Page 334 of The Edge of Darkness

As if coming to a similar realization at the same time I did, Torin whirled on Karios. “You fool!” she hissed. “You used the amulet, didn’t you?”

Karios held her stare without a single twitch of a reaction to her accusation.

Something in my gut twisted with a sense of wrongness.

Why would Karios have the amulet?

Torin stepped threateningly close to him. “What, exactly, did you do?”

His jaw worked beneath his beard, his eyes hard as stone, yet still, he remained unfazed. “I created, as my power allows me to.”

She cursed him further with her stare. “I gave you that stone so that you would protect it! Not use it on one of your whims!” A smattering of mist punctuated the air as she said the words.

The rune across her forehead, and the two lines bracketing the column of her slender neck flared with bright blue light, a manifestation of her rage. Her finger jutted in Niall’s direction. “I know of only one other power like this. It was my father’s, and it was bound to that amulet. When I recognized it, I told myself I was wrong—that it was some sort of fluke. Because how could my dead father’s power be in this fae High Lord?” She practically spit the words, and I noted the slight change in Karios’s expression, like she’d just said something he hadn’t previously been aware of.

Flame of Dark. Son of Shadow. Torin’s whispers had called Niall those things the first time we met her. I knew a power like yours once—ages ago. It brought a reckoning upon all that faced it. Those were the words she had said.

I turned toward her. “You suspected, yet you said nothing?”

“All I knew was that his power was familiar. I never truly considered the possibility that it came from the amulet. I didn’t think that your god-king would betray my trust!”

We all looked at Karios.

“I have watched over and cared for this world since its inception, down to every last detail of its existence,” he said. “So when my brother threatened all that I had built, and everything that I had poured my soul into, I became desperate.”

“You became foolish,” Torin spat.

Karios dipped his chin. “That too, I suppose. I cannot deny that when you arrived in this world, my eyes were opened to the vast possibilities that existed beyond what I knew. That there were other forces—other aspects of this universe at my disposal. I kept the amulet locked away for a while. In truth, I’d forgotten about it after some time . . . until Lyceius’s conquests became too burdensome. I transferred a fraction of its power to the High Lord of Calledan’s mate, who was pregnant at the time. Mistakenly, it was her youngling that absorbed the power, and it gifted him something that no fae had ever seen.” He raised his eyes to Niall again.

“Shadowfire,” Niall said. “That’s how Evander had shadowfire.” His voice . . . it was the same, but not, and suddenly I realized what was different. It was now laced with the familiar edge I’d heard during our intimate moments, when he let the dark side of him surface. It was the deep, other-worldly tone that lined each verbal threat he’d ever given our enemies. It was the edge of darkness.

And now, it was interwoven with every word he spoke.

Karios nodded, seeming to also take note of the way Niall’s voice had changed.

“But how was Niall able to control it, when Evander couldn’t?” I asked.

“I created humans and the fae with the ability to adapt through bloodlines. Magic also adapts as the world changes. Power strengthens when it needs to, and wanes when required. There is a balance. Evander was unable to control the power because his essence was not strong enough to embody it. He fought it more than he allowed himself to adapt to it. Accepting such a gift is half the battle.”

“That power is not a gift,” Torin growled. “It is darkness, Karios—a form of chaos. It was never meant for this world. This world has no god to control it, and you know as well as I that there is a reason for that.”

Karios tilted his head in contemplation. “The balance, yes.” Though he didn’t seem convinced that what he’d done was wrong.

“Did you not think that unleashing such a thing would have repercussions?” the goddess continued.

“You were not exactly forthcoming with every piece of information, Torin.” It was the first time he had called her by name, and the rasp with which he said it felt as physical as a slap to the face. “You never mentioned that your father was dead.” Because if she had, Karios would have known that whoever held that power in their veins would ascend to take Erebus’s place.

Karios leveled a look at Torin. “Perhaps I should have known better than to use the amulet in the first place, but understand that I have been waging a battle for the survival of my creation, and as you well know, there is only so much a god can do without violating divine law.”

“That is no excuse,” the goddess said through clenched teeth. “And bestowing a foreign power that is not yours to impart in the first place is as reckless as defying the fates themselves. In fact, it might even be equivalent.”

“Careful.” Karios’s voice sharpened like the edge of a deadly blade. “You’re going to need more ground than you currently stand on to make an accusation like that.”

The god-king’s threat hung heavy in the air between them, and Torin shifted uneasily on her feet. “If you think that I trust anything you say after this⁠—”

“I don’t need your trust, goddess. This world, these realms, the very land I granted you, are mine, and I shall do with them as I see fit.”

“You mean what suits your agenda best.” She scoffed. “I should have known.”