The Crown Prophecy

Chapter 19

T he man stepped forward , clad in leather armor so dark it seemed to disappear into the night. Age had weathered his face, and I could see pale white scars on every exposed inch of skin.

Fear seized in my chest as he took a step forward, the steel at his side clanking as he moved. I shot a panicked glance at my mother, the reality of the situation not quite catching up with me.

“It’s all right, Quinn,” she smiled saccharinely. “Helmund is going to help you.”

“Help me?” I echoed. “Where’s Vanessa?”

“Don’t worry about that now, dearest,” Mother dismissed. “We have more pressing matters to attend to.” My eyes darted back and forth between her and the man, unwilling to turn my back on either one of them.

“Now, I understand the last few months have been quite trying for you,” she continued. “I can’t blame you entirely for falling under the king’s spell. The castle, the riches, the magic . . .” She gave me a pointed look. “But these things are simply not for you. Helmund is going to help us . . . reset, shall we say? I’ve been assured he’s one of the most talented Siphons alive.”

“What are you talking about?” I backed toward the door only to find that pulling the lever did nothing. The man, Helmund, smiled smugly.

“We’re going to sort out your little magic problem,” he sneered, prowling toward me with a predatory look that had the hair on the back of my neck standing up. “Don’t be scared, girl. Extracting it will be painless.”

Extracting it? It sounded impossible, too horrifying to be true.

He held up a vial, no bigger than a hummingbird, and wiggled it between his fingers. “And after we Siphon Captain Maddox’s Gift as well, you won’t remember any of this.”

Making sense of the words, I blanched. Terror pounded her fists inside my rib cage, begging me to run, but there was nowhere I could go. My mother’s eyes watched me in cold indifference.

“Mother,” I pleaded, “don’t do this. I know you hate magic, but only because you don’t understand. It’s life, Mother. It’s part of me. If you rip it out, it will take a piece of my soul with it.”

I scanned her face, praying for any sign of softness or understanding, but she only rolled her eyes.

“Gods, you sound just like your father,” she spat. “Tiernan was always going on about the power of magic and its ‘oneness with life.’” Her words were cruel and mocking, but I could have sworn I saw a flash of hurt in her eyes as she spoke the unfamiliar name.

“Mother,” I started slowly, suddenly worried she wasn't in her right mind, “Father’s name is Otto.”

The look she gave me was one of pure disdain, as if she were looking at me but seeing someone else. Perhaps she was bewitched. The thought was terrifying and, strangely, slightly comforting. If she was being controlled, maybe it wasn’t really my mother trying to rob me of an intrinsic part of who I was.

“Who is Tiernan?” I probed gently, flicking my glance to Helmund, who was now grinning at me as if he was in on a hilarious joke.

“You were always a smart girl, if a little too romantic for my liking. I thought you’d have figured it out by now,” Mother said. “Of course, to be fair, everything we did to keep your Gift from manifesting worked so well that you didn’t have much of a clue. A little chip of hyalperite stone in the front door frame of the cottage worked like a charm.”

I took a sharp breath, piecing it together at once. Hyalperite–an ugly name for the horrifying stone I’d heard tales of Falerin using in interrogations during the war. It was real. Horror coiled in my gut as I realized the extent of her betrayal–of what she had kept from me.

“After all,” she said, “I couldn’t have you turning out like him. ”

“Who. Is. Tiernan?” I ground out, holding her gaze with as much ferocity as I could muster.

“Your father,” she sighed as if disappointed in me. “I just told you, Quinn.”

“My father?” My heart was quicker to put the pieces together than my mind, and all the air fled my lungs as I took in the enormity of it.

“Your biological one, anyway. In the end, he was nothing more than a shameful mark on my history. So I erased him,” she said matter-of-factly.

My face fell in abject horror as Mother put a hand over her eyes, massaging both of her temples as if I had vexed her.

“Now you’ve upset me by making me talk of him. He doesn’t deserve my memory. Thank the gods you won’t recall any of this and we can move on with our lives. Helmund,” she gestured to me, urging him to begin.

Helmand’s gaze widened menacingly as I pressed my back flat against the door once more. This couldn’t happen. I threw up my arms and imagined a shield settling around my body, but my magic didn’t move to make it a reality. Was there hyalperite here too? Or was I simply so inept that I couldn’t protect myself in my most vulnerable state?

Panic threatened to take hold as I frantically took stock of my situation: Evander was missing and I was locked in a room with a strange man who wanted to take my magic. A Siphon, Mother had called him. I tried to calm down my racing heart so I could think clearly.

Someone would notice I was missing. Vanessa was looking for me. I just needed to delay them long enough for her to realize what had happened. Anger bubbled up, scalding and all consuming. For once, the fact that my Mother never backed down from a fight and never allowed anyone the last word felt like a blessing instead of a curse.

“How could you lie to me? For twenty-four years?” I baited.

“Oh, Quinn, I never lied to you. I simply omitted his existence. Otto adopted you when we married, so when I told you he was your father, I wasn’t telling any untruths.” The logic was twisted and wrong, but she wasn’t worked up enough about it. I needed her to fight back.

“And what did Tiernan do to deserve this? Were you truly so narrow-minded that you cast him out for nothing more than having different beliefs than you?”

“Of course you would think the worst of me,” she spat. Her face was reddened with righteous anger, as I’d wanted, but there was something else there, too. Something that looked a lot like grief.

“He abandoned us, Quinn. Your own father left you before you were even born. His magic and ‘the greater good’ were more important to him than his family. One summons from the Crown was all it took for him to walk out the door and never come back. In the end, his Gift was the only thing he was loyal to.”

Each word was sharper than the last, filled with the vitriol of a woman scorned. He had deserted us? It was strange to feel rejected by someone I hadn’t known existed only a few moments prior, but her words swirled around me like wasps, buzzing and stinging and disorienting me further. He had been called to the palace . . .

“My father was a Wielder.” The force of the realization slammed me in the chest and I found myself unable to breathe. How? How had she kept this from me? Shock and betrayal and a strange feeling of calm, as if a final puzzle piece had finally settled into place, warred within me as I struggled to come to terms with this new reality. Mother ignored me; even saying the word was something she considered beneath her.

“I stood at the gates for days,” she continued, “thinking they had done something to him. Surely he hadn’t left me while I was with child. No one could be that cruel. I screamed until my voice gave out and then I just sat there, right in front of the palace grounds.

“Then you were born and thank the gods Otto was simple enough to fall for the idea of a damsel in distress with her baby in tow, or I shudder to think where we’d be.”

“All this time you knew I had a Gift, and you hid it from me?”

“Magic isn’t as strong as you might think, dearest. And when you know the right people, the people with real power, you can win against it every time.” She nodded at Helmund, signaling she was done with the conversation.

On her cue, he crept toward me as if approaching a frightened animal, but the manic grin on his face told me this was a game he very much enjoyed.

“This won’t hurt a bit, pet,” he said, even as he grabbed me by the roots of my hair and dragged me toward a chair. I threw my arms into a casting position again, but no magic hummed at my fingertips. Thrashing against him had no effect; I was caught in his snare.

“Don’t be dramatic, Quinn,” Mother said, turning away from me as if whatever happened next would be distasteful to witness. “It really is for the best. You and I will start over somewhere new. Somewhere no one will recognize you and we’ll never have to hear about those filthy royals again.”

“About that,” Helmund grunted, still trying to restrain me, “there’s been a change of plans. You’ve been very helpful, Wilomena, but I’m afraid she’ll be leaving here with me.”

Mother turned, an argument already forming on her lips, but the words were stolen from her as a knife flew from a holster on his side and embedded itself into her chest.

Her eyes widened with shock and she clutched the weapon, falling to her knees. When she locked eyes with me, her usual sneer was nowhere to be found, and the cold indifference faded from her gaze. All that remained was fear.

It was then that I finally screamed. Though I knew the room was likely sound-warded, I had to try. I yelled for my friends, for Maddox, for anyone who could hear to help me. Even when no one arrived, I continued to scream, shredding my throat with my terror, for the injustice of it all, for the life that was stolen from me, for having come so far only to end up here . . . even for my mother, who was cruel and imperfect but whom I still found my heart aching for, watching her blood sink into the carpet as she gasped for air.

Helmund clamped his hand over my mouth, and I bit down hard.

“Gods damnit!” he yelled. “Little bitch.” He shoved my head roughly under his arm as he rummaged around in his pocket.

“This will shut you up,” he seethed.

A foul-smelling cloth clamped over my nose and mouth, and everything went dark.