Page 114 of A Kingdom of Shadows

I look up at Darius.

And Crello, ruler of the tides and night.

So much of it is indescribable.

We reach my door, and I glance at its wood-paneled rose decorations. I can't decide if I should say goodnight or if I should think everything through first. It all still feels like a dream.

"The carving." Darius's voice seeps into my skin, soft like silk.

I suck in a sharp breath; having thought he was in no mood to speak with me. He must have had a million thoughts racing through his mind too.

"It was my mother's," he says. "The initial stood for Rivernorth."

I'm stone, standing still without facing him.

The letter R that was engraved into that carving. Lorcan had told me it stood for Rayth, yet it had been a lie. So much had been lies with him. My eyes drift to the floor before turning to Darius. Slowly, I look up at him, and my heart doubles in size. "Did she... carve it?"

"Yes." He smiles wistfully. "She loved carving anything from toys to simple things such as a spoon out of wood."

A small, sad laugh releases from my throat. I shake my head, biting my bottom lip. I want to cry out of frustration for not ever seeing this, for not thinking even after Lorcan had lied to me so much that perhaps there was more he hadn't told me.

"The crescent, though." Darius's smile falls. "Is what she carved for me because I reminded her of the night sky, and it is the last thing she gave me before her death. Then... when you and I had bumped into each other that day, I had been running from nearby venators. I didn't have time to check what I was doing, and when I realized I had the sun—your sun, it was too late to go back."

"How did it come to be in Lorcan's possession?"

He pauses, looks aside, and then runs his hand along his jaw. "The day of the Emberwell attack. He must have grabbed it as he wrestled me on the ground, since it wasn't there when I got into my home and reached for my pocket."

I take a step closer. I don't know how to comfort Darius. I feel that this is something one cannot do without breaking him further. Once, I'd believed Darius was the one to attack Lorcan, but the general, the queen, and Lorcan himself spun different lies and fed them to me.

My gaze drops to Darius's arm as I place my hand over it, allowing him to be at ease with my touch. My other hand falters as I reach his chest and press my palm against it. Upon contact, a memory of the night at Noctura ball resurfaces. "Your tattoo markings," I whisper, staring at his hands. "They were the Rivernorth's symbol, weren't they?"

Three rivers within a compass pointing North.

That is what the shifter drew on the ground down at the dungeons.

Darius is quiet. He nods, fixing his gaze on the floor.

I tilt my head to try and catch his eyes. "Why did you give the pendant to Ivarron when you'd risked so much just to get it back the first time?"

"Because I knew how much getting here meant to you."

My heart cracks. "But it was your mothers."

He looks away. "It'd already been tainted by Sarilyn."

I'm struck with silence. I have to force myself to breathe. He is being too harsh with himself, reminding me so much of what I am like.

"I saw her that day," he says, detached. "When Erion killed my mother, Sarilyn was there. I watched from the place my mother had hidden me. Sarilyn had told her that she'd always favored her compared to the rest of my mother's siblings, but it was such a pity she had to end her life just so there was no trace of the Rivernorth bloodline... Aurum, Aurelia, Eleodora, Auryn, Cressida and Idalia. The six golden children."

His family... all gone.

"After my grandparents passed the crown down to my uncle, my mother did not agree with everything he did for the kingdom. She told me what I could understand at the time, but it was never enough. I spent five years with her, hiding from our enemies, unable to see what the sun even looked like, and then—" He finally looks at me, eyes glossed over in a moonlit shine from windows along the corridors. "I had to stay silent as I watched my mother die right before my eyes."

It's as if someone is splitting my heart into pieces. I can hear the fragments of them break just as Darius's voice does.

"Darius—"

"I don't want pity Nara; I've survived all these years without it."

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