The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I had a feeling this all went horribly wrong, but I still didn’t know how.
“We spent years before the war searching for where Spirit Shadow might be trapped.” Gran shook her head. “Used our best scholars and historians, our smartest shadow elementals—nothing. Meanwhile, we were getting sanctions against us, trade banned, not allowed to travel to the mainland because of the magic we were using. It was despicable.”
Her words were full of venom, so much anger behind them, even after all this time.
“Finally, we had a breakthrough. According to many historical texts, the people of the Old World disappeared from existence over time. It was a long and painful extinction of their race. Yet the spirits seemingly disappeared at the beginning of this mass extinction. That timing couldn’t have been coincidental.”
Emory had made the exact same argument. But it still didn’t make sense.
“But then what caused the extinction?” I asked. “If the spirits were already trapped, how did everyone die? And why, thousands of yearslater, would our ancestors stumble on Arathia and be granted the same powers?”
Gran gave an impatient shake of her head. “I don’t have all the answers. Those questions are for people smarter than me.” She raised a finger. “But I know this: someone in the Old World had a grudge against the Seven Spirits, and they found a way to trap them because of it. Sealed them in hidden tombs around the continent.”
I could barely breathe, and Loch had gone completely still next to me.
“That’s unbelievable,” he murmured.
“Yet we found Spirit Shadow’s tomb.”
Neither Loch nor I spoke, both of us hanging on to every word coming from Gran’s mouth.
“It was in Shiraeth.”
The star court.
“Why would it be there?” I asked.
“Well, it’s no secret Spirit Shadow and Spirit Star didn’t get along. Maybe they were fighting when they were trapped. I can’t know for sure. But we decided to go along with our plan to attack. We started in the sky court, working our way down to the frost court, and we finally landed in Shiraeth. We had forces everywhere, our small but mighty court catching everyone off guard. But the war wasn’t going in our favor. We decided it was time to release Spirit Shadow.” She shook her head sadly. “We were such fools, Poppy.”
It all clicked in that moment. Over the years, there’d been questions about how Sorrengard managed to take Shiraeth by surprise so much that they decimated them all. I’d asked Gran those very questions, which she’d always shrugged off, saying that everyone underestimated the shadow court. Many assumed they’d used dark magic to do it—at least that’s what I’d read in so many books.
“He killed them all,” I guessed. “You set Spirit Shadow free, and he destroyed the entire star court.”
Loch swore softly.
Gran nodded. “We never imagined that would happen. We used the dagger to carve open his tomb, hidden deep in a cave, and he blasted out. Nothing but shadow and wrath. He tore around the entire court in minutes and then disappeared. It was a bloodbath like nothing I’d everseen. The other courts thought we’d used our dark magic to do it. We couldn’t tell them the truth. They’d go searching for their own spirits, would want to set them free. They drove our forces back to Sorrengard, banished us there, but we were already planning on leaving. We needed to find Spirit Shadow and figure out what in the bloody shadows we were going to do.
“We ordered everyone to pull back, to get back to Sorrengard immediately. Our next mistake.” Gran swallowed. “When we arrived with our fleet, Spirit Shadow was already there waiting, and he killed everyone. Every last person in my court. Our people gave the king and me, and the little baby in my belly, enough time to escape on a boat. They saved us before Spirit Shadow killed them all.”
“You were pregnant through that whole ordeal?”
She nodded.
My hand floated over my mouth in horror. “Gran, I’m so, so sorry.”
“My husband and I knew we had to tell the other courts about this, about the horrible mistake we’d made. We fled back to Arathia, our boat docking at isles of Valoris. We thought we might appeal to the young king. He was only eighteen, newly crowned after his parents had died in the Shadow War. We’d hoped he’d be impressionable, empathizing with what had happened to us. It was a long journey. I gave birth on the ship. A little girl. Most beautiful baby. I was in love, and she gave me hope for a better future. One where we could learn from our mistakes and work with the other courts. I realized how foolish and arrogant we’d been. Now I was ready to beg. But as soon as we stepped off our boat, they struck. The young king and one of his guards. They used lightning to kill my husband while he held our little darling.”
Her voice shook, and my eyes welled with tears at the tragedy of it all. The story played out in my mind, each piece fitting so neatly into the puzzle.
“You survived,” I said slowly. “And you wanted revenge. The king thought you had died.”
She nodded. “I ripped the shadow from his guard, then used that shadow to kill him right as the king’s lightning struck me, sending me into the frigid waters of the sea. I survived, and I had a piece of new magic in hand. The crown.”
Loch sucked in a sharp breath. “The crown appeared when you took the guard’s shadow.”
Gran didn’t acknowledge him, continuing her story. “I wanted the king to feel the same kind of pain he’d caused me. Death was too easy for him. So when I emerged from the cold depths of the sea onto the rocky shores of the isles, I vowed I would have my revenge. A new plan formed.”
I thought about my mother’s story of the strange woman who offered her a crown in exchange for her firstborn child. But my mother didn’t have me until she was fifty years old.
