Page 110 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
‘I promise.’
‘No matter what?’
‘No matter what.’
They walked back towards the keep hand in hand, their steps in quiet rhythm. Peace had become such a rare visitor in her life that she scarcely trusted it, and yet here, since their arrival, she had begun to feel something like her old self stirring beneath the weight of the God-Killer’s whispers.
She could almost see it: mornings spent reading softly to her mother while sea-winds curled through the windows; shared meals at the long stone table with Ash and her uncle; slow walks along the shore with Ash at dusk, wyverns crying in the distance like guardians of the horizon. She could see their daughter too—Medea—safe in this forgotten corner of the world, untouched by gods and curses, unafraid of the vast, merciless world beyond the cliffs.
For a moment, she allowed herself to believe it could beenough.
Ash had stopped so abruptly that Mal nearly collided with him. She glanced up, confusion knitting her brow, only to follow the direction of his stare. Down the narrow path that wound towards the keep, Morthos was descending, his steps uneven, as though the earth itself resisted him.
They did not move.
Mal felt it before she understood it—the way her body went rigid, the way the air thickened in her lungs. There was something wrong in the way her uncle walked. Something broken in the way his shoulders sagged.
She swallowed, her fingers tightening painfully around Ash’s hand.
‘What is it?’ she asked, though her voice trembled before the words fully formed. ‘What’s happened?’
Morthos reached them, but speech seemed beyond him. His dark eyes flicked to Mal, then to Ash, then back again. His hands were shaking. Wyverians did not shake.
‘What’s wrong?’ Mal screamed, her voice splintering against the wind and waves.
For a heartbeat, there was only the sea.
‘It’s the queen,’ Morthos said at last, his voice so quiet it barely carried over the surf. He lifted his gaze fully to Mal’s, and in his eyes she saw it. Saw the truth before he finished speaking.
The world did not shatter.
It simplyfell away.
‘Queen Senka is dead.’
I’ve always wondered who my real parents are. I am Hecate, goddess of witchcraft. But someone must have created me. I asked Hades once if he knew who they were. But he didn’t.
I wonder if they ever loved me.
Or why they left.
Tabitha Wysteria
Queen Senka is dead.
The words battered against the walls of Mal’s mind, again and again, refusing to soften. She blinked once, then twice, as though sight itself might rearrange the truth into something bearable. How could her mother be dead? She had been with her only moments ago. Hadn’t she?
‘I don’t understand,’ she managed at last, the silence stretching thin and fragile between them.
‘She…’ Morthos shifted, suddenly ill at ease. ‘She appears to have jumped from her window.’
Mal did not wait for the rest.
She ran.
Up the narrow path, into the keep, past Ash’s voice calling her name, telling her to stop, to wait, to let him handleit. She did not listen. She could not. The world had narrowed to a single, terrible possibility.
Through the main hall. Up the winding stairs. Into her mother’s chambers.
