Chapter 48
I’m grateful that he walks me up the street, giving me time to gather all the pieces of myself that went sprawling. Everything he said has left me spilled, my emotions flowing free.
I’ve never known such intense feelings before, which in part is why I didn’t trust what’s between us. But I know without a doubt that it’s not just me, that it’s not one-sided. That he feels this fixation too.
That he . . . desires me. Completely.
And Fates, his words. I want to lap them up and swallow them down. To keep them inside of me where I can digest them one by one.
The Pied Piper took me with his magic, and now he’s stealing my heart, bit by bit.
It’s a terrifying thought.
He seems to know I’m a riot of emotions that I don’t know what to do with, because after a few moments of anxious silence, he starts pointing out things on the street, explaining with a comforting drawl all the different structures they’ve most recently built.
“I’d like to bring you to meet someone now, if that’s alright with you,” he tells me after we’ve walked the length of the block.
I blink up at him. “Who?”
“Another friend of mine. He lives here. Will you come meet him?”
“Of course.”
I’m feeling much more solid by the time he leads me up the path lined with houses, though I’m curious as to who he’s having me meet.
The cabins are small, appearing to be made from the wood of the forest behind them, their lumber faces exposed, plaster and paint unmarred, brick chimneys clear of soot stains.
He turns us down a path to one of the cabins, and we pass a row of bushes with birds pilfering the stems. They caw and fly away as we go by, only to return as soon as we reach the front door.
Varrik knocks, and a few moments later, Ciona swings it open.
“Oh, Varrik. I’m glad you’ve come to visit him.”
“How is he?”
She presses her lips tight in obvious worry but says, “He’ll be glad to see you.”
We walk inside the one-room cabin, and I look around.
There’s a small kitchen to our left, with a pair of chairs at a round table.
Directly ahead is a single sofa, and to the back is a partitioned-off area.
Just to our right is a bed draped with blankets and furs as if it were deep winter.
There’s a man lying there, propped up slightly against the headboard with a plethora of pillows.
He sets the book he was reading onto his lap.
His brown skin is wrinkled and loose, like he’s lost a lot of weight recently, and his hair is black but has started to come in shockingly white at the roots.
But there’s no missing the red stains on the tips of his ears.
“Well, if it isn’t the all-powerful pipe-toting Govern, Lord Pied himself,” he rasps with a grin.
“I hope you brought me a bottle of wine.”
“I thought you seeing me was gift enough,” Varrik replies wryly.
“Useless.” The man huffs, but then it turns into a snarled breath that I think is a laugh.
Varrik walks up to the bed and looks him over. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, you know. Fucking great,” he drawls, his voice torn to bits and pieces.
“Birute,” Ciona chastises from the kitchen, where she’s tending to a kettle. “Manners.”
“Why?” he coughs, before he turns and spots me as I make my way over. “Oh. Beg pardon.”
I shake my head as I stop next to Varrik. “No need. Swear all you like.”
“Birute, this is Estinya. Estinya, this is my friend Birute.”
When our gazes meet, the man’s constellation forms like the shape of an egg. Earthly calm. Finds strength in humor. Stubborn.
“Nice to meet you,” I tell him with a smile.
“Is it? Can’t imagine why,” he says self-deprecatingly. “I’d get up, but you caught me at a bad time. I’m not usually in bed. I only sleep here, sit here, eat here, and fucking piss in a pot here.”
“And yet, I see you’re in fine spirits,” Varrik counters, which makes rocky laughter rumble from Birute’s chest.
I look over at Varrik, and he answers my unspoken question. “Birute used his magic a few months ago in a large city to dispel Hail Plague, but it took a massive amount of power,” he explains to me. “He’s still . . . recovering.”
“Still dying is what he means,” Birute cuts in. “He doesn’t like to say it. Thinks he can still get my magic to latch with someone and I’ll miraculously be healed. Even though I’ve been here for months and met everyone there is to meet and it hasn’t happened.”
“It will happen,” Varrik retorts firmly.
He lets out a severed sigh. “We can’t all fit into your ‘save the world’ plan, Pied.”
“Maybe not all, but you can, and I have the proof right here,” he says, turning to me. “I’ve latched to Estinya.”
Birute’s bushy brows lift. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He looks at my horns. “A fiend, huh?”
“I’ll start having you meet all the fiends residing here too. Don’t give up hope.”
Birute swallows down Varrik’s words and studies me thoughtfully. “You fiends really are full of surprises, aren’t you?” A coarse noise scratches through his chest as he breaks out into a grin. “Wait till the rest of the world realizes that they were going about this all wrong.”
“Wrong about what?”
“All the magic-less fae celebrating us Core but spurning you fiends. It’s funny. We Core are dying, and if too many of us kick off, it’ll only be you and your blood to beat back the Plagues. They should’ve been nicer to you lot.”
He coughs again, like rocks tossed together.
It takes him several seconds to catch his breath, and he mops up his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief, his movements laborious.
When he leans back again, he rests his head on his propped pillows and heaves out a sigh.
“So, is he being a bossy bastard?” he asks, gesturing to Varrik.
“Yes. Is he always like that?” I ask with a grin.
“Fucking always.”
“Birute,” Ciona chastises again. “Language.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“We’ll go. You rest,” Varrik tells him. “Later today, you’ll start meeting some fiends.”
Birute gives me a wry look. “See? He can’t help it.”
Varrik rolls his eyes, but I don’t miss the way his brow has tightened with worry. “Do you need anything?”
“I made tea for him,” Ciona trills from the kitchen, and she comes over with a steaming mug.
Birute grimaces at it and looks back at Varrik. “I don’t want tea. I want a bludgeon to the fucking head. Or a barrel of ale.”
Varrik shakes his head. “No to both. Tea’s all you’re getting.”
“You’re a shit Govern.”
“I’m a good friend, though.”
“A friend would let me get drunk, at least,” he grumbles.
“Maybe Ciona’s tea will intoxicate you.”
He takes a sip from the mug and grimaces. “No such luck.” He clonks it down on his bedside table and then grabs one of his pillows. “Leave me to sleep. You’re all aggravating.” He pauses, looking over at me. “Except you. Have any mead on hand, by chance?”
I shake my head. “I left that in my other dress.”
“Oh well. Next time, sneak it in, would you?”
Smiling, I nod. “I’ll do my best.”
“You sure you don’t need anything else?” Ciona asks him, worry in her blue eyes.
He waves her away. “I’m fine, Ciona. Go sniff some blood and let a poor man sleep.”
She fusses for another moment, pulling a blanket over him and then leaving a biscuit beside the bed, but he’s already turned away and snoring by the time the three of us leave the cabin.
As we walk down the path, I look over my shoulder before facing forward again. “I like him,” I say quietly.
Varrik nods. “Birute is a good man.”
My gaze flicks over. “I know what you’re doing.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” he replies, without missing a beat.
I roll my eyes. “Don’t lie.”
“How can I be lying when I’ve said nothing at all?”
“People lie in their silence all the time. It’s just harder to hear.”
“She’s right about that,” Ciona puts in.
“Fine, what do you think I’m doing?”
“You brought me to meet him so that I won’t be mad at you for stealing fae. So that I could see the repercussions to a Core fae who doesn’t have a Latch.”
“Yes,” he admits with a sigh. “When you asked to come here, I realized that I could show you what we’re doing. So you could see for yourself that I’m not just some villainous bastard. I’m making sure everyone is taken care of—both fiends and fae. It’s important to me that you see that.”
“I do,” I reply with a nod. “And I am relieved . . . I just wish it had been their choice from the start. That’s why I’m conflicted.”
“And I’ve explained to you why I can’t do that yet.”
I let out a breath. “I know.”
“I’m not trying to manipulate you. I’m showing you our reality. Gathering people to come here might seem bad, but it is for a good reason. And for the most part, everyone is happy and adjusting.”
I never thought that being kidnapped by the Pied Piper would make me face such dilemmas of morality. Of weighing good against bad.
As we walk back into the heart of the burg, I look over at the bricked well, watching a fiend woman gather a bucketful of water while laughing at something a fae man says to her.
My eyes flick past them across the street, and my insides jolt. “What is that?”
There’s a narrow building set back slightly, with a bench on one side. At the front of the structure, there’s a protruding space that doesn’t have walls. Instead, it’s enclosed entirely by bars. It’s an open-air jail cell, right there in the middle of the burg.
And clutching on to the bars, looking straight at me, is Theo.