Penellaphe gasped, her eyes widening with shock. “Good Fates,” she whispered. “I have known none who’ve done that.”
I was obviously missing something and also getting tired of asking questions. “What is a kardia?”
“It’s the piece of the soul—the spark—that all living creatures are born and die with. It allows them to love another not of their blood irrevocably, selflessly.” Penellaphe swallowed. “It must have been terribly painful to have that torn from you. To truly be unable to love.”
Chapter 2
“It was barely an inconvenience,” Nyktos muttered, clearly not pleased with the topic, and I…
I was stunned.
I’d believed that Nyktos could never allow himself to love. Not when he saw it as a weakness and also as a weapon to be wielded against him—just as I had sought to use it. But I hadn’t known that he was truly incapable of feeling love.
I was shocked that he would do that to himself, even though I understood why he would, after everything he’d been through. But I didn’t understand because he was…
“You care about others,” I said, shaking my head in confusion. “I know you do. How—？”
“Caring and loving are two vastly different things,” Nyktos said. “I am not incapable of caring for or about another. The kardia is simply unable to sway me. Something one would think all Primals would ensure.”
“Yeah. Namely, Kolis,” I murmured, running my palm over my chest where the embers remained still. But my heart ached for Nyktos. I glanced at Holland, who had fallen silent, and irritation darted through me. “You couldn’t give me a single hint that there was truly no point to any of what you trained me to do?”
“There is only so much I can do and say,” Holland said quietly. “Or could.”
I knew that. The rules. Still, it was irritating. I cleared my throat. “So, like I asked before, how long does the mortal realm have?”
“It’s hard to know,” Holland shared. “What you know as the Rot in the mortal realm has made the Shadowlands into what it is now. But it would not happen that way with the rest of Iliseeum. It has only just begun to spread beyond these lands. It would take Iliseeum longer to suffer the truly catastrophic effects, but the mortal realm would have…a year? Maybe two or three if lucky. But it would not be easy to survive such an event.”
Or be something anyone would want to survive.
The image of the Coupers filled my mind, the family lying together in that bed as they must have done a hundred times before. They had already been dying a slow death from starvation, and hundreds of thousands more would end up just like them when all the vegetation died. Then the livestock. The famine and sickness would be horrific, leading to wars and more violence.
Panic blossomed deep in my chest as I thought about the people of Lasania—my stepsister Ezra, Marisol, and the Ladies of Mercy, who did everything in their power to keep children from falling prey to the worst sort of humanity. Then I thought of the Massey family and all the other hardworking men and women beyond Lasania. So many who would have no chance. None.
“Can we not warn them?” I asked of Holland, my heart twisting. “Perhaps if we do, Ezra can work to—”
“Queen Ezmeria has already begun implementing much-needed changes in Lasania,” Holland interrupted.
I gasped. “Queen?”
A small, fond smile tugged at his lips as he nodded.
“She married?” I whispered, hopeful. “Marisol?”
“Yes. She took the throne not long after you were taken into the Shadowlands.”
I squeezed my eyes shut against the rush of relief. Ezra had done as I’d asked of her. She’d taken the throne from my mother. Gods, I would give any amount of coin to have seen the look on my mother’s face. A choked laugh left me as I opened my eyes, becoming aware of Nyktos watching me in that close, intense way of his. “How did she do it? Did my—？” I stopped. None of that mattered at the moment. “I need to warn her.”
“I would advise against that,” Nyktos said.
“I wasn’t asking you,” I snapped before I could stop myself.
He simply continued eying me, seeming utterly unperturbed by my response.
“Sometimes, it is best to not know if or when the end is coming,” Penellaphe advised.
“Didn’t you say that knowledge is power?” I pointed out.
“Sometimes, it is,” she reiterated. “But when it’s not, all it does is unleash harm and pain.”