Page 111 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
“What happened to the friend who stabbed you?”
“He walked away. Disappeared, while I bled out on the forest floor. Now . . . he’s dead to me.”
As he should be, Bristol thought,though the traitor deserved a far worse punishment than simple escape. “Why did he do it?”
Tyghan leaned forward, his arms resting on his legs. “He changed sides. He joined up with the enemy, and I—” He cleared his throat. “I got in his way.”
There was a bottomless loss in his voice. Loss of a friend. Loss of trust. It was the most desolate sound Bristol had ever heard, worse than her father’s sobs. “I’m sorry your friend did this to you.”
“I am too.”
“How many more demons do you have to go?”
“A few hundred, maybe more, but I think I’ve managed to purge the power of the steel.” He looked up from his hands woven in front of him, forcing a smile. “Or as Melizan puts it, my head has turned as hard as stone, and even demons can’t get through the doors anymore. I haven’t had any visits for months now.” He motioned upward toward the study. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“I could help you clean the room? Put it behind you?”
“No,” he said, shrugging like it was a trivial matter. “I’ll take care of it. I’ve just been busy.”
Bristol knew it was more than that. There were hundreds of servants at the palace who would happily take care of it. It was a reminder he wasn’t ready to shed yet. Or maybe he thought it was too soon—that more demons might still come. That his stone-hard head wasn’t as impervious as he wanted it to be.
His brows rose. “And now we’ve given that subject more attention than it deserves.” He stood and crossed to where she sat, pulling her to her feet. “Let’s go tell Eris and the others about the portal and see what they say. It might have been a burrow.”
“A burrow?”
“A type of portal made by small animals like mice or hares that can wind in a lot of directions, just like their underground burrows do, but they only pass into the mortal world, not into the Abyss. There’s probably dozens of them on the palace grounds. But being able to detect one is still a good sign, and if you can close one kind of passage, you might be able to close another kind, too. Eris will know.”
Small animals?Bristol’s heart slammed against her chest.Shit.
The image of two beady eyes flashed through her head.
Angus.
If a ferret could have a shocked expression, Angus had worn it when he saw her peek though the portal. Then he scurried off, looking as guilty as a dog sneaking off with a holiday turkey.The portal belonged to Angus.Did he create it? What sort of creature was he?
Her parents claimed they swapped one of her mother’s scarves for him in a supermarket parking lot before Cat was born, which at that point in time would have made Angus fifteen, but Bristol had read ferrets only lived for about eight years. When she confronted her mother about this, she had simply said,This particular breed lives much longer, but she couldn’t seem to remember the precise breed of their long-lived ferret. Neither could her father.
Was Angus a pet her father brought with him from Elphame when he left? She remembered Angus studying her as she waited for Harper. How he often studied them throughout the years. The girls used to joke that he understood everything they said. Now she wondered if he actually did. Was he one more thing that wasn’t what it seemed? Bristol raked both of her hands over her scalp, feeling like her head might explode.
“What’s wrong?” Tyghan asked.
“Ferrets,” she answered. “What about them? Could they make a hole like that?”
“Some, I suppose,” he replied cautiously. “Why?”
She told him about their pet ferret, Angus, and his penchant for disappearing. Several times through the years, they’d thought he was gone for good. “Maybe he was a pet my father brought from here. But why a burrow from our laundry room to your study?”
A muscle in Tyghan’s jaw twitched, and he was slow to answer, appearing to be just as perplexed as she was, but then he smiled. “Who knows? Maybe when you left, your pet was worried about you and he did his best to follow. And burrows aren’t an exact science. Like I said, they wander in a lot of directions. It’s hard to predict exactly where they’ll end up. He did get somewhat close to your room.”
“I guess so,” Bristol answered absently, now preoccupied with trying to sort out memories of Angus and his exploits.
Tyghan took her hands in his. “Let’s move on from burrows. Besides being able to close them, is there any other magic you’re able to do now that you haven’t mentioned?”
“Like what?”
“Like setting robes afire?”
Bristol wrinkled her nose. “He told you.”
