Those dark eyes pierced me, the florals wrapping tighter between us. That hum in my chest beat fists against my ribs. I swore I could hear the pounding in the silence.
Lancaster sighed. “I never wanted this life. I never wanted to be…the Hunter.” Malice twisted through those words.
Mora had told me as much. She’d implied on more than one occasion that there was more to her brother, and I’d spent countless nights wondering how he became this creature bred to slaughter me. Digging up old texts on the fae that now crowded my room back in Xenovia.
I scooted to the edge of my seat, keenly hoping he was going to show me now.
“This may be a surprise to you, Bounty, but it does not please me to kill those who have no power over their instincts. Who may even be unaware of the instincts within them. But I do it because it was a promise I made.”
“A promise?” I asked, but he was too focused on his story, eyes on me, mind in the past.
“When I was eighteen, I was summoned to the capital with my mother. I was her youngest child, and since I’d been born, we’d resided in the country.” A soft laugh. “I should have known there was something wrong. My mother, much like my sister, was born to be in the bustling city. They were both invigorated by the life of it all.
“Mora was already there. In Ritalia’s employ for her glamour magic.” He grimaced as if the tie of his family to the late queenpained him physically. “She wanted me, too. I was promised to her by my mother in exchange for keeping her secrets.”
“What secrets?”
That time, he seemed to hear my question. His eyes flicked back and forth between mine. My chest pounded.
“My mother’s blood is very powerful.”
“And Ritalia could scent bloodlines,” I finished for him. It was how the queen had kept her enemies and allies under her thumb—that very rare type of magic.
“She discovered what was within my mother the moment they met by happenstance when they were both young. And she kept traces on her and all her children over the centuries.”
I’d asked before, and he’d never answered. First while stitching him up and plucking cypher splinters from his wound, and countless times since. Once he couldn’t say it, and after he’d refused. But when I asked this time, something told me he was going to give me an answer.
“What is in your blood that she wanted?”
And with no preamble, Lancaster said, “My mother was the daughter of a demigoddess.” Those words clanged through me. “Her mother was the daughter of Aoiflyn and a fae male of inconsequential power. Some would refer to my mother as a Deige. A child with Godsblood and blood of magic. Some simply refer to her as a demigoddess. Either way, the blood of the Fae Goddess, Aoiflyn, flows through our line.”
It was a conversation we’d had before.
“Why is your magic—and your sister’s—so much more powerful than a typical fae?”
He dragged his tongue over his teeth. Ground his jaw. And?—
“Why aren’t you answering, Lancaster?”
Nothing beyond his nostrils flaring as I said his name and hatred pooling in his dark eyes.
“It’s related to the Gods and Goddesses you’re blocked from speaking of.”
Gods, I’d known then that there was some sort of connection, but I hadn’t dared to consider it might be the actual blood of a Goddess herself within the fae siblings. It was unprecedented. Until Ophelia and Jezebel, I’d believed Godsblood was so far removed from the present day, it wasn’t possible more than a drop flowed in the veins of the descendants. Not enough to make them powerful, surely.
How recently had the Gods walked the realm?
“Is that why you never spoke of it?” I asked. “Did Ritalia bind you from sharing this lineage?”
Lancaster nodded. “When she died, that bargain snapped, but it was natural to keep secrets that did not seem prudent.”
“To protect your mother,” I whispered. And Gods, I wished my chest didn’t crack at that statement. If my mother was still here, I’d have done anything to guard her secrets.
Lancaster’s expression shattered just as my heart did. “I wish it was for the reason you’re thinking, Bounty.” It was the most distress I’d ever seen bleeding across his sharp features. Lips downturned and eyes burning with centuries of pain. “Ritalia first manipulated my mother, then her children. When I went to the capital, my mother moved with me. She wanted to oversee my Hunter training, and that was when I first observed the dynamic between her and the queen.”
His words tightened as he went on. “It became clear Ritalia was making her into a tool. She used her for her body, to produce powerful children to line the queen’s guard and man posts across Vercuella over the centuries.” Lancaster fisted the sheets, shaking his head. “Then, when she had the Hunter she’d been waiting for—when my mother’s blood mixed with the right male for me to appear and be forced at Ritalia’s whim—she stopped protecting my mother.”
He sat forward, the sheet falling low around his hips, his elbows braced on his knees.
