The Maleficent Faerie: A Sleeping Beauty Retelling (For the Love of the Villain Book 2) by Rebecca F. Kenney

Author:Rebecca F. Kenney [Kenney, Rebecca F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

20

The Princess and I sit on the ledge of the Chapel roof, watching the raven shrink into the distance and vanish. I’m not sure what to say. How do I comfort someone whose parents just ordered their capture or death?

“What is it?” Aura says suddenly.

I frown, confused.

She points up into the sky, at the veils of darkness shrouding the Triune Suns. “The Void. What is it? Despite the name, it isn’t nothing. It moves in regular patterns. You pull things out of it with your magic—monsters like the Endlings. What is it, and how does it work?”

Only someone familiar with the dogma of the Caennith could understand how much it costs her to speak those words. To the followers of the Caennith religion, too much curiosity about the Void is considered foolish at best and traitorous at worst—just as fear of the Void is considered a sign of weak faith in Eonnula.

In the early days of my reign, I spent enough time learning the ways and religion of her people, thinking such knowledge might be the key to lasting peace. I was a fool. The attempt at understanding was one-sided. The Caennith Royals and their people expected me to learn their culture, but they made no attempt to understand mine.

Maybe Aura’s curiosity is the first step toward something new. It’s a pity she’ll be sleeping for a century, unable to serve as an ambassador from my kingdom to hers. That’s my fault, and the least I can do by way of reparation is to answer her questions.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “It isn’t exactly nothing. More like a kind of energy we do not understand, the opposite of heat and light. The Void is all around Midunnel, pressing inward, as you know—but parts of it are more condensed, moving through its expanse. Think of those centralized currents as a monstrous serpent out in the dark, made of the dark, forever slithering and coiling in the emptiness that is also part of itself. When its coils loop around the suns, they are blocked out, while other stars shine brighter.”

“So when you perform magic with the Void, you…” Her voice trails off, as if she isn’t sure what specific questions to ask.

“I perform rituals in my tower at Ru Gallamet, to collect condensed tendrils of the Void. I have a wheel and a spindle of my own design, which siphons the dark energy and allows me to shape it into a form I can absorb and use.”

“You perform rituals? Like blood rituals?”

“Yes.” I sigh, rubbing my jaw. “The Void has no real consciousness that I’ve been able to discern. But when it encounters life, it attempts to consume that life, replacing life with Itself. Blood is the essence of life. So yes, blood is a necessary component of the process. Typically I use Fae blood, since I need quite a lot of it.”

“That’s why my parents didn’t want you to have me. You were going to drain my blood.”

“No!” I try to communicate my sincerity through my eyes, my voice.

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