Page 106 of A Legacy of Poison and Lies

She didn’t even want to let herself finish the thought, not if there was any chance she could be wrong.

But before Holt could reply, Nye said, “Now that my cousin has set the tone for the evening, it’s probably time we told you about my research.” Despite her crack at Kej, Nye’s expression was serious. “The key was never for the Aquaris Court. It’s for Ranon.”

“What do you mean, for Ranon?” Kej asked. “I thought he was a crusty old corpse somewhere in the centre of Astaria?”

Ranon and Sira had been the first to create the monsters that wandered the continent, and Aurelia had been the one to replicate them. Zylah’s skin chilled, hairs rising on the back of her neck, the last of the puzzle pieces falling into place. “The key to his tomb. Marcus’s source of old magic…” The key Laydan had stolen. If he’d delivered it to Marcus, then that meant… “Aurelia… she couldn’t be, could she?” She studied Nye’s face, hoping she’d got it all wrong.

“Could someone please explain?” Rin asked, her attention darting between them.

Nye blew out a breath. “Ranon and Sira lost a child, though the texts were never specific. Zylah thinks that child might be Aurelia, Marcus’s wife.”

“His mate,” Holt added.

And if Aurelia had even a fraction of her parents’ magic, a far greater war than they had anticipated lay ahead of them.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Malok’s—Nye’sarmy arrived just before dawn, setting up further into Kerthen than Rin and Kej had the day before.

When Zylah asked how they’d managed to bring an entire tent and supplies between just the two of them, Kej explained how one of Malok’s scouts had ferried them most of the distance; Kopi had caught up with Nye and she’d brought him along.

She’d told Holt about the bargain she’d made in Kerthen. The favour she’d promised to a stranger in return for their healing. It had been foolish, but Zylah had been desperate. And she should have known it wouldn’t last. It had taken away some of her pain, exactly as she’d begged, but her condition had only worsened in the end.

And though she’d been glad for the opportunity to tell Holt, it hadn’t been enough to keep her mind from wandering, to keep her gaze from lingering on the entrance of the mine during her breaks as if she could will Marcus to walk through the opening in the rock. Holt had been with the army since daylight to ensure everything went according to plan, but she could feel his concern through their bond, his flicker of warmth to reassure her that everything would be fine.

If she was right about Aurelia, Zylah suspected things were far from fine. And if Raif’s mother was Ranon and Sira’s daughter, what other abilities did she possess? Her power to paralyse, did it come from Sira or Ranon? Was it just the very tip of what she was capable of?

Unease settled like a stone in the pit of her stomach; the small, human part of her that lingered screamed at her to leave, to convince all her friends to leave with her, to run from this and never look back. But that wasn’t who she was any more. Running wasn’t an option. She wanted to fight.Neededto do whatever she could to stop Marcus and Aurelia. To break whatever hold they had over Holt. Zylah was beginning to understand now that this would have been something Marcus and Aurelia set into action long before Aurelia’s supposed death, perhaps even before Holt’s parents died.

But to what end? Did they truly loathe this world so much that they wished to refashion it in the image of their vision?

Zylah adjusted her weight, her legs starting to numb from sitting in one position for too long. She’d spent the morning preparing baylock tea for the soldiers and coating blades with a paste made from the plant until she’d run out of sources to summon it from. Some she’d had to borrow from the botanical gardens back in Virian, and she knew Jilah would notice its absence immediately. Not that he would mind, given what they were about to do.

She cast her attention to the pile of metal at her feet. There hadn’t been enough baylock for even a fraction of the army’s weapons, but it would have to do. Anything that gave them an advantage over the monsters waiting for them at the mine could mean the difference between an end to Marcus and Aurelia’s plans, and the situation continuing to spiral out of control. There was so little knowledge about the vampires and thralls, other than bearing witness to the sheer amount of damage they could inflict. Zylah had overheard the soldiers discussing it on more than one occasion. Some had never seen a vampire, and they were afraid. She’d reassured them as best she could, offered words of comfort to quell their fears and knew that Holt had been doing the same as he’d made his rounds with Nye.

Her own blade, Zylah had coated in silence, deliberating for a while whether to cover it in baylock to give her a few seconds against the thralls and vampires, or in poisonous jupe in the hopes of harming Marcus. But she’d never seen jupe in use against a Fae, so the baylock was her only logical option.

He was just across the water, deep beneath the rock yet so close; all she’d have to do was evanesce in and out, a well-timed strike of her blade to end him. But she wasn’t foolish enough to let her impatience overtake her common sense. Whilst she’d been working with her hands, she’d been working on her abilities—which was difficult, given she had no idea what she was doing. But all morning Holt had allowed her tosearchfor signs of the compulsion in his mind, to look for any threads that she might be able to snag. Because if her suspicions were right, she intended to pull it apart, to untangle it from his mind herself.

Seated on a tree stump beside her was Enalla, one of the scouts who’d evanesced a large portion of the army to the forest. Zylah had tried to protest when the Fae had offered to help—when Enalla had insisted that using her hands for physical labour would help calm her fraying mind after travelling through the aether with so many in tow.

As she’d settled into brewing the tea over the fire, filling flask after flask, Zylah had left her to it, leaving the female to lose herself in the monotony of the movements, as if the repetition had lulled her into a meditative state and eased her soul, just as she’d said it would.

By late morning, the Fae’s eyes flicked up to meet hers. “The soldiers will be grateful for this liquid courage, Zylah.”

“If only it were enough,” Zylah said with a frown.

Enalla placed the waterskin she’d been filling in the pile beside her; canisters and skins emptied and refilled several times over since dawn, carried back and forth between soldiers by one of the scouts. “Come. Let us stretch our legs.”

The Fae led them out of the forest, the wards flexing over Zylah’s skin as they passed through them. She paused at their threshold, head tilting to one side as she recalled the strange feeling from the night before.

What is it?Holt asked her. He was deeper into the forest, somewhere with Rin and Kej, coordinating which units would retrieve the humans that fled the mine and where they would be taken.

I can’t be certain. But I think someone is within the wards. Concealed. Someone who feels like…Zylah didn’t know what the woman back in the shop had been. Fae, perhaps, but old, far older than anyone she’d met before.Someone I met back in Morren.She couldn’t explain it, either. Just a feeling ofwrongness. There was no feeling of irritation from Holt that she hadn’t told him about the encounter. There had been so much to say, and so little time to say it in.

Enalla shot her a concerned look, and Zylah quietly explained her suspicion about the breach in the wards as they made their way to the guards patrolling the shadows at the edge of the treeline, following their gazes across the lake.

“I’ll go and inform General Niossa,” the Fae said calmly, clasping a hand over Zylah’s forearm in a gesture Zylah understood to be one of respect. She didn’t wait for a response, and Zylah didn’t linger in the guards’ presence. She crouched low, winding her way through the reeds at the lakeshore to get a closer look across the water.

---