Chapter 39
Ifreeze, scanning the landscape, and Rion stops short by my side.
Catching my breath, I whisper, “Do you know what that is?”
“The questing beast,” he murmurs. He brushes a wet strand of hair off my face. “If we see it, you need to bury your thoughts in silence.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
The beast’s cries grow louder, and my stomach clenches. I clamp my hands over my ears, trying to block it out, but its howl is vibrating through my bones. And with the noise, a red-hot horror blooms in my chest.
I see it, then, flitting between the trees. It looks like an enormous, muscular leopard, only with a serpent’s head. Its spotted body blends into iridescent scales at the throat, and a long, forked tongue lashes out, striking wildly at the air.
Fuck.
Its head whips in my direction, and amber eyes lock on me.
My heart skips a beat.
Raising its head, it unleashes a cry like a hundred agonized spirits trapped within its ribs.
My legs start to shake, my teeth to chatter. Its howl carries a magic that vibrates down to my marrow, making my body feel heavy. It’s hard to breathe again—but not from a punctured lung. Now, I feel like rocks are crushing my chest.
Guilt presses down on me…
There was an old song the children used to chant, and it floats in my thoughts now, mingling with the cries of the questing beast.
Treason, treason, all around,
Drop the bones in hollow ground.
Ring the bells at Traitors’ Gate,
On gallows beams the crows all prate.
Around me, the forest starts to change.
The trees thin, and the river changes shape.
Now, I stand in an unweeded garden. I’m back at home, where I grew up before Auberon took me. I stand outside the little cottage in the woods, where the swing creaks in the breeze, and hemlock and nettle have strangled the flowers…
Clouds cover the sun.
My parents have been gone so long that the wood is starting to rot.
I rasp for breath.
Where did the king bury the bodies? In an unmarked grave with the traitors.
Drop the bones in hollow ground.
Does it matter where their skeletons lie?
It matters more the way they died—
The vision around me shifts, and the sky fades. Stone sweeps over the soil beneath my feet, and the sky darkens above into shadowed stone arches. Now the world smells like damp rock and mold.
I’m in the Undercroft. Nausea turns my stomach, and my legs shake.
Auberon says that mortals are the enemy.
I pace the slick stones of the Undercroft. The famine has driven the king into a frenzy, I think.
Now, he’s started burning demi-Fey. He incinerates them with dragon fire, and he sends his soldiers to slaughter their villages. When he’s done, half his kingdom will molder under the soil. But maybe then they’ll stop blaming him for the famine.
My father is half human. I don’t think of my parents much.
Auberon told us our parents abandoned us.
Since we first arrived in the Undercroft as children, he told us that our parents never wanted us.
We used to write them letters, but of course, we never heard back.
They were glad to be rid of us. Auberon told us.
Now, demi-Fey are the enemy.
What does it mean that I’m one of them?
I don’t know if Auberon remembers that I’m a quarter mortal, or that Tristan is half. You can’t tell by looking at us.
I think he’s pretending to forget. Right now, we’re useful to him.
When we stop being useful, he’ll call us traitors and drop our bones in the ground. If the king grows angry with us, our mortal blood will be all he can think about. We must do what he says so he doesn’t think too long on it.
I pivot in the Undercroft, growing restless.
We all know demi-Fey started the famine. They tried to poison us all, and now the rest of us have to live with their actions.
It’s midnight now.
Auberon brings two traitors into the Undercroft, arms bound behind their backs.
Another round of executions. We’ve done many like this, killing the demi-Fey traitors.
It’s their fault, of course. They’re conspiring to kill him. They poisoned the crops.
Torchlight wavers over the prisoners, and they’re all shaking.
I can’t see their faces because hoods cover them.
I know their eyes must burn with hatred behind the cloth.
The mob loathes the king’s instruments—people like me.
Auberon says they’d mutilate us if they won.
Devour us whole, eat our flesh. It’s not my job to question him.
The king barks at them to kneel on the stone floor.
Tonight, I’m chosen as executioner, and I ready my blade. I don’t enjoy killing, especially when my enemy is bound and helpless. But they’ve been tried and condemned, and who am I to argue with the king’s courts? They had the evidence.
Without order, everything falls apart.
I’ll do it quickly, I tell myself. They won’t feel a thing. It will be over before they know it’s their last moment.
They’re bruised and injured—but they’re traitors, so I turn my heart to stone.
They’d kill us if they had the chance.
He pulls off the first man’s hood, and I don’t see hatred in his eyes. I see sadness. Then, surprise. Then something almost like joy—
But my sword swings through his throat, and I snuff out the joy like a candle.
A woman is next, and it’s the same with her—surprise, then a look of pure elation…
I think I recognize her lavender eyes before I strike—her cheekbones and her black hair. They’re the same as mine. And I recognize her for an instant because I carry her face engraved on my heart. Even after I started to think she wanted me gone.
But Auberon taught me to strike first and think second.
Hesitation is death.
Auberon gave me a test, and I passed.
But why did they look happy as I held a sword above my head to kill them? Who could possibly feel joy moments before death?
It’s only a few minutes after my sword carved through their heads that I put it together.
They thought I was dead. Auberon never sent our letters.
My parents were happy because they learned I was alive. But by then, it was too late.
The image shifts again, and I’m in the Undercroft once more. Two prisoners bound. No hoods this time. Maybe I saw their faces for more than just a moment—maybe I knew it was my mother before I dropped the blade—
I can’t remember which memory is true.
For all those years in the Undercroft, I thought they’d sold me.
And hesitation is death, and acting quickly is also death, and the monster and the mob and the poison and the killer and the traitor is me—
I’m screaming now, and words are pouring out of me, and I need to stop it all—
Rion’s earthy scent seeps into my thoughts.
Slowly, gently, the warmth of him wraps around me. I see him now. It’s just him and me in the Undercroft. For some reason, he feels safe, even though he’s not. His magic, I suppose.
In the Undercroft, Rion leans down, resting his forehead against mine. With his magic seeping into me, he’s blanketing my thoughts with quiet.
The screaming in my skull falls to a hush.
I breathe in and out.
Smoldering oak. My feet stand on the forest floor. Sunlight pours into my thoughts, warming them again.
Breathe in. Breathe out—the scent of the forest, the humid air.
I open my eyes, and Rion’s forehead is still pressed against mine, just like he was in my hallucination of the Undercroft. I’m shaking uncontrollably, and tears pour down my cheeks. Fuck. Fuck. Gods, I’m crying like a little child, and it’s fucking mortifying.
I wipe at my cheeks as if I can hide it.
A soldier doesn’t cry.
Rion takes my hands in his. He doesn’t take his eyes off me, and that silver in his irises burns like the evening star.
My breath shakes as I look into his eyes. He’s completely at ease. I suppose terror is his domain. He could sweep it out of my thoughts, blow the horrors away like dandelion seeds.
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” I whisper. My hands are shaking, legs trembling.
“You’ll tell me someday.”
I’m still breathing hard, in and out.
Rion pulled me out of madness, and if he weren’t with me, it’s entirely possible that I’d be bashing my head against an oak like King Pellinore in the old drawings. Without him here, I’d be floating dead in the river.
I take another breath, listening for the questing beast. Nothing, now. Just the sound of the river.
“Why did you wait for me instead of running off to find the grail without me?”
His long eyelashes cast a shadow on his cheeks. “Because if I didn’t pull you out of the nightmarish memory, I’d have lost my best asset.”
The moths flit around us, and I glance at them. I wonder what the noble houses think about me sobbing like a baby. “Right. You need me. And now you look like a hero again.”
His brow furrows, but his expression is unreadable. “It doesn’t hurt my chances.”
I realize this is why he is holding my hands in his. I pull them back, trying to reclaim a sense of dignity. “Could you see my memory while you were calming my thoughts?”
His gold tattoos beam brighter. “I only saw you. But you’ve sparked my curiosity once again.”
I feel his dread magic stroking against my thoughts like a dragon’s claw, probing for things that terrify me.
As he does, I gather defenses in my mind, the way Auberon taught me—a veil to keep my secrets. “And why is that?”
His sharp thorn of power nudges against the cloud in my thoughts, trying to uncover my secrets. But I’m not letting him in. “Because I can’t see your fears the way I can see other people’s.”
Good. Because if he slips into my mind, he might find me holding a knife to the throat of the next king.
He turns to run again. “Let’s go. I want the grail in my hands.”