Chapter 30 #2
He didn’t respond immediately, and it was his silence that invited her to look up. Trisha immediately grew insecure. Sunlight glinted on the silver threads on his cuffs and brass buttons. A few long strides took him to the fireplace. He turned. His face was emotionless, as if carved from stone.
“What are you, Trisha? And don’t lie to me. I will know if you do.”
She swallowed the painful lump in her throat and said quietly, “J-Just a human woman.”
“‘Human’? Did that need to be emphasized?” Blainor scoffed, face hard. “Let me rephrase. Who taught you to wield your magic? Where were you raised, Trisha?”
She looked aside.
“And don’t you dare hide behind some wayward promise. Not after today.”
She winced at the coldness in his tone. It infuriated her. What right did he have to sound like that? As if he were entitled to stab her with guilt. It wasn’t his past they were discussing. It wasn’t his life being undone.
“Why do you need my confession? The Warlord’s word is the law; that’s what Byne told me. Or did she lie?”
The floorboards creaked under his weight. “You’re testing my patience. If the truth is impossible, you’ve just proved you’re no human.”
Fear spun her stomach into a tight knot, but she refused to reveal how much his threat impacted her.
“You want the truth? Fine. Fine…” Her jaw locked.
“The Undying Lands. The immortal fae. They raised me and taught me how to thread my music with magic. That’s what you wanted to hear. But you knew that already. Didn’t you?”
He blinked. “How…” Blainor started, voice careful, “is that possible?” His gaze turned inward.
“The fae are but a myth, stories told to frighten children into behaving. Obey your parents, lest demons whisk you away and drink your blood. No one has seen them in centuries, not since they disappeared and took their magic with them.”
She circled the tumbler in her hands. “My parents. I told you… They left me. But, there’s more. My mother—” Her voice broke, and she drew a steadying breath. “She took me there. Beyond the veil. She abandoned me with them. I don’t know how.”
“But you know why.”
Her shoulders slumped. The words were but a broken whisper, the ache of the truth still too raw. “Because of my magic. I learned it the last time when I went there.”
“Those four weeks after midsummer?”
The dry mud crumbled off her boots onto the thick carpet.
Its yellow and red threads blurred in her eyes, veins of light against darkness.
“Yes, but it was merely days for me. I didn’t mean to be gone for so long.
Time… flows differently between the two realms, you see.
I forgot about it.” She didn’t even know why she was telling him this.
But he needed to know that she hadn’t meant it.
Her absence hadn’t been intentional; she hadn’t known or planned it when she crossed the threshold.
Suspected, yes, but it hadn’t been what she wanted.
Blainor kneaded his forehead, face haggard and drawn. “Seven years ago, Trisha. Is that when you left them for the first time?”
Much easier to talk about this. She wasn’t breaking her promise. Trisha almost laughed at herself. She’d broken so many of them today that the truth about her family seemed the least important.
“Yes, when I learned that I wasn’t one of them.” Her voice thinned, the hollow sensation in her chest spreading in her belly. Swallowing, she went on, “I left because I wanted to find them and ask why they gave me away.” A bitter sound left her.
Blainor’s expression splintered, his hands tightening. A heartbeat of absolute stillness before he shook his head. His steps slow, he approached. “Then, why the pretense, Trisha?” Something furious simmered beneath his voice. “Why did you have to keep it a secret? Why couldn’t you—”
“Are you mad?!” she snapped. “You said yourself: monsters, that’s what humans call the fae. They’d stone me. Burn me as a witch.” She looked away, rubbing her shoulder. Her voice lowered. “I learned it very fast.”
“And that’s why you hide your magic? Playing in front of everyone, compelling them under your will, then to forget what you made them do.”
“No. I don’t—It’s not like that.”
An unamused smile touched his lips, fleeting, gone before it even softened the hard angles of his face. It made him seem colder. Dangerous. “No? Then explain, what did I witness when a linden tree grew in my hall?”
“I-I didn’t mean it! The fight… My magic sensed I needed something familiar. A home…”
“Home,” he taunted. “Did that drive you in Graystein, your dulcet southern song? You wanted a home in Orin’s house? I should warn you that his wife Edith isn’t one to share a marriage tattoo.”
Embarrassment heated her cheeks, but she relaxed upon sensing him injecting humor to the room. “You set me up, then.”
“Don’t you dare blame me. That song was your own choosing. But fine. There’s also Midsummer. What was that, Trisha?” He leaned closer. “You tried to force me under your will.”
The image of the mangled iron chandelier hit her like a wave. “I failed, didn’t I?”
He tsk’ed. “Reckless, Trisha. You should’ve known better. If something had happened… Your status as the Warlord’s Bard protects you only so much. But not when you’ve proved it can be used to kill.”
“Why do you think I keep it secret? What do you think lords and ladies in their high towers would do if they realized? Chains or death, that’s what I’d be offered. If I wanted to live, they’d force me to play to their whim. To their desire. I don’t play at war. I don’t fight anyone’s wars.”
He drew a breath, a terrible calm descending on him.
“Perhaps you didn’t before,” Blainor said, voice weighty and urgent, “but you will fight mine.”