Chapter 33
Graysen
Sirro stormed forward, every inch of him bristling, and his voice boomed, cruel and absolute. “The Wychthorns did betray you! Don’t you dare think otherwise!”
His hand clamped onto my shoulder, squeezing until the tendons ached.
“Never, ever forget that the Wychthorns betrayed you. They might not have gotten to my kind first, but they still exposed your mother. And much worse, Byron and his wife condemned you all to death. Every single Crowther would have been slaughtered that night. Your entire family. Every aunt and uncle. Brother and sister. Cousin and grandparent. All your loyal servants… Brutally butchered… Every member of your House annihilated for harboring an other. That is what the Wychthorns were willing to do. That is the depth of their deceit.”
His grip on my shoulder eased a fraction, and though he spoke quieter, his tone carried the same authority.
“I had to investigate your mother—the word came from Byron himself. But yes, someone else reached my brethren that same night.” His hand dropped to his hip, his furious stare shifting to the cauldron sputtering into the fire.
It was a good, long moment before he exhaled slowly, shoulders slumping as the anger drained out of him.
“I’d been at the Wychthorns investigating Nelle.
I was pressured to do so since she wasn’t out in public as often as she should’ve been. ”
“And you found nothing different about Nelle?”
“Nothing at all.” He began to pace the office.
“Afterward, I discovered someone else had betrayed Tabitha to one of my brethren. It was too late for me to intervene. Lyressa had already claimed her.” The defeat in his voice caught me off guard.
“And now I don’t know who betrayed her. Nor who Yezekael sold the information to.
It has to be either Lyressa or someone else…
Someone who ordered her to go around me to claim your mother herself… And I’m leaning toward the latter.”
He swiveled back around to face me, and I held myself rigid as he searched my face, his intense eyes gone somber. “I don’t think you, your sister, or anyone else present was meant to survive that night.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your mother invoked Draxxon’s Covenant.”
A memory surfaced of my mother’s voice, desperate and raw, shouting at the red-haired Horned God.
I beg you for mercy. For Draxxon’s Covenant. I’ll do anything you ask. Spare my son. Spare my family!
“I thought it was a reminder of Draxxon and Hamon’s sacrifice.”
“It’s more than that. Your family lost a great deal the night the Houses retaliated after your ancestors stepped down from the Great House.
Oskar survived, but he was a child and too young to know the old knowledge.
Your library, treasure trove, and entire house were ransacked.
” Sirro turned to Florin, arching a curious brow.
“I’m assuming Tabitha learned it from you? ”
Florin shrugged. “It might have come up. I’m not sure. She chitchatted far too much for my liking. Always poking at my wares and reading my books.”
Sirro didn’t look at all surprised that Florin had known my mother. A look passed between the two Horned Gods before Florin rumbled inquisitively, “How did you know she used to visit me?”
Sirro smiled slyly, jutting his chin toward Florin’s desk with its human-sized writing set before striding to the office door where a black leather tote hung from impala horns.
He half-pulled out a feather duster and winked.
“Tabitha might have risen to the upper ranks, but at her heart she was a servant. And very passionate about cleanliness.”
The Purveyor of Rarities chuckled. “That she is.” Shadows and light danced across his blue-black fur and ram horns curling back from his head as he shifted to his apothecary cabinet.
His hooves clacked on stone, his large shadow falling over us as he passed by.
The oversized office suddenly felt too small to contain two Horned Gods, their power trembling against my skin.
Sirro wandered closer as he moved to the fireplace.
“Draxxon’s Covenant was our word, given to your ancestors and bound with wild magic, to stay our hand if we should ever raise it against your family.
” A smile touched his lips, the faintest trace of pride running through it. “Your mother was always so clever.”
Picking up a log, he crouched and added it to the fire, poking it into the flames.
“Lyressa couldn’t work against Draxxon’s Covenant.
And those who accompanied her couldn’t either.
None of them could act against you or your sister.
” His voice thickened with guilt as he rose and faced me.
“I couldn’t do anything to save Tabitha, nor find her.
Lyressa hid her trail by claiming she’d given Tabitha to the Orbweever. ”
That was fucking bullshit. “She’s not dead.”
“I know. I don’t believe for a second Lyressa gave your mother to the Orbweever.
” His lips thinned into a sneer. “A mindless, ravenous creature that consumes everything it’s given—your mother’s remains would never be found.
Claiming she fed her to that beast was a clever way to hide what she was doing. ”
“What is she up to?”
Sirro’s nostrils flared, dark power roiling around his figure. “I still haven’t unearthed her intentions.”
Scowling, I glanced downward, stabbing the stone floor with the toe of my boot. If Sirro couldn’t find out, what chance did we have?
The Witches Ball, my traitorous mind whispered.
My gaze lifted as Sirro continued. “But I do believe she’s working against me specifically.
Maybe even the brethren itself.” He spun on his heel, pacing near his Familiar.
“I don’t like the idea of someone out there, one of the Houses, managing to work around me to accomplish this.
And now we don’t even know who this she was that betrayed Tabitha. ”
The memory of Yezekael’s last words prodded me. “Yezekael mentioned the Hemmlok Forest. That she sought him out there.”
Sirro stilled, his ash-dusted brows drawing together. “Yes. He did.”
The Hemmlok Forest was ancient, sprawling, primordial. Many Horned Gods lived deep within its Heart, including Jurgana and her sisters. “It’s shared by three families,” I said, thinking aloud. The forest lay near Ascendria, and three Houses claimed its thrawn realm.
“Lyons, Deniauds…” Sirro murmured.
“The Deniauds are Nelle’s grandparents,” I said.
Could they have been responsible? Had they protected Nelle by betraying my mother to Yezekael?
I shook my head, fairly certain that Nelle’s grandparents didn’t know that she was other.
They barely knew her. Byron had ensured that.
He hardly spent time with his own family either.
“Indeed, they are,” Sirro mused. “The Szarvases share the forest too.”
A ghostly sensation slipped through my chest, feather-light and cold as sleet, and the words rushed from my lips. “The Szarvases hunt otherworldly creatures in the Hemmlok Forest for the Horned Gods.”
Yezekael was a lesser creature. Otherworldly. Sirro and I shared a look as the truth struck us at the same moment. Yezekael bartered on behalf of others. Surely the Szarvases would know of him.
The shock hit me hard, that I knew something more of my mother’s whereabouts that fateful day. “My mother met one of the Szarvases the day she was stolen.”
Sirro’s spine went ramrod straight. “What?”
“That Szarvas woman was how Tabitha always referred to her,” Florin said as he sprinkled tiny violet grains into a cup of tea.
He stoppered the vial and returned it to the cabinet before lifting the tiny teacup in his large, taloned hand.
Ambling to Sirro’s Familiar, he offered it to her.
She wrapped her hands around the cup and took a sip.
Color returned to her wan face, and the threads of power linking her to Sirro brightened like quicksilver.
“That Szarvas woman,” Sirro repeated, his voice hard as iron.
Florin nodded, his long ears twitching and scattering tendrils of ethereal smoke. Sirro kept staring at him. No, he wasn’t staring at him, but through him as something ticked away in the back of his mind.
It was then that I spoke up, sharing with him what I knew about my mother meeting the other woman at the Monarch Tower. The power shortage and the flash of lightning that had occurred out of nowhere.
He dragged a weary hand down his face. “She gave herself away,” he murmured.
My heart skipped a beat as realization caught up with me at how long he’d known my mother’s secret and never acted against her.
Afterward, silence stretched between us.
Sirro leveled a dark, serious look at me. “A long time ago, before your parents wed, your father was engaged to someone else.”
Astonishment rendered me stupefied.
“It was a union between your family and the Szarvases.”
What the hells.
The Szarvases?
Sirro continued. “Your father and Miss Irma Szarvas were childhood sweethearts.”
Irma Szarvas. The name meant nothing. My memory of the Szarvases was cluttered with the current generation, not my father’s peers.
“You know her as Irma Pellan,” Sirro explained.
It hit like a strike across the face.
My mouth fell open.
Sirro stepped closer. “After the engagement dissolved, Irma married Aldert Pellan.”
I didn’t know Irma personally, but I fucking knew of her. The last time I’d seen her was at Evvie’s engagement celebration. The woman looked as if the life had been sucked out of her soul.
“Irma was enamored with your father. Anyone could see it. And now it seems even when things soured between them, she never gave up hope of reconciliation.”
“From what I gathered from Tabitha over the years,” Florin interjected, “she’s been trying to wedge herself between Tabitha and Varen ever since.”
Violence raged in my blood. I slammed my palm against the workbench. “She betrayed my mother. It has to be her!”
Sirro lifted a placating hand. “We don’t know for certain. But I’ll wager it was her.”
I glanced between the Horned Gods, my entire body humming with wrath. “It has to be her. It all adds up. But how did she find out?”
“I’m assuming the lightning strike has something to do with it,” Sirro said.
Maybe someone got hurt.
Maybe my mother helped them by stealing their pain.
Irma fucking Pellan.
But it was someone else’s face that came to mind.
Gerrit Pellan. The youngest, softer and kinder than his siblings.
A few weeks ago, he’d accompanied his father when the elder barged uninvited into our meeting with Sirro.
Gerrit had seemed off with my presence, uneasy… As if he knew something I didn’t.
I dug deeper into my memory of Gerrit. He’d have been four or five when my mother was taken. Young enough to still cling to his mother’s side. Young enough that Irma might have brought him to the meeting at the Monarch Tower.
He might know exactly what happened that day.
And how Irma Pellan discovered my mother’s secret.
“I’ll find out for sure,” I informed Sirro. “I’ll be the one to speak with her.” Eventually, I would, after prying what I could from her youngest son.
“Good. Because I’m not certain I wouldn’t annihilate her on the spot without interrogating her first.”
My anger faltered. “You really care for my mother.”
“Greatly.”
“Why?”
“As an other, she could never reveal herself to us. My brethren will never know how much we owe her.” He dropped his gaze, tapping his fingers against the workbench in a slow, measured rhythm, regret seeping through his voice. “And five years ago, I had to make a choice.”
Five years ago, he’d given us the boon. The Alverac. A dark, twisted way to gain Nelle. I sucked in a sharp breath as I suddenly remembered what he’d said to me after the meeting Gerrit and his father had barged into.
Choices. We all have to make choices. Some divide us right down the middle, cleave us in two. We have to pick one side or the other. Make one choice over another.
Did he suspect Nelle was a wyrm?
Was that what he meant? That he had to choose between saving Nelle or my mother?
“You gifted us the Alverac,” I breathed. “You knew Nelle would get us into the Witches Ball.”
His mouth tipped up, a shoulder hitching as his gaze met mine. “I’d hoped.”