Curse of Darkness Read online

  Curse of Darkness

  Bec McMaster

  Copyright © 2022 by Bec McMaster

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  All rights reserved.

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  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Cover: Gene Mollica

  Editing: Hot Tree Edits and Olivia Ventura

  Proofread: Julie K

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  To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the

  text, please contact the author at

  www.becmcmaster.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Looking to connect?

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Dear Reader

  More delicious fae romance

  Also by Bec McMaster

  About the Author

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  1

  ISKVIEN

  * * *

  “I would wait for you in the Darkness.”

  I stare at the enormous pyre waiting to be lit, and suddenly I can’t move.

  My heart doesn’t skip a beat. There is no lump in my throat, threatening to choke me. I am simply dead inside, my chest scooped out and empty, waiting to be filled.

  “Your Majesty,” says Maia’s high priestess.

  It sounds like it comes from miles away.

  All I can see is the empty pyre where my husband’s body should lie.

  There is nothing to burn.

  When we were forced to flee from the Black Keep—and the newly risen Horned One—Thiago was already dead. I see him falling again and again—I see it every night in my nightmares. And I hear the sound his head made as it struck the slate floors. A sharp crack he wouldn’t have even felt because he was already gone, and yet it splintered my heart and cleaved it open.

  I’ll never feel him in my arms again.

  I’ll never wake to see his smile.

  I will never—

  “Mama?” whispers a little voice and then a hand slips inside my own.

  There’s the fist to the solar plexus. There’s the knife to the heart. Suddenly, it’s beating again, all for her. Amaya is the only thing tethering me to this mortal plane at the moment. Her hand is warm, so warm. Warm where his is cold.

  I reel out of the nightmare, realizing thousands of faces watch us.

  This grassy knoll overlooking the city is where the people of Evernight honor their dead. I never expected to be here staring at Thiago’s funeral pyre, even though his body doesn’t lie upon it.

  It burned to ash in the implosion of the Horned One’s Hallow.

  I’d like to think the entire city turned out to honor their prince, but though thousands of them crowd around the base of the hill, not all of them welcomed him as their ruler. Some of them say he slew their rightful queen and overthrew her sons, and I want to scream the truth to the skies—that he was Queen Araya’s last-born son and he honored his mother to the very end.

  But that was not my secret to reveal.

  As much as I want to draw the curtains that shroud his mother’s portrait so the people can see the truth—that Thiago was their rightful prince and worthy of their respect—I will not spit upon his final wishes.

  “It’s fine, Amaya. I’m fine,” I whisper, squeezing my daughter’s hand. A part of me didn’t want her to be here for this—I want to protect her from every danger and ounce of pain I can—but again, it isn’t my choice to make.

  She’s nearly nine years old, and I’ve only known of her existence for a week.

  I will not lock her away from the world.

  I will not shroud her in secrets and lies.

  She will never know what it feels like to peer through closed windows at the world, wondering what she did wrong.

  And when I asked if she wished to be here for this ceremony, she gave a solemn little nod and said, “Yes.”

  “I never knew him,” she whispered, “but I would like to say goodbye.”

  Her choice. Always her choice.

  “Your Majesty, if you would light the pyre?” the high priestess says, and it sounds like she’s repeating herself.

  “My queen.” Finn offers me the torch, and in his eyes I see an echo of the pain that clutches my heart in its falcon claws.

  I don’t need it.

  I could set the pyre alight with a thought, and yet, this is symbolic.

  Baylor bows.

  Eris nods grimly to me, one hand resting on the hilt of her sword as she kneels. They’re all here—the circle of friends that stood at Thiago’s side during life and who stand here now, ready to guard my daughter and me.

  And then the entire city goes to its knees.

  All except Thalia, who awaits me at the bonfire, gowned in black.

  She holds her hands out for Amaya, giving her a tremulous smile. “He would have been so very proud of you, my darling,” she whispers, drawing my daughter into her arms.

  I’m not the only one grieving. As his cousin, she knew him best, after all.

  I steel myself, staring out over the crowd. “We come here today to honor our prince, who gave his life so his daughter could live. We come here today to send him swift flight on the winds. We come here today to sing him into the… the….”

  I can’t say it.

  “I would wait for you in the Darkness” come his words again, for he knew his soul was not bound for the Bright Lands.

  “To sing him into the Bright Lands,” Thalia says, taking my hand and squeezing it. “We come here today to share our love of him and praise the honor of his deeds in life.”

  The priestess of Maia starts chanting, and the crowd joins in.

  “Praise Maia. Bless this soul and sing him into the Bright Lands….”

  All I have to do is set the pyre alight.

  I lower the torch, and a flicker of flame licks at the dry tinder. It spreads hungrily, but it’s not enough.

  I want it to burn.

  Flames lick at the oak. It leaps from log to log and an inferno suddenly roars. Heat scorches the tears from my face as I stare blankly into the flames.

  “Child?” It’s a whisper stirring through my scattered thoughts, a tug from the leyline beneath the castle. “Can you hear me?”

  An ancient mind turns toward mine, trying to connect with me through my link to the Hallow in the castle.

  It’s not the first time the Mother of Night has tried to contact me this week.

  “Leave me alone,” I tell her, ripping my thoughts away from the leyline. “I want nothing more to do with you.”

  “Once upon a time there was a wicked prince,” I whisper, turning the pages of the book for Amaya. It’s the only time I’ve been able to escape the indescribable crush of emotion. “And he was very—”

  A knock raps at the door.

  My fingers pause on the page. I’ve barely set foot outside these chambers in days. Nobody would dare disturb us for any simple reason. Not in our grief. I want to ignore it. I’m not ready to face the outside world. I just want to stay here with Amaya and pretend the world will forget me.

  “My queen?” Finn’s voice calls through the door. He hesitates. “A rider arrived twenty minutes ago at the gates insisting he needs to see you.”

  I close the book with a snap. “Is it someone from the war camps?”

  “No. I—”

  “Is it urgent? Is it a matter of life and death?”

  Another hesitation. “He won’t speak to me. He won’t speak to any of us. He just says he need
s to talk to you.”

  “Then take care of it,” I snap.

  “I think you’ll want to see him too.”

  I don’t want to see anyone. Can I not have just one more day of peace?

  It’s a selfish thought. I’m the queen of Evernight now and we’re at war with my mother’s kingdom. I can’t let Thiago down. I can’t let his people down.

  You don’t have the luxury of grief.

  But the intrusion feels like a knife dragging through the ragged remains of my chest.

  “Will you be all right?”

  Amaya looks at me, and I see his eyes in her heart-shaped face. “I’ll stay here,” she says, “and play with Grimsby.”

  I know the grimalkin watches over her from the shadows, but he’s been scarce since the ordeal at Black Keep. He lied to me. He said he couldn’t see past that moment in time when I would hold my daughter in my arms but he knew that one of us would fall. He knew the Horned One would be unleashed upon the world, and only the sacrifice of a powerful fae could destroy the bindings that trapped the Horned One within his prison world.

  I’d expected it to be me.

  But Grimm had admitted he saw my husband fall.

  The grimalkin’s bound to Amaya as her familiar. I can’t stop him from appearing when I’m not around. Indeed, as much as I want to wring his furry little neck, there’s a part of me that knows he’s the best companion she could ever have—he would give his life to save her, and grimalkin are powerful foes.

  Nothing can enter this room and hurt her without going through Grimm.

  “I’ll be back,” I promise, “and we’ll finish the story later.”

  The second I open the door, it’s like being splashed in the face with a bucket of ice water. Our rooms are my refuge, but out here it feels like the whole world is rushing at me, and right now, I don’t have the heart to deal with it.

  “Who is it?”

  Its only when Finn flinches that I realize how sharp my voice is.

  “It’s your stepbrother.” Finn blows out a breath. “I never thought I’d say this, but I think you need to talk to him. He’s in the audience chamber. Eris is standing guard.”

  Edain.

  I was wrong. I do still have a heart.

  Because it plummets toward my feet.

  “You let him inside the castle?” I take off toward the audience chamber at a run. I’ve told them how dangerous he is. He’s both my mother’s lover and her assassin.

  “Eris won’t let him out of her sight!” Finn yells behind me.

  As dangerous as Eris is, I don’t truly know the extent of Edain’s powers.

  Or what he wants.

  The only reason he could be here is if my mother has heard of Thiago’s death and wants to destroy what is left of Evernight. Isn’t it?

  I burst through the audience chamber doors, slamming them open so hard they crash against the walls.

  Finn brushes past me, one hand on his sword hilt. “Let me go first!”

  But every inch of rage within me dies when I see the male kneeling by the dais.

  We stare at each other, and I’m not so lost in grief that I don’t see the change in Edain’s demeanor. Once he was a pet leopard, leashed at my mother’s feet. Once he wore silk robes that revealed a healthy slice of his chest, with glittering rings on his fingers and a curved dagger at his hip. To look at him was to see sex and sin and all manner of wicked vices.

  None of that remains.

  Instead, a stranger tilts his head back, his shirt ripped and stained and his black hair raked back off his face. There’s a sheath at his hip, but no knife, and claw marks leave dried blood on the back of his hands.

  Old blood.

  My steps slow. “What do you want?”

  If he mentions Thiago’s death, I swear I’ll kill him.

  Instead he tips his chin up, wincing a little in the light. “I have nowhere else to go. Your mother’s cast me out—”

  “And you thought you would be welcome here?”

  Silence settles over the room like a mantle.

  The stiffness leaches out of Edain’s shoulders. “No. I did not think I would find welcome. I wouldn’t have come if I weren’t desperate.” There’s a hint of his old bite in his voice as he meets my gaze once more. “You didn’t ask why your mother cast me out.”

  I should have. I’m not thinking as clearly as I once did.

  Edain is my mother’s pet.

  A toy, in her eyes. Her dearest weapon.

  My mother would never discard such a weapon when he was so useful. She would forgive him murder. She would forgive him any lie. She would forgive him almost any betrayal except for the one I once taunted him with.

  “Where’s Andraste?” I whisper, ice settling in my heart, in my soul, in the room. It suddenly sheets across the audience chamber floors, plunging the temperature of the room to arctic levels. “Where is my sister?”

  “Vi!” Finn skids on the ice.

  It’s everywhere.

  I’ve been able to shield the world from my burgeoning powers, but I can’t control this. I can’t control the rage that ignites my magic. Where once there was heat and flame, now there’s only ice.

  Because ice doesn’t hurt.

  Ice has no heart.

  “Your sister is gone,” Edain says, pushing to his feet and shifting warily as hoarfrost creeps up the walls. “Your mother discovered Andraste had a hand in stealing her crown and giving it to you. She wanted to punish her—”

  “What did Mother do?” I would know if my sister was dead. I would know. Wouldn’t I?

  “Your mother sent her north to the goblin clans.” Finally, I know why his eyes look so fucking wretched. “She’s to be the bride of the goblin king. And I can’t rescue her by myself.”

  2

  “Bride?” Dubiousness fills Finn’s voice as we all gather in the council chamber Thiago used to brief his circle of confidantes. “It’s been a long time since the goblins came looking for brides within the alliance.”

  I wrap my arms around myself as I stand by the window staring out over Ceres. I know what Finn’s not saying. The goblin clans haunt the mountains north of Evernight, though they keep to themselves. They struck an ancient treaty with our people citing peace, and while they despise both the seelie and unseelie, to break the peace means to spit in the eyes of their ancestors.

  It doesn’t mean there haven’t been incursions.

  The goblin clans are wild and unruly. They were once ruled by a long line of stern kings, but the last king was murdered, and the clans tore themselves apart, with his heirs proclaiming themselves “kings” left and right.

  It’s been over fifty years since the last king died. Edain said Andraste was to be the bride of the goblin king, but which one?

  How many of these false kings remain?

  And does this mean war with the north too?

  “Your mother said she didn’t care what they did to Andraste,” Edain says, heat flaring in his blue eyes, “as long as they claimed she was legally wed. She knows Andraste is popular within her court and wants to make a fuss about the great ‘sacrifice’ your sister is making for her people.”