Page 33 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
‘So you and I…’ Mal cleared her throat, steadying herself. ‘You are my uncle, and yet at the same time my half-brother. We share the same mother. Hecate.’
Morthos inclined his head in confirmation.
‘And my mother’s curse,’ Mal continued quietly, ‘the one Hades and Hecate passed down to me, in which I fall in love with…’ She glanced towards Ash, then exhaled softly. ‘It did not pass to you as it did to me. I am cursed to be reborn, as Hadrian and Hecate were. Ash as well. But we are cursed to love one another.’ She glanced back at Morthos. ‘And you…?’
‘I am only half-god,’ Morthos replied, lifting one shoulder in a faint shrug. ‘So I inherited only half the burden. I am cursed to return again and again, but I am not bound to love.’ There was something in his tone that suggested he might not have minded bearing the full weight of it.
Mal looked down at her hands, at the neat line of her nails, trying to marshal the storm of thoughts colliding inside her mind. Once more, the world felt as though it were closing in, tightening its grip around her ribs. Could she trust Morthos? Could she even trust Ash?
She wanted the answer to be yes. Desperately so. But when she lifted her eyes to Ash, those golden eyes so full of devotion and wonder when they rested on her, she saw something else beneath the surface. Something cold and inevitable.
A promise not of love, but of ruin.
There was doom in that stare.
‘Why did you try to kill me?’
Morthos exhaled slowly and let his gaze wander the vast, empty hall, as though the space itself might lend him the courage to speak. Mal did not rush him. Her own attention drifted instead to their surroundings. It was a beautiful place, in its way, with arches and stone shaped with care, but it had been abandoned to decay. Left to rot. She found herself wondering whether the room was a mirror of the Blackburns themselves: a family eroding under the weight of its own mistakes. Perhaps she was not the only one cursed. Perhaps the rot ran through them all.
‘Your father, King Ozul,’ Morthos began at last, ‘told me and our brother, Morwen, that the god of death had visited him. He said the god foretold that the queen would fall pregnant again, with afourth child. And that this child would need protecting at all costs.’
Mal listened, unmoving.
‘Morwen was against it immediately,’ Morthos continued. ‘He wanted you gone. He claimed the gods were playing dangerous games with mortals and that we would all be destroyed by it. Your father and I argued with him fiercely. At first, I wanted to protect you. With everything I had. You were my brother’s child. A blessing. Never before had the wyverian royal line known a fourth child. I did not see a curse where Morwen did.’
‘So what changed your mind?’ Mal asked quietly.
Morthos sighed and lifted his cup again, taking another long swallow. Mal found herself wondering whether there was any wine left at all.
‘When you were born, our mother Hecate, came to me,’ Morthos said at last. ‘She told me everything. Who I truly was. What I was. She said she had remained close all this time, watching over me, waiting for the moment we might become a family again.’ His jaw tightened. ‘But she twisted it. She told me you would come between us. That one day you would grow into something dangerous. That you would be the end of everything. Of me, of her… even of the world. And that I could prevent it. I only needed to—’
‘Kill me,’ Mal whispered.
She ignored the creature behind her as it began to cackle softly. Ignored the way her chest constricted at the realisation that her own mother had asked for her death.Her own mother.Whatever love Hecate possessed, it had never been meant for Mal.
Her hand drifted to her stomach, resting over the quiet life growing there. She forced herself not to think too far ahead, notto dwell on her daughter, on what her birth might one day mean.
The end of Mal.
And yet, she would risk everything for this child. She would not become her mother. She would not repeat the same cruelty, the same fear. She would never raise a hand against her own daughter to save herself, no matter what fate awaited them both.
‘Liar,’ the creature murmured at her ear.
Mal rose abruptly, the heavy chair screeching as it dragged across the stone floor. Ash’s eyes widened, concern flashing across his beautiful face. And still, Mal could not be certain whether that worry was meant for her…
Or for the child she carried.
‘He will always choose her,’ the creature whispered. ‘They all will. And you will become the villain, Mal Blackburn. In their eyes… you will be evil.’
Mal tried to swallow the knot tightening her throat, her hand curling protectively over her belly. Tears threatened, burning hot behind her eyes, but she forced them back and pressed them down into some sealed, shadowed corner of herself she dared not open. Because if she did…
She turned away, walking towards the windowless arches that overlooked the dark, restless shore.
‘I kidnapped you,’ Morthos continued, his voice trailing after her. ‘I managed to hide with you for days. Your parents were shattered by it. I still don’t know how your father found us… though I suspect the god of death, Thanatos, revealed our location.’ He dragged a hand down his face. ‘Your father took you home. He banished me here, though I deserved execution for what I’d done. He never asked me why. But I think he knew, deep down…’ Morthos rubbed at his brow, as though the weight of memory ached there. ‘We never spoke again. I have lived in this keep ever since, twenty-four years of isolation. Your father tasked me with raising and breeding wyverns. I send him beasts from time to time, but…’ His voice faltered, trailing off into the vast, echoing silence, one thick with regret, rot, and the long consequences of fear left unanswered.
Mal stared out at the sea, its black waters heaving like the outstretched hand of a god reaching for her. For a fleeting moment, she wondered what it might feel like to surrender—to stop fighting, to simply let herself sink. But the pain and fury had already taken root in her black wyverian heart, festering beyond mercy. She would not rest until Persephone was dead. Until every god still drawing breath was silenced.
She would become queen of the Underworld.
