“Well, I have no hard proof other than being raised alongside the cuck, but Arion doesn’t let requests go unanswered. He would have claimed you without delay if he truly desired you.”
“What do you mean?” Vann says.
“The magic may belong to the witches, but what if he has stooped to the Giants’ level and asked for Abhartach’s help?”
The room spins around me. Vann thought it was Daniel somehow. Liana believed it was just the witches. Now Mrath thinks it is Arion.
Facts spin through my mind, but no matter how much knowledge I have acquired, it never seems to be enough.
Elves did not look for their brides among nobility since the daughter of a courtier is just as likely to stab her husband on the wedding night as a snake is to strike when cornered. No, they found women in the mountains and fields. They threw them over their shoulders, and ran to be married.
Is my curse some version of that tradition to Arion?
“I… I do not know. We met for one evening—I did nothing to encouragethis.”
She frowns. “You didn’t have to. The world has gone mad for humans, and with the dwindling numbers of women in the elven court—lost to death or defection—I’m sure Arion is afraid,” Mrath says. “Can’t promise a new supreme reign of the Elven Empire without soldiers. Believe me, I despise it like a weak fuck, but you humans are the only ones left who can bear so many races’ children.”
My stomach twists violently. The urge to tell her I can’t sits on the tip of my tongue—not without the magic that comes with matehood.
“I wouldn’t bear his child,” I fumble.
Vann stiffens beside me, his head snapping in my direction, but I can’t meet his gaze.
Mrath tilts her head, her voice hardening. “And you think that matters?”
A bitter laugh escapes me. I still can’t believe this is happening. My time with the Elf King lasted one night? He called me pretty. Loyal. And?—
Suddenly, fragments begin to coalesce in my mind. It’s like I am transported to his side at the festival a year ago. We’d just finished dancing. There was something he said—something I couldn’t catch. I’d thought of it a few times since then, but it comes to me now, clear as the dawn.
“There will come a time when I will need you. Fear not, for I will bring you to my side without injury.”
Oh gods.My hands go numb.
After I’d killed Diego, I’d heard a voice upon waking.
“I am so pleased you didn't get rid of my gift.”
A gift.Hostia. He’d given me a stone with a snake on it. It’d been on my dresser the night I got cursed. And now, I realize the whispers, the fleeting promises—they all point toward this. Arion is controlling me like a puppet.
Vann, likely noticing the tremor in my hands, reaches out and cups my wrist. It is a small thing, but it gives me strength to speak again.
“It doesn’t make sense that he would fight so hard for me. It’s trivial. Kingdoms should only wage wars over things far greater than me and my womb.”
Mrath’s gaze sharpens. “Trivial?” she echoes. “To give life, to create something where there was nothing—that is not trivial, girl. It is power. The most sought-after power of all, as it is one a man cannot carve out himself. A man is nothing if his line dies with him.”
Her words pierce me. What she says makes sense. But, if that is true, what does it mean about me?
“I think you might be right,” I declare, even though bits and pains are pricking at my conscience. Small cuts that never healed—thatmake me wonder about my place if I can’t easily do this thing that others seem to be able to do with painstaking ease.
A slow, frown spreads across Mrath’s face. “Then we have a problem. I do not keep company with witches any longer, and there are none in my Enclave.”
Disappointment curls in my gut. If she didn’t know, what was I to do? This was my only plan? The only other option could be going to King Arion.
“But, fear not. Mrath to the rescue,” she chimes back, and a few other elven women titter. “The last I heard about the witches, they had retreated to some small speck of an island in the Sea of Sorrow. To reach it, you must go west. There is a city, I will inform my contact there to find you. They will take you to see the witches.”
I swallow hard, my mind racing with the implications. Another journey means I’m not returning to my home for a while longer. In scrolls, heroines seemed to be so adaptable under such conditions. But I feel like weeping.
I wanted this to be over faster. I wanted to be whole.