Chapter 30 #3
She stayed silent, focusing instead on getting out of the curious crowd—and away from the Voice of the Elders stalking them still. Guiding him out of the Mother-Tree entrance and onto the main street, Semras kept peeking behind to see if they had lost her.
She couldn’t see robes of yellow and white among the crowd anymore, but she still dragged Estevan into the dark alleys behind the shops.
“Damn you, why won’t you answer me?” Estevan asked, trailing behind her.
Semras glared back at the man she had sacrificed too much for, prepared to scold him—but one glance at him drained her of all will to fight.
Barely restrained panic filled the inquisitor’s pale eyes. The kohl she had traced earlier on his skin now fell in rivers of bluish-black along his face, washed away by sweat and tears of agony. The usually overconfident, shameless inquisitor was barely holding together.
“Semras …” he pleaded.
“Please,” she replied, voice croaking. “Please let me … I …We will speak once we’re out. It’s too dangerous to remain here.” She turned once more to focus on the path, blinking away her own rising panic. “And I need—I need time. To gather my thoughts.” And find a plausible lie, she thought.
Semras kept her hold around his wrist, taking comfort in the pulse still beating there.
After crossing the fey gate and putting a safe distance between them and Yore, Semras slowed down.
Legs shaking, she sat at the base of a beech tree and watched as Estevan slumped against another one. They faced each other in silence, catching their breath amidst the dried red leaves.
They were safe now. Bound by a Fey Bargain to Yore, none of the Seven’s successors could leave its grounds. By the time the Voice would report that Semras was gone, their trail would have turned cold.
Now that the danger had passed, her heartbeat slowly returned to a normal rate, and the consequences of her foolishly spoken words sank their claws into her mind.
It still felt so unreal to her. In front of all the Coven, she had taken Estevan before the Old Crone and the New Maiden. She had lied to save his life, and the lie became real in the most horrific of ways. There was no turning back.
Even now, her warp shape throbbed with discomfort as it adjusted to the foreign sensation of Estevan’s threads replacing her own. A breath shuddered out of her—it came from her heart, mourning what she had just lost.
She was now bound for life to a man who had deceived her, betrayed her, thrown her in shackles, and confined her. A man she had meant to run away from and never see again once they’d have stopped Inquisitor Callum’s plan.
But now … now she would have to live with the ghost of him wrapped around her heart instead.
“Well?” Estevan’s voice startled her from her thoughts.
Semras glared at him. “Well? What madness possessed you to enter the sacred Mother-Tree?”
“What madness, you ask—you! You are the source of my madness! That wispy girl in the red dress, she approached me and said some cryptic words about how the Elders would soon come down for a rare spectacle. I dismissed her, but then you were not where we agreed to meet, so of course her words made me believe that you had been caught! And I rushed inside the hall to—”
“And you believed her?” she snapped. “I never pegged you for a fool, Estevan, yet here we are! You still have no idea that you walked into a trap, do you? And you have no idea what you just forced me to—”
“What. Trap.” His voice had turned to ice. “You held me in the dark for long enough, witch. Speak now.”
Semras scoffed. “Of course. Back to being called ‘witch.’ So this is an interrogation, not a conversation, is it, Inquisitor?”
A storm was brewing in his pale blue eyes, where panic had turned into a cold fury. The inquisitor still controlled it, but she could see the cracks forming in the walls of his restraint.
It broke some more, and he suddenly leaned forward, caging her between his arms and the tree.
Semras killed a whimper of fear behind tight lips. He had trapped her just like that a week ago in his mentor’s study. More memories soon followed that one, fluttering helplessly around her mind: the cage, the shackles, the loneliness and fear and despair and—
Shuddering, Semras blinked away the agonizing visions.
The inquisitor grabbed her chin, forcing her attention on him. His face was inches away from hers. “Do not …” he said quietly, “think of running from me. I will have my answers from you, and I will have them now.”
Semras’ lips quivered, and the memory of the murder scene surged back in her mind. “You can’t hurt me …” she breathed, trying to convince herself.
Estevan looked at her somberly. “No … No, I cannot,” he murmured, releasing her chin.
His knuckles brushed her jaw in a pleading caress.
Against her skin, his bare hand felt rough and calloused and impossibly gentle.
“Semras, I have imagined so many possibilities, and none are pleasing me, but I still need to know: what did I agree to? I heard them say, ‘twined by the wyrd’ … What does it mean?”
Rendered wordless in front of his plea, Semras beheld him.
At his best, Estevan was an overwhelmingly headstrong and charming man, and, at his worst, an unpredictable, lying bastard. But the man in front of her now was neither. A wretched and scared shell of his usual self stood in their stead.
Or perhaps this was who he truly was, deep down: a man lost in a world that didn’t care to make sense for him—a man without landmarks, drifting and grasping at anything for a semblance of control over his fate.
Embers or inferno, she remembered. His fire came not from arrogance, as she once thought, but from a survival instinct born from the violence of his world.
Semras exhaled quietly. Estevan needed—no, deserved—the truth.
Her eyes drifted to the red welts coursing across his skin. “Must we speak of it now? You’re hurt …” She hovered her hands near his bruises, not daring to touch them and awaken the pain within.
He looked down at himself. “This is not the first time I have been tortured … though, admittedly, this was one of the worst.” His lips twisted into a forced smile. “I will be fine. This is more important to me. I need to know, Semras.”
She heard him, but her mind kept reeling over the severity of his wounds. “They meant to kill you …”
“They would have succeeded had you not intervened,” he replied. “I have never seen warwitches at work before, and I do not care to repeat the experience.”
“I won’t let them get to you ever again.” Gripping her head, she added, “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t sent that Crone-cursed message, the Coven wouldn’t have been on high alert, and—”
Estevan cupped her face and brought her eyes back to him.
“Semras, do not regret what you did out of concern for your Coven. I would have done the same,” he said.
His brow creased. “I will, in fact. That witch you said had trapped me … Madra, you called her? She needs to be put on our watchlist. She sounded … unhinged, like an extremist.”
A sister witch being watched by the Inquisition would have alarmed her before.
Now, it didn’t.
“I thought you’d want revenge on her,” she said softly. “Maybe even kill her.”
Estevan shook his head. “I would never take revenge for myself. My life is insignificant compared to how many have been lost to the Void.”
“It is not insignificant to me. That’s why I saved it.” Semras sighed. “It cost me dearly, but I did.”
Wide eyes took in her confession. “You …?”
“I claimed you before the Coven, in a ritual that binds us as … as lifelong companions. Our wyrd—our fate—are entwined now. You swore to me your protection and care. And I devoted to you my power and my … my company. It’s hard to explain,” she mumbled.
It wasn’t, but she couldn’t tell him everything.
Not now, when she’d yet had to process it herself.
“You could call yourself my … my knight, my champion, maybe, or my—”
“… Husband.” Estevan’s face dropped. Backing away from her, he sat back in shock.
“It’s … yes,” she reluctantly admitted. “That’s how most Deprived call Wyrdtwined mates … but it’s not quite the same. It’s … um …”
Estevan dropped his head into his hands. “I swore an oath …”
“It’s one, yes, but—”
“No. Not this one.” The inquisitor lifted his head to gaze at his open hands, his face stricken by horror.
“Long ago, I swore an oath to the Inquisition. I struggled to put no one above that duty, but I never broke it. And it should have remained unbroken until my eternal rest.” Estevan lifted sorrowful eyes at her.
“Do you understand what you did to me? You made me break that vow. I was a man of my word, and now … now I am a man of nothing.”
Semras blinked, stunned by his unexpected grief. Then, rage overtook her. “You would have died! The warwitches would have killed you—you said so yourself! What I did saved your life!”
“I would rather have died than break my oath,” he replied quietly, eyes closing. “I would rather have died.”
He’d rather die than take her as Wyrdtwined?
Semras’ warp shape throbbed. Ached. Wept. The foreign wefts woven in it smothered her heart in their cruel, cold embrace.
“Great. Well. This is for life, so …” Her lips quivered. “Endure it. Like I’ll have to.” A tempest of emotions blurred her eyes with telltale tears, and Semras tried blinking them away.
She wanted to laugh. She had wasted the only Wyrdtwined mate she could ever have for a man so ashamed of it he’d have preferred death. If she was so repulsive, he could always kill her to rid himself of the sight, she thought. It was a ridiculous idea, of course … and yet …
Doubt gnawed at her heart. No, he wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t …
Wouldn’t he?
The witch stared at her hands, and memories washed over her once more. Shackles binding them. Bleeding fingers ripping at a locked door. Her body crushed by his against the floor.