Page 73 of Tusks & Saddles
It didn’t sound like an awful way to live. Beatrix could picture the idyllic family in a nice wooden cabin, staring up at the moons. It sounded a lot more welcoming than the stuffy political meetings masquerading as parties she had been forced to go to in her own youth.
“One late afternoon, I was helping my mom gather mushrooms. Phoenix tails—they’re red but have the same flavor and consistency as bison. Weird, I know. We had ventured past our usual route—I had found a patch of mushrooms at the base of this large tree. I was picking them when I heard my mother shout my name.”
Welborn let out a laugh, though it didn’t match the expression on his face. He was trembling slightly, and for a moment, Beatrix debated reaching out a hand to steady him. Did he need that? Would he appreciate the gesture, or would it cause him to retreat?
“I didn’t understand at first—I didn’tknow,” Welborn swore, as if he needed Beatrix to believe him before he told her the whole story. “I—I need toknowwhy things are happening. If I can’t—if I can’t make it make sense in my head, it gets stuck in there, you know? But I should have realized the way she yelled my name, and I just…I didn’t.”
Beatrix placed the half-eaten cheese and bread on her skirt. She shifted toward him, pressing her weight into the hip opposite of her thigh injury. It was still healing rather well, but the damn thing was tender to the touch still. Welborn was still staring at his hand.
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
“Something from above came down and picked me up, but not before my mom got to me first. I didn’t realize we were in the airuntil I felt the tree branches whip my cheek,” he said, voice wavering.
Beatrix’s mouth formed a grim line.
“What was it?”
“A manticore.”
Beatrix’s eyes shut at his confession. The gravity of the situation wasn’t wasted on her. Facing a monster of that size—of that strength? It was a deadly encounter—especially for a mother and a child.
“How did you…”
“Survive?” Welborn asked, bringing his glassy eyes up to her. “My mother. For a while, I wasn’t sure what we would do. I just remember crying and being scared out of my mind. I was fifteen at the time, but pretty thin still. I had never seen a manticore before. I hadn’t realized they could get so big. My mom wrapped herself around me while the manticore had her. She didn’t even scream when its claws pierced her back. She was praying in my ears. Praying to the All Seer to save me.
“We were in the air for what felt like hours, but I don’t really remember how long it was. My mom wouldn’t let me look. But then something weird happened. The sky turned dark, and thunder came from above. There was a flash of light—I remember it being so bright that even when I closed my eyes, I could see the inside of my eyelids. Next thing I knew, we were falling for what felt like forever and only seconds. My mother kept me in her arms. She took the brunt of the fall as we passed through the trees. Before I knew it, we landed, and I blacked out. I woke up three days later with my hand run through and pinned beneath a large tree branch with my motherdead beside me.”
Welborn was stubborn, but he couldn’t suppress the tear that fell down his cheek. Beatrix watched it glide down, gathering at the tip of his chin before falling through the hole in his hand. The cleric laughed—a truly sad thing.
“My mother saved me,” Welborn said. “And sometimes I wish she hadn’t… but I suppose that would make me ungrateful, huh?”
Beatrix had seen grown men cry before. Fuck, she had been the cause of grown men crying before and had sincerely felt no sympathy given most of those men had the emotional intelligence of a pine cone.
But he’s not like them.
“Being upset that your mother’s gone doesn’t make you a bad person, Welborn,” Beatrix said as gently as she could. “I don’t think a bad person would think twice about it. Your mother made a choice in an impossible situation, and she chose to protect you with her life. Whether it was the right choice or not is irrelevant. All that matters is that it was hers.”
“I—I know that. My mind understands it—it makes sense logically. But I can still feel her hair brushing my cheek. I can still smell her body. It took three days before someone found me. I was barely alive by the time they got me to a healer, and I was unconscious when dad and Boone made it to the healer’s home. I spent so long in bed thinking about what I could have done differently, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t let anyone I cared about die for me again.”
Welborn stretched his arm out, placing his hand onto her boot, where it peeked out from beneath her skirts. She dared to think he had wanted to take her hand, but thought better of it given her…temperament.
“That’s why I made us jump. I didn’t want to see another woman I—” Welborn’s cheeks turned a dark green that he tried to hide as he dipped his head low.
“That you…?”
“That I care about…die,” he managed.
His confession—if it was even that—made Beatrix’s heart do a strange thing. It was beating the way it did after she let off a round withGambler’s Luckand hit her target. A high that came only from adrenaline and succeeding at something she had desperately tried to do. To feel her heart doing that over something as simple as a clumsy admission of some kind of affection,well, it frightened her.
A lot of things had frightened Beatrix growing up. Things that Beatrix knew she couldn’t control. The way people had stared at her like she was a party favor instead of the daughter of a noble house. The way boys had teased her for her horns or pulled her tail. The way her mother looked at her with thoseeyes.Filled with fear and pity. She didn’t know which one was worse. It had made growing up difficult, even with her brothers clumsy support. Even with the most devoted father in the world. Balthazar was overprotective, but that had been for his own selfish reasons, too.
When it came to the subject of her heart, Beatrix had kept it nestled deeply beneath lock and chain. There had only been so many times she could give it to those around her before she realized how little it was cared for. That Beatrix had to be the one to care for it.
Yet, here was a man—a terribly naive, albeit gentle, man who was bashfully trying to hide beneath the brim of his hat from her. The notion was absolutely silly, for Beatrix didn’t know what she had done to earn his affection.
Perhaps that was why she found herself unknowingly confessing a secret she had kept from the world for almost ten years.
“I’m a daemon.”
