Chapter 40
I sat in Mae’s tent, relieved I was no longer the centre of attention. I stayed quiet while she checked my head and the rest of my injuries. Three days and three nights of sleep had healed everything.
‘I don’t think you need to see the general’s Wound Weaver,’ she concluded.
‘Do you know why my eyes are like this?’ I asked hopefully.
‘No,’ she admitted.
‘Am I a Shadow Weaver?’
‘Yes, but I’ve never met a Shadow Weaver. Bending shadows and light to do your bidding is rare, but Shadow Weavers did exist before Eritz was divided in two. Your ability to turn a man to ash is not a Weaver ability, though. Neither is turning day to night.’
I truly was the Cursed One.
‘The curator believes there might be answers in Ephemeros.’ Mae raised a thin brow, assessing my reaction.
‘So, you know about the deal I made with General Toro?’ I asked.
‘I may have guessed,’ she said vaguely.
‘You mean you read someone’s mind?’
She shrugged with a smile.
‘You can travel into people’s dreams too?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You looked different in my dream.’
‘I don’t feel like an old lady, so I don’t see myself as one,’ she admitted.
‘You told me if I woke up, you would tell me about my parents and twin.’
‘Ah, you remembered that.’ She smiled ruefully.
‘Did you know my parents?’
She nodded.
I was finally going to discover the truth. Why did they send me away? Why wasn’t I worthy of their love?
‘Your mother was a Mind Weaver like me, but instead of being able to enter dreams, she could influence a person’s thoughts. A rare gift. Mind Weavers can communicate without words to other Mind Weavers, and that’s how I came to know what I know now.’
‘My mother spoke to you with her mind?’ I was absorbing her every syllable, desperate to know anything she could tell me about the woman who gave birth to me.
‘It was the only way she could communicate by the end, and she wanted you to know everything. She asked me to show you.’ Mae gestured to her bedroll. ‘Lie down. When you’re ready, I will begin.’
My palms became sweaty as I did as she asked.
‘Close your eyes. I need you to relax for this to work. Try emptying your mind.’
How? My mind was never empty, especially not now when I was on the cusp of getting the answers to questions I’ve been asking my entire life. I tried to ignore the scratchiness of Mae’s bedroll and the lumpy ground that pressed into my back. She really should find a flatter surface to sleep on.
‘Try taking a deep breath, hold it for two counts, and breathe out for three.’
I breathed as Mae counted and felt the tension begin to leave my limbs. Her hand gently stroked my head, and to my surprise, I grew sleepy.
?
Sitting at a gilded dressing table, a woman admired her reflection as she brushed her radiant, golden hair.
Grooves formed between her wide green eyes, and her full, rosy lips tipped down at the sides as if she no longer liked what she saw in the mirror.
It was a young Queen Yaris, and she looked like she did in the portrait that hung in the Warwicks’ rooms in Capita Castle.
Reflected in the mirror, a young man climbed through the large window behind her. She turned towards the intruder with a gasp.
I recognised a young King Hared, with his brown hair and tall frame, but then the image shimmered, and the illusion was gone.
The man in his place was also tall, but he was more robust, with rounder shoulders and a broader chest. His hair grew longer and turned a bright auburn.
How had he changed his appearance? Could Weavers do that? I had thought only women were Weavers.
Queen Yaris threw herself at the man, and he swung her around with a joyful laugh.
‘What are you doing here?’ She looked up at him with adoration. My heart ached to be able to hear Queen Yaris’s voice for the first time. It was soft and a little husky, just like mine.
‘I want you to run away with me,’ he joked.
‘Very funny,’ she replied with a smile.
He became serious now. ‘What if you did?’
‘Then my husband will send his armies after us and we will die, or worse.’
She pushed him away and returned to sitting at her dressing table, but she did not resume brushing her hair. Instead, she met his gaze in the mirror. His eyes were grey like mine.
‘Would you have married me if you had the choice?’ he whispered to her.
‘What does it matter now? We need to stop torturing each other with what ifs.’ She sounded sad and hopeless.
Before the man could reply, there was a knock at the door. He took one last longing look at her and left through the open window.
?
The scene changed, and Queen Yaris was noticeably pregnant.
She was sitting with King Hared in the castle dining room.
It looked the same as it had when he insisted that Bethel and I attend dinner and dance every night with Goodwin and Capita’s other lords and ladies.
But there was no dancing or food on the table.
They were alone, and King Hared was furious.
‘I know the child is not mine! You thought you could marry me and cover up your disgrace?’ His words echoed loudly around the empty dining room. ‘Whose is it?’
Queen Yaris didn’t reply.
‘I’m not naming another man’s child as my heir!’ His red, contorted face was almost touching hers. I don’t know how she tolerated it.
‘You could name Goodwin your heir if it’s a girl,’ she replied calmly.
‘If the child is born alive, it will not stay that way for long.’
His cruelty made my stomach churn, and her calm demeanour slipped away.
‘No! Please!’ she begged, grabbing his arm in desperation.
‘You will have more children. I’ll make sure of that,’ he snarled as he pushed her away.
?
Adorned in a flowing white nightgown, Queen Yaris lay in a grand bed, cradling two infants. A younger Mae stood protectively at the head of the bed as the queen cried softly.
Two knights stood nearby, waiting to take the newborns from their mother. When the first knight leaned in to grab a child, Queen Yaris placed a hand on his arm and whispered frantically. The knight’s eyes glazed over, and with slow, trance-like movements, he took the infant without a word and left.
My heart plummeted when I saw the other knight. He had pale blond hair and blue eyes.
Iain.
Queen Yaris kissed the second babe’s tiny head and carefully passed it to Iain. As she stared at him, his eyes became vacant, and he nodded like a puppet to whatever it was she had said.
?
Queen Yaris was in the dungeon, chained to a chair.
She was still wearing the nightgown she had given birth in, and it was soaked in blood.
King Hared stood in the cell with a man dressed in black robes.
I felt her terror and cried out as the man forced his fingers into her mouth.
King Hared watched unwaveringly as the other man took a knife and cut out his wife’s tongue.
?
I didn’t want to see any more. The echoes of her suffering lingered in my mind, foretelling the pain and torture that lay ahead. I had already seen what became of my mother hours before she died.
‘It’s over, it’s over.’ Mae’s voice cut through my grief as I lay sobbing in her arms.
‘She was my mother, and I promised we would rescue her.’ I clutched Mae’s arm desperately. ‘That day I saw her – did she know who I was?’
‘She knew you were her daughter the moment you touched her.’ Mae’s eyes filled with unshed tears.
‘She did?’ I remembered her frantic calls as we left her.
‘I was getting messages from her through that cell door all night. I told her to sleep, and in her dreams, I showed her how you looked that day.’ Mae touched my hair tenderly. ‘She was happy that you were not only beautiful but also kind-hearted.’
I had failed to come back for her in time, and the guilt made me choke on the tears that poured relentlessly from me. ‘Was it Merrick who killed her?’
Mae nodded.
‘I wish I could deliver a hundred more painful deaths to him.’ Both of my mothers had died by his hand. ‘She did something to those knights, didn’t she? To Iain, the man who took me?’
With the blanket I still wore, I wiped away some of the tears and mucus from my face.
‘She used Control Weaving to make them keep you safe instead of killing you and your brother as the king ordered.’
Brother. I had a brother. I put that information aside – there was something else I needed to know first. Something about the man I had spent half my life with.
‘Can Mind Weaving make people lose their memories, even forget who they are?’
‘Your mother was a strong Weaver, which may damage the mind over time.’
So his confusion and memory loss had been my fault too.
‘King Hared found out, didn’t he? Is that why he cut out her tongue?’
‘Yes, he was very cruel to her by the end. I think he loved her very much once,’ Mae said sadly.
‘How can anybody do that to someone they love?’ I said, appalled.
‘Those who love us can sometimes cause us the most suffering. Love is an incredibly potent emotion that can easily twist into something toxic,’ Mae said grimly.
Loving someone and losing them was a pain I was more familiar with. ‘My brother, does he live?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Yes.’
‘Where is he?’ My heart rate picked up with anticipation.
Mae hesitated before answering. ‘The knight delivered your brother to your father.’
‘The man who came through the window?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
I frowned. ‘I don’t understand how he could transform himself into the king. I thought only women were Curs— I mean, Weavers.’
‘His sister would help him. It was an illusion used to get him past the guards.’
‘Where is he now? Why didn’t our mother keep us together?’
‘It would have been too easy for King Hared’s men to find you both if you were together. Twins, a boy and a girl, would be easy to track,’ Mae explained.
She still hadn’t told me where my father and brother were, but I thought I knew why. Did he have an accent? He spoke little in Queen Yaris’s memories.
‘They are in Ephemeros, aren’t they? My father wasn’t from Pedion, so they hadn’t married?’ Her father wouldn’t have wanted a man from Ephemeros to take the Pedion throne.
Mae nodded wearily, confirming my suspicions. External forces truly were working to get me to Ephemeros.
Mae’s face was drawn, and shadows filled the cavities under her sad eyes. The past few days spent trying to wake me and now sharing my birth mother’s memories with me had taken a toll on her.
I rose from her bedroll. She wasn’t the hugging type, so I hovered awkwardly, trying to think of the right way to thank her.
‘You’re welcome,’ Mae said. ‘Now get some food and sleep. Having someone in your head will make anyone tired.’ She yawned and then smiled sleepily.
I wondered what it was like to know everyone’s thoughts. I smiled back at her and left her to rest.