Chapter 31

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

H alle doesn't release me from her gaze as she says, "It was Galeia's belief that it should have been her."

My furious thoughts halt. "What do you mean?"

"Her heart was made from dark metal. Regardless of which Blacksmith had created it for her, and even if it had been created out of love, the metal from which it had been made wasn't pure. So the very thing that should have condemned her—that darkness—also saved her."

Sudden pain billows up within me and the pause in my fury ends.

Anger rushes back to me in a flood.

The echo that sounded within Veritas comes to my mind so clearly now, and its meaning is horribly transparent.

"I took her darkness so she could be free. I ripped out the malice so she could be at peace."

"I died so she could live."

"She lived while I died."

"It should have been her. Not me."

I double over with a groan and now Halle—and each member of my pack—edges toward me.

"Darkness?" Anarchy was already sitting closest to me, but she wraps an arm around my shoulders. She is always my protector, the one who worries about my emotions. "Are you okay?"

I can't answer her because it doesn't matter if I'm okay.

I force sound from my lips. "Halle, clarify this for me: Did any Blacksmiths have silver hair?"

"Yes," she whispers.

"Which House?"

There's a pause. "Silverspun. The House that created the keepers." But she hurries on. "That doesn't mean he was from that House."

I glare up at her, finding her as pale as she was when the keeper had first brought me to the Underworld, and she took a step back and asked him why he was wearing that face.

That green-eyed, silver-haired face that has always scared the fuck out of me.

"He could have chosen that face for many reasons," she says. "He could have meant it as a taunt. A rejection of the magic that created him. Hell, he could have even chosen it as a form of acceptance, because without their choices, the world we know would not exist."

She shudders and wraps her arms around herself. "I may not have witnessed the keepers' creation, but I saw the decay that stretched east. An entire fae city was wiped out. A Valkyrie village was infected, and all of its women became mortally ill. Animals were malformed… We hadn't seen a deer for years, let alone a natural wolf…"

Her focus becomes a little distant as she fixates on the wall—outside of which the two wolves may still be playing.

She shakes herself. "There are many reasons why the keeper could have chosen to show you that face."

Including because he was trying to send me a message about the power I control.

My fingers curl with frustration because only he can give me clarity.

"What about the face he's wearing now?" I consider his hair, how dark it is, but it isn't metallic and it never scared me.

To my surprise, it's Jonah who answers. "The face he wears now does not belong to a Blacksmith," he says. "Just as this longhouse would never have belonged to a Blacksmith."

I cast my gaze around the structure. "You said this was an En… En…" My forehead puckers as I stumble over the pronunciation. "How do you pronounce it?"

"Einherjar," he says, pronouncing it en- hair -yar with emphasis on the second syllable. "He has the same blue eyes as their greatest chieftain."

The form he takes when his mood is the darkest. He wasn't wearing it when he first met Jonah, and now I wonder if that was a deliberate choice on the keeper's part. Jonah would have recognized these eyes.

My hand brushes the keeper's cold cheek as I try to work through the threads of the weave of my mother's life and how it connects with the keeper's.

"Okay, then. Here is what I have: my mother's life was saved by a powerful Blacksmith whose identity is unknown," I say. "Whether or not it was given out of love or hate, the heart they gave her kept her alive until I came into existence and absorbed her power."

A lump forms in my throat. "In prison, her heart finally stopped altogether."

I breathe out. Then in. Pushing through the pain of those memories so I can continue. "Her heart started beating again when the keeper touched her. A final burst of life."

A final chance to speak with the keeper who'd taken her place in oblivion.

Oh, the gentle way she pressed her palm to his face…

I remember what the keeper said to me right after I read the book… When I'd screamed at him that my mother was alive and free and she could have come back for me.

He told me it wasn't that simple.

He never once told me that her heart had been failing because of me.

"The keeper did what he was supposed to do," I say, speaking around the tightness of my throat. "He took her heart so the metal it was made of couldn't be misused. He had no choice. That metal was infused with Blacksmith magic. It had to be contained. Just like Ryuji said. All of it gathered up and?—"

"Take the crown."

It's such a sudden impulse coming from outside of me that I freeze.

Then, very slowly, I draw back the fur covering the keeper's chest, exposing his left hand where it rests against his heart.

That oh-so-small ring he wears on his finger.

It gleams at me, drawing me in as it always does.

My voice is cold with fear now. "Ryuji said that all of the dark metal, except for my mother's heart, was destroyed. He was talking about the hammers of the most powerful Blacksmiths, wasn't he?"

I pin Halle with a stare, but she doesn't answer me.

Her form flickers between dead and living, her face rippling between fully charred and that of a woman who has unwanted wisdom.

"Metal like that…" I continue. "Metal of the kind that was used to create my mother's heart. How could it ever be destroyed? All you could do is contain it. Put it somewhere nobody can reach it."

What better place to hide dark metal than on the head of the keeper in a realm from which he should never have been able to escape?

"Then I came along," I say. "I gave the keeper the power in my heart in exchange for vengeance, unwittingly bringing that metal out into the world. Unwittingly bringing into the world the power I absorbed, and now…"

Friction grows in the air around me.

My pack is suddenly tense. Halle is like a stone. Jonah has taken a step closer.

"Temptation," I say, repeating what the keeper said to me. " Take the crown. "

I reach for the keeper's hand, slowly extending the claws of my left hand at the same time.

Take the crown that isn't a crown.

All of its power calls to me, all of the vengeance that the keeper promised me, right at the tip of my fingers.

A hammer waiting to be claimed.