Chapter 25 #2
Semras paled. “… He forced you to use your sight for him until you went blind?” She reeled back, stricken by uncontrollable shudders. “How much more of a monster can he be?”
“Inquisitor Velten is no monster! He saved me; he gave me purpose!”
Jaqhen stirred and started wailing.
Nimue’s anger disappeared at once. Turning her attention to her child, she rocked him in her arms. “Mama is sorry, my baby. I’m sorry, I’m not mad at you,” she said, shushing him.
“It’s alright; your papa will be back soon.
Mama saw it. He will be back, and we’ll spend time together just like before he left for the Anderas … ”
Semras walked away to the nearest window. Rancour simmered at the back of her throat, and the view outside did nothing to soothe her temper. Everything out there was a monument to the power and shamelessness of her captor.
How despicable that man was. He had used Nimue shamefully, making her use her power until she went blind, then leaving her to rot here in a city far away from her true kin. Worse, she had fallen for him so much she believed he’d been good to her. Devoted!
As if the madman even knew the word.
Semras bit her lip. Was that the fate awaiting her too? To become just another tool, discarded in a corner of his fancy mansion and given baubles to decorate her cage with? To have her heart twisted by his manipulative attention until she could no longer tell right from wrong?
“You came here for your portrait, didn’t you?” the seeress asked, cutting off her dark thoughts. “Come, I’ll show you.”
Then Nimue turned on her heel, gently bouncing the baby in her arms. Semras followed her into a bedroom. A small crib rested against a bed with disarrayed blankets.
Nimue pointed to a side table. “I kept it here after Inquisitor Velten left to find you. I had a hunch it would be significant, that you would come for it.”
Coming from a seeress, a hunch meant a lot. Semras walked up to the table, pulled the drawer, and picked up the piece of canvas within. Her eyes scanned it.
The upper left, with her name and part of her face, had obviously been ripped away, and what lay before her eyes was the rest of an illustration of her.
And of him.
Amidst a forest painted in broad strokes, they lay entwined with each other in a strangely intimate and violent embrace. Semras was straddling the monster’s hips, strangling his neck while his hand pressed on her throat to push her away. His other hand held back her wrist, and …
Thin lines of threads wove their warp shape cores together.
The glade. It depicted what happened in the glade, when he accused her of Bleak witchcraft after she lent him her lifeforce.
But the details were off. Nimue hadn’t painted the fire and blood or any of the menhirs.
Semras had been bare-chested back then and not wearing that dress, yet the threads between them unmistakably set the timing of this scene.
She’d never lend him her wefts ever again, so it could only mean one thing: that fate had already come to pass.
Nimue drew closer. “Inquisitor Velten thought it meant you would be his doom. I have another interpretation. Are you familiar with the Death card of the Tarot? The one used by diviners?”
Semras ripped her gaze from the drawing and stared wordlessly at the seeress.
“Many take it literally, like an ill omen for their mortality,” she continued. “In truth, it means something entirely different. Transformation. Change.”
“No, it’s wrong. It—”
It already happened.
“You will change him, and he will change you. The hands on your throats represent the death of what you were at each other’s hands. His ‘death,’ more than yours, since you are prevailing from above. But it isn’t an ill omen for either of you. I am sure of it.”
Semras’ mind drew blank. Holding the drawing between her bound hands, she didn’t feel like she was prevailing at all. “It—it can’t be … He told me—”
The seeress scoffed. “Inquisitor Velten is the most honest liar I have ever met. What did he tell you exactly? His choice of words matters. He’s skilled at concealing his true intentions. In his lies, you will find truth.”
Semras slowly lowered the painting back into the drawer, then closed it.
Looking at it wouldn’t give her any more answers, and neither would telling the seeress how wrong she’d been with her vision’s interpretation.
She’d let Nimue live without that guilt weighing on her conscience.
It wasn’t her fault; they had both been deceived by the same man.
In the seeress’ arms, the little baby opened his eyes and turned to look at Semras. His irises were a pretty shade of deep blue. Of course they were.
Nimue noticed her staring at them. “We are still waiting to see if he’ll have my eyes or his father’s. Green or brown, we’ll know in a few months.”
Green … or brown? Not blue?
Semras’ heart skipped a beat.
Oh.
The boy wasn’t the monster’s child. He was Ulrech’s—Ulrech with his dark hair and dark eyes and similar appearance to the man he served.
Part of her, a part buried deep within the wounds in her heart, begged her to confirm the truth. “The rumours about the paternity … was that your idea?” she asked in a breath.
“No,” the seeress replied. “Inquisitor Velten was the one to suggest it. Ulrech would have received a dishonourable discharge from the Confraternity had the truth been revealed, and the inquisitor’s backing was powerful enough for him to survive such a scandal, so he thought it the most natural solution to our woes. ”
Semras could guess who that backing was. She’d heard it from the mouth of Inquisitor Callum earlier. “His backing … You mean his father, the cardinal?”
She nodded. “His Eminence oversees the Vandalesian Chapter of the Inquisition. Inquisitor Velten usually never uses his father’s influence, but he made an exception for us. I believe, however, that the cardinal suspected the truth, and that was why he let his son off so easily.”
Semras scoffed. “I bet Sir Ulrech hated that idea and still said nothing.”
“He did!” Nimue replied, laughing dazzlingly.
“He’s so terrible—a grumpy, single-minded, bullheaded idiot who doesn’t know how to use his words.
I adore him so much.” She looked down at Jaqhen.
His little eyelids fluttered with sleepiness.
“He gave me the most beautiful child in the world. I love them both so dearly.”
Throat tightening, Semras lowered her gaze. Nimue’s love for Ulrech seeped from her voice like the warm glow of the sun. The monster hadn’t been a bastard betraying a lover when he flirted with her all this time, after all.
But it never mattered: he had manipulated her for a game far more dangerous than a side affair.
Nimue readjusted her hold on her child. “I saw threads between you and Inquisitor Velten when I painted your fates. I don’t know what will bind you so strongly together, or if it’s something from a future that can still change, but know it will be hard to break it once it happens.”
“Of course they will be hard to break. They’re cold iron shackles. That’s what binds me to him,” Semras sneered, shaking her hands. “You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of the keys instead of comfortless words? Or know where they might be?”
The seeress looked down at her bound hands.
A shadow of unease passed through her clouded eyes, then it left, and she gave her an enigmatic smile.
“You will not need it. Have faith in my vision. It was strong, stronger than any of the others, and you didn’t have the shackles in it. They will come off soon.”
“You knew I had them all along, didn’t you?” Semras fought back a snarl. “Why would you still support him, knowing what he did to me?”
Nimue shifted on her feet, eyes fleeing behind her to the bedroom doorway. “I see the future, Semras of Yore. I see what could have been and what may yet be. And what Path would have lain beneath your feet had your hands been free.”
She meant the Bleak Path.
Semras paled, her breath seized by dread. Her captor had a visceral hatred for bleakwitches; if he thought she was or would become one, then she was in much more danger than she first thought. “… Did you tell him that too?” she asked, voice weak.
Eyes still fixed behind Semras, Nimue slowly shook her head. “There are things you do not need a seeress to comprehend. He knew even before asking for my opinion.”
The sound of footsteps on the floor floated to Semras’ ears. Someone knocked on the wall rhythmically as they approached. They stopped, then two more, short and closer, announced their arrival.
Nimue’s smile greeted them. “Thank the Old Crone, my lord Inquisitor! Come, hold Jaqhen for a moment. My lovely child doesn’t nap anywhere else than in someone’s arms these days, and I can’t feel mine anymore. Please relieve me for a moment.”
Semras shivered violently. The monster had found her. Mouth dry, body taut with fear and repulsion, she forced herself to face him.
He stood in the doorway, arms crossed and face fixed in an impenetrable expression.
“I hope I am not interrupting anything,” he said.
Even his voice sounded calm, devoid of emotion.
After a pause, he stepped closer and lightly caressed the child’s head.
“I cannot stay for so long, Miss Covenless, but I will give leave to var Hesser for the rest of the day. I do apologize again for taking him from you barely half a day after we came back from the Anderas.”
The seeress’ clouded eyes filled up with warmth. “Thank you, my lord Inquisitor.”
The delicate creases formed by her smile only enhanced her beauty. Shining around her in a cascade of liquid gold, Nimue’s blond hair framed a lithe body that didn’t keep any reminders of her recent pregnancy.
A pang of jealousy twisted Semras’ guts. It took her by surprise. She wasn’t certain of exactly what she was envious of. Freedom, love, security—Nimue had so much more than Semras could ever hope for now.