Chapter 25 #3
“Red door.” I pointed at it, trying to distract him.
He curled a lip at the square.
I couldn’t really blame him.
The buildings here had been painted once, all in different colours, but now the plaster had fallen away from the stone in places, and a layer of green coated what was left. I could smell that algae in the damp, chilly air, together with something like rotting meat and vomit.
Delightful.
Sylvan led the way of course, striding across the slippery cobblestones with a grace only a fae could manage. I trailed behind him, grimacing whenever my feet slipped and I had to fight to stay upright. I swore fae were part cat. It would explain how they were so light-footed and nimble.
He was banging on the weatherbeaten door before I had made it two thirds of the way across the square. He looked back at me, expression reeking of disappointment, and muttered something as he waved his hand through the air.
The acrid tang of magic filled it and heat shimmered over my skin, and when it abated, the cobblestones were dry and the heavy scent of algae and other things was gone.
Thank the gods.
I reached him as the door swung open.
“Piss off,” a grey-haired female barked.
And the door closed in Sylvan’s face.
I bit back my chuckle this time, but couldn’t hold back my smile, even when Sylvan shot me a warning look that told me not to dare mention that he was now three for three.
He curled his fingers into a fist and banged the side of it on the door so hard I expected it to fall inwards under the assault.
The door jerked open again and she snarled, “Do you not understand English?”
“I assure you, witch, I understand you perfectly well,” Sylvan growled right back at her.
Her hazel eyes narrowed on him, her lips compressing as she stared. Hard. Either she was really struggling to figure him out, was trying to cast magic on him and failing, or she thought that if she kept glaring at him that he would in fact go away.
I doubted that would work.
A number of people had opened the shutters and lifted the sashes on their windows and were now leaning out of them, watching us.
Some had even stepped out of their door to lean against the algae-ridden wall, and several had grouped up to whisper about us.
Every pair of eyes on me raised my hackles and had me wanting to turn tail and get the hell out of here.
I didn’t have the time or the patience for a staring match, so I closed the scant distance between us and subtly waved a hand at her to get her attention.
“Hello. I’m very sorry to disturb you, but a witch pointed us to you and if you could answer some questions, I’d really appreciate it.
She told us the reason you were shunned and I think maybe my parents came to you and you helped them. ”
She eyed me, and then peered at the guards behind me, and then glared at Sylvan.
That glare roamed over him, singling out his fine clothing, the jewels on his sword, and the real gold on his scabbard.
“I’ll speak for coin.” She held her hand out to him, palm facing upwards, a smile creasing the corners of her mouth.
“You will speak or you will lose your tongue.” Sylvan drew his sword slightly, flashing the honed blade.
Behind me, I heard several more swords being drawn in the same way.
The only one who didn’t move was the commander.
He watched me, and I had the feeling he had been given strict instructions to guard me in particular, and if anything went down, I would find myself being hauled over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and teleported to the portal.
“There’s no need to threaten her.” I placed my hand on Sylvan’s arm, and then looked over my shoulder at the guards, giving them all pointed looks that commanded them to sheathe their weapons, and then turned to the witch.
“I don’t have any coin. I’m sorry. I just need to know if my father really is the male these people say he is. ”
She stared even harder at Sylvan.
And I realised why she kept looking at him like that when she finally spoke, her words cutting through the heavy air as surely as a blade might have to cleave the tension away.
“You look like him. I don’t forget a face, especially not the face of a liar.
He promised us riches and help in exchange for a little trick…
I forget his words.” Her lips pursed. “It’s been so long.
Something about needing heirs and needing them to be secret.
Safe. I had a good business before he came along.
Never should have done it… never would have done it…
except my sister was ailing and I needed the help.
He said he could get his hands on the waters. ”
“The waters?” I frowned at her, unsure what sort of water could heal someone.
Sylvan spoke over me. “The Hallow Waters?”
She nodded. “He said they can cure anything.”
Waters that could cure anything? No wonder the witch had been willing to bargain with him.
“It is true. My cousin did not lie,” he said, “but the Waters are closely guarded by the Nightmare Court.”
Sylas must have been desperate in order to risk entering that court, breaking the accord to take the Waters from the unseelie.
I shuddered at the memory of Kalyn and how he had manipulated me. “What happened?”
She scowled at Sylvan, as if he was to blame.
“I helped him. Took his… donations… and whenever males came with their females, needing help conceiving, I used them instead of what the client gave me. I felt it was wrong after the first one, I swear, but the fae knew what he was doing. He would only give me a drop of Water each time. A drop for each seed I planted in an unsuspecting womb. A drop wasn’t enough to help my sister, so I had to keep doing it, earning a drop each time until I had enough. ”
Sylas had manipulated her.
I was beginning to see the truth in what Meiryn had told me. Our father hadn’t been a good man. He had been a monster.
“How many did you help him impregnate?” I held my breath, part of me not wanting to know the answer to that question, because if the other witch was correct, most of them had been killed by their parents.
Her expression shifted, hazel eyes darting this way and that as she muttered to herself, and then she finally looked at me. “Fifteen maybe. Twenty at most before he stopped coming, leaving me with a thimbleful of Water. Not enough.”
“He stopped coming?”
She nodded. “He just stopped coming one day. The bastard. He knew our deal… but he stopped coming. No more donations. No more Water.”
“He died,” Sylvan put in and I looked at him, recalling what I had read in the journals. “Three years after the record you read about and his visit here.”
“Sounds about right,” the witch mumbled. “That sounds fae to me. Reneging on a deal. Leaving others in the shit.”
Sylvan should have been a wolf, because his hackles rose splendidly as he stared the old female down, and the bite in his words was unmistakable. “We are seelie, and not the type to behave in such a manner.”
He said seelie like it made them gods, like they were flawless souls with only good in them, incapable of cruelty.
Yet the evidence of their cruelty and their deception was standing right in front of him.
Me.
The witch laughed in his face, very enthusiastically, spraying him with spittle. “Seelie. Unseelie. Never trust a fae, I say. No benevolence in tricking females into getting pregnant with your offspring, is there?”
He didn’t say a word. I supposed it was hard to form a good comeback for that one. At least it was hard to form one that would keep his breed looking as holy as he had made them out to be.
“Soon after he stops coming, my sister died… and the parents start coming. Threats. Violence. One even tried to kill me. Several left their babes on the doorstep of my store. Dead.” She bit out that word from between clenched teeth as she advanced on Sylvan and prodded him in the chest, and he still didn’t say a word, didn’t even react to what his cousin had done, to the violence he had brought about against innocent children.
The witch snapped, “They drove me out after that.”
“Do you have any records?” I watched as she kept prodding Sylvan in the chest, each one a little harder than the last, as if she was testing his breaking point.
A dangerous game.
I had seen Sylvan’s fangs, that beast behind the mask that craved violence, and I was sure that if the witch kept pushing him, she would lose her head to his blade before she even saw him move.
She backed off and shrugged at me. “If you’re looking to know if your parents came to me, I don’t need a record to tell you.
Only one wolf came to me, with the same hair and same soft eyes, and I will never forget her face, not as long as I live.
She haunts me. They both do. So happy to be getting a pup.
Mother Earth, it made me feel wretched, but I told myself my sister needed help, and your parents needed a pup.
I never did manage to convince myself I had done the right thing.
They were the first. You were the first one.
I’m glad you lived. Your parents were good. Kind. I hoped they wouldn’t kill you.”
“They loved me and protected me to the end.” Those words came easily to me. I wasn’t sure she deserved any kind of absolution for her sins, but I also couldn’t leave her wondering what sort of horrible life she had inflicted upon me.
“I’m glad… and I’m sorry,” she said, softening a little as she looked at me, and opened her mouth to say something.
She snapped it shut.
Going deathly still.
I felt it too.
That vibration in the air.
That brush of darkness over my limbs.
The tender swirl of a shadow against my ankle.
That scent of wild, winter storm that stirred my wolf, that revealed the reason my instincts had been battering me from the moment I had stepped out of the portal, and made all my focus narrow on one point behind me.
That connection that bloomed in my heart.
Fierce. Bright. Consuming.
Kaeleron.