Page 51 of King of Immortal Tithe (Darkmourn Universe 2)

It felt wrong to ask Myrinn to spill the perfectly crafted chest of secrets without consulting the person it related to, but I had to know. Selfishly, it would help me make sense of him.

“Claria tells it as though it is her greatest story. Repeating it over meals with dignitaries and high esteemed members of Evelina’s realm. Anyone who would listen. The part that sickens me the most is that they laugh, chuckle like wild beasts over someone else’s misery.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat, laying my fingers on the back of Myrinn’s hand. “Help me understand.”

She gathered herself, inhaling deeply as she regarded me through the low-lit room. “Then I will tell it as Claria has. Forgive me for the lack of sensitivity.”

I gripped the glass and watched Myrinn without blinking for fear of missing the truth of Faenir’s beginnings.

“Faenir was born to Queen Claria’s eldest daughter, my father’s sister. Her name was Lilith. During her pregnancy it was prophesied for a child to be born that would finally relieve my grandmother of her duties. Evelina is a place of life. So, when Faenir was born, the perfect vision of our realm was shattered as though captured in a glass ball and thrown from a great height. Lilith died as Faenir passed out of her. Her partner, Faenir’s father, Croin, took Faenir into his arms and the moment he did so he joined his beloved in death, all before he had realised what had happened.”

I blinked and my mind filled with scenes so horrific I wished never to close my eyes again. A body slick with the grime of birth, skin cold and as stiff as marble. I saw a child, its wailing scratching across my soul like a knife pulled across stone.

The wine was left cold in my hand, my grip on the glass threatening to shatter it at any given moment.

“Claria tells the tale as though she found them. Mother, father and the unknowing maids that rushed to help and calm the crying child. Faenir was discovered, naked and subdued, surrounded by a mound of the dead.”

Myrinn was crying hard now. If there was more to the story, she couldn’t speak through the sobs that wracked her chest.

I sat there in numbed silence.

Faenir was branded a monster for simply being alive. His curse was unfair and had moulded him into the person who had seen me in Tithe and acted upon desperation.

Just as I do with the vampires.

Just as I do with suffocating my sister and her life.

In a twisted, warped way, I did not blame Faenir for stealing me. Maybe that was the wine that dulled my sense between what was wrong or right. But in the back of my mind I felt as though I would have done the same.

“How did he survive?” I asked. If he could not have been touched, then it made little sense to understand how a child was nursed and brought up all without even being able to pick him up from the floor.

“He was never meant to,” Myrinn replied. “Claria misses this part out in her stories, but our family knows the next chapters well. It took twenty royal guards to return Faenir to his family dwelling. Once bundled in cloth they were able to touch him… he was gathered in a sack and taken home.”

“To Haxton Manor.”

“They swaddled him in cloth, the first guards dying upon impact with his skin. Those who were lucky enough to gather him from the trail of death were safe for longer moments; protected by the material. Claria did not care for the material that covered Faenir’s mouth. Sometimes I imagine she must have wished him to suffocate after what happened to Lilith.”

There was a storm in my stomach. It jolted like wild seas, threatening to break free and spill the morning’s food across my new outfit and the chair I sat upon.

“The orders were simple. Take him to Haxton and discard him into the lake.”

“No.” The glass slipped from my hand and shattered across the floor in a littering of diamond-like shards. “He was a baby!”

“That did not matter. Faenir was a monster from the moment he was born. Claria had him thrown into the Styx in hopes that he would drown. Condemned as poison. His crime of death punishable by death.”

I grieved for that child. My heart twisted into knots in my chest, the feeling reminiscent of when my own parents had succumbed to the sickness that claimed them.

“But he survived.”

She nodded as the lit candles cast shadows across her striking beauty. “Faenir’s power goes against Claria. Life and death. He, like her, is powerful enough to rule a realm. His magic is unexplainable, and Claria despises that. Whatever happened to Faenir in that water changed it forever. You saw what lurks within the waters… you know that death lingers and so does Faenir. Some stories tell that a servant of the family jumped into the Styx and dragged the child free from the water. Faenir has never been one to reveal what happened. Nor do I think he will ever expose that part of his past to anyone.”

I stood suddenly, rocking on my feet. “I need to see him.”

Myrinn reached out and gripped my arm. “I am sorry if I upset you.”

“Before I said I was not scared,” I said, my chest rising and falling wildly. “Now I understand that Faenir is not the monster in this story. He is simply the product of another.”

She released me. “Go to him. See him in the same light I have for many years.”

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