Chapter 32
Graysen
Perched on the writing desk was a silver tin, the wildflowers etched into its sides caught candlelight that folded around its form.
My mother had kept this tin filled with her fragrant dried tea leaves for whenever she visited the Purveyor of Rarities.
After the shitshow of the past six hours, I would’ve preferred something a lot fucking stronger than chamomile, but Florin was a teetotaler, and despite it all, my mother’s tea was a pleasant respite that warmed my belly.
I took another large swig of tea and checked on Mela, pressing the back of my curled fingers against her forehead, noting the warmth and flush of vitality to her flesh.
While she’d slept, I’d cleaned the ash and grime from her exposed flesh with a damp cloth, tucked a feathery blanket around her prone figure, and found a soft pillow to cushion her head.
I’d prayed to Skalki, giving my thanks for sparing my friend’s life.
When I extended my gratitude to Florin as well, he quickly waved it off, grimacing as if my gratitude had offended him.
The fire crackled and spat, bathing Florin’s profile in shadowy orange as he stooped over to ladle himself a fresh cup of tea.
He straightened and ambled back into his shop to continue cleaning up the mess of destruction I’d caused by kicking in his door.
“Take your time, Tamer,” he advised as he passed by where I sat. “Finish your tea.”
This was my third cup, and honestly, even though I was completely exhausted, I couldn’t sit here and stew in a puddle of thoughts that all centered on Nelle.
As soon as Mela had recovered from the Gestelt poison, I’d mentally searched for those threads of life that bound Nelle to me. Relief washed through my lungs when I found them, faintly glowing in the cold, black depths of my soul.
Life still burned in her.
She’d experienced a myriad of emotions since then, joy being one of them, and such overwhelming love and happiness. But now I was worried. More than fucking worried. I could feel Nelle’s anger beneath my skin, bubbling like hot, painful blisters. My knee bounced as unease found a way of release.
I can’t…
What the Uzrek had urged—to let Nelle free from my heart—was advice I needed to heed. But it was far easier said than done. Everything in my body, my soul, seethed with urgency to go to Nelle, to find her and calm her.
But how could Nelle ever leave me if I was still holding onto her?
I have to let her go…
The teacup rattled upon the saucer when I put it down, rising to follow Florin to help put his shop back together.
We’d talked in between working. For someone who claimed he was constantly irked at my mother’s incessant chattering, he was certainly fucking calling the kettle black.
He was intrigued by the abilities and qualities of a tamer and had asked a slew of questions.
There wasn’t much that I could offer in return.
I didn’t know a lot, myself. All I’d been able to share was how it felt to cross vast distances through a void that folded space as easily as my fingers bent paper.
I crouched down and hefted up the door from where it had ended up after I’d kicked it in.
It was tall and heavy, and fucking cumbersome to navigate through the alleyway of freestanding shelving.
Leaving it leaning against the wall, I headed back to the mess in the shop and retrieved an old toolset.
I got to work repairing the holes on the doorjamb and hinges before realigning the door and screwing everything back into place.
Florin had placed his cup of tea on a low table and had resumed sorting through the debris.
The kicked-in door had sailed through his store and smashed a lot of wares.
Glass jars had exploded into shards that glittered upon the soft loops of wool like frost. Curiosities were strewn wide, some even crawling or wriggling away.
Liquid rarities had soaked into the rugs and were lost.
My destruction had cost the Purveyor of Rarities a small fortune, which he continued to grumble about under his breath, “You couldn’t just knock?” shooting me annoyed scowls as he gathered what he could salvage and swept the rest up, dumping it all into a metal bucket.
After rehanging the door, I eased it back and forth, checking my handiwork. The bell above the door chimed tink-tink-tink with every forward and backward pass. As I swung the door to and fro, a new thought bloomed inside my mind and overshadowed everything else.
I stilled, frowning, my gaze darting outside Florin’s lair to the staircase landing.
I’d not been able to enter Florin’s domain when I’d been holding Mela’s poison-ravaged body in my arms. Despite being a child of the Houses, she was human, I got that.
And I understood I was somehow different.
Perhaps being a tamer had allowed me past the wards at the time I’d first arrived with Nelle.
But there was something else in all of that.
Something that kept tapping an insistent beat at the back of my mind.
I spun slowly back around to face the Horned God, who finished gathering up miniature bones and dropped them into a wooden bowl.
He ambled forward to retrieve his teacup, taking a long slurp before sighing in pleasure and chomping away at a piece of dead animal floating in the goopy tea.
I braced a hand on my hip, the other resting on the edge of the door as I cocked my head, considering the Horned God.
Just before our earlier departure, he’d wanted to know which of us had opened the door topside, the secret doorway in the market that led down here.
It had seemed important to Florin to discover who it had been.
Nelle herself acknowledged that the magical doorway hadn’t opened for her—it had opened only for me.
How had Nelle, born with a wyrm inside her, one of the most powerful creatures of our world, not been able to get the secret door to open for her? Maybe Zrenyth’s rope collaring her had prevented the wards from detecting the wyrm.
I addressed the Horned God. “Florin.”
He glanced over, the teacup hovering at his lips as he raised one furry eyebrow, silently waiting for me to speak.
“Can an other enter this place?”
Florin snorted into his cup of tea. “Not likely.”
My frown deepened as I stepped closer. “Then how did my mother find you?” Even if she had found clues and guessed the Purveyor of Rarities’s location, exactly as Nelle had done—the door hadn’t opened for Nelle. So why had it opened for my mother?
She was other.
The kind of other that could steal pain and detect her own kind, nothing compared to a girl with an actual fucking wyrm tethered to her.
Florin gave me a sly look over the rim of his teacup, his smile sharp-toothed and so ruthless it chilled my blood. “Now that is something your mother never thought to ask.”
Startlement cracked through me.
And then that shocked feeling was obscured by my awareness of a loud, ominous noise traveling up the stairwell, the stone floor trembling beneath my boots.
I spun around, whipping out my daggers and lowering myself into a defensive stance.
A writhing mess of silvery threads exploded through the open doorway, blustering inward to shake shelves and flail the strings of intestines and the tapestries hanging from the ceiling. I leaned forward, bracing myself against the tempest of roiling might.
The storm blew apart, the otherworldly strands of power calming to shimmer and hover through the lair like a thick fog. And Sirro stepped through the doorway, accompanied by his Familiar.
The Horned God looked as if he’d woken up from a four-day bender.
His light linen clothing was torn and splattered with black blood.
Flakes of ash crusted his skin, and grime was smeared around his tired features.
He had his arm banded around the waist of his Familiar, supporting her as they walked deeper into Florin’s lair.
She looked just as bad as he did. She’d lost her shoes, and her elegant dress was tattered, her hair wild and snarled.
Sirro’s dark magic curled around her limping figure, offering soothing strokes.
I straightened, my grip relaxing on the hilts of the wyrmbone blades.
The Horned God had gotten here fast. In fact, when I thought about it, he’d arrived in the catacombs rather quickly after I’d caught Yezekael and sent out a message, hailing him there.
He had to have some method of traveling quickly.
Since he was alive, it couldn’t be swifting, so it had to be something else.
Sirro arched an eyebrow, his narrowed gaze sliding astutely from Florin to myself. “Graysen. Yet again you surprise me.”
“Master Sirro,” I greeted, about to say more when he slashed a hand through the air, cutting me off curtly.
He frowned, distracted by something behind me.
I half-twisted around, my boots swiveling on a rug, to see him staring into the office, taking in Mela.
His gaze sliced to Florin, eyes flaring wide in astonishment. “The V?duva girl’s still alive? How?”
“Skalki’s joyful tears,” Florin replied smugly, before taking another slurp of his tea.
“You have our goddess’s tears?” Sirro breathed, his eyes widening even further.
“I am a shop of curiosities, Sirro,” Florin snapped back, bristling with annoyance. He brandished a condescending, talon-tipped hand at his wares. “I am the Purveyor of Rarities. Have you aged so much you need glasses to see where you stand?”
Sirro’s expression morphed between incensed anger and amusement. He angled his chin toward the office. “Come, my sweet.” Supporting his Familiar, he guided her past the wreckage. I hurried after him, Florin ambling behind, the shop ringing with the crunching of glass beneath my boots.
One of Florin’s enormous chairs swallowed Sirro’s Familiar as he eased her into it.
She sank back with a weary sigh as strands of his power fluffed and rearranged the autumnal pillows behind her.
Content, she tucked her feet to the side, rested her hands on her lap, and stared straight ahead with a glassy, lacklustre gaze.
Sirro moved to the workbench, his fingertips brushing the worn, nicked surface.
He scanned Mela, sleeping peacefully beneath the feathered blanket, the steady rise and fall of her chest untroubled.
Not a single sign of the vile effects of the Gestelt bolt remained on her body.
Even the burn scars on her throat had faded, as if she possessed unnatural healing.
Her eyelids twitched, and she let out a contented murmur, stretching like a cat before snuggling back down for more sleep.
“Extraordinary,” Sirro murmured in awe. He glanced upward at the Horned God. “So this could negate the poisonous lance a Gestelt weapon would have on our kind?”
Florin grunted, tearing his goat-like eyes from Sirro to study Mela thoughtfully. “Perhaps. It’s not like I have a lot left to experiment with.” He flicked his gaze back to Sirro. “Maybe it only works on humans.”
Sirro’s lips twitched with mirth. “I’m sure if you did come up with an antidote, the price would be atrocious.”
Florin grinned gleefully. “No doubt.”
It was utterly useless to ask, yet I couldn’t stop myself. I’d been there when our chance to uncover Yezekael’s secrets died with Silas and the Gestelt bolt meant for me. “Who has my mother?”
Sirro blinked at the abrupt question, his hand dropping to his side as his mouth pressed into an apologetic line. “I’m sorry that creature didn’t live long enough to help us uncover the truth about your mother.”
I’d been the only one present with skills able to overhear the Horned God whispering angrily to that otherworldly creature, desperate to learn who had betrayed her.
An ugly mire of twisted guilt, anger, and confusion surged through me as I stood in Florin’s office, tightening the air in my throat.
“You knew all along that someone else betrayed my mother. That it wasn’t the Wychthorns at all.
” I dragged a hand through my hair, gripping the ashy strands until pain stung across my scalp.
Deep down, I knew it still wouldn’t have saved Nelle from us. We needed her to pressure Byron into giving up Brangwene’s Hjarte.
But Gods… My family had blamed the wrong people.