Page 102 of Feral Guardian
“All right, so tell me. Where’s your mind run off to?”
I don’t want to burden him with my worries, but if we’re truly to be together, no secrets…
He is my husband.
I sigh and twist in my seat until our gazes meet. “I can’t leave them in there to my mother’s devices. I have to do something. Soon. Sooner than a long-term plan to take the throne.”
He grips my chin softly and plants a gentle kiss on the corner of my mouth. “We will.”
Suddenly, Alastair’s hand tenses on me, and he looks over his shoulder.
“What is it?” I ask, my eyes darting to where he’s looking.
He pulls Kor’Tar to a halt and stays very still, and very silent, for a long breath. Then he shakes his head and turns back to me. His expression is easygoing as he drops his lips to my ear and whispers. “I believe we’re being followed.”
My mouth goes dry and my heart hammers in my chest. “By?”
“Hunters I cannot see. I worry when we get too far from town, they’ll make their move.” He kisses me softly. “We should ride faster, outpace them for a while.”
“Not fight?” I ask. “I’m ready.”
He nuzzles my neck and pulls in a deep breath through his nose. “I love that you’re so willing to stand beside me.”
He slaps the reins and Kor’Tar breaks into a canter. Alastair hunkers down over me and then digs his heels into Kor’Tar’s sides, urging him into a gallop. We ride hard like this for many long minutes. Just when I feel like my ass might break, we slow and move off the path. We find a place to let Kor’Tar drink, and finally, Alastair talks to me more.
“Fighting this close to town wouldn’t go unnoticed. I don’t want the queen knowing where you are.”
“If we’re being followed, she already knows, right?” I ask.
“I don’t think they’re her assassins.” He shakes his head. “I can feel intent in a person’s stare—it’s part of my demon senses…”
He rubs the back of his neck with a deep sigh. When his eyes find mine, they’re open, and vulnerable. He’s terrified of what I’ll think of him.
I step closer and put his arms around me. “Nothing’s going to scare me away, and you promised no more secrets.”
“I did.” He kisses the top of my head and lets his lips rest on my crown. “There’s evil power in me, Lily. The Fyn people do not speak of the dark gods anymore, as if their memory has been removed,all record of them destroyed for centuries, but the Illyan people remember.
“You know the greater gods: Yegress, Nol’Ther, Eyzanth, Zephrom. And their six children: Gaien, Kor’Tar, Morgha, Osselna, Juuren, and Vexune. But there are three missing, a greater goddess, Ashai, and her two sons, Dimir and Typhen.”
These names don’t feel completely foreign to me, like some far-off memory is yelling up from a deep pit, but I remain quiet and let him go on.
“The other gods, they are not evil, they are simply primal. Yegress wants life to flourish, so only his strongest creations survive. Nol’Ther claims life, but only because our return to her is a return to peace. Zephrom can seem cruel, but she always seeks not just balance, but equity. And Eyzanth.” He pauses, chuckling. “My mother always said he was a perpetual child. All emotion and no filter, no control.” He turns serious again. “But not evil. Not full of malice and hate, like Ashai.
“I was cursed by her. The night of my birth, the earth shook and her symbol cracked through our palace. It’s still there to this day. No mortar made from Gaien’s earth or Morgha’s metal can fill it. My mother knew then I’d been cursed, and she kept my mark a secret.”
He pulls back his beaded braids and dips so his head is at my eye level. He pulls on his dark hair and separates it until I see a mark—one I knowverywell. One that I spent many hours staring down at in the Pit as my mother carved into my flesh.
My heart leaps into my throat and I think I might throw up. “The Pit, the room where she did this”—I pull up my sleeve and reveal the marks to him—“it had that on the floor, in the center.”
He and I had talked at length about what had happened to me in the Pit, but I’d never described the room to him. I couldn’t bring myself to relive it, to see it again.
Alastair’s expression goes cold, but his eyes burn red with his magic. “What she did to you was monstrous, and I’ll make her pay.”
“What about your mother, doing this?” I say, pointing to the scars on his arms. There are more beneath his shirt, down his stomach to his legs, even on the tops of his feet.
Alastair shakes his head. “She warded my body as I grew, containing the evil power and transforming it into something I could wield. It would’ve consumed me by my fifth birthday had she not.”
I sigh, trying to disconnect my feelings about being mutilated from his. We were both marked, but my mother was a monster, and his was trying to save him.
