“I wouldn’t want you to,” she counters. “The truth is all I’ve ever wanted.”
I wonder if what I’m going to tell her will change that.
“It wasn’t just me who did well once we got to Trova. No one in your kingdom had fought real battles against our kind for a long time. They’d forgotten how to defend themselves against our…unique skills.”
“They must’ve not known what hit them,” she says.
“Yes, at first. But to be fair to them, the Ethirans learned quickly. Still, we swept through the west like a hurricane, driving them back. Once we heard Palquir was sailing up the Potamis to retake Elmere, we followed our enemies as they retreated east.”
I pause, trying to collect my memories. But they’re all a blur from those few months—an endless stream of riding and fighting and sleeping, only to rise and fight some more. That’s all Trova is to me now, just a list of places where I opened the earth and poured humans into it.
“I suppose you don’t know that I had a different name back then. I wasn’t always the Nightmare Prince,” I say before I can stop myself.
“No,” she says. “I didn’t know that.”
“Earthsplitter,” I say. “Makes a bit more sense, doesn’t it? I could end whole battles within an hour on the right ground.”
“So why did you do things different at Mistwell?” she prompts.
I still recoil a little from the town name, but there’s no going back now.
“Frankly, even though I was good at it, I’d gotten sick of all the killing. MaybebecauseI was so good at it. The victories had made me overconfident, and I was young and arrogant. I thought I could end the entire war in one quick sweep.”
“And you did,” she says. “Herrydan’s death marked the end of the fighting, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” I say, withdrawing my hand from the fountain water. “We knew he was in Mistwell with the last of his men, and we knew the town was full of Ethiran sympathizers. We argued for hours over how to take the town while minimizing fatalities in our ranks and among the civilians.”
I smile unhappily at the irony.
“So did you really intend to get them to surrender at first?” she asks. Then, more quietly, “What changed your mind?”
I push my shoulders back, preparing myself to finally say it.
“I didn’t change my mind. The whole thing was a mistake. I never meant for those people to die.”
Her eyes widen, but she stays calm.
“A mistake?” she repeats.
“Yes, it was an accident. I went to General Lestrides with my plan. He was skeptical, but I convinced him it was the best option. I would send my sensic magic into the town that night and influence Herrydan, as well as anyone else I could get to listen, to surrender.
“Part of me knew better than to stake everything on my sensic power. I was aware even back then that the kind of magic I did was complicated. It requires nuance and finesse to properly place an idea in someone’s head via their dreams. But I ignored all that. I felt unstoppable. The entire kingdom knew I was powerful enough to win battles for the Trovians—what was one little town after that? Whyshouldn’tI use my magic however I wanted?”
“But something went wrong,” she says.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to picture it, but the images are always there. Even now, eighty years later, they haven’t faded one bit.
“The moment I woke up, hours before sunrise, I knew something terrible had happened. All those sleeping minds were justgone. I ran to the town, and that’s when I found them. I’d sent Herrydan and some of his closest followers a dream about the gods. I’d whispered to them that Ethira wanted them to surrender, to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. I told them it was his will.”
Ana says nothing, so engrossed by my words her breathing has grown shallow.
“What I had underestimated—what I might’ve sensed if I’d been more cautious and less sure of myself—was how desperate Herrydan had become. He knew he was losing, he knew that his death was inevitable, but he also believed deeply that he was doing the gods’ will. They all did. They weren’t just an army, they were a cult. All of them were utterly convinced that Herrydan was their celestial messenger on earth. And their precious leader had been praying every day, searching for a sign. So when a message came to him one night from—as he thought—Ethira himself, demanding an ultimate, final sacrifice…he followed his orders.”
I press on, barely coming up for air. If I hesitate, I might not be able to tell the rest.
“His men killed the townspeople first. One by one, cutting them down with their swords or killing them with magic. No one fought back. They were followers of the Temple, and that justmade them all lambs for the slaughter. And when they’d killed every man, woman, and child in the town, Herrydan gathered all of his soldiers in the courtyard and ordered them to turn on each other. By then, I imagine the madness had fully set in. After what they’d done, there could be no turning back, no acknowledgment that their grand leader might be mistaken. They could only deal with what they’d done by believing ithadto be done. So, spurred on by visions of Ethira rewarding them in the Eternal Realm—visionsI’dfed into their minds—they killed each other.”
“How do you know this?” she asked. “I thought you said they were dead by the time you got there.”
