Chapter 31
“If that prissy knight stole our horses, I will eviscerate him,” Inquisitor Velten declared coldly.
An icy silence had stood between them on their way back to camp. The inquisitor only broke it once, to ask her if she’d learned of anything on her side of the stalls, and Semras had muffled her desire to scream out in rage. The entire trip had been futile. She had lost so much to gain nothing.
And now, just as she longed for nothing else than to gallop back home as soon as she could, neither Themas nor the horses were anywhere to be seen. Only bedrolls and bags remained, abandoned around an unlit campfire. Disheartened, Semras stared at them blankly.
Next to her pack, a blur of red fur darted toward a nearby birch tree. Her gaze followed the sound of rustling leaves to a squirrel standing still against a white bark trunk, its mouth stuffed with a thin glass vial. Small black eyes stared at her, waiting apprehensively.
“What now?” she muttered flatly.
“Maldoza stranded us here.” Velten sighed. “So now we wait until he comes back.”
Semras blinked. The small critter had stolen her glass vial. She darted after it, and it startled away, dropping the corked bottle onto the dried leaves of the forest floor. Without looking back, the squirrel fled up the trunk and out of reach.
She grabbed its lost prize, then examined the seal. Despite its brief adventure, it had stayed on, and the seeds of the devil’s helmet still remained safely inside. Their small, dark oval shapes rocked against the glass as she slid the vial back into her pocket.
“And if he doesn’t?” Semras asked, glancing at the inquisitor.
Velten finished unbuttoning his ripped garb, used one corner of the fabric to wipe away the remains of kohl on his face, and then let it fall at his feet.
“Then, we occupy ourselves until he changes his mind.” Before her, he stood naked from the waist up, with only black trousers to shield where the dark hairs trailing down his abdomen led to.
Semras’ eyes widened. He couldn’t possibly be suggesting that they …?
“Avert your eyes, witch. This sight belongs only to my wife.” He smirked cruelly, and she repressed the deep desire to ensure he never could again.
Oblivious to her murderous desires, the inquisitor bent down over his bag and retrieved a new shirt.
“I once ardently wished,” she mused out loud, “to shatter your teeth one by one.”
Velten cocked an eyebrow. “How very like you. What about now?”
He had missed a small trace of kohl on his cheekbone, and she suddenly remembered painting the whorls there hours earlier.
The memory of her fingers tracing patterns on his skin burned her fingertips.
He had kept as still as he could back then, eyes half-lidded to let her work around them.
Both of them had taken succour from that rare moment of peace, and now …
She looked away, fleeing the bitterness creeping up her heart. “Still daydreaming about it,” she replied.
Hoping to distract herself, Semras crouched before the unlit campfire and studied it.
It needed only a spark to come to life, she judged.
The witch grabbed some wefts of heat from the surrounding Arras and then wove them with stiff, clumsy fingers.
After an excruciating minute, flames caught on the logs, and she smiled in relief.
Her joy vanished as soon as Velten stepped into view behind the campfire, busy buttoning up a white shirt over his chest.
“Do not daydream for too long,” he said as he adjusted his sleeve over his wrist, “or you will lose your opportunity to act without witnesses. Maldoza will return. He left his bag here with ours.”
Semras glared at him. “Just so we’re clear, I am not riding with you on the way back.”
“I did not plan for you to. I planned—”
“Oh, great. More plans,” she hissed. “You always have the best ones, don’t you? Like your latest, brightest idea of—”
“Do not start a fight. You will not have to endure me for much longer.” A sobering finality tainted his voice.
Semras’ heart skipped a beat. “… What do you mean?”
“You will ride Pagan with Maldoza, and I will take the other horse. Far from my preference, but … do not accuse me of never thinking of your comfort.”
Velten would leave his precious stallion in the hands of the Venator knight he loathed so much?
Semras arched her eyebrow. If he really wanted to, he could easily obtain another horse for her at any of the traveller’s inns peppering the area bordering the Vedwoods.
Or he could simply borrow one from the farmer’s homestead they rode by just before entering the forest. That one was only a two-hour ride from where they now stood. He didn’t have to cede—
Or … he did have to if he never intended to pass by any inn where a requisition could be made.
Oh, the inquisitor had plans indeed. And they included neither her nor Themas. The bastard had learned the identity of the comfrey buyer at the coven grounds and had no intention of sharing it with her.
A bedroll lay a step away from the campfire, and Semras sat on it. “Your horse doesn’t listen to anyone but yourself,” she said with feigned disinterest, looking to confirm her hunch. “Are we going to get another one as soon as we can?”
“Pagan is not so bad,” Velten replied, arms crossed. “The Voidborn thing is half-fey. Give him blood and he will obey.”
“I’d still rather ride another horse.” Trying to entice him into revealing his ploy, she blurted out, “I’m—I’m not really comfortable around the Fey.”
He scoffed. “You have fey blood, witch. And you looked fine when we rode together on Pagan.”
“That was different.”
“How so?”
‘Because you held me, because you made me feel safe,’ was not an acceptable answer. Not anymore.
Velten waited for a reply, but she refused to utter the words. That conversation was useless—he clearly had no intention of letting slip his plans.
After her continued silence spoke for her, he dropped onto his bedroll and watched the flames of the campfire dance in front of him. Minutes passed by in blissful silence before he broke it again. “Why are you scared of them?”
“… The Fey?”
He nodded, and Semras mindlessly trailed her fingers over the dried leaves.
“I wanted to be a weirwitch once,” she said at last, eyes fixed on the flames.
“You know—study the Fey and their language and laws of Bargain. One day, I found a small tumulus near my previous coven grounds, and I crawled into it.” Semras scoffed at her foolish younger self.
“Stupid, I know, but I wanted to see a real humanoid fey, and I knew that the only ones remaining on the peninsula had been sealed away in them. So I went in, thinking I’d come face-to-face with a Seelie. ”
“I gather you did not meet one.”
“Oh no, I did. There was a Seelie within.”
Semras stayed silent, mind enraptured by the memories of sharp teeth and gleaming eyes pursuing her in the dark. She had crawled into the musty, primitive tumulus. She had met its Fey Lord.
Or rather, its living remains—along with all the tiny dark things nested in it.
In the complete darkness of the tumulus, the pitch-black shapes of fey critters swarmed within the Seelie’s ribs of brambles and bones, ripping its rotten flesh apart in perfect silence.
Hands darting to grab the smaller vermin within its reach, the Fey Lord consumed them while the others devoured its innards.
Then the survivors gave birth to new critters before getting eaten in turn; the Fey Lord and its Court were sustaining each other in a constant cycle of renewal.
Then the Seelie noticed her, and beyond its slowly stretching smile, Semras saw the Night lurking.
A weirwitch once told her that most Seelie would guide lost travellers back to their rightful places, following their own odd, structural logic to decide who belonged where. She hadn’t mentioned that some of them were collectors.
The lord raised a rotten limb and, in a guttural tongue not spoken by men for a millennium, declared a single word: “?eānl??.”
Join us.
The swarm of fey lunged toward Semras.
She ran. Through corridors of twisted roots and sharp stones, she fled as their echoing, nightmarish chanting pursued her.
Join us, join us, join us.
Semras kept running until the Night’s maw closed behind her, until the Seelie’s Court could no longer chase her, until the writhing mass and its pointing finger faded into a nightmare forever burned into her mind.
Join us. Stay. Belong. Years later, she could still hear their honeyed whispers in her mind—her deepest longing, twisted into this grotesque, repulsive fate. How very like the Fey to poison even her childish dreams of a family.
“Semras?” Velten’s voice dragged her out of her memories. “If you would rather not talk about it …”
She shook her head. “It’s fine. It happened almost a decade ago. I just … struggle to find the words to describe …” Atop her bedroll, the witch hugged her knees. “You know how some people fear the mighty jaws of a bear? Well, I fear the swarm of thousands of bugs that consume its corpse.”
“So you met fey critters. Trenti imps, flying ventolines, the likes?” Velten raised an eyebrow. “They are not particularly dangerous.”
Semras glared at him, fighting back the shudders brought out by the memories. “Try facing a thousand at once. Old Crone witness me; try facing a single humanoid fey!” Another shiver took her.
Velten stared at her for a moment, then added a log to the fire. Embers flew into the night. “I have before,” he said, smirking. “You forget my brother.”
“The changeling? How could I? He’s the reason we’re stuck here together.”
His grin dropped. “Do not call him that.”