Page 38 of Steel Heart Iron Claws

“I’ve collected these fae artifacts at great expense over the course of nearly forty years,” he explains. “A diver died bringing this one back from a shipwreck. It is Immortal Thracia’s midnight vase. Her most prized possession, according to lore, as it was a wedding gift from Immortal Samaur during the First Return. He called upon the sun to heat sand from beneath a glacier, giving it its unusual color. It can keep any bloom alive for eternity, even without sunlight.”

His hand on my back steers me toward the next pedestal, but I step away from his grasp, a hand pressed to my dress’s tight bodice.

“If your rule is so just and your kingdom so great, then why did my mother flee?”

His blue eyes shine in the low, iridescent lightthat keeps shifting as the eels circle in their glass enclosure. Finally, he looks into the middle ground and sighs.

“Isabeau was an actress—did you know that?”

I can’t hide how much this unexpected fact shakes my world. The truth is, as much as I loved my mother, I knew almost nothing about her. For ten years, she kept her past a mystery. At night, when I would ask her to tell me about when she was a little girl, she would make up fantastic tales and tickle me until I giggled myself to sleep.

Rachillon smiles at my reaction, knowing he’s hooked my interest.

“Isabeau’s godkiss allowed her to glamour herself and any objects in her possession. As you can imagine, it was the perfect gift for an actress. She could change her face to match any role. But her talent extended beyond appearance. She was a wonder on stage. Her words, her eyes—she could convey entire worlds in one expression.”

In the softness in his rasping voice, I can almost believe that he loved her.

“I first saw her in a production of The Night Hunt,” he continues. “She was playing Immortal Solene. I courted her for months until she agreed to give up the stage and commit to servicing me. A concubine, yes—I couldn’t marry a commoner. Still, we were together day and night, always as equals. But then—” His throat bobs with a hard swallow. “—she fell pregnant. I was overjoyed. Though we were not married, I wanted nothing more than a child produced by our union. A godkissed seer predicted you would be a female and also godkissed…three days later, Isabeau was gone.”

My limbs are left shaken by this information. All my life, I would have paid a king’s ransom to have known my mother’s history, and now it’s given to me freely.

And yet, greedily, I’m salivating for even more.

“Why?” I press. “If you were so in love, why did she run away?”

Rachillon turns to the fish tank, running his fingers over the surface to trace the fish’s movements. “Isabeau feared the coming war. She could sense its approach, whether in one year or thirty. She wanted to hide you from it.” He tilts his head so I can see his profile glowing in the eel’s shifting light. “I didn’t think you should be hidden. I knew, in my soul, you would be key to the war’s outcome. And so, she fled. She didn’t want you to live the life of a revolutionary. She wanted you to simply be…happy.”

Happy. The word skewers me through the ribs.

It feels like a fairy tale. A fantasy. Maybe if my mother hadn’t died, I would have had a chance for happiness in Bremcote. Learning to sew and dance from her, marrying a boyishly sweet minor lord, having children of my own. But shediddie. And everything that happened after?

Not exactlyhappy.

I take my time soaking in this knowledge, tucking it away deep inside me, locked in a place more treasured than this fae artifact room.

My mother loved me. She wanted to protect me.

After a lifetime of guessing, this information is water to a girl dying of thirst.

Rachillon lets the silence stretch, and for that, I am grateful. If there’s ever a time not to be rushed, it’s now.

Finally, I bring myself to look him in the eyes. “One more question. How did you know exactly where I would be, unguarded in the woods after Lord Berolt’s funeral, for Immortal Iyre to capture me?”

He laughs to himself, but there is no mirth in it—only sadness. Pity. Forme. “I was told the exact time and place.”

“What?” I blurt out. “By whom?”

He turns back to the swimming eels, the light shimmering over features so like my own. “Don’t you know?”

The fae artifact room spins on its axis, and I grip the marble pedestal before I lose my balance.

A wave of nausea rolls up my throat as I close my eyes, praying to every god who has ever walked the earth that it’s not the name I think it is.

Hands trembling, I hear the warning hum of every spider within Drahallen Hall.

“SSSSsssss, tck-tck-tck, sssSsssss, TCK-TCK-tck…”

They sense my pain. They’re trying to ease it. Hoping to soothe the unbearable wail in my soul.

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