20. Twenty
Chapter 20
It was a long ferry ride back to Olymrei. Kalcedon was back to human form, chin down and cloak’s hood as low as he could pull it. He sat beside me, leaning against the cabin wall and staring the other way.
“You know they were only looking at you because of me , right?” he asked abruptly.
“Keep telling yourself that,” I retorted. I smoothed the wind-riffled page of my journal and squinted at it, trying to find any entry into the spell that I could. There was silence for a moment. He pulled the cloak tighter around his shoulders, gray hands buried under the fabric.
“The ground tasted like iron,” Kalcedon told me.
“What?” The Etegen’s swells tossed the boat in a way that made it hard to stare at the spell for long without feeling ill. My stomach was still weak after the stone’s sickness.
“Iron,” he repeated. I shook my head and looked up at the horizon, gulping air and trying to look thoughtful rather than ill. I’d never hear the end of it if I let on a little storm was getting to me.
“It was probably just the soil.” Iron only really hurt when it was concentrated, but you could still feel it in other places, sometimes. And I knew Kalcedon was more sensitive to it than I was.
Kalcedon didn’t talk again. I went back to my work.
The sigil for ‘water’ had helped me unravel the tree spell. Thinking of the scorched ground around the Ward stone, I imagined the sigil for fire and once again hunted through Tarelay’s complexities for anywhere it could hide. But as I stripped flame from each phrasing the shapes left behind seemed even more senseless and odd than before.
At last, head aching, I abandoned that strategy. Buried halfway through was one of the same phrasings Tarelay had used in the tree spell: tied to life , I’d decided it meant. I started there.
Tied to life . Because the Ward could drain it?
With that as a keyhole to the rest, I guessed at one sigil, then another.
“These look like distances. Could it have hard boundary limits built into it?” I exclaimed as we pulled into the harbor. Kalcedon came to look over my shoulder.
“You can’t actually read that,” he insisted.
“I’m figuring it out,” I told him.
He gave me a long, odd look, and walked back to the railing.
Getting to and from the stone took all day. Our ship pulled into port at Olymrei as the sun fell. I stumbled getting off. Kalcedon, walking behind me, caught me around the waist. I was a little surprised at the strength of his gardeners’ arm. Like stone.
And his heat: an inferno against the whole of my back; an anchor against the coils of sigils and webs shifting in front of my eyes, patterns tugging at the edge of my knowledge.
“You’re blocking the way,” he muttered in my ear. His arm loosened. Grabbing me by the wrist as he pushed ahead, he yanked me away from the docks. I followed, my exhausted brain happy to relinquish control over such mundane matters as the movement of legs through a crowd.
Kalcedon found a tavern that served as an inn, paid for a room, and sat me down at the end of a long table. When he sat opposite me, the nearest man, a few places down the long bench, hurriedly shifted even further over.
I blearily took in the space, but my head was spinning too much to do anything but observe. A low stone ceiling. Long wooden tables. The air smelled like garlic. All the conversations around us were hushed, and I could feel too many eyes pointed our way.
Kalcedon beckoned over a serving man, then called out loud for one when the man met his eyes but refused to attend. A young tiffa was dragged from the back, her hair in braids and her apron stained from cooking. The serving man shoved her towards us.
As Kalcedon ordered food from the wide-eyed, trembling girl, I opened my bag and drew my journal back out, flipping it open to the now well-creased section where the Ward’s mysteries danced in black ink. This was far more interesting than my surroundings.
“Absolutely not.”
I blinked up at Kalcedon. He’d finished ordering and our entire half of the tavern was empty now. The half-fae man glowered at me, then reached across the table and grabbed the journal.
“No,” I protested, my hands tightening on it as he yanked. “Careful, you’ll—”
“Meda,” he growled. “Let go.”
“But—”
“You need a damned break. Let go .”
“But it’s important,” I protested, even as my fingers loosened. He closed the journal without even looking at the sigils. “I’m close, I can feel it.”
“Your eyes aren’t even focused. You need to rest.” The tiffa returned with a pitcher and cups, set them at the very edge of the table, and fled. Kalcedon had to get up and lean over to reach them. He poured me water and put it in front of me.
I sighed and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. My head still felt like it was spinning.
“Look,” I told him. “I know it doesn’t matter to you, about the Ward…”
“What?” Kalcedon said. I looked at him. His eyebrows were furrowed, his dark eyes disbelieving. “Of course it does.”
“You don’t want me to go to the Temple, I know, and anyways you’d probably be happier on the other side of it,” I rambled. My mouth was awfully dry. I took a small sip of the water in front of me. Realizing how good it tasted, how badly my body craved it, I quickly drained the cup.
“Don’t be a dung-brained idiot, you…” he cut himself off, a twisted, struggling expression on his face. Kalcedon drew a deep breath and smoothed his features, but I saw how tight his jaw clenched, a muscle there feathering. “Don’t… be foolish , I mean,” he said stiffly, and I wondered if somehow my words about cruelty had gotten to him. He took another deep breath, nostrils flaring, and continued. “The Ward matters. You wouldn’t be safe, if it fell.”
“Careful,” I told Kalcedon, loopy with exhaustion. “I might start thinking you have a heart.”
He stared at me in silence across the table. The serving man came with two bowls of spiced grains and prawns. I was midway through my first bite before Kalcedon spoke. He still hadn’t moved.
“I never realized you believed that.”
I quickly swallowed. “We can’t help who we are. I don’t think less of you for it.”
“Of course you don’t,” Kalcedon said. There was an agitated look on his face as he folded his arms. “ You’re so heartless that when I kissed you, all you wanted to do was turn into a bird.”
“That’s not…” I frowned, and poked at my food. I had my own excuses. “Magic is intoxicating.”
“Fae aren’t heartless , Meda.” His voice was cold, and I could feel his power thrumming with annoyance. “I have a heart.”
“If you say so,” I muttered, trying not to be caught up in his sway. He was just afraid of losing me, I told myself sternly—that was all. He didn’t want to be alone. It didn’t mean he cared who was at his side. If he did, he wouldn't choose me.
“Your precious Tarelay built a whole damned Ward to keep a woman safe. How can you, of all people, think fae are heartless?”
“Possession isn’t love.”
“ Possession ? He did the opposite! He gave her up forever to protect her. That’s love.”
“It isn’t,” I insisted. “If it were love, he couldn’t live without her. All he wanted was to keep the Sorrowing Lord from having her. He just cared who owned her, that was all.”
“Unbelievable,” Kalcedon muttered. He glared at me, his food still untouched, his arms still tightly crossed. I took another bite.
“If the fae weren’t heartless, we wouldn’t have so many stories about it,” I told him around my food. For a moment that seemed to shut him up, until Kalcedon spoke again, his words like ice.
“A handful of ancient stories, and you think you know everything.”
“It’s not just old stories. What about your father?”
Kalcedon’s mouth tightened. “You don’t know anything about that.”
“Eu… she told me about it. She said your mother risked her life, escaping the outlands, since if you’d been any better-formed inside her, you both would have died from the Ward’s drain on you.”
I had never mentioned Kalcedon’s birth mother in front of him. Nor had he brought her up.
Now I offered Kalcedon his own story as evidence: the terrified human woman, willing to abandon her whole world and risk her life to escape his father’s clutches. The mother who, on birthing and weaning a half-fae son, handed him into the safekeeping of the seer and walked away.
His father was fae. His father was terrible. I didn’t know what more proof Kalcedon needed.
“That wasn’t her story to tell.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes. His voice, normally so full of anger, sounded hollow. His shoulders caved slightly.
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
Silence. Kalcedon started to shake his head no, then lifted it instead, his dark eyes boring into mine.
“Cruelty and domination are not fae sport, Meda. Or aren’t the Colynes human? Anyone can give in to evil. We’re just more capable than mortals, that’s all.”
“You said ‘we.’”
“You seem determined to treat me as something different from you,” Kalcedon growled. “Why fucking fight it?” He tossed my journal back across the table and picked up his food. “I’ll eat in the room, and spare you my heartlessness.”
I watched him go, then slowly opened up my journal with a frown. I hadn’t expected Kalcedon to react so poorly. He couldn’t be surprised I thought it, when everyone else in the world did, too. But I found myself questioning, really questioning, what he was capable of.
He’d cried for Eudoria. He’d treated me with a certain tenderness, too. And he was half human.
It occurred to me, uneasily, lurchingly, he might actually be hurt, not simply acting it. That I might have hurt him. In my exhaustion my tired eyes started to swim, vision blurring as tears rose up in me. I knew what it felt like to be treated as someone off , different, odd. And I didn’t want to hurt Kalcedon. I just hadn’t realized he could be hurt. And if he could be… if Kalcedon had a heart…
How long and lonely a life, for a monster stuck in a tower.
“Mistress,” a woman hissed. I wiped at my eyes and looked up from the tangle of written sigils in front of me. A young man stood on the other side of the table; two women stood just to my left. Hurriedly they all sat. The nearest woman, thin, pale, and honey-haired, placed a hand on my shoulder and peered wide-eyed at me.
“What?” I uncomfortably shrugged off the touch.
“That faerie,” she whispered urgently. “Has he been hurting you? Forcing you to…”
“ Kalcedon ?” I asked in disbelief. I closed my journal quickly, and hugged it against my chest.
“She might be under a ‘chantment,” the brown skinned man across the table said. “We oughta get her to the Queen’s witch before he comes back…”
“You think—?” The urge to laugh warred against the urge to cry and hit something. I shook my head frantically. “I’m not under an obeisance. I doubt Kalcedon even knows how to cast one.”
“She must be under some sort of a spell,” the second woman offered, looking not at me but at her companions.
“Mistress,” the first said again. “It’s alright. Don’t cry. We’ll get you away…”
“Enough, all of you,” I said, with a sharp huff. “He’s a witch , not a faerie. I’m a witch. We both grew up on Nis-Illous, inside the Ward.”
“But…”
“But nothing,” I interrupted. I tried to push the bench back from the table, but the women’s weight made it hard to move. Instead I stood with some difficulty and picked my way over it, journal under one arm and bag on my shoulder. “As if Kalcedon could put an obeisance on me,” I muttered to myself. I snorted, grabbed my food, and headed to the stairs.
But Kalcedon probably could , if he wanted to, I admitted to myself. I’d never seen an obeisance, but the old faerie stories were littered with them. No doubt there was a spell somewhere in the tower’s library, and Kalcedon had the power, and no matter how sloppy his casting, if he wanted a puppet to control he could have had plenty of them to play with by now.
And yet I had no fear that he would. Because the only thing cruel about him were his words, the ones he always used to push people away. Oh, maybe he wasn’t quite like the villagers on Nis-Illous, but neither was I.
With the journal still tucked under my arm I walked down the hall. It wasn’t hard to find our room: I felt Kalcedon brooding behind the door, the swamp of his power. When he didn’t answer my knock, I opened it and walked into the heavy, miserable haze.
It was a nicer inn than the last we’d stayed at. Neatly appointed, minimal but tidy. A small table in front of the window held Kalcedon’s meal, still untouched. A breeze stirred through the opening, carrying the smell of salt and the sounds of bells and city life. The witch lay sprawled on the bed, on his back with one arm thrown over his eyes. Everything in the room seemed to lean in towards him, like the whole world was holding its breath. I set my food beside his, shrugged off my bag, and climbed onto the bed. Kalcedon stayed silent until I poked him.
“Leave me alone, Meda,” he muttered.
“But I want to apologize.”
Kalcedon seemed to consider this. He subtly lifted his arm to peek at me. A moment passed. I bit my tongue and waited.
“...if you must,” he wearily allowed.
“You say terrible things to people. Well, to me,” I clarified.
Kalcedon slowly uncovered his face and stared at the ceiling, brow furrowed.
“But I’ve never seen you actually hurt someone. And I know you could have. So there’s that.”
“ This is an apology?” he muttered.
“I’ve never been a good judge of character. Like—my brother Dareios told me Calnas wasn’t very nice, but Calnas was nice to me , and nobody else wanted to court me, so I thought Dareios just didn’t know what he was talking about. But Calnas wasn’t nice, not at all. I just couldn’t tell.”
“Who in horns is ‘Calnas?’”
“The man I almost married.”
“God’s peace,” he muttered.
“ Everyone said you were heartless. My family didn’t want me to go to the tower at all because of it, but I told them I didn’t care. And there have been a few times I wondered if they were wrong about you, but I didn’t want to be like those stupid humans in the old stories who forget everything their elders tell them and fall for some fae trick the first time it’s sprung on them. And even if faeries are heartless, you’re half human, so maybe you’re not.”
Kalcedon was still frowning up at the ceiling. Then he drew a deep breath, audibly ragged, and covered his face once more. I saw his throat bob; heard another heaving breath.
“Are you… alright?”
“I’m just tired.” His voice was thick, choked with emotion.
I frowned. The power in the room kept souring. Slowly I lay beside him, my body an inch from his, and watched him. Kalcedon didn’t move; didn’t pull his hands from his face or look my way. I could hear each deep, shuddering breath he drew.
Slowly, unsure how to help, I reached out and draped an arm over his chest. At the touch Kalcedon turned bodily away, but instead of pulling back I dared to tighten my grip. For once I didn’t feel pleasure. I felt only pain, and a need for him to be alright, and a vast, empty gulf between us that I wished did not exist.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. He didn’t answer.
What I wouldn’t give, to wind time back around its spindle and return to those days in the tower, where the threads between us were rivalry and longing, with no hint of grief.
Kalcedon didn’t resist as I buried my face between his shoulder blades and breathed him in, the hot burn of magic, the smell of ocean and sage. My palm rested over his heart, where it pounded in his chest. His shirt was a good texture, soft and smooth. And his power crackled around me, calling every inch of my body to life, as painful as life could be.
“Tell me why you’re tired,” I whispered into his back, the words muffled as my lips grazed his back.
“Even my own mother didn’t want me. Everyone looks at me and sees something rotten. Even you . But Eudoria never did. She’s the only one who never did.”
And she’s gone .
I shut my eyes and squeezed him as hard as I could. Kalcedon didn’t react. He was as immovable as stone. Still I gathered him. Still I pulled him tight. And then I whispered a truth that had been so obvious to me I’d never realized it needed to be said out loud.
“You’re wrong. I’ve always liked you.”
The room stilled; the burn of magic froze. A breath. I felt him shift, just barely, as the whole room waited.
“...Don’t say that if it isn’t true,” he whispered.
“It’s true. Even when I thought you were heartless, I liked you all the same. I don’t think you’re rotten at all. Just mean.”
I braced myself for one of Kalcedon’s familiar retorts, for him to call me a name or tell me I was a liar, but he didn’t say a word. Instead, in a moment so slow I thought time had listened to my wishes and come undone, Kalcedon turned in my arms. He turned until my cheek was cradled to his chest, to the pulse of his life. His arms enveloped me. His lips pressed down to the crown of my head, and rested there.
“I thought I was the reason you left.”
I pulled my head back to look up at him, into his dark, hungry eyes. Into his pain and longing.
“What? No. Of course not.”
His eyes searched mine, hunting for truth. I looked away on instinct, shifting my gaze to his full lips instead.
“I’ve always wanted to go to the Temple,” I reminded him. “I never said you couldn’t come.”
“But did you have to leave so soon? Without even a word?”
“I couldn’t be there. Not right after losing her.”
He nodded.
“Fine,” Kalcedon whispered.
The suffocating pain in his power loosened thorn by thorn. If the agony wasn’t gone, it was at least no longer the whole of him. Now the blaze of power enveloping me was an exquisite burn I wished I knew how to return.
“Fine?” I echoed. Kalcedon’s lips curled in a weak smile. It didn’t quite reach his eyes, but it was a smile nonetheless. His hand trailed low on my back, a burn of power pooling in me that made my mind stutter. I pushed against him. His breath warmed my cheek.
I found myself wondering if it would be wrong to kiss him, as shattered as he’d been. Just to feel him a little closer.
“Fine,” He breathed. “If you must live at the Temple, I’ll—”
A thud. His power spasmed as he jerked against me, a strangled breath stealing his words. In startled confusion I pushed myself up.
An arrow pierced him like a needle to a pincushion. Its pale, feathered stalk jutted from his shoulder to point straight to the window, proof of origin.
An arrow? Those people downstairs, they’d been convinced… so someone had found which room was ours, taken a shot through the window… with a gasp of fury I grabbed his magic, spun my hands, and slammed a barb of power towards the window.