The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash 4)

My body flashed hot and then cold. “You knew my mother?” As soon as I said it, I realized that, of course, he had known her. He would’ve been at Wayfair when she served as a Handmaiden.

“I did.” His gaze lowered as tension bracketed his mouth. “She believed that, given a chance—if you were raised away from Isbeth and the Ascended—you wouldn’t become the Harbinger who would destroy the realms.”

A shudder ran through me as a memory of that night surged.

“It has to be done,” the faceless man said. “You know what will happen.”

“She’s but a child—”

“And she will be the end of everything.”

“Or she is just the end of them. A beginning—”

I stepped back, my heart thumping. “A beginning of a new era,” I whispered, finishing what Coralena had said to…

Malik watched me, and my stomach twisted with nausea.

Casteel’s arm encircled my waist as he pressed into me from behind. “Poppy?” He lowered his head to mine. “What is it?”

My skin kept flashing from hot to cold as I stared at Casteel’s brother, but I didn’t see him. I saw the man with shadows for a face. The cloaked figure.

The Dark One.

“Poppy.” Casteel’s concern radiated in waves as he shifted so he stood beside me.

The sourness of shame crowded the back of my throat as Malik said roughly, his voice pitched low, “You remember.”

That voice.

His voice.

“No,” I whispered, disbelief flooding me.

Malik said nothing.

“What the hell is going on?” Casteel demanded, his arm around me tightening as my stomach churned. I started to bend over, forcing myself to swallow down the bile that had risen.

“I was broken,” Malik said to Casteel. “You were right. What they did to Preela broke me. But I was never loyal to that bitch. Never.”

Casteel tensed at the name.

“Preela?” I whispered.

“His bonded wolven,” Kieran growled.

Oh, gods…

“Not after what she did to you. Not after what Jalara did to Preela. Not what she made me do to Mil—” He inhaled sharply, stiffening as raw, suffocating anguish lashed my skin. The kind of sorrow that went beyond the bone and hurt more than any wound could. And it was so potent I could barely feel Casteel and Kieran’s surprise. It got lost in the icy agony. “I wanted to kill Isbeth. The gods know I tried before I realized what she was. I would’ve kept trying, Cas, but that prophecy.” His nostrils flared as he shook his head. “It was no longer about her. You. Me. Millie. None of us mattered. Atlantia did. Solis did. All the people who would pay the price for something they had nothing to do with. I had to stop her.”

Casteel’s arm slipped away from my waist, and he turned to his brother.

Malik’s eyes closed tightly. “I couldn’t let Isbeth destroy Atlantia or the mortal realm. I couldn’t let her destroy Millie in the process. And she was destroying her.” Anger and guilt swirled through him, stirring the eather deep in my chest. Flat eyes opened, locking on mine. “I had to do something.”

The floor felt as if it rippled under my feet. I couldn’t feel my legs. A cup toppled behind me, rolling across the counter. Reaver caught it, his eyes narrowing as they cut to the trembling blinds over the window. The rattling daggers on the table.

“You had to do what, exactly?” Kieran asked, but Casteel had gone silent because he…gods, he was processing everything. Fighting with himself to believe it.

Malik still stared at me. His voice hoarse, he said, “I was prepared to do anything to stop Isbeth, and Coralena knew that. Because Leopold did.”

But she had—

He’s her viktor.

Memories of that night in Lockswood slammed into me, clear and without the shadow of trauma. I leaned into the counter as they came, one after another after another. All of it in rapid succession and in seconds, stunning in its clarity.

Shocking in what the recollections revealed.

Anger surged through me, burning away the disbelief. But that wasn’t the only emotion. There was a storm of them, but the sorrow was just as powerful because I remembered. Finally. And a part of me, something that was either not touched by that fury or stemmed from that same cold place in me, also understood.

“I remember everything,” I said, and the room steadied. I steadied as I focused on Malik. “Why? Why didn’t you do it, then? Finish it?”

Casteel’s head turned to me, and I saw that his skin had paled, almost as bad as it had when he’d been in bloodlust. “I’ve done a lot of terrible things—committed deeds that will haunt me to my last breath and beyond—but I couldn’t go through with it. Even believing what I did, I couldn’t,” he said with a dark, choked laugh. “Apparently, killing a child was a line I could not cross.”

“Motherfucker,” Kieran rasped.

“No,” Cas said, and that one word was harsh. It brooked no room for argument. It was a proclamation. A plea. “Tell me it isn’t so.”