Page 89 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
I moved closer to them, arms wrapped about myself to try and settle the unease biting deeper into my bones.
‘I think she’s after territory in the east,’ I answered. Thean didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink.
‘No.’ Their smile was small, almost in sympathy at my stupidity. ‘What she’s after and what she’s doing are seldom the same thing.’
Of course. Thean would understand her. If a creature like thatcouldbe understood.
‘Why would she reappear now?’ Why come out of her lair? She seemed too obsessed with her own legend to rise for nothing more than to antagonise Montagor, to want any part in this brewing conflict.
No, she’d appear at the end when everything was settled. A saviour in the ashes the fey had no choice but to choose.
Then Thean stood, tall and lean as they towered over me. Only there was no threat in their proximity, or the way they dipped their head so I didn’t miss a word from their lips. ‘You speak as if she’s ever stopped. Poison needs time to spread. Her type is long and agonising. Her roots are deep, and she’ll do anything to win.’
There was such hard cruelty in those usually warm eyes, imploring me with the rest of the words I knew they couldn’t say. My eyes moving to that mark on the side of their throat.
‘She wasn’t there for any other reason than to see how her game is playing out,’ Thean answered the question. As if we were all pieces on her gameboard. Even if we wanted no part in the play.
‘Mal Tarour,’I barely breathed the ancient words, scared they might bind me the same way they had bound others. Thean’s attention was suddenly rapt on my face; they went as taut as a bow-string, waiting.
‘She held the King of the North for a time,’ I finished, all the pieces slotting into place. My father served that monster with the blade I now carried, a blade a creature like Thean wouldn’t miss. They knew who I was.
Yet they hadn’t spoken a word of it. Had kept that secret without being asked. Despite what they could gain. Only they stood here with me, because there was no power to begained from the Countess’s favour. She took, consumed. But she never gave. Not even mercy.
‘She doesn’t hold him now,’ they replied, voice so soft, lost in some memory. Confirming what I didn’t need to ask.
My father had been bound. He’d unwound himself somehow from that vow and Thean knew it. All this time. They’d stayed for Emrys, for Emmaline, but perhaps for themselves too. To try. ‘You asked me to forgive you.’
Only for what, I didn’t know yet.
They looked back to the fire, dismissively. A mask sliding back across their features. ‘It hasn’t happened yet.’
‘When it does, I’m sorry I didn’t have the answer.’ The words felt too broken from my lips by the regret of the truth in them. Seeing the flash of pain in their amber gaze. ‘No matter what she makes you do. I’ll forgive you.’
Just as Emmaline had. As if knowing sending the voyav on this path would lead them here. That they needed us just as much as we needed them. Even if their help was fleeting, even if their will was never their own.
‘Tea,’ William announced, turning me to the boy. Noticing Alma hadn’t come back with him. Too many loose threads I couldn’t catch.
She wasn’t there for any other reason than to see how her game is playing out.Thean’s words sat uncomfortably inside of me. A warning I felt it might be too late to receive.
While William brought some semblance of peace back to our gathering with a pot of tea, Emrys re-emerged, washed and changed.
Then after three irritated attempts at scrying, Gideon found a location for the Portium door.
Any hope I had that the next steps in locating what Montagor was looking for would be easy were lost as we were greeted by a night bitter with frost, thick fog curling over the crooked tombstones and the lumpy frozen dirt path that curled upwards towards the hollowed-out abbey just beyond. Nothing but shards of rock held together with ivy and hope that the wind didn’t blow too strongly in its direction.
Fat snowflakes fell from a bruised night sky, every tree withered and twisted. A strange gloomy silence that accompanied most forgotten places.
Relmort Abbey. One of the saints’ most prized places of worship where it sat on the cliffs in the west. The wind was sharp and lined with salt, stinging my cheeks, making the snow dance before us.
The stained glass was long gone and the saints’ emblems worn from the stone, the faces of the statues chiselled smooth by fey – but I could imagine the grand depictions of their Elysior kings. How they’d brought civilisation to these lands and culled the beasts who once called it home.
Nothing but a tomb itself now. Forgotten and alone. A fitting end for their tyranny.
Small glimmers of white flashed in the corner of my eye. Roaming spirits lost across this unhallowed ground.
I pulled my cloak tighter against the night chill. Alma butted my thigh with her snout in her new dog form. Her dark, curly fur catching the snow. William had been thrilled at her choice in creature for this evening. Something about her sudden decision to shift made me think she was hiding though – and, because she was Alma, wondering just what she was hiding from was a hopeless endeavour. Her secrets woven too tightly around her ribs, stored deep like small nuts for winter. I’d never asked for them. Knowing thather secrets were part of her defence. Her safety. No. I didn’t need her secrets. I just needed her to know I’d be listening, even if it took her decades to let one slip free. I’d be here. Waiting.
I let my fingers run through the soft fur at her head before she darted off with a bark.
