18. Elowen
ELOWEN
F orsythe keeps his distance from me, scarcely looking in my direction, as we return home. He even made me sit on a sheet in the carriage, ‘lest the beast’s filth sully the velvet seats’ of his precious carriage. And blessedly, I’m left to bathe in relative peace. Relative because my thoughts are awhirl with conspiring a way to free Sariel. And perhaps an even greater question lies in how the hell we’ll sustain ourselves afterwards. It’s not like there are any jobs available for daemons in this world—though it goes without question he intends to return to his realm.
How to do so is a question I’ve been meaning to ask. But with his talk of me having to turn into a daemoness, drink blood, and bear children, I hadn’t quite had the presence of mind to ask.
And on top of that, my body seems at war with my mind because, despite the absolute-fucking-pickle we’re in—there’s a desperate and demanding ache that I promptly return to Sariel and beg him to fuck me and fill me with his seed. To fulfill our bond.
Images of attempting to smother Forsythe with his own bed pillows are a constant moving picture in the back of my mind.
Rat poison?
No—his nose is too sensitive, and I gather he has at least some of the immortality Sariel possesses. Poisoning him would likely only result in a pair of soiled trousers.
A giggle bubbles up my chest at the thought. For some reason, I am utterly delighted at the thought of Forsythe shitting his pants. Considering how obsessive-compulsive he is in regards to his personal hygiene, he’d probably be in such duress over such an incident, he might just die of humiliation.
Another giggle rises, intensifying until I’m wheezing with silent laughter, and tears stream down my cheeks.
And then I’m sobbing.
How cruel is fate that the moment my soulbound and I are united, Forsythe has to get in the way—and we may very well die trying to escape?
My sobs slow as something like realization washes over me. Something seems to click into place, but I can’t yet see what.
Something about this seems so very familiar, as if history is repeating itself.
My mother had dreams and visions. Though they were in such a multitude, and I was so young at the time, that I could never make much sense of what little she would tell me about them. If so, I might wonder if she, too, had experienced The Summoning? Did she have a daemon mate out there somewhere? My heart aches to imagine suffering through not merely three years but a lifetime of dreaming about a male you know is yours but that you never get to meet.
My mind races back through linear time—Forsythe had been one of the consulting physicians at the asylum where my mother was frequently hospitalized. My mother at the time suffered only from an illness of the mind, one that induced auditory and visual hallucinations. It wasn’t until sometime after that that we’d met Evandriel—through Forsythe. I never knew the nature of my mother’s and Evandriel’s relationship, but I’d gathered they were friends. Though I can scarcely imagine why.
Forsythe had attempted to help my mother, but her condition eventually spread from her mind to her body. She remained under his care until her passing.
Rage and nausea churn through me in equal measure as the realization hits me that Forsythe likely had something to do with her death.
All these years, I thought he’d been helping her.
London is not a safe place for women to walk around alone at night. Sariel would be furious if he knew I was sneaking out of my bedroom window to head towards one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the whole city. I slipped a paring knife into my garter belt and sent a prayer up to whatever god will listen. Crawling on hands and knees over the roof, I reach the eave, ready to try and shimmy my way down a rainwater pipe—only to find Evandriel, the cursed male himself, already leaning against his hearse carriage, staring up at me from beyond the garden wall on the adjacent side street.
Despite the distance and the dim light, I can clearly make out the gleam of his too-sharp teeth as he grins before taking a pull on his pipe and exhaling a billowing plume of fuchsia-colored smoke.
Attempting to descend via the rainwater pipe proves futile. Instead, I slide halfway down before the strength in my hands gives out, and I fall backwards. The breath is knocked out of me with a whoosh, and I can hear Evandriel hiss a curse before there’s a thud by the garden wall, and in the next second he’s standing above me.
I wheeze for air, rolling over to crawl to standing, and quietly growl several curses. As Forsythe’s only servant, I possess the keys to every gate and door in his house. There’s no fucking way Evandriel climbed the fence that fast. I’ve always known Evandriel was something other , like Foresythe, but had never really witnessed any proof of my suspicion. He tends to make himself rather scarce in my presence.
Yet here he is, a smirk tilting his lips as soon as I shove his helping hands away.
“You alright, girl? Took a nasty spill there.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Oooh, just because, I imagine after speaking to your soulbound, it might have gotten a few of your wheels turning. Thought you might have a few questions for me—and I wanted to save you and myself both the trouble of having to rescue you from any unsavories and their ill-willed ambitions.”
The bottom half of my jaw nearly falls straight off my face. Evandriel takes another drag from his pipe and blows a large plume of smoke into the air. It doesn’t smell like tobacco. Instead, the scent is floral, sweet, and spicy.
He gives me a moment to gape, as though this was all so very expected, as he continues to puff away. Finally, I muster the fortitude to ask for answers I only now realize I’m terrified to discover.
“Did Forsythe kill my mother?”
Evandriel’s mouth slackens from around the lip of his pipe, eyes widening a fraction as if I’ve caught him off guard. The reaction is gone so fast, it makes me wonder if I’d just misinterpreted the expression. Taking a deep breath through his nose, his broad chest expands before exhaling surprising weariness. “Not intentionally.”
His words gradually sink in like quicksand, and my mind becomes so distant from my body that it takes me a few moments to recognize the warm water spilling over my cheeks are in fact my tears; that the sharp pain in my curled fists is from my nails digging into my flesh.
For all my softness, lying beneath the surface of my flesh is a dormant creature—even if only within my mind—that when summoned has a thirst for blood.
The part of my mind that martyrs itself beneath the weight of guilt and constantly reminds me that I owe a great debt—to whom, I’ll never know—because my mother and I were rescued from the streets and everyone else was left behind, tiptoes around the awakened, bloodthirsty beast in an attempt to reason with it in some milquetoast voice.
But he employed you, clothed you, fed you…
Righteous or not, it does not matter to the beast—the demon inside me—because whether or not he intentionally killed my mother , Forsythe is going to die.
Evandriel hesitates for several moments, studying me with a look of unmistakable sadness shadowing his eyes. “He was trying to cure her.”
Somehow, the words make me even more angry.
Cure her.
Now that Evandriel has revealed a modicum of truth, my mind is now able to puzzle various things together—like the fact that her mental affliction only escalated to a physical affliction when Forsythe came into picture.
Saline seeps across my lips, pressed in a grim line to try and stifle the grief threatening to crumple me beneath its weight. My voice is a tremulous whisper. “Cure her from what?”
Some part of me has always had some idea but I’d been too young at the time to grasp the reality of it.
“Her gifts.”
My brow hardens as my throat works, unable to form words. Sensing this, Evandriel elaborates.
“She was a seer. Had no one to help her control her gifts. They consumed her. The doctors thought her schizophrenic. They wanted to lobotomize her. Forsythe was the one to convince them otherwise.”
“That doesn’t explain her death.”
Evandriel draws in a deep breath, as if to steady himself, and it’s then that I finally recognize the signs of exhaustion etching his features. “Forsythe found a way to temper her visions by draining them. And apparently, trying to drain too much of someone’s magic will drain their life force. While her visions decreased, so did her health. Forsythe tried to convince her to stop using the device he’d given her to do so, but she said she would rather ‘be weak in body than in mind because’…”
A tremor that began in my hands has now taken root throughout my entire body as the revelation strikes me.
“Because why?”
Evandriel shakes his head. “She loved you more than anything, Elowen.”
I can barely hear him over the pounding of blood in my ears. With a few bold steps forward, I fist the lapels of his woollen coat. Evandriel doesn’t flinch as my tears and spittle pepper his cheek when my words rush out of me in a hissed reply. “Because why?”
The sadness creasing Evandriel’s begrudgingly handsome features is painfully sincere. “She wanted to be there for you, Elowen. She felt tremendous guilt for how her mental health—or rather, her inability to control her gift—had affected you and your childhood…”
While it is true that my mother couldn’t hold a job because of her condition?—
Guilt churns within me at having spent all these years calling it such a thing, as though it were a disease, when truly, if Evandriel is to be believed, it was a gift.
“She just wanted to be there for you in a way she had never been able to before.”
My grip on his lapels tightens, as if it’s the only thing keeping me from sinking into the wet cobblestones beneath me, before my forehead lands squarely on his chest.
Fuck, what I would give to be in Sariel’s arms.
I’m not sure why I don’t immediately recoil when Evandriel’s heavy arms wrap around me. Instead, I allow myself to crumple against his chest as I finally release a held-back sob.
“I’m sorry, Elowen... I wish more than anything she was still here too.”
After I managed to stop sobbing against Evandriel’s chest—thoroughly dousing it in tears and snot, none of which he batted an eye at—I don’t bother trying to sneak back into Forsythe’s. I simply walk through the front door, numb and unconcerned as to whether or not he notices.
He doesn’t.
The house is so still and silent that I wonder if he’s returned to his laboratory.