Epilogue #2
Over the past few months, she had come to learn just how much Cael’s fey inheritance bound him.
Changelings had all the advantages of both species and none of their weaknesses, but that didn’t mean they were free from their influence.
Crossing thresholds uninvited always made Cael tense his shoulders, as if fighting some inner compulsion, so Semras made sure to verbally welcome him in at each of his visits.
The two brothers had sorted their quarrels in the weeks following Estevan’s resignation. Cael came out the winner, proving with exacting Seelie logic how right he’d been about Estevan’s place—or lack thereof—in the Inquisition.
Her Wyrdtwined couldn’t argue against it, and his grudging acceptance had made the half-fey smile genuinely. Beyond his Seelie tendencies, Cael had genuinely believed his brother would be happier after leaving the sacred institution—he had been right about it too.
Stepping into the hut, the inquisitor threw a cursory glance at the disarrayed worktable, then at Estevan and Semras.
She flushed with embarrassment. Her Wyrdtwined was still bare-chested—it wasn’t hard to guess what they had been doing before his arrival.
“I would usually suggest passing by another time,” Cael said, watching his brother buttoning his shirt up, “but it is far more entertaining to stay when you so obviously want me gone, Estevan. You seem well, brother. You too, Madam Velten.”
By now, Semras had resigned herself to the oddity of having a family name—along with the title of ‘madam.’ It sounded important to Estevan, so she had accepted them both without protest.
“You as well, Cael,” she said. “Would you like a drink? A cup of cocoa, maybe? It’s still cold outside these days; you must be freezing.”
“I am not.” Cael removed his coat and hung it on the hall tree next to the door. “But if it is not too much of a burden, I would still appreciate a hot drink.”
Smiling to herself, Semras invited him to take a seat at the nearby kitchen table, then went to the cast-iron stove to prepare his drink.
Adorned with scroll and crisscross patterns, the curious apparatus had been a gift Cardinal Velten brought them once, while on his way to Leyevna’s home for their new monthly supper tradition.
He had marvelled so much at the chunk of metal and its supposed superior efficiency compared to older models that she hadn’t had the heart to refuse it.
Now it lay in a corner of her kitchen, acting like a bulky, albeit pretty, preparation table for her.
Semras stretched her arm to grab what she needed from the wooden shelves hanging above it. Her hand hovered just beneath the highest one—where her teapot waited for her to grow three inches taller.
“Here, let me help.” Stepping next to her, Estevan brought it down to the cast-iron stove. “I will take care of our tea while you make that atrocious sugary mud my brother calls hot cocoa.”
Shaking her head at his choice of words, Semras leaned against her Wyrdtwined as they prepared the beverages side by side.
The cocoa didn’t take her long to make, and she took care to add double the usual amount of honey.
The Fey loved milk and sugar, and she knew Cael did too. Another one of his bloodline quirks.
Once done, she brought the drink to the table, her Wyrdtwined following close behind with two cups filled with tea. One of them was her favourite: the one speckled with glimmers of ore he had broken when they first met—now repaired with gold filling its cracks.
Another surprise from him after he learned of her partiality for that specific cup.
He told her he had it fixed according to an emerging Eastern technique—one that honoured an object’s resilience to hardship.
Very fitting, considering their own tumultuous history.
That cup was theirs now, where it once had been hers alone.
She loved it so much more this way.
Estevan sat across from his brother with a smirk on his lips and a glint in his eyes. “Do you want some cocoa with all that sugar?”
Cael nodded his thanks to her for the cocoa cup, then gave him a blank look. “No.” Only a small, withering glint in his eyes betrayed his aggravation at the jest.
Chuckling, Semras took a seat next to Estevan. “What brings you here today?”
After a long sip of his drink, Cael dropped a few letters tied together on the table. “Correspondence, for a start.”
Estevan opened them. Most of his former retinue had remained in Castereina, but only Ulrech wrote to them often—Sin’Sagar simply sent Maraz’Miri at the speed of wind to bring them news.
Over months of assiduous letters, Sir Ulrech had proven to be a far more skilled conversationalist on paper than in person and regularly gave them news of Nimue and their son Jaqhen.
At Estevan’s request—and after the men discussed it privately for a surprisingly short amount of time—the Confraternity had honourably discharged Ulrech of his obligations to the knightly order, and the former Venator now enjoyed a well-earned retirement with his small family.
When they last went to the city, Estevan and she visited them.
With the knight finally free to help her with childcare, Nimue’s mood had improved immensely, and Semras now understood why Ulrech had claimed men would kill for her smile.
She looked radiant, a sun compared to the moon of the knight’s quiet, sombre calmness.
Semras had yet to ask about the curious circumstances that brought a seeress and a knight together. Maybe one day, she’d find the occasion.
“Baby Jaqhen started teething,” Estevan muttered. “Nimue is requesting a soothing syrup if you have one, Semras.”
“Ah, if only I hadn’t been interrupted,” she said, smirking at him. “Then I could have given a bottle to Cael, and they wouldn’t have had to wait for the next time we make the trip to Castereina.”
Cael frowned. “Did I arrive at the wrong time?”
“No,” she replied.
“Yes,” Estevan spoke over her.
Semras elbowed him, and he theatrically placed his hand over his heart. “Witness, Inquisitor Callum! A witch is casting violence upon me!”
Unfazed by his brother’s antics, Cael sipped his cup. “You deserve it after what you have cast upon me.”
Estevan stopped his theatrics, brow furrowing with confusion. “What are you referring to?”
“That witch you asked me to investigate, Estevan … was it …” Cael cleared his throat. “Did you mean to bring us together? Romantically, I mean.”
Semras pursed her lips. “Are you talking of Madra, perchance?”
“That is her name, yes,” he replied. “I tried speaking to her to establish her threat level, but she insisted on inappropriately flirting instead. As far as I can tell, the only threat she poses is to bachelors.”
She stifled a groan. Of course, the fleshwitch would take one look at Cael and decide she wanted his fey blood for her heirs. If the inquisitor ever had any, his daughters would all become powerful witches, even with Deprived women as mothers.
She shuddered to think what they’d be if he ever fell in love with a full-blooded humanoid fey.
But the Fey didn’t know love, only obsession, and Cael had no chance of meeting one on the Vandalesian Peninsula anyway.
The ones powerful and cunning enough to hide from the Inquisition’s Nighthunts had been sealed away by weirwitches over centuries of coordinated efforts between the peninsula’s Covens.
Unless their prisons of ancient tumuli and dolmen stones were destroyed, those Fey Lords would never again wander among mortals.
Estevan whistled. “Again, Cael? This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Remember the Ostvaldi ambassador’s wife? Father worked so hard to fix that misunderstanding before it turned into a political disaster. You are a menace to all womankind.”
“I truly do not know why,” he said quietly over his cup. “I give no encouragement toward that sort of behaviour.”
His even tone didn’t betray any sign of distress, but Semras winced anyway. The past few months had made it painfully obvious to her that the inquisitor did not know about his true nature or why women fell prey to his fey aura so easily.
The Fair Folk of the Night were apex predators—their beauty was an intoxicating lure for the unaware. Even with only half of a fey legacy, Cael exuded the same enticing charm that brought so many to their death over millennia of unheeded cautionary fairy tales.
Semras sighed. The fleshwitch might not even have known Cael was half-fey and had only been driven by the spell his nature had put her under, rather than by the potency of his bloodline.
“Madra’s just partial to redheads,” she lied. “Don’t think too much of it.”
Cael hummed, drumming his fingers on the table.
“I do not. I have no interest in pursuing a paramour. They would only stand in the way of my duty.” He paused, then added, “She did not seem to understand that part very well. Usually, the Inquisition’s insignia acts as a good deterrent for such unrequited attention. ”
Flushing deeply, Semras dropped her gaze to her cup, then took a sip of tea—for courage. “About that … I might have started a … a trend.”
When she had finally gathered her courage and revealed the true identity of her Wyrdtwined to her Coven, her witch sisters hadn’t reacted the way she had expected—with scorn and rejection or anger for betraying them with their natural enemy.
A few did show outrage, but Leyevna’s public support helped quickly smooth things over.
The fearsome warwitch still held a lot of sway over the Yore Elders, and once she’d had a private meeting with them, Semras had only been lightly admonished for her reckless actions, rather than punished for bringing an inquisitor inside the coven’s grounds.
So instead of rejection, Semras saw Blyana shriek with laughter—hollering about understanding now the source of the ‘trophy’ she’d seen on her hands—while Madra had stared at her with newfound respect.