CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE #4
“If you do not give me the moonstone,” she began, her tone dropping into a dangerous register that prompted the raising of gooseflesh along my arms, “I will take it from you by force.” Vayen pulled back only slightly, our faces a mere rose’s width apart, to lock eyes with me once more.
My breath hovered in my lungs at her proximity, but her scent was inescapable.
Just as I suspected, she smelled strongly of the wood and last night’s rain—moss and mist, with the slightest hint of leather, no doubt from her vest. I did not appreciate the stirring in my chest in response, especially considering the threat that hovered on those full, parted lips.
Damnable woman. I knew implicitly that her words were a promise, and even still I could not find it within myself to be enraged as I caved to her demands.
“Fine,” I said, mustering every ounce of indignation I could as I all but spat the word. I reached into my pocket and summoned my mother’s cloak pin, thrusting it into Vayen’s grasp to underscore my irritation.
“Thank you.” With that, Vayen approached Whick’s throne and gave it a swift kick. The man startled awake, toppling his tankard to the floor. It was only his large hand grasping Rowland’s brooch that stopped the ruby from joining the sea of clutter surrounding his feet.
“Was that really necessary?” he rasped.
Vayen’s expression was unamused as she handed him my moonstone before returning to her seat.
I crossed one arm over the other with a scowl.
Still grumbling, Whick shifted his attention to the two artifacts that now rested in his calloused hands.
It was only then I noticed the strange markings that marred each palm with thick, raised scars.
He clasped his fingers around both objects, eyes fluttering shut.
The moment his hands closed, a flash of something unreadable pinched his features—bushy brows indented, bulbous nose wrinkled at its bridge, and full lips thinned.
Not pain, nor surprise. It was somehow… more.
Whick loosened both hands’ grip before tightening again, head tilting this way and that as his breathing intensified. The movement sent his coiled, white-blonde ropes of hair tumbling about his shoulders.
Vayen’s attention was rapt. “What do you see?”
“Death,” Whick said in that thunderous tone, deep and ladened with gravel.
He opened the palm that held Rowland’s brooch, though his eyes remained closed.
“You were right to cross, girl. What that creature had in store for you is not something any being should be made to endure. Even with rescue imminent, I doubt your mind would have survived.”
“What—what rescue?” I asked through my confusion.
Without looking, Whick tossed the brooch to Vayen with finality.
It was then he clasped my mother’s cloak pin between both hands, intertwining thick fingers and pressing them to his mouth as he hummed low, sending barely perceptible vibrations through the stone floor.
I could feel the waves of sound traveling up into my boots, and I lifted my feet in response, as though the ground were dangerous.
My head whipped towards Vayen, quickly assessing whether or not worry had gripped her insides as it had gripped mine, only to see her hungry expression deepen. Her lack of alarm only slightly eased my growing trepidation, but it was enough to keep me planted in my seat.
After a few moments, the humming stopped, and I returned my feet to the floor. Whick dropped his forehead to his laced hands. He stayed there for a while, neither myself nor Vayen daring to breathe a word as he contemplated whatever it was that had just happened to him.
I tried to prepare myself. Any moment now Whick’s mouth would open and he’d inform us both that I was not Naeno’s Vessel, and I could return to my bedchamber and forget the matter entirely.
I could live in Grenythwood Village while I gathered my bearings, continuing to train under Winnie and Ekko, and either reside there permanently or find another place within the Threshold to call home.
A common life. Perhaps one day I could even meet someone, and we could share that life together.
One without treaties, or Goddesses, or silver-green eyes that pierce right through you without so much as asking permission first.
I didn’t need to be special, I decided. I only needed to be left alone.
“Deysi,” Whick said suddenly as he opened his palms to view the cloak pin he held.
“What did you say?” I breathed out in disbelief.
I could barely contain the tears that reflexively pooled in my eyes at hearing my mother’s name.
Speaking of her was all but forbidden in the castle.
When I was a child, long before Father had cemented an all-consuming fear of his ire in my bones, I had whispered her name into the night, terrified that I might forget it.
I had spoken it to myself so many times that it had ceased sounding like a name at all, and somehow that frightened me even more.
But hearing it tumble out of Whick’s mouth, as though it were the most natural thing…
it was more powerful and terrifying than any sorcery I had encountered thus far.
“This was Deysi’s, wasn’t it?” Whick’s beckoning brought me back to his dwelling, far away from the memory that had seized me.
Grief lodged in my throat and I did my best to speak around it. “It belonged to my mother, yes. Did you know her?” I hated the hope that quieted my voice; it only ever served to magnify my disappointment.
“I never had a chance to meet her,” Whick confirmed to my dismay. “But I was… close… with someone who cared for her very much.”
“Then you know she would have been a much better candidate for this Vessel you speak of.”
“Indeed,” Whick agreed, twisting the knife that already pierced my heart. “But we all have to make do sometimes.”
I parted my lips with every intention of saying something I would wholly regret, but Vayen spoke instead.
“Does that mean it’s her? She’s the Vessel?”
My heart all but stopped beating as we awaited his reply.
Whick gazed down at the cloak pin, thumbing the snowpetal as I had done hundreds of times, though his attention remained locked on the moonstone. Firelight bounced off its surface, summoning that familiar bright blue sheen.
“Her?” Whick grunted. “Unlikely.” Before relief could take root within me, he added, “But not impossible.”
“Honestly? After all of the dramatics, you’re not even capable of discerning if I am this… moon Vessel?”
“Goddess Vessel,” Vayen corrected impatiently. “But she’s right. You said you’d tell me if she was the one. You were supposed to know what to do.”
“It seems disappointment is never far, where you’re concerned.” Whick stood to his modest height and tossed the cloak pin into my lap before retrieving a tankard from the floor. With that, he began peeking inside his carafes once more.
“Fucking depths,” Vayen growled, standing to her less-than-modest height to address him. “You said—”
“I lied.” Whick located a carafe that met his expectations and cradled it securely as he returned to his throne. He sat with a guttural noise of approval.
Vayen looked to be but a moment away from throttling the man as he downed an excessive gulp of liquid from a now-overflowing tankard. He placed the carafe by his feet with great care before assessing her silver eyes and swiping his tongue over that wet, stubbled upper lip.
“I assumed you were full of troll shit,” Whick said simply.
“Believe it or not, I have little interest in divulging the inner workings of Sor to the likes of you. I thought I would peer into her artifacts, determine that she’s as diminished as the next half-blooded Lunamorian wench, and you could be right on your cursed way.
But it would seem none of us is that lucky. ”
I held my mother’s moonstone to my chest possessively, as though it would shield me from their worsening quarrel. This was all too much. I wasn’t meant to be here.
“I would love to be on my fucking way,” Vayen spat.
“But the words tumbling out of your drunken mouth don’t much amount to anything.
” Vayen combed through her curls with taut fingers, the muscle through her forearm flexing with the motion.
“If you can’t tell me whether or not she is the Vessel, what can you tell me? ”
Whick’s pale blue eyes narrowed, his chin raised quite extensively to meet her gaze.
He seemed almost taunting as his deep voice rumbled, “I can tell you she’s not, not the Vessel.
” When Vayen took a step forward, the movement laced with warning, he raised a stubby finger to halt her.
“And that if you want to be certain one way or the other, you have quite the journey ahead of you.”
“Where would we have to go?”
“Up the mountain.” A humored expression softened Whick’s features as he took a pull from his tankard.
“Up the mountain,” Vayen echoed as a blanket of dissociation blurred my senses. I could only just sense her hesitation as she questioned, “How far up the mountain?”
“All the way to Castle Sor,” Whick confirmed as the hearth sputtered noisily in agreement. “She has the potential. But she would have to undergo the Goddess’ trials to receive a soul fragment. Where Naeno is concerned, that would be one half of the Moonlight Trials.”
Vayen turned from the both of us, pacing before the hearth as she ran a hand through short curls. “How have I never heard of this?”
“It’s not something we announce to all of Morwyn,” Whick said with a scoff.
“Why not?” Vayen countered. “Wouldn’t that increase your chances of finding a Vessel?”
I could barely comprehend their back and forth as I studied the bird’s outstretched wings of my mother’s cloak pin. Bjorn’s words echoed in my ears.
“It’s called a snowpetal.”
I’d never seen one, but Bjorn had insisted they were plentiful on Mount Sor.
“Because we can’t have all of Morwyn traipsing up the mountain.
” Whick slammed his tankard onto the squat table before him, knocking over a stack of books in the process.
“Not to mention that a Vessel, like all things, is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. We wouldn’t want to encourage every potential to enter the trials—the results would be fatal. Quite literally.”
The tumbling books prompted a flinch, but my mind continued to wander to Mount Sor. Enormous trees with purple blooms. A pale blue sky, reflecting onto the glassy surface of a chilled lake.
“Lake Alacine,” Bjorn had said. The canvas’ beauty swelled my heart, even in memory.
Vayen rounded on Whick with a dropped jaw. “Wait, you’re telling me an evil bastard could be Naeno’s Vessel?”
“It is a Goddess’ discretion who receives their soul fragment, and they’re not in the habit of explaining themselves.
” Whick ran a hand along his chin, like he was prepared to stroke a beard that didn’t exist. His hand landed on his chest hair awkwardly instead.
After clearing his throat, he added, “I’ve only witnessed a handful of trial attempts myself, and each time the Goddess rejected the potential. ”
This pulled me from my trance.
“Rejected.” Both Vayen and Whick startled at my utterance, as though they’d forgotten I was there entirely. “What would happen if I were rejected?”
Whick downed the remainder of his tankard in one massive gulp before fixing me with a luminescent blue stare that showcased how little any of this mattered to him. “If you enter the trials and Naeno finds you unworthy?”
“Don’t—” Vayen tried to interrupt.
“You’d suffer a terrible death,” Whick continued with a weighted, drunken shrug. “Just like the rest of them.”