Chapter 381: Griffin Thinks Sterling Is The Father

Emma’s dark magic coiled around her hands like living smoke, pulsing with a rhythm that matched nothing natural.

Everyone’s legs froze in place.

"What the hell did you just do?" Blair asked.

"Goddess, I love a good reveal. You can feel the room recalibrating. You know what I love about Drakencrest, specifically? The architecture screams ’we are untouchable,’ and the security says ’please, walk right in.’ It’s like a vault with the door open. Very inviting. Very stupid."

The torches along the walls dimmed further. The shadows in the throne room stretched and deepened, reaching toward her like they’d been waiting for permission.

"Oh, and your mage over there?" Emma’s eyes slid to the woman standing in the shadow near the south wall. "Yeah. She’s staying out of this."

Every head turned. Including the ones that should have been watching Emma’s hands instead of following her gaze like trained dogs.

Lux Nash was white. The color had left her face with the speed and totality of a woman who had just been hit by something she couldn’t name and the inability to name it was the thing that was destroying her.

Her hands were at her sides. Open. Still. A violet shimmer of magic was skating across her knuckles but not moving anywhere.

"Even if she has no memory of who I am, her magic recognizes my signature. She’s my daughter. Magic does not resist that from which it originated. For the dumb one in the back, that means she can’t fight me."

Lux’s jaw moved once. No sound came out.

Kael’s eyes moved from Emma to Lux. The calculation behind them was running at full speed and the output was a revised threat assessment that had just doubled in complexity because the woman who had been trying to crack Guinevere’s memory loss was the daughter of their main suspect.

"Your daughter," Blair repeated.

"Yes. Are you dumb? That’s what I just said."

"How old are you?"

"You never ask a woman her age, Blair. Didn’t your mother teach you that? She didn’t. Because she died when you were young. Consider this a favor."

"Keep my mother’s name out of your mouth," Blair snapped.

"Can I just say," Emma continued, ignoring Blair’s warning and turning to Lux with a grin that carried warmth and condescension in equal measure, "you have been very slow to connect the dots on what you are. You were making progress for a while there. On the ice continent. The research was good. Getting closer. Then you stopped looking." She tilted her head. "Why did you stop looking, Lux?"

The question hung in the air with the energy of a therapist.

Lux said nothing. Her chest was moving in shallow, controlled breaths that had nothing to do with control and everything to do with the fact that her body was fighting a war her magic had already surrendered.

Emma glanced at her daughter with the soft, pitying smile of a woman returning a lost dog. "Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the villain here. I’m the context you were missing. Everything that didn’t make sense about you? Your magic, your instincts, the way you could read dark signatures no one else could touch? That was me. In your blood. This whole time. You’re welcome." She gave Lux a Blair-level once over. "It’s a shame you don’t look like me."

Emma turned back to Blair. "Sorry about that. Family stuff. You know how it is."

Her palms came forward.

The blast of dark magic hit Blair’s chest like a freight train made of midnight. Black and violet light erupted from Emma’s hands in a concentrated stream that should have sent the dragon princess across the throne room and into the far wall.

It didn’t.

The necklace at Blair’s throat ignited. Gold light blazed from the pendant, flaring outward in a pulse that met the dark magic head-on. The collision produced a sound that was felt more than heard, a deep percussive thud that vibrated through the stone floor and rattled every piece of metal in the room.

The dark magic reflected. Bounced back. Hit Emma square in the chest and shoved her three feet across the stone, her boots scraping grooves into the floor.

Emma didn’t stumble. Didn’t falter. Didn’t break stride. She caught herself with a grace that said she’d been shoved by her own magic before and considered it a professional hazard.

The grin that spread across her face was the grin of a woman who had just found the answer to a question she’d been asking.

"THAT’S how you got Navarre. I kept feeling it. For the past few days there was an energy around you that I couldn’t locate. I went through your things twice. Your wardrobe. Your jewelry box. Your desk. I couldn’t find it." She let out a delighted laugh. "And you were wearing it. The whole time. On your body. Under your clothes. In plain goddamn sight."

Blair’s hand went to the necklace. The gold was still warm from the deflection.

Emma flicked her wrist.

The motion was small. Casual. The flick of a woman brushing lint off a sleeve.

The chain around Blair’s neck snapped. The necklace ripped free from her throat with a force that left a red line across her skin, and the pendant sailed across the throne room in a spinning arc of gold light, clattering against the far wall and sliding across the stone floor until it came to rest sixty feet away, dark and inert.

"That was my mother’s," Blair gritted, still unable to move because her legs were being held in place by a crazy woman’s magic.

Emma waved her hand like she was shooing a fly. "You shouldn’t have ever had it to begin with."

"That necklace survived three dynasties, a war, and being hidden in my brother’s disaster of a bedroom. It did not survive you, and I am going to take that personally for the rest of my life."

"You stick up for yourself," Emma observed. "I like you. I’m still going to memory wipe all of you, but I like you. Just know that."

"Pick it up," Blair demanded.

Emma blinked.

"When I get out of this, and I will get out of this, you are going to pick that necklace up off the floor and hand it back to me. Or I will burn this throne room down around both of us and let the stones sort out who was right."

Emma started laughing again and clapped her hands. "Now then. Where were we? Oh right. You gathered your best minds in the keep and put them in this room. You made it too easy for me."

In the back of the chamber, Sterling Emberfell’s bracelet flashed bright white once and his legs were free.

The blast came fast.

Sterling moved faster.