Tale of the Heart Queen
BY NISHA J. TULI
Artefacts of Ouranos
Trial of the Sun Queen
Rule of the Aurora King
Fate of the Sun King
Tale of the Heart Queen
Title
Copyright
ORBIT
First published in Great Britain in 2024 by Orbit
Copyright © 2024 by Nisha J. Tuli
Excerpt from Mistress of Lies by K. M. Enright
Copyright © 2024 by K. M. Enright
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-356-52343-9
Orbit
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
orbit-books.co.uk
To everyone who’s waiting for their rainbow at the end of the storm
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Acknowledgments
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Readers,
I’m so excited to welcome you back to Ouranos one more time for the conclusion of this series that has taken over and changed my life. I know I left you on a bit of a rough note at the end of Fate of the Sun King, and I’m very sorry, but you’re about to see why and how it all comes together now.
Tale of the Heart Queen was the hardest book I’ve tackled yet. (I think I said that last time, but finishing up a series turns out to be more challenging than it looks.) It’s also the longest book I’ve ever written, but we had a lot of things to accomplish . . . as you’ll see.
I wrote every single word with the goal and hope that you’ll love this series until the very last page. I know I did, and I’m very happy with the ending I gave them all.
Lor goes on her wildest adventure yet, so hold on to your hats because this will be a ride.
Listed below are the content warnings for this final installment of the Artefacts of Ouranos. Thank you for coming on this journey with me.
I promised you all a happy ending . . . so here it is.
Love,
Nisha
Content Warnings: You’ll find the same themes and topics as the previous books in the series, including mentions of past abuse, both sexual and physical. There are mentions of trauma, suicide ideation, alcohol abuse, non-consensual touching, and child abuse. There is also mention of pregnancy and its possible complications, though everything turns out fine.
The dogs are safe. Nothing happens or ever will happen to the dogs. They’re both very good girls.
CHAPTER 1
LOR
SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE APHELION
My heart lives outside of my body now, bleeding out on the hard-packed earth where I kneel on the unforgiving ground.
Sobbing, I cling to Nadir, pressing my ear to his chest, willing his heart to beat. It remains silent and inert, like wood charred by wildfires, drained of life and slowly crackling to ash.
My ribbons of my dense crimson magic pump through his limbs, grasping at nothing but the yawning emptiness in his chest. It’s no use. My grip slips and stutters, and I struggle to cling to the shreds of his spirit draining into the soil.
If I keep pushing myself, I risk losing control of my healing magic and sliding into the electric threads of my lightning, causing even more damage.
It’s hard to believe I could make this any worse.
I scream. I cry. I let every tear fall. I plead to the skies. I beg the goddess to save him. I bargain with the heavens. I offer up my soul in exchange for his life. I will do anything.
My vision blurs at the corners, and my stomach roils, bile basting the back of my throat. Sweat beads on my forehead as my surroundings tilt on an axis. My cries vibrate through every nerve, assaulting my ears and the tiny hairs covering my arms and the back of my neck. My skin hurts. My hair hurts. The pain in my chest feels like I’m being manipulated by giant hands, twisting my body at opposite angles until I’m nearly torn in half.
Distantly, my mind registers that Rion and his army are still close. Though we’re hidden from view, I need to stay aware. Soon enough, they’ll wake up under my dome of lightning unless I managed to kill them too. But something tells me it won’t be that easy to finally rid myself of the Aurora King.
He has the ark of Heart in his possession. Until a few days ago, I’d never heard of it, but it belongs to me. And I want it back. Something tells me I need it back.
I recall the way it looked as it landed in my outstretched hands. What the Empyrium shared with me in the Evanescence. Virulence. That black glittering stone I looked upon so many times when I stared at the Aurora Keep from the Hollow, vowing to tear it apart.
Are the arks made of the same substance?
The memory of Rion’s choking black magic filters into my turbulent thoughts. What shadowed power flows in his veins? What forces has the Aurora King been toying with? Is that what all of this has been about?
The Lord of the Underworld was the first Aurora King of the Second Age. He used virulence to attempt to destroy Zerra, and now Rion has his hands on the ark of Heart. Does he intend to destroy me with it? But why? Or am I only a step on a ladder to some other purpose?
Does Rion know that he sleeps in a bed surrounded by dark magic?
Could virulence bring Nadir back? I’d crawl into the very heart of the Beltza Mountains on my hands and knees if that’s what it took.
“Nadir,” I sob into him, soaking his shirt with my snot and tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I did this. I was reckless and impulsive, failing to consider who might be close when I unleashed. Rion and his guards had to pay for touching me again.
Thank you for telling me where she would be.
Rion’s words come back to me with the diamond-hard clarity of honed steel.
But I refuse to believe them. If Nadir gave me up, he had a reason. He had no choice. He would never have done so willingly. After everything we’ve been through, I have to believe that. I handed him my trust, and I refuse to waver at the first test.
I fist the fabric of Nadir’s tunic as I wail, wondering how I’m supposed to go on. How can I possibly exist without him?
My magic fizzes under my skin, pulling towards him like fingers seeking a drop of moisture in a desert. It’s that same formidable tug I always felt before we finally admitted who we were to one another. Does it feel his loss, too?
No one’s heart has broken into as many pieces as mine. No number exists high enough to count these shards pushing under my skin. I am bereft. Tossed in the waves of a sea with no bottom where I’ll sink and sink for eternity.
My mate. I killed my mate.
“Help!” I scream as though anyone could make this stop being real. My stomach lurches, and my pulse pounds inside my skull, chipping away at its brittle walls. “Take me too,” I whisper. I can’t go on knowing I did this to him.
My heart lives outside of me now, exposed and raw for the world to witness the monster I’ve become.
I cry, and I cry until my soul melts out of my chest and my limbs drain of every emotion and feeling, leaving me numb and hollow and broken.
CHAPTER 2
“Oh, do stop your blubbering,” comes a sharp voice, shocking me into choked silence. My head snaps up to find we’re no longer in the forest where I dragged Nadir. “It’s so very . . . phlegmy.”
We’re in a massive round room, the floor made of a shiny material that might be marble, except it’s one continuous slab with no discernible breaks. Windows surround us, filtering in soft white light that seems to almost hum. I feel it more than I hear it with the barest vibration in the backs of my teeth.
Though this isn’t the same room where I met the Empyrium, premonition tells me I’m back in the Evanescence, but I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Given my luck lately, it’s probably a terrible fucking thing.
Before me stands a woman wearing a silvery dress that dusts the floor in light, airy folds. Her bronzed arms are bare, and her blonde hair curls almost to her waist, crowned with a silver circlet framing her lovely, heart-shaped face. A pair of piercing aquamarine eyes stare down at me with cool detachment.
She seems familiar, and it takes me a moment to place her. She’s the former Aphelion queen who failed to help her people and was “volunteered” to become a god.
“Zerra,” I whisper, and she tips her head, looking down at me like I’m dung smeared on the heel of her shoe.
“You called me.” She gracefully spreads her arms with her palms turned up. “So here I am.”
I search my surroundings for the Empyrium and their strange shifting body of many people, but there appears to be only the three of us in the room.
“This is the male you’re so attached to,” Zerra says with a sniff as she elegantly sinks to her heels and assesses him from head to toe. It takes a moment to process those words. Does she know who I am? Who Nadir is?
I reach out and grab her slender wrist. She feels as delicate as a bird, but the air around her is perfumed with the stench of chaos, and I would do well not to underestimate her.
“Can you help him?” I ask as she snatches it away.
She’s a god. Surely if anyone can fix this, then it’s her.
“Please. I screwed up. I lost control of my magic, and I . . .”
Zerra’s nostrils flare before she pushes herself to stand and takes two careful steps back, putting distance between us.
“I can help him,” she says matter-of-factly, as though she hasn’t just offered me a lifeline woven of glittering golden thread.
“Thank you,” I say, prepared to lay down my own life or whatever else she demands. “Please. I’ll do anything if you can help him.”
Zerra’s mouth twists up into a smile that sets me on edge.
“Yes. That you will, Lor.”
I blink, again noting the ominous bite of her beauty and waiting for whatever condition she’s about to attach to my future. Our future. I squeeze Nadir, hoping he knows I’m doing everything I can to fix this.
“What?” I finally ask while she continues staring at me with that same haughty look. “He’s not breathing. Hurry up. What do you want?”
She waves a hand. “Don’t worry. As long as he’s with me, he’s in a suspended state. He’ll be fine once I choose to revive him. It will be like you never killed him at all.”
Those words loosen the bolt screwed inside my chest, but it can’t be that easy. I’m confident I have many bridges yet to cross before this is over. I cling to him tighter, feeling how cold he’s grown already and how the color has leached from his skin. I run a thumb over the arch of his dark brow, my fingers caressing his cheek as my eyes burn with tears. When I look back at Zerra, she’s watching us, a crease denting the space between her brilliant blue eyes.
“What will make you choose to revive him?” I ask, gritting my teeth with impatience.
She clasps her hands at her waist and slowly paces a few steps left and then right before turning back. With my heart wedged in my throat, I clamp down on the urge to scream at her to hurry the fuck up.
“The arks,” she says after a few moments as a few pieces shift into place.
“The arks. Cloris Payne told us about them.”
“High Priestess Cloris,” she says. “You will respect her position and address her as is her station.”
I roll my neck because otherwise I’ll roll my eyes. I’ll respect Cloris fucking Payne when pigs grow unicorn horns.
“Fine. High Priestess Cloris told me.”
Zerra tips her chin as if that pleases her. But only a little. Her entire demeanor speaks to something that resembles a mortal-shaped sneer. This is the goddess who controls our lives? This small, petty woman?
“I don’t have the ark of Heart if that’s what you’re after.”
“All in due time,” she says.
I’m choosing not to think too hard about what that means, because for now, Nadir is the only thing that matters.
“The Alluvion King has an ark in his possession,” Zerra says.
I sigh, feeling pressure build in my temples, already knowing where this is going.
“I want you to retrieve it for me,” she says.
“Of course you do. And then you’ll bring him back?”
She presses her lips together and nods.
“Then I’ll bring him back.”
“What if I can’t find it?”
She wrinkles her nose and tips her head in a smooth feline movement. “Then your mate will die.”
At those words, my chest squeezes like my ribs are tied together with thick iron chains.
“Bring him back now,” I plead. “He can help me find it. And if we can’t, we’ll find another way to repay you. You have my word.”
Zerra paces a few more steps in the other direction, taking her time. I get the sense she wants to make me squirm, and I do my best to control my temper. She’s the only hope I have right now, and I have to remain on her good side.
If she has one.
Just from this single interaction and my brief window into her past, I suspect the good side of this High Fae queen-turned-goddess was set on fire and burned to ash a long time ago.
“No,” she says. “I don’t care for that idea.”
“But Nadir knows more about the rulers and their kingdoms than I do,” I say. “He’ll be a much better asset in aiding me. I’ll find it much quicker.”
I try modulating my voice into something that resembles confidence when my insides are liquefying into a raw pool of regret.
“And have you two plotting against me?” she asks. My forehead furrows as I think about the last thing the Empyrium said to me. They want to replace Zerra . . . and that’s when their final words come barreling back with the force of a tidal wave.
A queen without a queendom.
They want me for the job. I think.
Does Zerra know that? Am I now a threat to her?
Suspicion burns up the back of my neck. What are the odds Zerra found me only moments later? Surely the Empyrium wouldn’t have told her? And if they did, why?
I shake my head, pretending I have no clue. “I don’t know what that means. Why would we plot against you?”
I don’t want this role. It’s the last thing I want, just like the original rulers who also refused this fate. They wanted to return home and help their people recover from the disasters plaguing their lands. That’s what I want. I want to return to Heart and take my place where I’m sure I belong.
I ignore the tiny, chastising voice in my head telling me that maybe that has never actually been my destiny, even if it’s what I want.
But one problem at a time, I guess.
Should I tell her I don’t intend to replace her? Would she believe me? What if she doesn’t know about any of this, and I’d just be revealing everything to her?
“We wouldn’t do that,” I say. “I don’t even know how we’d do that.”
She makes a noise that suggests she doesn’t believe me.
“These are my conditions. You will travel to Alluvion, ingratiate yourself with Cyan, and find out where his ark is hiding.”
“That’s it?” I ask, hope spiraling in my chest. That I can do.
“No, that’s not it,” she bites out like I’m literally the stupidest person she’s ever met. “Then you’re going to steal it for me.”
I hold in another weary sigh that threatens to topple this entire room. Everyone wants something from me. Rion. Atlas. Cloris. And now . . . this goddess who seems like kind of a bitch. But worse than that, she seems dangerous. A knifepoint dangling over my head.
“And then you’ll bring Nadir back to life?”
“Yes,” she says. “Decide. I grow weary of this conversation. I can just as easily let him die right now. It truly doesn’t matter to me.”
She says the words casually, but they taste like a lie.
The Empyrium described the great lengths she went to retrieve the arks in the past. She wouldn’t have done any of that if they didn’t matter. She tore apart Ouranos trying to root them out, and now she intends to search for them again.
Why does she think I’ll succeed where her priestesses failed? Why is she asking me? Did she see an opportunity when I called for her, knowing she could use Nadir as leverage? Or is all of this a coincidence?
Does any of it matter right now when his life is on the line?
“Where will Nadir be while I’m in Alluvion?”
“Right here with me,” Zerra says. “Were you expecting a parade for him?”
The bitter taste of anger flashes in the back of my throat. “I just need to know he’ll be safe.”
She rolls her eyes. “You really don’t have much choice, dear Lor. Either accept my offer or I’ll send you back to Ouranos, and you can see how you manage on your own. But he’ll be gone. Understand that.”
I could be walking into her trap if she does know of the Empyrium’s plans, and I have no idea if she’ll keep her word, but I’m also aware that I have little currency to offer. If I don’t try, then Nadir will die for sure.
She waves her hand over his body like he’s a fallen log blocking her path. How can a goddess be so callous? I remind myself that she was a spoiled young queen who was forced into this role. She is no benevolent spirit, as we’ve all been led to believe. She never lived up to the potential the Empyrium saw in her. This might be all she knows.
“Fine,” I say through gritted teeth. It’s a fool’s mission, but I’ll do anything to save my mate.
And really, how bad could this be?
I rub a hand down my face.
When did I get so good at kidding myself?
“I thought you’d say that,” she says with a simpering smile. “You have five days.”
“What? That’s not enough time!”
But a second later, my surroundings blink out in a flash of white light, and I find myself lying facedown on a warm patch of sand, a strong wind tossing my hair and tugging at my clothing.
I cough the grit out of my mouth as I roll over to find an expanse of crystal-blue ocean filling the horizon. Sitting up, I scan my surroundings and realize Zerra must have dropped me in Alluvion.
At least she did me this favor. She must really want that ark.
“That bitch,” I say, wiping sand from my mouth, but the effort only deposits more fine grains onto my tongue. I try to spit them out, but more wedge between my teeth and in my throat.
I wince at the ache in every joint and muscle. Between the fight and the chase inside the Sun Palace, trying to heal Nadir, and the emotional weight of losing my mate, I feel like I’ve been filled with a thousand pounds of lead.
My quest stands in the distance. A shimmering palace made of what looks like sea glass sits on the shore, glistening in the sun—the Alluvion King’s home.
I stare at it, wondering how to approach this. Walk up and announce myself? Tell Cyan who I am? Would he believe me? And if he does, will he welcome me or vilify me for my grandmother’s actions? Maybe he’ll try to use me like everyone else. Can I trust my secrets with him? Do the rulers of Ouranos know the heir of Heart has surfaced?
I stumble to my feet, dusting sand off my golden Sun Palace livery. I think of Nadir in his black clothes and how he refused to wear the uniform during our mission to the Mirror. A sob cracks in my chest, and I hold my hand against it as though I could stop my heart from leaking out and bleeding through my ribs. But I have to keep it together for his sake.
I attempt to straighten my wrinkled clothes and finger comb the tangles out of my hair. I rub my face as if that might do something to make me more presentable. I must look like something the ocean vomited onto the shore.
“You couldn’t have given me something clean to wear?!” I shout at the sky, but I’m met with only belligerent silence.
Zerra’s probably watching me, loving every moment of this.
“Fucking gods,” I mumble to myself as I pick my way through the soft sand that’s already filling my boots, chafing my skin.
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