Page 150 of The Mirror of Beasts

“I had every right!” he roared, running a rough hand through his hair. “I couldn’t risk something awakening your magic and triggering your curse again! It took you every time there was danger, stealing the breath from you, stopping your heart. Again and again and again, bringing your soul into a new body so he couldn’t find it. And each time, I was powerless to stop it!”

I reared back. “You …”

“I’ve used all my coins now—they were given to me to protect you, so I could ensure that you were reborn and lived a fulfilled life,” he said. “That was the only thing she wanted, her last act before she became one with the world.”

“You’re not making any sense,” I told him. “You—”

Nash didn’t let me finish. He was frantic now, the words unraveling faster and faster. “I asked the Lady of the Lake to cast a spell to hide your soul, to protect it, but something in the spell was flawed, and now it’ll all begin again—if I don’t get you away from here, far away from here, you will die.”

I was shaking my head, pulling away again. I held up a finger, as if it were a talon I could drive through his throat, to make him stop talking. But it felt like every drop of blood had left my body.

“Neve has Creiddylad’s soul,” I whispered in protest. One hand rose to claw at my chest, as if I could physically cling to my denial.

“She has a different role to play in all of this,” Nash said. “I didn’t see it until Lyonesse, when she took up the sword. Of course you found one another, Fate’s always been a cackling old crow.”

“What are you saying?” I demanded.

“Listen to me, Tamsy,” Nash pressed on. “You weren’t in danger before because your power hadn’t awakened, but it’s different now, isn’t it? You felt it in the cemetery—the spark of potential, the call of new life. I know you did.”

I’d felt something, but—

“There’s no time left,” Nash said. “If he takes you, if the curse activates itself and you die by it or, Mother forbid it, he kills you himself, he’ll be able to capture your soul—the very thing it was meant to prevent. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

My mind only seemed to understand one thing.

“You lied,” I breathed out. “About everything. The curse. Where you found me. Why you took me in … You suppressed my memories. How can anything you’re saying be real?”

“You are as dear to me as my own flesh and blood,” he said softly. “You are the daughter I never had, in a life I never saw for myself.”

I shrank back from the words, from him, my heartbeat fluttering. How many years had I longed for him to say that to me?

“I’ve made so many mistakes in that time, but I can’t let this be another,” Nash swore. “You will live. You will survive this.”

“The others—” I began.

“The sorceresses will know who Neve is by now,” he said quickly, reaching for my arm again. “And the Dye boy will survive. Somehow they always seem to.”

“You don’t know that!” I tried to move around him, to dart back down the long hall, but my body was still too unsteady, and his hold on me was ironclad as he drew me the opposite way.

“Oh, but I do,” he said. “It was the same for his father, his father’s father, his father’s father’s father …”

One by one, he opened the doors we passed, revealing root cellars, rooms stacked high with barrels of wine, discarded crates of books, but no Veins.

“The only Vein I saw was upstairs,” I told him, seizing on an idea. “In the archive. You must have seen it. Doesn’t it make more sense to go up there?”

He stopped, turning to look at my face. Breath surged in and out of him.

“All right,” he said, his voice strangely devoid of emotion. “Then go up and look for it, dove.”

The look he gave me was one of a stranger—there was no warmth to his eyes. Something was wrong.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

“Go past me and head back upstairs,” he said, his voice hard. “Right now.”

“What the hell is the matter with you?”

Nash’s face was wan, his eyes pleading in a way I’d never seen before. “Go back to the attic.”

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