Chapter 9 #2
“Yes, exactly that. So run along, don’t stop abandoning me and the town now. Not when you’re so good at it.”
“Do you think I abandoned you, Rumor?”
His question caught me off guard and so did the lump that rose in my throat.
“What else do you call burying someone alive and leaving them for dead? Especially after I just lost… lost everything.” My voice cracked, revealing sentiment I fought so hard to conceal beneath anger and rage and distraction.
But there it was, on full display for Spade, as knotted and overgrown as the giant pumpkin there in my mother’s garden.
The scrape of the lord’s dark magic slid down my shoulders like warm velvet, and my breath hitched at the feel of his power, the subtle display of how magnificent he was. He looked me up and down before surprising me by extending a hand. “Do you want to go for a ride with me?”
I arched a brow. “What?”
“You don’t think I walked here, do you?” He nodded past my fence, where a dark silhouette of a horse took form. “Come meet Dulcet.” Without waiting for my answer, he took my hand and pulled me forward.
I dropped my carrot bundle to the ground and followed him without protest, stopping at his large, black mare. “I like her boots,” I remarked, noting the long hair over the horse’s hooves. “She’s pretty.”
Spade huffed a small laugh and gave Dulcet’s long mane a rub. “Hop on.”
“We’re riding together?”
“Well, I’m not going to run behind you, so yes.”
“I don’t think I ever agreed to this.” I countered weakly, already positioning my foot in Dulcet’s stirrup. “I haven’t ridden a horse in years, and I’ve never ridden one with a man… or lord… daimon… whatever the hell you are.”
With a hearty chuckle, Spade’s grip landed on my lower back as he helped me onto his horse. “How about you just call me your god?” he said lowly, settling into his seat behind me.
“I don’t think so.” I swiftly elbowed him in the ribs, eliciting another chuckle as he took the reins.
“Are you always so angry, Rumor Malefic?”
Dulcet trotted forward as I tried to ignore the feeling of my back pressed against Spade’s broad chest. “Yes, I am. Are you?”
“Exceedingly so.”
“You may be angry about many things, Spade Blackthorne, but I’d bet being buried alive isn’t one of them.”
“I guess I’m just luckier than you are then.”
I tried h my smile as we ventured past my cottage and through the fields. “Where are we going?”
“Putting you back in the ground, of course.” His voice was teasing, and with each stride away from my ancestral home and my mother’s garden full of memories, I breathed a little easier.
“Funny,” I replied. “May as well. I might as well be right back where I started. I’ve lost my sister again, possibly for good, and the whole town hates me.”
A loud caw sounded overhead, and I glanced up to see Never gliding over us. The scene felt familiar, but I couldn’t place why.
Spade broke the silence as we passed the giant old willow stump. “Nothing’s ever as bad as we think it is. Conversely, nothing’s ever as good as we think it is, either.”
“Wow, so encouraging, thanks. Is that the best ancient lord daimon wisdom you have to impart? Can’t do any better than some vague riddle? Some practical advice, perhaps?”
“Your pomegranates need fertilizing—the ones back in your garden.”
I scoffed. “You’re a real piece of work.”
“I do my best.”
Dulcet weaved slowly down an old forest hunting path, snapping twigs beneath her weight. “I used to hunt with my matri in these woods. This very path, so long ago.”
“Is that where you acquired your ferocity?”
I snorted a laugh. “No, I came out of the womb demanding the fates be held accountable for damning me with mortal existence.”
“That, I don’t doubt.”
“And what of your sister? From my brief view of her, she didn’t seem as eager to bespell wrath and carnage.”
With a sigh, I shook my head and wove my fingers into Dulcet’s coarse mane. “No, Prism is… was… is… a much gentler, fairer, and kinder person than I am. Where life hardened me to dusty ash… it only shaped her more into the diamond she is.”
Spade tugged the horse’s reins to the left and veered us off the hunting trail in a direction I wasn’t familiar with.
Usually, I’d be more hesitant to explore the woods of Willowspire, especially unarmed, but with Spade…
What was there to fear when accompanied by a daimon lord… except the daimon lord himself?
He broke the silence as we traversed up a steep, rocky mountain path. “While it’s not the same, I suppose I relate to you in a way.”
“How so?”
“My brothers and I were thrown into the same fire yet came out vastly different beasts. Riot took the flames and harnessed their chaos—turning himself into something unpredictable and wild. Twenty learned how to use the fire to mold and transforming himself, his mortal form, and conceal his humanity behind a different being altogether. But me…” Spade paused, and I couldn’t resist looking over my shoulder at him.
His strong jaw and downcast, brooding features were enough to take my breath away instantaneously.
The scar over his eye caught the morning light and seemed to glow, while his onyx hair tinted blue in the brightness of day.
Asshole or not, he was something magnificent to behold.
He was self-important and frustrating to no end…
but there was a deepness to Spade I’d only tapped the surface of.
He was a black hole of mystery and intrigue, and I couldn’t help myself from moving towards it.
Like the dark doorway in my very vivid nightmare from the night before.
What would happen if I tugged at his polished hinges?
“And you?” I picked up his words where he’d laid them. “What did the hell of your upbringing make of you?”
His eyes met mine, dancing with an emotion I couldn’t quite place. “I believe you have a few observations of your own on that.”
“You’re very guarded; you don’t give much away, but yes, I’ve surmised all I need to know.”
“Oh, have you?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “You said it yourself, you’re an asshole.”
With a ghost of a smile, Spade’s gaze dropped to my lips and a rush of heat fell to my center. “But you like me, don’t you?”
I swallowed, my usually close cutting replies dying on my tongue. “I… I… hate that I do.”
A slow, satisfied smirk tugged at the corners of Spade’s mouth. He jerked the horse to a stop and nodded over my shoulder.
It was an effort to turn around, to pull my attention from his all-consuming presence, but when I finally did, the scene astounded me.
All of Willowspire sprawled out like a rumpled patchwork quilt.
The town with its twisting billows of smoke, the rubbled square, the pastures and rolling hills, and in the distance above it all loomed the Blackthorne Castle.
“I’ve never been up here, never seen the town from this vantage point. How do you know this place?”
Never cawed from the branch of a nearby pine as Spade and I dismounted and walked over the cliff’s smooth rock surface.
With a glance at his raven, Spade crossed his arms and looked out over the town as he answered. “I know everything.”
I rolled my eyes and kicked a pebble over the cliff’s edge.
Spade left me alone for a few moments. As I looked out over the town, idly trying to find the twirl of chimney smoke from my own cottage so very far away, my thoughts drifted like the dried leaves in the wind.
I thought of Prism and her last words to me before she walked into the blue fog.
I suppose they were more than words; they were a hex, a curse, something awful.
A promise that no one would ever love me again.
The sentiment stung, but didn’t wholly devastate me, if I were honest. The thing about it that hurt the most was that it came from her—the person I loved most. The person I’d given up my life for.
Hell, I’d given up my humanity for her by pursuing dark magic in my quest to save her.
I’d hexed the Blackthorne Boys, abandoned my home, made enemies of the Viper brothers, and struck a deal with a haunted grimoire.
I mean, damn, I’d even killed a whole wither for her. All for her.
In return, my sister came into her magic and used her newfound powers to hex me to never find love? All because I gave up everything I had to save her life?
My teeth gritted together in indignation.
How could she? “Spade,” I called over my shoulder.
“What happens if someone willingly walks into the blue fog?” When he didn’t answer, I turned to look for him, finding the moody Blackthorne boy in the branches of a tree.
“What the hell are you doing up there?” I laughed.
Putting a dagger back in his coat, Spade dropped from the branch and sauntered over.
He opened his palm and revealed three tiny, glowing red and white mushrooms. “As much as I enjoy your cheery company, my venture was for multiple purposes. These fungi grow at the top of the highest point of every town in the realm. Bastards to obtain, hiding in the tree they deem the wisest, but the bread and butter of many advanced potions.”
I rubbed my finger over the little glowing mushroom. “Why would you bother with potion work? Your power is so… magnificent. Surely you don’t need to bother with hunting down spellcraft flora?”
Spade lifted the corner of his full lips. “Magnificent, huh?”
“Shut up, you know what I mean. You’re old, really old, probably. Like you just said, you know everything.”