my heart.

“Whose voice was in the Torch?” I ask when he tells me about how Garnet was forced to descend.

“I can’t even begin to guess,” Nadir says. “If we knew, it might answer some questions about what my father wants from you. ”

I shake my head. “We never really discussed what Cloris said. She claimed she went to your father and revealed me and Tristan and Willow, but what did he want? What did she promise him?”

Nadir presses a thumb to his lip. “When you first disappeared from Nostraza, he didn’t seem to care other than making sure you were dead,” he says, and I watch as he continues. “But then he changed his tune and suddenly seemed intent on me finding you.”

“So maybe Cloris promised him something—whether the ark or something else—but when he couldn’t get to my magic, he gave up.” He looks up at me. “And something happened during those weeks you were looking for me.”

“Maybe,” he says as we both fall into silence.

“Zerra tried to force you into having sex with her?” I ask after a minute, my voice low and deadly.

He sighs. “Yeah. The extra fucked-up part is it’s obvious that anyone she brings up from the surface eventually succumbs to this weird kind of numbness. All her servants and helpers were like ghosts—present but not really there. After a living person spends enough time up there, that’s who they become.”

“I’ll kill her,” I growl, and Nadir’s face cracks.

“I love it when you’re possessive, Heart Queen.”

“I mean it,” I say. “She was already on my list, but now—”

“Lor, if she dies, then does the Empyrium get what they want from you?”

I sigh and take a sip of coffee.

“I had considered that,” I say, my heart feeling heavy. If this fate is inescapable, then I’ve been contenting myself that maybe Nadir could live with me. But even if he was willing to abandon his life on the surface, I couldn’t let him suffer the fate he just described. I also tell him what D’Arcy said about the death of one’s mate because now I’m wondering if the same thing might affect him if I’m sent to the Evanescence for good.

“You weren’t kidding when you said it was complicated,” Nadir says with a weary sigh as I offer him a weak smile.

We both fall into silence as we pick at our plates. I was starving when I woke up, but I’ve lost my appetite in the face of the ever-mounting odds piling up against us.

Then he gives me a serious look. “How did you destroy her palace? What did you sacrifice?”

My brow furrows, and I let out a deep breath.

“What is it?” he asks.

“You,” I say. “When she refused to give you back, I thought I’d never see you again, and I wanted to hurt her. When she said Herric’s name, I realized she never intended to release you. So I lost control—I truly thought you were gone forever.”

He slides from his seat and drops to a knee, his hands folding with mine. We press our foreheads together, needing only to hear our breath and feel our hearts beat.

“So now what?” Nadir says after a moment.

“We stick to the plan and head back to Aphelion.”

I look at him and nod, neither of us saying what’s next. We have to find the Crown so I can ascend. We need to get the arks of Aphelion and then Heart. That means confronting Rion once and for all. I started in The Aurora as a child and ended up in the Sun Palace, but everything keeps pointing me back to where I spent so many miserable years.

My gaze drifts north. Both Rion and Zerra want the ark of Heart for what I can only surmise are very different reasons.

Either way, we must get it back.

“Back to Aphelion again,” I say.

Hopefully, not for the last time.