Chapter 89
He was darker than night; blacker than a fathomless abyss. He was lost in swirling black waters, without air or hope. It was a place so deep and so dark there was no up or down. There was no right or wrong. There was no light.
Some claimed you could find the brightest light in the darkest hour, but the solemn one had rejected the light and extinguished the flicker in his own heart.
He’d cut through the Clarks. He’d stormed through the Bards. Once, he’d been called the Knife. He’d been called the Butcher. The Devil’s Hand.
Now, he wasn’t called anything. What he was didn’t have a name.
The wind tracked the slice of his hungry knives and watched as conjurer after conjurer fell. The rocklike one had asked for a storm of blood. He’d asked that the solemn one kill every Bard and Clark cousin in the city.
The rocklike one wanted a war, and the solemn one was his means to starting it.
There was a chance—a good chance—the solemn one wouldn’t survive. A blade became dull if used without sharpening.
But when had that ever mattered to the rocklike one?
He’d always treated the solemn one as disposable.
He’d always looked on him with contempt.
When he was young, the solemn one had often wondered if it was because of the sprinkle of conjurer in his blood.
Later, he’d decided it couldn’t be that—it had to be something wrong with him.
Not his blood, but him. After all, if the rocklike one approved of creatures as loathsome as slipshots or as base as growlings, why couldn’t he give his approval to a nine with a tiny sprinkling of conjurer?
The girl had never cared, but the solemn one wanted the rocklike one’s approval too. Even while he hated him, he wanted his approbation.
The solemn one had never learned that needing, and needing to be needed, could be poisonous to humans.
The outside sky was pitch-black, but the lights of the Bard penthouse were bright. It was a party. Why? Because the Bards loved parties.
The father wasn’t there, but there was a room full of cousins. The mother was there too. The wind was surprised. She was beautiful like an orchid, but thin and fragile too. The funeral had broken the fragile stem of her strength. Her son’s wedding to a Clark had snapped it in half.
Now, the bright, metallic lights glittered on her long, sequined dress. She held a glass of champagne and laughed brittlely. The music was overly loud. The talking was forced and boisterous. Even the food smell was overpowering.
Every now and then, the Bard’s wife glanced at the floor-to-ceiling windows and flinched. But everyone else at the party ignored the gathering clouds and the lightning strikes.
The penthouse elevator dinged. The sound was buried under the music.
Everyone except the mother ignored the man who stepped out of the sliding doors.
If the wind could count, it would say the solemn one killed every conjurer in the room within fifteen seconds. But the wind couldn’t count, so it decided it was better to say everyone except the mother was dead before an oak leaf could fall from its limb and hit the ground.
Some conjured. Some tried to defend themselves. It didn’t matter. The solemn one slid through their defenses. He moved like death itself.
The Bard’s wife froze. Terror gripped her. Her champagne glass slipped through her fingers and shattered against the floor. Without looking, the solemn one spun and threw a knife across the room.
It hit the mother in her chest before he’d fully turned.
She gasped and fell against the window, sliding down to the floor.
The sequins caught the light, and she blinked as the solemn one advanced on her. He had another knife in his hand. His face was cold, his gray eyes darker than night.
The Bard’s wife looked up at the solemn one, and her face leached to white. She lifted her hand—not like she was warding herself from death, but like she was inviting him close.
“I knew . . .” she whispered. “I knew someday, you’d come.”
The solemn one narrowed his eyes. His shadow fell over the woman. The sequins on her dress lost their glitter.
He shrugged at the pale tinge of her lips. “Death comes for us all.”
She shook her head. A tear leaked from the corner of her eye. She began to choke. The solemn one leaned down, ready to end her life.
“Son . . .” she whispered. “Don’t . . .”
The solemn one froze. He stared into the woman’s sharp face.
“Your son won’t save you,” he said. “He’ll be dead before this is all over.”
She lifted her hand, and instead of cutting her down, the solemn one let her touch the constellation of freckles on his cheek.
“You were dead,” she said, “the moment Ragnor left you at Hell Gate. You’ve haunted me my whole life. I knew you’d come.”
The solemn one grabbed the woman’s wrist. The light of her spirit was slowly leaking from her eyes.
“What did you say?” the solemn one asked. “What did you just say?” He leaned close, gripping her to him.
The wind couldn’t curl close to her chest to hear the struggling thud of her heart, but it knew she didn’t have long to live.
“Are you . . .?” The solemn one stared at the knife in the woman’s chest. The blood seeping free had slowed. His expression froze.
Was there right?
Was there wrong?
Was this something he would regret?
“No.” He shook his head vehemently. “No. You aren’t my mother.
If you were my mother, you would never have left me in Hell Gate.
You would never. You’re a liar.” He shook her, and she coughed raggedly.
“I’m not a Bard. A Bard would never have been forced to do—” He clenched his jaw, anguish painted on his face. “I’m not a Bard. I’m not—”
The Bard’s wife—she didn’t look like any of her children—blinked at the solemn one. She looked like she was viewing him through the dark currents of a midnight ocean. Slowly, she pressed her thumb and her first two fingers together. She twisted her hand.
The solemn one didn’t stop her.
She slumped forward, and as her breath rattled free, she painted an illusion in the air.
It was stunningly similar to the illusions the solemn one had often painted for the girl.
But instead of a distant hope or a beloved dream, this scene was a memory.
The wind flew into the illusion and watched.
* * *
“Mama, what’s wrong? Mama, stop crying! Stop crying!” The little one, the musician as a young boy, buried himself against his mother’s side.
He was a beautiful boy—his mother always told him so. He had shining black hair, luminous eyes, and a voice that sounded like an angel’s. He’d always been able to make her smile or laugh, but this time, he couldn’t.
She kept weeping, her eyes red, her face splotchy.
“Mama?” the musician whispered. He began to sing her their favorite song. It was the song about a rabbit who was lost in the woods and had an adventure, until finally, its mother found it and brought it home.
But unlike other days when his mother was sad, this time, the song didn’t cheer her up.
“Go, Ragnor. Go away. Go play with your sister.”
“But Mama, what can I do?”
“Nothing.”
“Can Dad help?”
She laughed, and the bitter, hysteric sound made the musician flinch. “If your father knew . . .” She shook her head. “No, beautiful boy. Go on. Go!”
She pushed him out of the bed, and he scrambled away. But instead of running outside, he hid behind the door and peered through the crack.
He watched her, his hands clenched, as she cried. He mouthed her name—“Mama”—as she wept. He couldn’t help her if he didn’t know what was wrong.
So the musician began to watch his mother. Some days, she was happy, but other days, she closeted herself in her room and kept the lights off. When his father was home, she sparkled and laughed, but when he left, she refused to eat and didn’t sleep.
There was something very, very wrong.
The musician had always been her favorite. He’d always made her smile. So he cuddled his mama. He brought her flowers picked in the park. He sang her songs. He tried to be very, very, very good. But each day, her smiles grew a little less bright, until they were barely there at all.
It was almost too much worry for a tiny body to contain.
What had happened to make his mother so afraid?
Then, one day, after the trickster had been put down for a nap, the mother slipped out of the mansion. She darted quick glances over her shoulder and hurried into shadows. The musician, watching from an upstairs window, opened the latch and scrambled after her.
He followed her, running to keep up with her, darting behind newsstands and crouching behind trash cans. He slipped into a dilapidated brick building in Murray Hill, using his newly birthed power to cloak himself. He barely breathed as he squeezed into a tiny apartment on the fifth floor.
He pressed himself against the plaster wall as his mother ran to a man who was not his father. They hugged. They kissed. The musician didn’t watch. Instead, he crept over creaking floorboards to a small playpen on the floor.
He stared at the chubby, freckle-cheeked boy. He was small—a baby, really. Not a baby like the trickster, but still a baby. At least to the musician, who considered anyone younger than him a baby, this boy was a baby.
He hated him on sight. He knew with unshakeable confidence that this boy was the reason his mother had been weeping. He knew this boy was the reason his songs couldn’t make her smile. He was the reason for her fear.
“Mamamamama,” the freckle-cheeked boy sang.
He reached out his chubby arms. His cheeks had flakes of milk on them, and his clothing was stained with pureed carrots.
The carrot was almost the same color as his hair.
It didn’t darken until later in life. His eyes were the same though: a cautious, hopeful, solemn gray. “Mamamamamama. Mama?”
The musician flinched as his mother pulled away from the freckled, red-haired man.
She stared at the child, and tears filled her eyes. “We can’t keep him. Dagrid suspects. Tonio, Dagrid suspects. He’ll kill us. He’ll kill me. You know—”