Page 57 of Bound and Tide

He flinched under Red’s touch, blinking at her like she’d just appeared. Her hand pressed to his cheek as she turned him toward her, and he had the sudden feeling he’d missed something. “You three will stay here,” he said with a steadiness he wasn’t sure how he mustered. “And the imps too.”

She hesitated, and a small part of him wished she would brazenly tell him no. “But I promised,” came quietly from her mouth instead.

He slipped his hand around hers and squeezed it against his cheek. “I must go alone.”

“Be careful, koul’tah,” she whispered and pressed her lips to his.

Xander wanted to hate how much he’d come to crave her gentlest kisses and softest voice, wanted to loathe himself for such weakness and longing, but it was impossible. He could only feel himself slip deeper into that thing he’d always been disgusted by until she’d taught him how wonderful it could be.

“Oh, koul’tah?” Costa snorted out a laugh as he leaned up against the door, still drained from the spell in the courtyard. “She’s calling you her baby!”

Xander’s whole body flushed as Maia cackled, and even the elven woman let out a chuckle.

“It’s a term of endearment, and it means many things.” The sharpness of Red’s voice quieted the others, though her eyes never left his. “Not least that I need you to return safely.”

He nodded, making his own silent promise. He wasn’t sure if he could keep it, but he would try.

His gaze slid to the urchins, bruised, exhausted, and dirty as they sat on the temple’s floor with the imps huddled around them. “Be…good,” he said, struggling for the right word.

Costa nodded, suddenly stalwart, and Maia only stared back at him, but for once there was no derision there. As he squeezed Red’s hand, he almost laughed—caring for things was supposed to make one weak, yet in that moment the fear drained away. Not entirely, but just enough for him to be able to leave them.

The elven keeper led him as far as the stairwell. As she lit a torch and handed it off, she told him that what he was seeking was not a sacred place. Xander agreed, remembering Father Theodore’s explanation that the rift and the pool of pure noxscura that filled it would be his best bet to contact the infernal plane but were still a danger.

As Xander descended the spiraling staircase below the Temple of Osurehm alone, he thought of Delphine Delacroix first. He’d never pitied her, and he still didn’t mourn the dead bitch, but as he walked the same path she had not just once but twice, he felt a momentary kinship. From what he’d been told, she’d made the choice to descend a second time, and she’d tried to destroy the pool he knew waited for him below. She’d ended up destroying the entirety of Ironwood Hollow instead, which, he supposed, was admirable. At least there wasn’t a village left for him to raze to the ground if he fucked everything up.

But as the stairs twisted and widened, his thoughts turned to her sister, Tea Cakes—er, no, Celeste. The meek woman had been his captive years ago. It was a short stint that she broke out of with her nox-touched powers, his first real experience being enthralled. Though as the noxscura pulled at him to descend faster, he began to wonder if there was a time in his life that he’d not been held captive himself by arcana and duty.

“Apologies,” he murmured as if Celeste could hear him. He didn’t know exactly what he was apologizing for—he’d been more hospitable to her than anyone else in her miserable life—but she’d always been timid and sweet and hadn’t deserved to be treated like a puppet in his selfish games. If the gods were kind—and of this, Xander was truly not sure—they would send her the strength to never be anyone’s pawn again.

The kindness and cruelty of the gods wasn’t really all that weighty, but it was easier for Xander to believe, in that moment, that very little was up to him.

The stairs ran out and opened onto a wide, rocky corridor dug out of the earth with a gentle slope downward. His torchlight only went so far, but he was not willing to use magic, especially when it swirled so chaotically in his guts. As he continued on, the meager firelight revealed skeletal bodies and discarded armor, but his mind turned to Kitten.

No, to Amma. He’d been far worse to her than Celeste, by all accounts, and not just for the whole murdering her thing; he’d had her sent back to that marquess she was supposed to marry. He knew very little about the royal families of Eiren and even less about the way they played matchmaker with their children, but he’d seen the look in her eyes when she’d called her betrothed a monster. He’d retorted then that he didn’t care, but… “And more apologies,” he muttered, chest heavy.

The torch’s light wavered in an unfelt breeze, the darkness turning somehow darker, and the way ahead visibly narrowing. His footsteps paused as it hit him how far he’d gone, how deep he was, how…impossible it might be to get out.

Xander preferred to carry very little on him, though he was never without a small pouch fastened to his hip. It was nearly full, the metal piece Costa had given him on top when he flipped it open. He wiggled fingers past the broken bits of corrupted idols he’d used around Bendcrest, the dried iccali mushrooms, and the folded parchment from Stavros until he grasped what was left at the very bottom.

Gone fluffy and dull with time, the feather was no less comforting in Xander’s hand. Its stem was broken, and there was no magic in it, but he’d guarded it like it was a precious thing for at least a decade. It was one of a kind, after all, its mate destroyed in his attempt to enchant the pair.

His attempt with Bloodthorne.

They were in their early twenties and had called a truce. Birzuma had been imprisoned by Archibald a few years prior, and one of them had been hurt or lost or something else inconsequential—who could bloody remember—and together they came to the brilliant conclusion they should conspire on a spell.

It all ended terribly, of course, because neither blood mage could be trusted, especially when they were so young and foolish. Damien ended up absconding with their only success: a pair of feathers that would allow the users to find one another over great distances—an early attempt at translocation. Xander wasn’t even really all that upset when he discovered Bloodthorne’s betrayal—he’d been planning on killing him when they were finished anyway. But when he found the feather they’d failed on first was all that was left behind, he had become…sentimental.

Xander supposed then he always had been capable of love because if he’d ever loved anyone, it was Damien. The man was the closest thing he had to a brother even if Xander spoke to him much too salaciously for that—innuendo and come-ons were a good cover for true, too hard to admit feelings—and for all the torture he put that man through, Damien had never really given up on trying to love him back.

Yet he had hurt Damien in a way he had never hurt anyone before—killing the person he loved and laughing, treating life and loss like a game. And that was just it—he knew the moment he’d plunged the knife into Amma’s back that the games had to stop. The joy he took in hurting them because of his jealousy would destroy them all, and he just couldn’t do that. He would resurrect her, even if it killed him, because he knew Damien loved her, deserved her, and all Xander wanted then was for his friend to be happy.

“I am sorry, Damien,” he said one last time, and tucked the feather away for safe keeping once again.

Chapter 25

WHERE ALL LOVE BEGINS AND ENDS

Xander would have turned tail and run had that not been exactly what he knew his mother expected of him. Why must you be such a baby? she would sneer with no affection and, I can’t believe I’ve raised a craven coward. The words assaulted him in her voice, perhaps real or a fabrication of his mind, it was impossible to tell with the whispers and the rift and the queasiness. But they anchored him to the spot, only paces away from a pool of pure noxscura.

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