Chapter 5
Graysen
There was one question sitting on my tongue, demanding to be asked. It was almost impossible to remain silent and respectful, waiting for the Horned God to acknowledge me.
Florin ambled deeper into the long, narrow office before finally turning around.
His hard gaze scanned my face. Assessing.
Contemplating. Calculating. With every second that dragged by in silence, my patience frayed.
Until it snapped completely. I hissed an annoyed breath and tipped my chin up in challenge.
He could obliterate me without breaking stride, crush me like an annoying fly, but fuck it, I needed an answer.
His smile was slow and sly. “So, Sticky Fingers, what do you want to know? I can see all those questions tumbling inside your head. I can feel the need to voice one of them desperately. So why don’t you ask it of me?”
“You knew my mother’s secret. You knew she was other. Did you sell her out?”
Florin tossed the balled rag, damp with dark green blood, into the fire. It hissed and shriveled in a spray of sparks.
Instinctively, I slid my boots across the stone floor to widen my stance as he loomed closer. The wavering candlelight didn’t quite reach the apex of the room, and shadows curled around his ram horns, deepening the grooves in his face. In that thin veil of darkness, his eyes glowed a violent red.
I braced myself.
I wasn’t expecting the delighted laughter that thundered from deep within his chest and shook his entire body.
Florin braced a hand on the enormous workbench and leaned downward. His grin showed a sliver of sharp teeth. “I can see why your mother used to say all her children were born from a storm. There’s a tempest raging in those black eyes of yours.”
“And you didn’t answer my question,” I gritted out, unable to soften the caustic edge of my tone.
“I knew Tabitha since she was a young girl. Yes, I could have revealed her truth to my brethren at any time I chose during all those years.”
I pressed on, needing to hear it. “Did you tell anyone that she was other?”
He straightened. “No. I did not.”
I could taste his honesty on the tip of my tongue. Relief loosened the strain in my body, and I sagged against the doorframe, pushing waves of hair off my forehead with a wrist. “Then how did a child of the Houses, a mere servant, meet and befriend a Horned God?”
He rapped his talons slowly on the workbench, its wooden surface riddled with nicks and scars from time and use. “We first met when she snuck in here to steal from me.”
“Little thief, I remember you calling her.”
He huffed a laugh. “I swore Tabitha stole more things off me over the years than everyone else who tried their best to rip me off during a sale.” A smile steeped in memory slowly spread across his mouth.
“I couldn’t keep her away. She was always arriving without an invite to clean and chat, curious about the wares I sold. ”
“And she continued to visit you? Throughout all these years?”
“Tabitha had another life before she met your father. She had one foot in the world of Houses, another foot placed within my own. Your mother was the keeper of many secrets, some of which she never shared with me. She had a very difficult childhood and faced more heartache than anyone I…”
My body locked rigid, wondering what he was going to say. What the hells did he know that I didn’t?
But the Horned God expelled the next words with a mournful sigh. “She was more than a friend to me. She was…”
And the deep emotion swimming in his gaze knocked the questions from my mind. He shifted sideways, fussing with the clutter on the workbench. His voice went rough when he confessed quietly, “I miss her.”
A hollow, familiar ache lodged itself between my ribs. I missed her too.
His head jerked back abruptly, eyes widening as if a sudden thought had ambushed him. He blinked, startled. “I even miss the incessant chattering.”
Thorny heat tightened my throat. “My mother’s not dead.”
“I know.” He snorted. “A car accident would never have killed Tabitha. Not with the bloodlines flowing through her veins. The unnatural healing.”
Elemental smoke rippled around Florin’s tall figure like smoldering coals caught in a gentle breeze as he jutted his chin towards the vials and herbs strewn over the workbench. His voice became sharp and businesslike. “Make yourself useful and give me a hand with this.”
Several scents competed for dominance in the office.
Logs popped on the hearth, the smoky sweetness of apple wood barely masking the faint, foul note rising from the small cauldron simmering over the crackling fire.
A bucket of hot, soapy water on a double footstool sent up clouds of lavender steam.
But beneath it all lingered the acrid metallic tang of fresh blood clinging to the toasty air.
I pushed off the doorframe and walked deeper inside, my boots leaving the running rugs and crossing onto the stone floor.
At the enormous writing desk, I set down the bag of croissants and the burlap sack.
Fat candles dripped wax into metal holders, their honeyed light spilling over an open ledger, an inkwell, and a pewter vase stuffed with brightly plumed quills.
My fingers brushed over a smaller writing set beside a bowl of silver coins and tiny bones—human-sized, with albatross-feather quills.
A sharp pang twisted through me. It was my mother’s writing set. I was sure of it.
And there was more. A black tote bag hung from an impala horn on the wall, rainbow dusters poking out of the top.
A woven basket filled with blue shammy cloths sat on the filing cabinet.
And on the mantelpiece, a dish of potpourri, just like the ones she made every so often at home, perfumed the air.
All of them were hers. Little pieces of her tucked away in this otherworldly place.
Heat burned the backs of my eyes. My greedy gaze swept over the polished desk, the coffee table, the oversized armchairs softened with cushions in tangerine and butterscotch, each one decorated with silver-thread roses in her clumsy stitching. The space was cozy. Almost human.
I drifted toward the workbench, disoriented by how much of her lived in this room. I dazedly shook my head, trying to reconcile it all. This place, this other world of my mother’s, which she’d cloaked in secrecy for all these years, was a side to her I never knew existed.
The workbench was huge and high, the tabletop level with my chest. Strewn across it were torn scraps, half-wrapped bundles of roots, uncapped vials, and a mortar and pestle still rimmed with the fibrous remains of a poultice. A pungent mix of herbs and the sting of magic clung to the stone bowl.
I stretched up awkwardly to sift through the oddities cluttering the workbench and gave up with a muttered curse. How the hells had Mom ever managed this?
Florin picked up the bucket of hot, soapy water sitting on top of the footstool. “Use this,” he said, nudging the stool with a hoof. “It was your mother’s.”
“My mom’s.” I blinked, surprised.
He grunted with a nod and placed the bucket on the ground with a heavy thud, water splashing over the rim.
I pulled the stool closer and stepped onto it.
The height was better, but the sudden weight of the moment pressed in on me.
My fingers hovered over the clutter, a strange sensation of belonging threading through my chest. Here I was, standing where she once stood, doing the same thing she had, working beside Florin.
The Horned God flicked his talons toward the apothecary cabinet jutting up against the workbench and ordered gruffly, “Put them away in there.” Bending down, he dipped his hand into the steaming bucket, water sloshing as he pulled out a hard-bristled brush and scrubbed at the pools of dark green blood.
Nelle and I had clearly arrived just after Florin finished tending to someone.
A creature had stolen out of his lair as we descended from the market—a spindly thing with slender yellow eyes, its body half-lost in a lacy film of pine-colored mist. It had held my gaze for a heartbeat before hobbling down into the darkness below.
I stoppered the vials. “You were healing someone?”
Florin grunted with a nod, scrubbing vigorously. “You just missed him. A gwilin survived a tjolk attack. Nasty, festering bites on his arm and leg.”
I’d encountered tjolks before on hunts with Dad in the savage wilds of the Hemmlok Forest. Solitary beings with long limbs, leathery skin, and star-shaped pupils, they could chew through vegetation and even rock, but they always preferred flesh. This time, they’d gone after a harmless gwilin.
I gathered up the bits and pieces scattered over the workbench.
There were dried herbs I recognized and some I didn’t.
Chipped black stones that were ice-cold against my fingertips.
A tacky orange substance that hummed with dark magic, and desiccated scraps of blue flesh that had turned to leather.
The apothecary cabinet had many tiny drawers, the cherry-red wood dulled by years of handling, and it seemed Florin had been in a hurry to swipe the contents, as a few of the drawers remained open.
I poked around and put a few of the items back.
Some of their homes were easy to find, others, not so much.
As I worked, I shifted between the cabinet and the workbench, sometimes needing the footstool to reach higher drawers.
Eventually, I only had a few glass vials left to store away.
The scrape of bristles against wood filled the room, followed by splashes as Florin plunged the brush into the bucket for more water. The scent of lavender rose from the froth as he scrubbed the tabletop clean. “What do you remember of the day your mother brought you here?” he asked, pausing.