Chapter 18
Only a few hours after Jane fled…
When I come to, everything is wrong.
Anya is in my room, her head bleeding. Bones peers over me like I might be dead, and I can't feel that confused heart of Jane anywhere .
I slowly push up into a sitting position, staring with wide eyes across the room before looking down at my body. I'm still wearing nothing but pants, my shirt on the floor near the mirror where she healed me...
That fucking bitch.
She knows the siren's sunder . Who the fuck taught her? And how did she hide that from me?
“Good,” Bones says with a dramatic sigh. “We were just about to round everyone up to find her—"
“How long was I out for?” I stand, feeling as if I merely took a pleasant nap, surveying every available detail for context. It looks as if it’s early morning outside, the hearth dwindling but not dead.
“Quite a few hours,” Bones replies.
Anya adds, “The men are all rallying outside, ready to ride. Like Bones said, we were just about to go after her and leave you here—“
“No. No, I go alone to find Jane.”
Anya watches me with a determined calculation. I know she’s reading me the way I read hearts—except she’s got no magic for that. She’s just shrewd.
I examine my armor, thinking over a plan as I near the table, stopping to stand over a vast pool of blood. “Who bled?”
Anya replies, “I stabbed her.”
I glare at her over my shoulder. My blood runs hot at the image of Jane being stabbed right in front of me while I was sleeping like nothing fucking happened. “You what ?”
“Sir, she attacked you. Then me ,” she explains, shock widening her dark eyes, looking at me like maybe I've forgotten who I am.
I lower my head to stare at the stain that’s already dried. Anya didn't behave wrongly, not with Jane’s ability to heal herself. “Where did you stab her?”
“In the lower stomach. I know we still need her alive. Figured she could heal that enough.” Anya carefully adds, “What happened, sir?”
Bones watches with a curious glower. I ignore the lipstick smeared on his face, honestly amazed that he pried himself away from his 'kitten' to check on me.
“She knows the siren's sunder and can use her magic to subdue others. Much like a sedation,” I explain, rubbing my neck. “Didn’t know healers could do that.”
Anya groans. “I knew it was the sunder. I told you that’s what it was,” she says, pointing at Bones. “Although, I also didn’t know about the healer part. That’s definitely new.”
“What did you two do while I was out?” I ask, touching the leather of my vest, considering everything. “What all has happened?”
Bones dramatically nods to Anya, who says, “Well, we searched all of Dryhill. Found that the northern stable master gave a small woman a horse for some coin, so we sent out three scouts. You were breathing fine, so I figured some kind of magic knocked you out.”
Bones adds, “We were giving it until the sun was fully up before sending out the rest of the men.”
“You’re sure you want to go alone ,” Anya confirms, her tone flat. “Let us trail you, at the very least.”
“I may be back tomorrow, in a week, in a month. But I go alone for this,” I reply resolutely, squatting down to stare at the red pool… the lack of bloody footprints leads me to think she healed it before leaving. “She says it's business, but it's personal now.”
I turn around to check for my coin, in case... my voice actually cracks, holding my hands out to the side. “The bitch stole my fucking coin.”
Holy shit. Do I even admit that I’m impressed at the brass balls she has? Stealing from a Zenith is a death sentence. It’s even codified.
Anya winces when she prods her head at a delicate spot. “Didn’t peg her for that type of woman. That bugs the shit out of me that I read her wrong. Guess it makes sense though, if the Council wants her.”
Bones nears a window and peers out behind the curtains. “Should’ve seen her when she attacked her room. She’s like a spawn of Skull’s Row.”
I don't know what I feel. Or perhaps I don't know how to interpret what I feel. I’m enraged, obviously, and have a natural desire to find her, kill her right on the spot, and tell the Council everything I know of her after placing her pretty head on a spike.
Then, there's the strangest emotion—the one that contrasts the familiarity of my indifference: sympathy. The way her regret mixed with victory as she subdued me confuses me the most.
She meant those words she said to me.
Some part of her genuinely wanted to trust me, only terrified of what would happen to her, choosing to look after her own skin. She could have killed me if she fucking wanted, or left me wounded.
Instead, I feel completely well-rested.
“Someone ready Phantom for me,” I say, not caring which one does it. “Put my armor in a bag and attach it to the horse.” Grabbing my skull mask, I remind myself that Jane’s father once bore his own, too.
My time of doubting her capabilities is done.
The hunt begins.
* * *
Heavy clouds dim the moonlight, and the northern stables are rather quiet. I ride Phantom up to a man who sleeps a little too carelessly in a bed of hay, my steed stomping his foot to wake the stablemaster. He nearly trips when he stands, strands of dry grass stuck to his clothes and hair.
“My liege,” he manages out, his words slurred with ale.
“Did a woman take a horse?” I ask, burning my gaze into him. I’m wearing the skull mask to enhance the powers I possess—I can feel traces of Jane like a bloodhound catching a dying scent.
“Aye,” he says, nodding to the first stall, the space empty.
“Where was she going?”
“D-didn’t say, my liege.”
“How fucking useful,” I growl.
Kicking Phantom, I ride to the gate and shout for them to open it, the door still in the process of lowering as I charge forward, Phantom’s weight smacking the wooden door down. Outside of Dryhill, horse hooves litter the dirt road canopied by trees, but I can feel her. If I were to turn south, I’d lose all sense of Jane.
The little thorn in my side, the one with her name carved into it, shines brightest in the east.
* * *
Present time, quite a few hours after Jane left Inkstone…
The first rays of dawn pierce through thick clouds, casting a pale light over this smaller outpost known for its trading of inks and rubies—Inkstone. Skull’s Row traders often roll through here, only being a week away from our kingdom and near the coast. It used to be called a burrow, trees nestling deep into the soil as vines wrap around the buildings.
Now it’s a proper fucking city, one that a particularly notorious witch infests.
I dismount Phantom and leave him at the entrance, unbound. The horse has been branded to my magic, and if I need him, he’ll appear for me and know not to wander far.
It’s so early that even the wild dogs sleep, the only sound being the padding of my boots as I follow the traces of Jane to a tavern, my hand on the hilt of my sword. A few horses are tied to posts—there’s one with a burn into its fur that’s of a skull.
Could be Jane, or could be someone else visiting.
As I stare at the building in front of me, my attention peaks as I hear someone open their front door to send their child on morning errands.
Even though I know she was in the tavern based on the traces of her aura—perhaps stopping for food—I can’t fight the gnawing sensation that the tavern is a waste of my time.
If anything, I’m drawn to the right.
My heart races with annoyance when I wonder if this is leading me to her .
I fucking hate witches.
Following the traces of Jane through the main street, all of the homes made of half-timber and brick, I pass underneath a footbridge that connects two of the largest buildings.
Winding down and traversing a few flights of stairs, Jane’s aura grows bright in my mind’s eye as I pace along a dirty path until I reach a ramshackle hut sitting on the edge of a clearing, smoke lazily curling from the chimney. The prickling of witch’s magic taints the air, giant beasts—the size of Phantom—sleeping outside of a nearby building; hell hounds. They’re the size of a grizzly, their hide so thick that not even a sword could penetrate it, all wrapped in silver fur that contrasts the bright red of their eyes. The black paws of one stretches out, claws as sharp as talons.
Hellhounds are nasty fuckers that even give me a run for my money, and witches love taming them. Especially to guard their dwellings.
Jane’s aura is laced so heavily in there, I almost wonder if she’s still present…
A witch’s house is where the Zenith princess hides, then?
The witch inside is one I know very well, and I hate that bitch. She reads me like I read others, and the thought that she has information about what truly lies inside of my heart makes me want to kill her every time we, unfortunately, have an encounter.
No one should have that kind of knowledge over me.
I near it nonetheless, the hellhound’s eyes widening as a deathly grumble emanates from their throats.
The others awaken.
Creatures born from magic always feel different to me. Their motives are clear, but I can’t seem to anticipate their attack—only knowing how they feel. Eyeing the beast that licks its lips, I say, “I want to see your mistress.”
Red eyes sharpen, the growling intensifying as their muscles stiffen. It doesn’t like the skull mask. Grunting, I remove the face covering, the material hardening in my hands. I hold an arm out as if to show the beast I’ll play by its rules, even if it annoys me. I don’t have any time to waste—
The bright red door to the hut creaks open, and an older woman with inky hair stands in the gloomy threshold. “I knew I sensed you.”
The eyes of a witch always unnerve me; completely unreadable, especially as they hide any true thoughts or intentions with their own magic. They can see things beyond my own capabilities, the annoying vulnerability a reminder to keep this encounter short. Her hounds watch carefully, waiting for their master to display distress.
“I want to talk, Cypress.”
“I bet you do. Last time it was about Serena—are you here about her, again?” she muses, opening the door further into her obscure dwelling. The hell hounds crane their monstrous heads as if questioning her life’s decisions. “No, no I think not… come in for some morning tea, Soren. There’s much to discuss.”
She watches me carefully, her eyes half open as if she’s waking from a sleep, and yet they’re completely alert. The cunt is leaving a trance, then. Probably watching me as I approached.
If that’s true, then she already knows I’m here for Jane, which means mentioning Serena is an unnecessary stab at my pride. At the part of me that not even Bones or Anya gets to see.
Each step toward the hut feels like a betrayal to myself, entering a den of magic that’s wholly dangerous. But Jane’s presence pulls me closer. Her emotions saturate the inside of this space like a permanent imprint.
What the fuck was she doing here?
I duck to enter, the door groaning behind me as it shuts. The morning sun reveals the dust floating in the air, my gaze scanning the room for any sign of a hiding fugitive. No, she’s not here anymore. The air is thick with the smell of herbs, the floorboard creaking underneath my boots.
Ruby jewelry hangs all over, the crimson glow intensifying the mystic atmosphere from the candles lit all around. I’ve been hearing that Cypress has taken to hell hound breeding, and with how careless she leaves the jewelry about in this place, it makes sense now; she doesn’t have to worry about any thieves here.
Nearing a table where I can almost see Jane’s ghost, I sense right where her ass was perched as she sat, trying to imagine where in the hells she’s fucked off to.
Either way, I’m getting closer.
With measured steps, I approach the stool, my hand instinctively running over the table. “This isn’t about Serena, and I already told you that I’m not speaking to you about her further.” Anger twists inside of my veins like barbed wire. “I want the woman with auburn hair that was in here,” I demand.
“Miss Jane has you quite ensnared…” she replies.
“Why was she here?” I assert, locking my gaze with the witch’s obsidian one.
Her laugh fills the quiet hut, the aged woman nearing a corner where a stove heats a pot of whatever the hells witches drink in the morning. “Don’t waste your threatening glares on me, Soren. You hurt a single hair on my head and those hounds will rip you apart. Would be such a waste to have you die for no reason at all.”
A waste? This whole damn conversation is a waste . “Why did Jane come in here?” I press.
More importantly, why is the damage to Jane’s heart so profound that it’s almost as if she’s still here? Witch’s magic, maybe? She could still be here, but hidden.
Cypress removes the steaming, black pot and pours a dark, watery liquid into two cups. “Poor dear. She’s quite terrified. She came here because she’s desperate.”
“I bet she is,” I chide.
“Taking her to the Council will get you nowhere, Soren. At least, it will not help you achieve what you truly seek. It’s also a waste of time, as she’s innocent,” Cypress defends, bringing the tea to the table at which I stand. “Sit.”
“Her innocence is not mine to decide, nor do I give a shit.” I sit in the chair, considering every possible layer of Cypress’s words.
“Since when do you bow to the Council? I’ve never known you as a follower of other men’s codes. Even if the Zenith have marked your chest, we both know it was a sacrifice to help you acquire your true objective.”
She sits across from me, pushing what smells like a cup of tea closer. I don’t move, except to stare at what she offers. It smells like soil, the steam spiraling upward.
The last time I drank one of these from her, my ability to control myself and my emotions were non-existent. It’s the only time I’ve managed to slice my blade into Cypress, who gladly took the wound as the action of me drinking her tea gave her access to all of me.
And for fucking what? I still don’t know.
“We’re at an impasse, Soren. I won’t tell you why Jane was here or where she went, and you won’t kill me.”
My path before me is so unclear that there’s no point in considering what direction to move in. I could leave and follow the path that Jane lays, but the nagging sensation in my gut tells me to not move from this seat. That’s usually a foreboding warning from the gift that guides my intuition, demanding I heed it. “Fine. But I’m not drinking this, for obvious reasons. Let’s also skip useless conversations. You knew Charles Ritter?”
“Of course, I did. His wife bore a fondness for rubies.”
My eyebrows twitch as shock distorts my concentration. “ Wife ?”
She sips on the steaming tea, smiling at me. “Ask Jane herself if you want to know more.”
“That woman knocked me out and stole my coin. The last thing she’s sharing with me is her life story.”
“Of course, she stole from you. She wants to live, doesn’t she?” Cypress stares me down, her black eyes unnerving as they begin to widen with concentration.
Staring across the room as I consider any other approach, I see an old window resting against the wall, many pegs glued on so ruby necklaces can hang off each one.
Everyone has a vice, and Cypress adores her coins. Everywhere she exists, she indulges in some kind of sales of luxury items. Was Ritter’s vice the fact that he wanted a family but no one could know of it?
Could Jane be setting me up from the beginning? If I couldn’t read souls like ink on skin, I’d perhaps believe it.
But that soul of hers is so tormented it’s completely raw in places.
He was never found dead… “What do you know?” I ask, facing her again. “You want me here, so tell me what you planned to tell me once you knew I was coming.”
Her cup lowers, those eyes so intense it’s as if she’s awoken from a slumber. Leaning back into her seat, she seems almost proud to say, “It’s a warning. If you’re even remotely associated with Jane’s death, Charles Ritter will find you, and the plans he has for those that hurt his wife and daughter would make even you squirm. Seeing as how the wife is dead, that means Jane is everything to him.”
“So, he’s not dead?”
“They never found a body,” she replies, lazily shrugging her shoulders. “And before you ask, Jane doesn’t know he’s alive.”
Adrenaline heats my blood; my jaw clenches as my nostrils flare. Breathing heavily, I don’t know how to process the details. “Why tell me? Why let me know and not her, if this is even true?”
She points her finger at me. “Because you’d do best to put your energy into preserving the life of Ritter’s daughter rather than appeasing the council of killers. She’ll find out in time when it feels right for you to inform her. Not before then.”
“So, you want me to gamble on a woman I don’t know, all the while I’m supposed to hope it goes in my direction, all because you and I had this conversation? After what happened in our last encounter where you nearly raped my soul?”
Her grin is slow and shaky, as if she nearly forgot. “Tell me—what action do you think will return Serena to you?”
The audacity of this witch, to use her . I lean over, staring Cypress down, not caring that the hounds outside growl with a warning. “ Don’t.”
Her cackle raises the hairs on my arms. “You can’t stand that you can’t read me, can you? To face someone that uses similar powers as your own? There’s no shame in wanting your sister returned, Soren—” my hands shake with a need to strangle her until her eyes pop “—but if you need proof, then it’s proof I shall give you.”
Heaving a dramatic sigh, Cypress stands, pulling out a scroll from inside her black robes to unroll and reveal blank parchment. She then nears a cluttered wall where her attention falls on a knife that seems as if a giant ruby was cut to be the blade. The witch moves to a nearby window, unlocking the latches as wood strains against itself when she opens it. One of the hellhounds peers in, sniffing in my direction. She speaks to it in a foreign language as the beast opens its mouth, saliva stringing between the teeth as it allows her to slice its tongue. Red liquid pools from the wound, Cypress carefully moves to our table and she cuts her palm, lowering her hand to smear the shared blood on the blank page.
Lines form like roots, spreading outward in a unique design until they glow, her black irises turning crimson, the color stretching as if staining the whites. She enters a trance as she sits, one hand on each side of the scroll, her sacrificial palm bleeding onto the table in a messy expanse.
Her hypnotic, terrifying eyes stare off into the distance as if she stares at an invisible painting with moving parts. “Miss Jane felt compelled to come east, allowing us cross paths, Soren,” she says, her voice low and gravelly. “The energy of our world is changing… right now, ancient powers and dynamics are being threatened by man.” She squints and tilts her head. “It’s not the end of the society, however, but the gods are not pleased. Poor Jane is wrapped up in this in ways she doesn’t understand.”
Cypress looks me in the eyes and I hold my breath. “In particular, the Sirens are angry. Jane’s father made a deal with them when his wife was struck down and Jane’s life was threatened. The Scorpion has waited over a decade to strike perfectly rather than embark on a mindless rampage—as his moniker denotes. Keep Jane alive, Soren, and you will live another day to see your sister, as she is still very much alive. Let Jane die, and the Scorpion will torture you in ways that only a Zenith who has lost his family would.”
Deep emotions, ones I never let out, resurface at her mentioning Serena in such a way. It pisses me off so much that a hound snaps at the open window when I move my hand—even by an inch— toward a blade at my thigh. “I didn’t ask to be Jane’s charge. I’m not agreeing to this, all because a witch put on a nice show.”
Cypress’s eyes return to normal, disappointment clear in her expression, like she wanted to remain in the vision for longer. The blood on the parchment rescinds before disappearing as if wiped away, her hand healing, the table clean once more.
“Yes, well, I didn’t ask for the ringing in my ears as I’ve aged, and yet here we are,” she snaps in an uncharacteristic display of normalcy. “It’s a part of life. I’m only here to deliver the message, Soren.”
“All creatures in this world are selfish and will do what they need to survive. You’re clearly working with Jane, and her father. And now you’re using my sister as a means of manipulation to keep them safe. I loathe being used.”
She rolls the scroll back inside her cloak. “It’s not my fault you’ve never learned to trust the motives of someone if you can’t read them.” She presses her lips together as she stares at me. “Do what you want with that information. Just understand that Jane must remain ignorant about her father’s whereabouts. The gods work with man as their first resort before relying on the ruthless powers of the mother goddess to ravish the lands until the humans bow down once more. We are currently in possession of controlling our own fates before our world is ravished by the wrath of our creators.
“I’m merely a branch in the tree of life, just like you, and my role is to inform you that helping the Scorpion will get you closer to saving Serena more than the Council ever will, which means to help, and protect, Jane.”
An incredulous laugh escapes me. “And how the fuck did I get tied into this?”
“Because you’re the one the Council sent.” She huffs, her patience thinning. “Sometimes our ties to fate are profound and deeply woven, and other times, we’re just caught in the web.”