Mor shook her head—not at what I’d said, but at whatever had occurred.
Helion fixed his full attention upon me. It was an effort not to flinch at the weight of that focus, the simmering intensity. The muscled body was only a mask—to hide that cunning mind beneath. I wondered if Rhys had picked that up from him.
Helion folded an ankle over a knee. “The Lady of the Autumn Court’s two older sisters were indeed …” He searched for a word. “Butchered. Tormented, and then butchered, during the War.”
I shut out Nesta’s screaming, shut out Elain’s sobbing as she was hauled toward that Cauldron.
Lucien’s aunts. Dead before he’d ever existed. Had his mother ever told him this story?
Rhys explained to me, “Hybern’s forces had swarmed our lands by that point.”
Helion’s jaw clenched. “The Lady of the Autumn Court was sent to stay with her sisters, her younger children packed off to other relatives. To spread out the bloodline.” He dragged a hand through his sable hair. “Hybern attacked their estate. Her sisters bought her time to run. Not because she was married to Beron, but because they loved each other. Fiercely. She tried to stay, but they convinced her to go. So she did—she ran and ran, but Hybern’s beasts were still faster. Stronger. They cornered her at a ravine, where she became trapped atop a ledge, the beasts snapping at her feet.”
He didn’t speak for a long moment.
Too many details. He knew so many details.
I said quietly, “You saved her. You found her, didn’t you?”
A coronet of light seemed to flicker over that thick black hair. “I did.”
There was enough weight, anger, and something else in those two words that I studied the High Lord of Day.
“What happened?”
Helion didn’t break my stare. “I tore the beasts apart with my bare hands.”
A chill slid down my spine. “Why?”
He could have ended it a thousand other ways. Easier ways. Cleaner ways.
Rhys’s bloody hands after the Ravens’ attack flashed through my mind.
Helion didn’t so much as shift in his chair. “She was still young—though she’d been married to that delightful male for nearly two decades. Married too young, the marriage arranged when she was twenty.”
The words were clipped. And twenty—so young. Nearly as young as Mor had been when her own family tried to marry her to Eris.
“So?” A dangerous, taunting question.
And how his eyes burned at that, flaring bright as suns.
But it was Mor who said coolly, “I heard a rumor once, Helion, that she waited before agreeing to that marriage. For a certain someone who had met her by chance at an equinox ball the year before.”
I tried not to blink, not to let any of my rising interest surface.
The fire banked to embers and Helion threw a half smile in Mor’s direction. “Interesting. I heard her family wanted internal ties to power, and that they didn’t give her a choice before they sold her to Beron.”
Sold her. Mor’s nostrils flared. Cassian ran a hand down the back of her hair. Azriel didn’t so much as turn from his vigil at the window, though I could have sworn his wings tucked in a bit tighter.
“Too bad they’re just rumors,” Rhys cut in smoothly, “and can’t be confirmed by anyone.”
Helion merely toyed with the gold cuff on his sculpted arm, twisting the serpent to the center of his bicep. But I furrowed my brows. “Does Beron know you saved his wife in the War?” He hadn’t mentioned anything during the meeting.
Helion let out a dark laugh. “Cauldron, no.” There was enough wry, knowing humor that I straightened.
“You had—an affair after you rescued her?”
The amusement only grew, and Helion pushed a finger against his lips in mock warning. “Careful, High Lady. Even the birds report to Thesan here.”
I frowned at the birds in cages throughout the room, still silent in Azriel’s shadowy presence.
I threw shields around them, Rhys said down the bond.
“How long did the affair last?” I asked. That withdrawn female … I couldn’t imagine it.
Helion snorted. “Is that a polite question for a High Lady to be asking?”
But the way he spoke, that smile …
I only waited, using silence to push him instead.
Helion shrugged. “On and off for decades. Until Beron found out. They say the lady was all brightness and smiles before that. And after Beron was through with her … You saw what she is.”
“What did he do to her?”
“The same things he does now.” Helion waved a hand. “Belittle her, leave bruises where no one but him will see them.”
I clenched my teeth. “If you were her lover, why didn’t you stop it?”
The wrong thing to say. Utterly wrong, by the dark fury that rippled across Helion’s face. “Beron is a High Lord, and she is his wife, mother of his brood. She chose to stay. Chose. And with the protocols and rules, Lady, you will find that most situations like the one you were in do not end well for those who interfere.”
I didn’t back down, didn’t apologize. “You barely even looked at her today.”
“We have more important matters at hand.”
“Beron never called you out for it?”
“To publicly do so would be to admit that his possession made a fool of him. So we continue our little dance, these centuries later.” I somehow doubted that beneath that roguish charm and irreverence, Helion felt it was a dance at all.
But if it had ended centuries ago, and she’d never seen him again, had let Beron treat her so abominably …
Whatever you’ve just figured out, Rhys said, you’d better stop looking so shocked by it.
I forced a smile to my face. “You High Lords really do love your melodrama, don’t you?”
Helion’s own smile didn’t reach his eyes. But Rhys asked, “In your libraries, have you ever encountered a mention of how the wall might be repaired?”
Helion began asking why we wanted to know, what Hybern was doing with the Cauldron … and Rhys fed him answers, easily and smoothly.
While we spoke, I said down the bond, Helion is Lucien’s father.
Rhys was silent. Then—
Holy burning hell.
His shock was a shooting star between us.
I let my gaze dart through the room, half paying attention to Helion’s musing on the wall and how to repair it, then dared study the High Lord for a heartbeat. Look at him. The nose is the same, the smile. The voice. Even Lucien’s skin is darker than his brothers’. A golden brown compared to their pale coloring.
It would explain why his father and brothers detest him so much—why they have tormented him his entire life.
My heart squeezed at that. And why Eris didn’t want him dead. He wasn’t a threat to Eris’s power—his throne. I swallowed. Helion has no idea, does he?
It would seem not.
The Lady of Autumn’s favorite son—not only from Lucien’s goodness. But because he was the child she’d dreamed of having … with the male she undoubtedly loved.
Beron must have discovered the affair when she was pregnant with Lucien.
He likely suspected, but there was no way to prove it—not if she was sharing his bed, too. Rhys’s disgust was a tang in my mouth. I have no doubt Beron debated killing her for the betrayal, and even afterward. When Lucien could be passable as his own offspring—just enough to make him doubt who had sired his last son.
I wrapped my head around it. Lucien not Beron’s son, but Helion’s. His power is flame, though. They’ve mused Beron’s title could go to him.
His mother’s family is strong—that was why Beron wanted a bride from their line. The gift could be hers.
You never suspected?
Not once. I’m mortified I didn’t even consider it.
What does this mean, though?
Nothing—ultimately nothing. Other than the fact that Lucien might be Helion’s sole heir.
And that … it changed nothing in this war. Especially not with Lucien on the continent, hunting that enchanted queen. A bird of flame … and a lord of fire. I wondered if they’d found each other yet.
A door opened and shut in the foyer beyond, and I braced myself as Nesta appeared. Helion paused his debating the wall to survey her carefully, as he had done earlier.
Spell-Cleaver. That was his title.
She surveyed him with her usual disdain.
But Helion gave her the same bow he’d offered me—though his smile was edged with enough sensuality that even my heart raced a bit. No wonder the Lady of Autumn hadn’t stood a chance. “I don’t think we were introduced properly earlier,” he crooned to Nesta. “I’m—”
“I don’t care,” Nesta said with a snap of her wrist, striding right past him and up to my side. “I’d like a word,” she said. “Now.”