Chapter 47 #2
She rounded his way and shot back at him with a defensive tone. “It’s not theft. Varen and I are merely reacquiring items that were stolen from his family’s treasure trove when it was ransacked after they stepped down from Great House.”
My eyes widened.
What the…?
My voice rose in a squeak. “You and Dad are out stealing?”
My mother spun my way, and her eyes grew just as round as mine.
“Oh… No…? Maybe…?” she fumbled, fussing with the feather duster.
She blew out a breath from the side of her mouth and caved, throwing up a defeated hand and stamping a foot at the same time.
“Ugh. Okay, yes, occasionally we pull a tiny heist or two.” She wiggled her golden brows and her eyes sparkled.
“That’s how we fell for one another all those years ago.
We were out stealing from the same person, and our heists collided one night. ”
“Fuuu—”
Mom suddenly let out a strangled shriek, lurched forward, and slapped a hand over my mouth. “Graysen, you know we don’t use that kind of language in our family,” she warned.
My voice was muffled by her hand. “But Dad…?” Dad was always cursing.
She heaved an irritated sigh, muttering beneath her breath. “When I get home, I’m going to wash your father’s mouth out with soap.”
I couldn’t stop the burst of laughter, because that would be funny.
She dropped her hand away, and I asked, not yet prepared to let it go. “Stealing, Mom?”
She grinned as her gaze went a little far away with memory. “I must admit, it’s a lot of fun. Especially when our mark flashes about the fake copy we replace the stolen item with.”
Oooo, clever.
“Can I help with the stealing?” My fingers were already twitching, eager to go out with Mom and Dad and steal stuff from the Upper Ranks.
She tickled my nose with the end of the feather duster. “No.”
I threw myself at her, wrapping my arms around her middle to give her a squeezy hug. She smelled of her favorite roses, and I sank into her comforting warmth, giving her my best pleading face. “Oh, come on, Mom…pleeeeeease…”
She hugged me back, running her free hand through my hair and ruffling it. “Oh, my sweet Tamer. I’m only telling you this because very soon you won’t remember any of it.”
Wait…what?
“What do you mean?” How could I ever forget such an amazing place?
My mother unwound her arms from me and stepped back. “First, shoes.”
I toed my shoes off, bent over, and scooped them up. My sock-clad toes dug into the soft rug as I shook the shoes to prove that I had nothing tucked inside. But I made a mental note that next time I would. Like Mom said, it was the perfect place for hiding small things.
“Hmm, okay,” my mother murmured, almost as if she still didn’t believe me.
I crouched down and put my shoes back on, concentrating hard on tying the laces into a bow. Straightening, I asked, “Why did you steal the stones? What did they do?” Because everything in here was magical, and I didn’t think for a second that the stones my mother had stolen were anything ordinary.
She grinned while squeezing my cheek playfully. “You. Always full of questions.” She nodded toward my hand, silently asking me to raise it. I did, cupping my palm, wondering what she was going to give me.
Behind me, Florin approached with the rhythmic thunk of his walking cane. The candlelight flickered with the dark magic that emanated from him, and it trembled against my skin. His enormous shadow fell over me, and I felt as small as one of my action figures in his presence.
He raised a hand that was human-like but for the black talons curving from the tips of his fingers, and he dropped something into my palm.
I flinched as it wriggled against my soft skin, tickling as it writhed and coiled.
It was a fat grub with feelers that sprouted around its head and tail, and its body was a glistening verdant green. “What is it?”
“Hymgild’s Memory Eater.”
I grinned. “So it makes memories go away?”
My mother nodded, and then said, “Eat up.”
My eyes flared wide. “It’s alive!” I shrieked.
Mom popped a fist on her waist and waved her free hand, ordering me to eat the fat, wiggling thing. “Go on.”
My stomach clenched in revolt. “Gods, Mom, no”—fucking—“way.”
She angled her feather duster, and the ends caught my neck, tickling my skin. “This is punishment for stealing. How can I take you anywhere if all you’re going to do is thieve?”
Despite the foul thought of crunching on the creature, excitement barreled through me. “So we can come back here? It’s so cool.”
“It is very cool,” she agreed with a wide smile, sweeping her gaze briefly about the room.
My excitement evaporated when I realized what I was about to eat. “I don’t want to forget this place.”
Mom gave me a commiserating look. She slipped an arm over my shoulder and squeezed me closer. “I know, my inquisitive little Tamer, but it’s safer if you don’t remember. It’s for the best… Now come on, you need to eat it all up.”
I grimaced, then steeled my stomach for what was to come.
Closing my eyes, I tossed the otherworldly grub into my mouth and bit into its writhing body.
I almost gagged when I squelched through its flesh.
Putrid oozing gunk exploded, but it was tempered slightly by a saffron flavor, and a crackle of magic zinged along my teeth.
“It’s gross,” I complained, chewing as fast as I could.
Mom only returned a mock look of sympathy, patting my upper arm.
“It’ll be over soon, and we’ll go get an ice cream.
” Letting go of me, she rounded to stand in front.
Leaning down, she looked me dead in the eye.
Her features tightened into a serious expression.
“Now, I need you to think about this place and Florin. Can you do that for me, Graysen?”
I nodded, glancing up and around. It was a grotto of enchantment.
Cave-like but filled with creepily weird and seriously cool items. The prices stated on their tags were so high—more than what I earned as pocket money—I’d never be able to afford them.
Even after being caught out, my fingers itched to continue pocketing a few more rarities.
There were some things here that hailed from Zrenyth’s time.
However, I did as my mother asked and brought into my mind’s eye this place and Florin. And my memories slipped backward in time…
…wandering around unattended, stealthily slipping fascinating things into my pockets, and hiding them in my suit, while Mom eased her friend’s pain.
The reason why our outing in Ascendria had taken a strange and harried turn.
Mom’s voice floating from the office glowing bright with wavering threads of power, as she scolded him for not calling on her sooner…
…to the lair’s gigantic door and the bell ringing—tink, tink, tink—as we entered the place…
…gripping my mother’s hand tight as we walked down an ancient staircase with power flailing against my skin and whipping through my hair…
The magic coursed through my body, razoring straight to my head, the sensation much like thousands of tiny insect feet crawling across my brain. It threaded its way through all the memories connected to this place and Florin, pulling them in like a fishing net with a haul of flapping herrings.
However, as the magic continued its work, I focused on the here and now.
My mother walked away to put back all the things I’d stolen.
As she strolled through the vibrant den, rounding enormous sculptures, she spoke with Florin.
No one knew she was friends with a Horned God.
I didn’t think I’d ever heard her speak of Florin at home, and I had a feeling that even Dad didn’t know.
I listened in on their conversation as the world around me took on a filmy quality.
Florin approached with ponderous footsteps while she put back the Bog Booghie’s sword with the rest of the miniature weapons.
She cleaned the nearby row of jars with a quick swish of her duster, readjusting them with the tip of her finger so they sat perfectly aligned.
She craned her neck to look up at him. “Will it work?”
Florin leaned heavily on his walking cane, standing beside a cracked and worn stone carving of Brangwene. “It won’t erase the memory completely, but it will bury it down deep.”
She spun around on her heels, smoothing a hand over the duster, its nylon fronds gathering within her fist before flaring free when she released them. “Will it stay buried down there?”
At that mention, a pinching sensation erupted inside my skull, as if the grub was burying itself deep inside my brain.
“There’s no guarantee it won’t unearth itself. If it does, it won’t come back in its entirety all at once, just in small, confusing pockets.”
My mother glanced at me with curiosity before her gaze returned to the Horned God. A notch formed between her brows. “Have you used it before?”
“Only once or twice.”
My mother’s mouth pursed. “Have you used it on me?”
“What would you have to forget, little thief?”
She flashed a grin, the freckles dusting her nose and cheeks sparkling, and her body relaxed. “Nothing, I’m sure.” And then her tone became thoughtful, slow and careful. “I suppose I wouldn’t remember if you had used it on me or not.”
A beat of silence. “Indeed.”
His pause gave me pause too. I tasted something wrong on my tongue, like a dusting of snow, cold and sharp and numbing.
Startlement had my spine stiffening.
Florin had used it before on my mother, but she didn’t know. Didn’t remember, obviously.
And then my mother’s face blurred at the edges as the world rippled and warped in a way that reminded me of when my aunt had tossed a solvent at one of her canvases.
All the oil paint had melted away into dribbles of color, taking the picture along with it.
And that was what seemed to happen around me, inside my mind too.
This strange place that I’d entered not so long ago and wandered amongst all its wonders, melted away.
I turned in a dizzying circle and glimpsed a wooden sign hanging above the door, catching only a single word written in silver—PURVEYOR—before my vision dotted as if I were looking through a veil of lace.
Then my mind went blank and the world went black.
Suddenly I was blinking into a bright light, surrounded by walls painted in vivid colors, the sound of chattering customers around me just as loud.
In my hand, I held an ice cream with pastel swirls of pinks and chocolates and greens.
My mother leaned an elbow on the white table, ice cream coated her tongue in apricot as she licked her cone. She beamed at me and winked.
And the memory-dream shifted into something else…
A strange sensation, from the here and now in the tower’s bedroom, of my body being pushed.
Shunted. Rolled. Before I was tugged back down like a scuttled ship dragged beneath the surface of an endless ocean, and I fell into a deep sleep where I dreamed of nothing.
Time passed slowly and quickly, as slumber always seemed to do.
And then something else tossed me from the depths of sleep.
Something soft as feathers tickled my thigh.
I rose to consciousness with a gruff growl working up my chest to rumble from my throat, and an animalistic need burning my skin.
A melodic hum replied, soft and sweet and enticing, before the warmth of lips, teeth, and tongue danced across the side of my ribs.
I pried apart my sleepy eyes, and my muddled mind tried to make sense of where I was.
I usually slept for long periods of time.
Right now it should be morning, maybe even early afternoon.
It certainly felt that way with the heat baking my skin and the humidity prickling a sheen of sweat over my sticky body and dampening my hair.
But it wasn’t light in here, it was dark, and I lay surrounded by softness with the heady scent of sex lacing the air.
I blinked, and my gaze sharpened with confusion on the slats above me, as if I lay in a coffin, confined to a small box.
I realized where I was—beneath my bed.
I levered up. There was enough space beneath the tall bed to raise my head to see what the hells was going on.
I met a crown of pale blond hair, the long locks sweeping across my body like feathers as Nelle scraped her teeth against my skin.
Her tongue lapped over the bumps of my ribs, raising goosebumps, her breath washed in swirls of heat as she rubbed her cheek and chin over the curve of my figure, all to that mindless humming that tightened my body and turned my blood to molten gold.
What the hells was she doing?
I sucked in a sharp breath when I understood exactly what.
Scent marking me.
Nelle glanced up, and I met eyes gone black that glittered like the night sky. She straddled my thighs and prowled over top of me. Her sex-mussed hair slithered over a shoulder when she angled herself to stare unblinkingly back.
And I realized what she’d done.
During my slumber, she’d pushed and rolled me under the bed, and tugged the overlaying rugs and furs right down to the ground so we were hidden away. She’d even dragged a mixture of bedding belonging to each of us and nestled them around my body.
She’d replicated a burrow of sorts.
Like a wyrm would do beneath the earth.