Chapter 31
“Wyatt!” Carter’s voice yelled as there was an urgent knocking at his cabin door. “Wyatt, hurry up!”
Wyatt left his desk and rushed to open the door to Carter and Piers. “Is it Simon?” he asked.
Over the last several days, they’d noticed that Simon had been meditating constantly, and only stopped once the small whippon he’d summoned returned, and then he promptly disappeared for hours at a time. After the incident on Chestwil and the threats Simon had made about it, Wyatt had been hesitant to try and stop him from leaving. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to know where Simon was going.
“He just left,” Carter said.
“We have to be quick,” Piers added.
Wyatt was ready that very moment, and raced off the ship with Carter and Piers to catch up to where Simon had gone. Luckily for them, it was already dark out, and once they caught up enough to catch sight of him, they were able to hide in the dark shadows of alleys as they trailed him. He seemed to know where he was going, and walked along steadily and confidently, in no hurry as he made turn after turn along streets lit dimly by the light coming from building windows along the way.
None of them said anything for fear of being seen or heard, and followed swiftly and silently until Simon stopped at a specific street corner. He stood there for almost a minute, leaning against the building adjacent to the road where he was hidden in the shadows, and then, finally, continued. He crossed the street and wandered up to the door of a house on the opposite side, where he stood at the door with his head down, pressing his ear to it to listen inside. Whether he heard what he wanted to or not, he crept around to the side of the house, and his silhouette sat down in the darkened alley.
“What’s he doing?” Carter whispered.
“I don’t know,” Wyatt answered. “Waiting?”
“For what?” Piers asked.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Carter said, and plopped down in the darkness of their own alley across the street.
Wyatt and Piers did the same, and they sat there quietly and anxiously. Though Simon was well across the way and out of earshot, it seemed all of them were afraid of being caught. It was one thing to interrupt whatever Simon was doing and not be able to figure out what that was. It was another thing entirely to be caught and earn Simon’s wrath.
And so, hours passed in the silence. It felt like such a long time that Wyatt began to wonder if anything would even happen at all. But sometime later, after Carter had already fallen asleep and Piers seemed to be doing the same, there was a stirring across the street. The front door of the house opened, and as several people walked out, he finally realized what Simon was doing, because he recognized the people leaving.
Or, most of them, anyway. It was Rue, Carolina, Ophelia, and two men. Simon crept closer to the edge of the house as they all stepped out, but stayed hidden while the Omen crew said goodbye to the man in a dark brown cloak.
Brown cloak? An archivist?
“Oh, no,” Wyatt breathed as all the blood drained from his face.
“What?” Carter asked.
“The hidden archives,” he hissed. “Carolina’s here to search them.” His heart was suddenly racing. “They must be in that house.”
“But that would mean that Simon…” Carter trailed off, his eyes going wide.
Wyatt paced a frantic circle as Rue and the others left the archivist’s house.
“Maybe he just wants to search them for himself,” Piers suggested.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Wyatt inhaled deeply as he worked another circle. “What do we do?”
“Maybe Piers is right,” Carter said. “Simon seems to operate under his own set of rules, and you said Sovereign doesn’t even care about pirates. Maybe that’s true of the hidden archives too. ”
“Whatever the plan is,” Piers said, “Simon’s on the move.”
Wyatt stopped pacing as Simon finally knocked on the door of the man’s house. But it wasn’t just Simon. He’d summoned a veltis so big that it blocked out all the light from inside as the man opened the door with a smile. That smile faded as soon as he saw what was on his stoop, but he didn’t get a chance to react before Simon’s hand covered his mouth. Simon shoved him back into his house, and his veltis hunched halfway over to fit through the doorway and then swung the door shut behind them.
Wyatt, Carter, and Piers sprinted across the street, sliding to a stop outside the home and crouching down under a window that looked into the main room, only to find that Simon had thrown the man to the floor and was standing over him.
“Do you know who I am?” Simon asked him. The man nodded. “Good.” Simon turned away from him to look around the house, running his hand over the nearby table as the veltis took his place towering over the man. “I heard Carolina Trace is heading to Wallowford, is this true?”
The man’s eyes darted from the veltis to Simon, but his lips pursed tightly. In response to his defiance, the veltis hunched down to growl in his face, and he quickly nodded a confirmation.
“Is it because she found a lead on Ascension?” Simon questioned.
“Wyatt,” Carter whispered, “what do we do?”
“I’m thinking,” Wyatt hissed.
But he was panicking, because he didn’t know what Simon planned to do with this man or the hidden archives, and he didn’t know how he could possibly stop him from doing whatever he wanted. Whatever Simon’s plan was, it didn’t seem good. Especially because, when the man refused to answer his next question, the veltis’s claws pierced his shoulder as it hauled him off the ground to dangle him in the air.
“I won’t ask again,” Simon sneered.
The man grimaced against the talons dug into his shoulder and gave an agonized nod.
“You’re doing good,” Simon praised, in a voice so condescending it made Wyatt’s skin crawl. “What’s the lead?”
The man shook his head, and then yelped when the veltis tightened its grip, digging its nails even deeper. “A shipwright,” the man whimpered. “Highland Sails.”
“Very good. Last question, and then we’re done. And I want you to think long and hard before you defy me again, understood? ”
“What do you want?” the man asked through panting breaths.
“The hidden archives,” Simon said, “we’ve known of them, but not where. Tell me.”
The man glared at him, and was silent for several long, tense seconds before spitting at Simon’s feet. Simon didn’t say anything to that. Instead, the veltis slammed the man’s back into a rafter beam above them and then let go, so that he fell eight feet back to the wood floor with a brutal thud.
Wyatt dashed for the door, yelling, “Beecher!” as he burst into the house with Carter and Piers behind him.
The veltis roared at them, and Simon snarled, “Interfere and it’s the end of your career, Kim!”
“What are you doing?” Wyatt demanded. “This isn’t the plan.”
Simon didn’t answer him. He turned back to the man on the floor, who was still face down and coughing into the wood with his arms wrapped around himself. “Tell me!” Simon screamed at him, and his veltis grabbed a fistful of the man’s cloak and shirt and lifted him into the air again.
“With all due respect,” the man mumbled hoarsely, taking several strained gulps of air before finishing, “go fuck yourself.”
The veltis smashed him back to the ground with all its strength, so swiftly and ruthlessly that something cracked and the man screamed out in pain.
Piers dashed several strides across the house to help him, but Simon threatened, “ Touch him and I’ll kill you .”
Piers stopped in his tracks, tearing his gaze away from the man who was now coughing up blood to look at Wyatt for guidance. Wyatt made a move to go over instead, and it wasn’t Simon who stopped him. The veltis stepped into his path and advanced, backing him into a wall and menacingly dragging its claws through the wood beside his head.
“I’d rather not kill you ,” Simon told him, “for the conflict it’d cause with your father, but don’t push me.”
“This is madness, Beecher,” Wyatt pleaded. “We know where Omen is going next. Why are we here?”
Simon ignored him and strode over to the man on the floor, nudging him onto his back with his boot to glare down at him. “The archives. Where?” But the man was in no shape to answer him, and Simon removed his boot from the man’s shoulder and began to saunter around the house. “How much history could there be?” he murmured to himself, and opened all the cabinets in the small kitchen. “A cabinet’s worth?” He strode toward the bedroom as he said, “A room?” and then searched through the drawers in the man’s dresser and under the bed.
He found nothing, and wandered back out to the main room, stomping his boot on the floor every few steps as if searching for a secret hatch. “Every night for the past week,” he said, “Carolina Trace has been here. I know they’re here somewhere.” He wandered back to the man who’d rolled onto his side again and curled into a ball, and squatted down next to him. “If you tell me, I’ll let you live. You may lose hundreds of years’ worth of history, but you’ll be alive to pick it up again.”
The man was trembling, breathing fast and shallow as if every swallow of air was excruciating, but he managed to look up at Simon and ask, “Do you swear?”
Simon motioned an ‘X’ across his chest. “On my mother.”
The man shut his eyes as he uncurled one arm from himself to point toward the hearth, and said, “The andirons.”
Simon stood and paced to the cold hearth, using his magic to lift the andirons and the attached base out and fling it across the room. It scraped noisily across the floor, and Simon stared down the hole it revealed for several seconds before looking back at the rest of them.
“If anybody moves,” he told the veltis, “kill them.”
He dropped down and disappeared beneath the hearth.
“Wyatt,” Carter hissed, and though the veltis gave him a low, quiet growl, he whispered, “Wyatt, this is insane. We have to do something.”
“The archives aren’t worth our lives,” Piers whispered back.
“Don’t,” the man choked quietly, “don’t do anything.”
“What?” Wyatt asked.
“He’s going to kill me,” the man said.
“Then why’d you tell him?” Carter asked.
“He was-” The man coughed up more blood, and then groaned and curled deeper into himself. “He was going to find the archives anyway. Hopefully he’ll kill me quickly.”
“Run,” Piers told him. “We’ll distract the veltis.”
“Simon’s bluffing,” Carter agreed, “he won’t kill the three of us.”
“If I was to kill any of you,” Simon said as he ascended from below the hearth, the faint smell of a fire following him, “you’re first, Hann.” And as Simon crossed the room to return to them, a thick cloud of smoke began to rise from the archives. “Time to go,” he announced .
His veltis stomped across the room, and without warning or hesitation, it plunged its long talons straight through the man’s chest as it lifted him a final time off the ground.
“No!” Wyatt yelled, darting across the room to punch the veltis in the back.
It was like his fist struck solid rock, and the veltis dropped the man back to the floor and turned on Wyatt with a raised claw. He braced himself for the strike, but it never landed. It shoved him aside to follow Simon out the front door of the house, leaving the three of them behind.
Wyatt immediately dropped down to try and help the man, but there was nothing to be done, and he shook his head to Piers and Carter’s questioning looks. “He’s gone,” he told them.
And then all he felt was fury, because they weren’t following Carolina Trace to kill innocent people, and if he’d have known this would happen then he never would’ve told the emperor about it to begin with.
“Simon!” he shouted, pounding out the door to chase Simon down. Simon hadn’t gone far down the road, and the three of them caught up as he reached a darkened alley across the street. “What are you playing at!”
Simon didn’t even act like he’d heard him, and it wasn’t until Carter shouted, “He’s talking to you!” and grabbed Simon’s arm that something happened.
The veltis whirled around and closed its long fingers around Carter’s neck, lifting him straight into the air. Carter struggled, first trying to pry the veltis’s fingers off and then resorting to slamming his fists against its forearms as the panic set in.
“Let him go!” Wyatt commanded.
Simon stormed over, shoving Wyatt back into the wall of the alley and holding him there by the shoulder. “You listen to me, and you listen to me closely, Wyatt ,” Simon snarled, pointing a finger of his other hand into his face. “The sooner you accept that you have no power here, the better. I am doing exactly what I need to do, and you will not stand in my way.”
“What do you need to do?” Wyatt spat, passing a frantic nod toward Carter, whose lips were turning blue as he continued to struggle against the veltis. “Kill innocent people?”
Simon chuckled, but if the tightening of his vicelike grip on Wyatt’s shoulder was any indication, it wasn’t a friendly one. “Your informant was right about Ascension — it shouldn’t be available to just anyone. So I’m going to burn down every trail, destroy every lead, kill every person who knows a single thing about it behind Carolina Trace to ensure that I am the last person to ever Ascend.”
Wyatt’s eyes went wide. “You can’t,” he breathed. “I won’t let you. We’ll stop following them.”
“Then your position as Vice Admiral and captain of Sky’s Honor is forfeit,” Simon said, letting him go. “Your ship is now under my command, and we leave as soon as Omen does whether you're on it or not.”
He snapped at the veltis, and as it released its grip to finally let Carter go, it cut one of its razor-sharp nails straight through the side of his neck.
“Carter!” Wyatt screamed, racing to his side as he collapsed to the ground with a gash through his jugular.
Carter was grasping frantically at his bleeding neck as he struggled to pull in the deep gasps of air he hadn’t been getting for the last minute. His entire face was purple, his eyes bloodshot as they looked around wide and terrified.
“Move your hands,” Wyatt instructed, doing everything in his power to control the rising panic as he shoved Carter’s hands away to apply pressure to the wound. “You made your point!” he yelled after Simon, who was already halfway down the other side of the alley. “Heal him!”
“See you on the ship, Mr. Kim,” Simon called back, and then added, “or not,” as he disappeared.
“Fuck!” he shouted, and told Piers, “Go and find a doctor, now !” Piers took off instantly and without a word.
“Deep breaths,” he said to Carter, trying to ignore the blood pouring through his fingers as he pushed hard over the wound. “Try and slow down, I know you need the air.” Carter’s nails clawed at his arm and his frightened eyes were full of tears, and Wyatt couldn’t help it. His own eyes flooded. “I got you,” he sniffled, and squeezed his eyes briefly shut to send the tears streaming down his cheeks, just to clear them so he could see. “You’re going to be fine. You’re my best mate, huh? It doesn’t end like this. You hear me? I got you.”
He didn’t know if he was trying to reassure Carter or himself more, but his heart was pounding so hard that he felt it in his ears and behind his eyes. It was pounding so hard that he was getting lightheaded, but he shook it off. Carter needed him to be strong until better help came. No matter how much blood was still coming through his fingers. No matter how terrified he was of losing his best friend .
Those few minutes felt like hours, but he finally heard running footsteps on the pavement. “Here they come,” he told Carter, looking up hopefully.
That hope disappeared the moment Piers came bursting into the alley with several people right behind him. Carolina’s eyes landed on Wyatt, and he’d never been the target of such fury. She smashed into him, tearing his hands from Carter’s neck as she stood him up and threw him back into the wall, pressing the point of her dagger against the underside of his chin.
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t shove this into your brain,” she snarled.
“Help him,” he begged, his eyes full of fresh tears as he pointed desperately at Carter, whose wound was flowing freely without his hands there. “ Please ,” he cried, “I’ll tell you what happened. I’ll tell you everything, please, just heal him.”
Carolina hesitated for a few moments as she took in the situation, but she eventually nodded at Ophelia, who knelt down beside Carter and set her hands on his neck. She closed her eyes, and in the few moments while she worked her magic on him, Wyatt risked a glance at Rue. She must’ve felt him looking, because she tore her focus from Carter to meet his gaze, and there was a deep crease between her eyebrows as she gave him the subtlest shake of her head. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and leaned his head back against the wall, unable to watch any longer and waiting to hear that his friend was saved.
It felt like another hour was gone before Ophelia’s voice said, “Close your eyes and rest, Carter. You’re safe now.”
Wyatt finally looked. Piers had knelt on the opposite side as Ophelia, and nodded at him to confirm that Carter would live. He sighed his relief, but he didn’t get to do more than that before Carolina’s dagger pressed harder under his chin.
“Start talking,” she commanded.
He wished he had time to catch his breath. To calm the racing of his heart now that Carter was out of immediate danger. But he didn’t, and so he started at the beginning. “We’ve been following you because the emperor knows of your curse and your search for Ascension. He wants it to break his curse too.”
Carolina stared him down while she processed that information, but Ophelia stood and stepped closer, asking, “Who did he send?”
“Simon Beecher,” he answered .
She blew a hard breath through her lips and asked, “He killed John?”
“The archivist?” he asked.
“His name was John,” Carolina growled.
Wyatt nodded confirmation. “And he burned the archives.”
“Why?” Carolina asked.
“Because,” he answered with a defeated sigh, “he’s going to destroy or kill every lead you find so that when you finally bring him to it, he’s the last person to ever Ascend.”
“Big deal,” said the man that was with them. “We’ll just kill him first.”
“It’s not that simple, Berkeley,” Ophelia told him.
“Why?” Carolina removed her dagger from Wyatt’s chin and told him, “Don’t move.” Then she asked Ophelia, “I’ve heard that name before… Who the hell is Simon Beecher?”
“A Caster,” Ophelia answered, but sighed. “ The Caster. He works for the emperor, and he has a reputation for being swift and merciless.”
“That doesn’t scare me,” Carolina said.
“It should,” Ophelia told her. “He’s strong. I’m no match for him in my current state, and even when the curse is broken and I have all my strength back, I’m not sure it’d be enough.” She shook her head. “We can’t go after Ascension if that means he’ll get it, Carolina.”
“Does your captain know all this?” Carolina asked Wyatt.
“I was the captain,” he told her.
“Was?” she repeated.
“I threatened to stop following you to keep Simon from hurting anyone else. He’s taken command of my ship and intends to follow you whether we rejoin him or not.”
“Which ship is yours?”
“Why?” he asked.
“Maybe we can’t kill Simon Beecher,” she said, “but we might kill enough of your crew to keep your ship from being operable.”
“I can’t let you do that,” he told her. “And I don’t recommend an open attack.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because,” he sighed, and because he already knew how much Carolina’s crew hated Vinson Penny, he braced himself as he said, “Simon gave Vinson Penny a new ship to join us, and promised him Omen when all this is done. Our crew is nearly doubled.”
Carolina’s face went blank as she let out a huff of laughter and turned her back to him. Her shoulders shook with another brief laugh, and then she shook her head, and when she turned around again, she led with her fist. Her knuckles landed square on his jaw with so much force he almost hit the ground. He caught himself on the wall as the taste of blood saturated his tongue, and he spat most of it out before straightening up again. But he didn’t retaliate.
“Fair enough,” he groaned, stretching his jaw back and forth. He spared the briefest of glances at Rue, who was doing her best to hide the cringe on her face.
“How were you trailing us?” Carolina asked. “Who on my crew alerted you?”
His eyes snapped away from Rue and back to Carolina, and before answering, he mustered all the fortitude he could. For every lie he’d ever failed to tell, he poured his soul into this one. “I don’t know.”
Carolina scoffed at him. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Anonymous letters,” he told her. “Left with the harbormaster telling us where to go.”
“How did it start? And where?”
“By chance,” he said. “At Cotisall. I don’t know how they found me.”
Carolina hummed and looked him over for several long seconds while she thought about it. “What makes you so special?”
“My father,” he answered. “Admiral Kim.”
“Someone important, I assume,” Carolina said.
He nodded, but Ophelia’s brow furrowed as she looked at Carter. “Why did Simon do this if you were captaining the ship that brought him?” she asked. “Just because you threatened to stop following us?”
“He doesn’t trust me,” he said. “Probably hasn’t trusted me since the moment he stepped foot on my ship.”
“Why not?” Carolina asked.
“I think he could sense that I didn’t want him to Ascend,” he answered. “Maybe even that I’d actively try to prevent him from doing so.”
“Why don’t you want him to Ascend? You’re Sovereign, aren’t you?”
Wyatt gestured at Carter. “He did that to my best friend for no other reason than to prove he doesn’t like me. He killed John in case someone ever made it to him and the archives for Ascension. He promised Vinson Penny not just any ship for helping him, but Omen . You lot may be pirates, but you’re a far cry better than Penny, I know that much.”
“And him?” Carolina asked, pointing at Piers, who gave her a grimacing smile and a tiny wave. “What excuse do you have for bringing them? ”
“Commander Parker is my superior,” he said, and nodded toward Ophelia. “He sent them when I told him you had a Caster.”
“Do they know?” Ophelia asked.
He shook his head, but when Piers saw him do it, he quietly said, “Yes.” All of them looked at him in surprise. “He’s your father, right?” Piers asked. “Baker. That’s the name he signed the warrant letter with. It didn’t take us long to put it together once we found out you went to school under the same name.”
“If your fathers knew,” Ophelia asked, “why didn’t they tell me so to keep me from running?”
“Because,” Piers answered, “if nobody knew that we knew, then we couldn’t get in trouble if your father was caught.” He shrugged. “They want out, Miss Parker. You’re meant to be our last bounty.”
“I see,” Ophelia said with a nod, but she didn’t seem to know what else to say.
So Wyatt asked, “What now?”
“Well,” Carolina sighed, finally putting her dagger back in its sheath. “I’m not quite as keen on killing you.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“Don’t thank me.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not completely decided against it.”
“I’m not getting back on that ship,” Carter murmured from where he was lying on the ground. His voice was hoarse and gravelly, and his elbows shook as he began to push himself up to sit, but he managed to do so and then scooted to lean back against the wall. “I don’t have a father or two to keep Simon from trying to kill me again. Let him think I’m dead, I’ll stay here.”
But Wyatt didn’t want to leave Carter behind, and he said to Carolina, “He could go with you.”
She stared at him for several seconds before laughing, “You’re out of your mind if you think he’s boarding Omen.”
“He’s safer with you than he is on Sky’s Honor,” he told her.
“You don’t even know me,” she said.
“I’m still standing,” he said, “so I know you’re better than Beecher.”
“Why would I do anything for you?” she asked. “ I don’t like you .”
He sighed and said, “We can make a deal. I’ll go back to Sky’s Honor and keep you alerted if anything changes with Simon. And if need be, I’ll fight on your side to keep him from Ascending. ”
“If you do that,” Carolina told him, “you’re as good as a deserter in Sovereign’s eyes.”
“Then so be it,” he said. He was finally sure. “I don’t care anymore.”
Carolina hummed, watched him a bit more, and then asked, “How will you contact us?”
“Send someone to meet with me,” he suggested, “before leaving here, and at any island you go next. We can work together.”
“I don’t trust you,” she said, “and I can’t force any of my crew to do so either.”
“I’ll do it,” Rue said, stepping up to Carolina’s side and telling her, “whatever happens, if you still decide to see this through, we can’t let Beecher Ascend. We need all the help we can get.” There was a long pause before Carolina finally nodded. “Where should I meet you?”
It took everything in him not to smile. “A tavern?”
“Setting Sun,” Rue said.
He nodded and tore his gaze away from Rue to extend his hand to Carolina. “He goes with you, then?”
Carolina glanced at Carter and said toward him, “He stays in the brig.”
Carter shrugged and mumbled, “If it has a bed and a shit bucket, it’s still better than being anywhere near Beecher.”
Carolina grabbed Wyatt’s hand, pulling him closer as she shook it. “Don’t fuck this up,” she told him. “My patience is wearing thin. And if you put my sister in danger, I will kill you. Got it?”
“Got it,” he replied.
“Go to the tavern tonight and wait,” she said. She let his hand go and backed away, gesturing to the others to follow. “Rue will come when I’ve decided what we’re going to do.”
He nodded and strode to Carter, offering his hand to help him up. Carter took it, but he was so weak from the blood loss that he could barely stand on his own.
“Will you make it back alright?” Wyatt asked.
“He needs blood,” Ophelia said. She came over and took one of Carter’s arms to lift it over her shoulders and support him. “We have Catorix on the ship.”
While Rue came to take Carter’s other arm, Wyatt detached his entire coin pouch and took out just enough to pay for a room, and then extended the rest to Carolina. “Whatever he needs, give it to him, please. ”
She took the coins from him and attached it to her own belt, nodded at him, and then led the way out of the alley. The others followed her, Carter calling, “See you, fellas,” in his raspy voice as he went with them. “Be careful.”
Wyatt waved as Rue cast a final glance back at him, and then they all disappeared around the corner. The moment they were gone, he exhaled hard and fast, buckling over to put his hands on his knees.
“Oh,” he breathed, a flurry of relief and residual panic blowing through him. “I can’t believe we survived that.”
“I’m sorry I brought them,” Piers said. “But I knew Miss Parker could heal him and I wasn’t certain I could find any other doctor in time.”
“It’s alright,” he answered, taking in a deep breath to calm the whirlwind in his stomach as he straightened up. “You did the right thing. You saved Carter’s life.”
Piers nodded, was quiet for a couple of seconds, and then asked, “Is Simon going to kill us when we return to the ship?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “My father isn’t here, Simon could tell him whatever he wanted about my death.” He shrugged and mumbled, “Not that he’d care anyway.” He gestured at Piers. “But your fathers are here, and my crew may be under his command, but they wouldn’t stay that way unquestioningly if he started killing us.”
“Right,” Piers agreed. Another handful of seconds passed, and then he said, “I should go back, then. I’ll get a feel for the mood on the ship and report to you when you get back tomorrow.”
“If you’re worried about Simon,” Wyatt told him, “you don’t have to go back tonight.”
Piers shook his head. “My fathers know Simon’s been leaving the ship. If I don’t return, they’ll confront him, and that won’t be good for any of us.”
Wyatt nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Be safe, Wyatt,” Piers told him.
“You too,” he replied, “and thank you, for saving Carter.”
“Either of you would’ve done the same for me.” Piers smiled, gave him a small wave, and left.
He only stood there in the cold darkness of the alley alone for a couple of seconds before hurrying back out to the street. More soldiers had gathered across the way at John’s house, and were only trying to keep the fire from spreading since it had grown to engulf the entire home. As much as he wished tonight never happened, there was nothing he could do, and so he headed for the tavern with a crushing amount of guilt and anger in his chest, hoping a good night’s sleep would bring him clarity by morning.