“Well, well, well, #2
Luna’s eyes widened. This Lancelot Mortimer was the consort of the Shadowbane Lady?
She’d heard of him, heard of the terrible darkness he’d spread across all of Plym.
It was rumored that Jastira’s lover had turned on her in the end, moments before she ascended to unstoppable power, though Luna didn’t know any further details.
She stared at the slender, aged figure before her.
He didn’t look like the sort who would overthrow evil overladies. But then, who was she to judge?
Sighing, Mortimer rolled his head back, gazing one-eyed up at the shimmering light as though it were a window to the past itself.
“I always worshipped the very ground on which she trod. Forty years later, that never changed for me. But Jastira . . . my lovely, lithe, lusty Jastira. She was seduced by a younger man. A fresh-faced idiot, who made her fancy herself in the flush of new love all over again. Oh, it was such foolishness!”
He closed his good eye. The other wouldn’t close, but glinted from behind folds of melted skin as it continued to gaze up at that orb.
He uttered a deep sigh. “My Jastira, you see, was far more beautiful than other women. Age had not affected her looks in the slightest. No! She knew such spells as to keep her as lithe and plump and toothesome as the day I first laid eyes upon her! Perhaps I let myself go by comparison, but I never thought she minded. Not until that young bastard came along.”
He spat the word with such vehemence, spittle dotted the warehouse floor. Then he rounded on Luna, both eyes open, the one wide and seeming to quiver in its socket with the intensity of his focus. “Now, what was his name?” he mused in tones both low and venomous.
Sudden sickness twisted in Luna’s chest. Though she couldn’t say why, she realized what he was about to tell her, what he was about to reveal.
She realized and, in the same moment, understood that she should have guessed the truth a long time ago.
How or why, she couldn’t say. But somehow she should have known.
She should have seen it, should have prepared herself.
Fortified her heart against the moment about to happen.
Goddess, she prayed desperaetly, let me be wrong!
But Mortimer continued relentlessly: “By the end, he was known as the Grimshade Lord.” He tapped the smooth skull of his walking stick with his fingers, a thoughtful rhythm, then faked a shudder.
“Oh! How we all trembled at the sound of his fell footsteps, echoing through the halls of Nocturnus! Such a ghoulish figure was he, and none dared stand against him, wreathed as he was in shrouds of anti-glitter, the blackness of the Void lodged deep in his eyes! But when I first met him, he had not yet earned that name. Now, let me think, what was he called in those days? Niles or Niel or . . .” His smile grew, twisted. “That’s right. Nigel. Nigel Grimm.”
Luna closed her eyes and turned her head to one side. She felt as though she’d been slapped. You don’t have to believe him, she told herself firmly, denial screaming inside her head. You don’t have to accept this!
But she knew. She’d known for some time now that Mr. Grimm—her sweet, shy, adorable employer—was a Dark Sorcerer. Had he not himself revealed some of his connection to the Shadowbane Lady? He’d brought her to the grave of his father, after all, told her how old Alfred P. Grimm had perished.
She should have pressed him then. But she’d made the mistake of looking into his sad blue eyes and seen there his urgent desire to be kind, to be caring.
To be the perfect gentleman. She’d recognized the lost soul in him, searching for some sort of ground on which he could stand, could plant himself and build something, anything worth having from the wreckage of his life.
And she’d decided to trust him. Knowing even as she did so that it was a foolish choice.
But then, she’d always been a bit of a fool where Nigel Grimm was concerned.
Lancelot Mortimer watched her closely, gauging her reaction.
Luna felt his gaze on the side of her face.
She didn’t want to give him any satisfaction, so she forced herself to open her eyes and schooled her expression into blankness.
Then she turned. Blinked innocently back at him.
It was too late, of course; he’d already read plenty in her initial flinch.
But she would put on a brave show, nonetheless.
Mortimer’s lip curled in a sneer. “It was a torrid affair from the off,” he said, his words a poisonous drip in her ear.
He took a few hobbling steps closer, his one eye blazing.
“I suspected for weeks, but had no proof.
After all those years together, I could not believe my Jastira would throw me over for a callow boy!
Others whispered warnings, but I refused to listen, refused to believe, even as suspicion gnawed away at my gut.
“Then, one day, I walked in on them. They were together in Jastira’s own bedchamber, the one in which she and I had shared so many decades of delights.
At first, I thought she lay there waiting for me, her luscious body thrown back upon her cushions, her hair tumbled in fiery red glory, like rivers of magma against the black sheets.
How beautiful I thought her then, and all the old feelings roared to life inside me, a furnace of heady joy!
“It was then that I saw him. On his knees. His face buried between her—”
Luna dropped her chin, stared hard at the fabric of her coat.
Stared at the dirty old button directly in her line of sight.
Stared at the little thread pulling loose and considered how she would need to mend it soon or risk losing the button entirely.
She focused on every little fray and scuff and stain and refused, refused, refused to hear what Lancelot Mortimer said.
She wouldn’t hear it. And she wouldn’t believe it either.
Belief was a choice, wasn’t it? She could choose not to believe him, not to let those wicked, lascivious pictures fill her brain like a scried image.
It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t let it be true.
“The boy had grace enough to be ashamed,” Mortimer continued relentlessly.
“My Jastira, however, only laughed. Laughed in my face.” He laughed then himself, an insane cackle, as twisted as his own pathetic features.
He shook his head, wiped a tear away with the flick of a gloved hand, then looked down at Luna again.
“But I understood at last. The revelation came to me in a flash—she was testing me!
Testing the depths of my love! We had grown too complacent, she and I.
Too comfortable, too certain of our mutual devotion.
She needed to know I was still the man who would fight for her. Who would kill for her.
“So I laid my plans. I watched my rival closely, learned all I could about him and his weaknesses. Then, when the opportunity was ripe, I challenged him to a duel, as was my right!”
Tears gathered fast, collecting on Luna’s lashes. She tried so hard not to let them fall, but one began to trickle free, and she hated herself for allowing it.
“But did that boy honor me and my position as the Shadowbane Lady’s chosen consort?
” Mortimer cried, throwing up one hand in a disdainful gesture.
“Did he acknowledge the unspoken code of our Order and meet me where I stood, a challenge justly issued?
No! The arrogant bastard mocked me with his laughter and turned his back on me.
“Well, I could not let that stand. So I aimed a bolt of raw Dire Matter to pass over his right shoulder. A searing blast, intended to warn him of the serious nature of my challenge, to make him turn around and face me as he ought. But what do you think this Nigel Grimm did in response?”
Luna shook her head, and a second, hateful tear slipped free.
“He whirled, caught my blast even as it hurtled past him, rearranged the sigils, and sent it straight back at me. Straight into my face.”
Mortimer smiled like a death’s head rictus.
Drawing close to Luna’s face once more, he forced her to stare into the melted ruin of his features.
“What do you think of what he’s made of me?
” he whispered, turning his head this way and that, as though to let her admire all angles.
“I am certainly memorable, am I not? All thanks to Nigel Grimm. All thanks to your employer.” He reached out then and brushed his gloved thumb across her cheekbone, catching yet another tear as it escaped.
He held it aloft, a little bead of wetness that gleamed in the orb light.
Then he spun suddenly in place and threw his voice up to the high rafters. “I know you’re here, Grimshade Lord!” he cried. “No use in hiding. Come out! Come out and face me! Face whatever is left of this face!”
Silence answered, broken only by the shuffling feet of the Brute Boys. Luna couldn’t see any of them beyond the orb’s glow, but she felt their discomfort. No one liked dealing with mad sorcerers.
“Did I get it right?” Mortimer continued, turning slowly in place.
“Some of the details might be a bit fuzzy. The old noodle, you know. Doesn’t hold memories the way it once did!
” He backed away from Luna and held out both hands, the walking stick swinging from the right one.
The little red jewels set in the skull’s head glinted like sparks of hellfire.
“Feel free to add whatever details you like!”
As though in response, a sudden shattering of glass sounded from the upper levels. Voices erupted, all the Brute Boys shouting, drawing weapons, turning every which way. Overhead, someone screamed, followed by the thick sounding thud of a body dropping onto the metal walkway.
A shot rang out. Luna screamed, her voice muffled in her gag. She winced to one side, but her bindings held her firmly in place, even as her feet scrabbled uselessly on the floor.