Chapter 35
A THIEF AND A LIAR
FELíNE FED SIG THROUGH THE corral’s wooden fencing.
His needy velvet lips pressed over her open palm, searching for additional kernels of grain.
The bucket of oats sat forgotten by his front hooves.
He much preferred to take treats from her hands.
She wasn’t complaining. The temperamental beast was docile as a newborn lamb now that he had gotten his way, and Felíne enjoyed his quiet company.
Sig even permitted the unnamed wolf to settle inside the tree line and watch them so long as he didn’t approach the fence.
“You need a name,” she informed the wolf.
He watched her with glowing yellow eyes.
Eyes like the grimalkin. Felíne shuddered.
Sig snorted, sensing her disquiet, scattering oats into the grass.
The memory of the pit resurfaced, her untenable fright surging despite the absence of immediate danger. Fear was funny that way.
Felíne remembered the first time Mender Alcuin had secreted her to one of his infirmaries in the city.
She’d been fourteen. Her panic attacks had all but faded into distant musing.
Yet when she’d stepped across that threshold into a patient’s room and seen a strange shurii woman waiting patiently in the examination chair, she’d frozen.
Her anxiety rushed back like water around a breaking dam.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. Strangers were dangerous.
Wasn’t that what she’d always been told?
What if the woman knew who she was? What if she were a member of the Cozened?
What if she tried to take Felíne? She couldn’t let that happen.
She held too much responsibility. Everyone was counting on her.
Mender Alcuin had guided Felíne to an empty room and talked her through her breathing until her racing heart had slowed, her shallow breaths became regular once more, and the vice clamping her chest in its anxious grip had loosened.
Then he led her back to the patient’s room. Felíne had balked, looking up at him in confusion. He’d smiled and said, “However will you master your fear, dear one, if you refuse to face it?”
Felíne glanced back at the wolf and held its unblinking gaze. His silver belly was pressed into a bed of clover, pink tongue lolling.
“Grim,” she said to him. “We’ll call you Grim.”
Both animals perked their ears. Felíne turned to see the woman, Santhe, exit the cabin and make for the dense hedge that separated Kal’s property from the darkened interior of the forest. Felíne stepped back from the corral, dusting her hands of grain.
Santhe noticed Felíne and paused. Then she changed her direction and approached, cold and distrustful. Felíne couldn’t blame her. Oh, how she missed Imogen’s steadfast companionship.
“Are you really who you say you are?”
Felíne nodded.
Santhe’s focus narrowed.
Felíne tried to find some irritation or anger to fortify her, but she only felt sadness. She missed her friend and wished she were meeting Kal’s under better circumstances. “I don’t fault you for distrusting me. I’m only sorry that I’ve earned it.”
“My…friend is still there. In Asteros,” Santhe murmured. The way she said ‘friend’ made Felíne think they were more than that. “We risked so much to get Railah out of the city. And now? To realize we took the Prima instead?”
Compassion welled. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. It was a misunderstanding.”
Santhe’s brown eyes sharpened to splinters. “Yet you said nothing.”
“I didn’t,” Felíne agreed. “I did not know Kal’s intentions. I feared for my life.”
“Selfish,” Santhe muttered.
There was the irritation she’d been seeking.
“Selfish?” Felíne bristled. “A fear for my life is a fear for yours. For your friend’s.
For every single shurii living.” Santhe struggled to hide her surprise.
Felíne continued. “Do you have hope for a future? For children, perhaps? Grandchildren? If anything happens to me, it’s not just me who suffers.
I may be many things, Santhe, but selfish has never been one of them. ”
The space between Santhe’s brows creased deeply. “You really believe the prophecy, then?”
“It is not blind faith,” Felíne said. “It is certainty. If I don’t return…”
They could hold Asteros accountable for every wrong ever committed, and it would all be for naught. They’d be doomed regardless.
The door to the cabin creaked, and Santhe glanced over her shoulder. “And Kal?” she asked. “It’s clear the two of you care for one another, despite this…complication. He believes he can keep you.”
Felíne’s heart squeezed. “Kal will accept reality,” she said, though her voice had lost some of its conviction. “He must.”
Adder appeared from the front of the cabin. He glanced curiously in their direction, silver hair catching the light.
“I hope you’re right,” Santhe said, turning to join him. “For all our sakes.”
Felíne waited until both Santhe and Adder had disappeared behind the wall of green before picking her way back toward the cabin’s front door.
She expected to find Kal on the couch where she’d left him, but the room was empty.
As was the hallway, the kitchen, his bedroom, and even the bath.
The cabin wasn’t large. There were only so many places he could be.
“Kal?”
“Here,” his voice called. Felíne followed the distant sound back toward the living room and stopped before a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf near the hearth. Odd. The vertical edge of the shelf was askew. She nudged the lip farther out. It swung open on silent hinges.
Felíne stared down into a dim stairwell. Kal had a basement hidden behind his bookshelf. Of course he did. She stepped onto the first descending stair.
It wasn’t a dank, creepy basement. Not like the unused tunnels beneath Asteros. She didn’t breathe stale air. No cobwebs clung to the ceiling. No broken, dusty pavers marked her descent.
No, this was a sleek stairwell of polished mahogany, walls lined in pale stone.
Cheerful oil lamps flared with life, their amber wicks ensconced within textured glass cylinders.
The floor was smooth tile layered in plush cream-colored carpets.
Upon reaching the bottom, Felíne found herself in a long, rectangular room with a surprisingly cavernous ceiling sporting thick wooden beams. The far end of the room was shadowed, but she could see a wide array of armor and weaponry, each piece arranged neatly along one wall.
To her left sat an ornate bar. Shelving behind the expansive counter held an assortment of bottles filled with amber liquid.
The collection would make any barkeep flush with envy.
But it wasn’t the armory or the impressive selection of liquor that made her breath catch.
The entire right wall of the basement was carved with bookshelves bursting with texts.
A comfortable, overlarge chaise lounge occupied the center of the space, flanked by a rustic low table.
Seated upon the lounge, surrounded by a flurry of parchment, tattered scrolls, and heavy, leather-bound tomes, was Kal.
The man had a secret basement filled with books, liquor, and weaponry. If Felíne didn’t love him before, this settled things.
They stared at one another.
“Having fun?”
Kal ran a hand through his hair, distressing the already disheveled curls. Additional lamplight spilled over his features, gilding his tawny skin. “Not particularly, no.”
Felíne carefully tiptoed around the mess of vellum and crawled onto the wide, plush chaise. “What is all this?”
“The godscripts.”
“What?” Her eyes snapped to his. There had to be a hundred texts alone. Why in the world would one man need that many copies of the same holy book? “All of it?”
Kal leafed through a particularly worn manuscript. “Not all. But most. What I’ve been able to collect the past fifteen years or so, anyway. Many are fragmented translations. It’s been a while since I’ve gone through them.”
“Goddess mercy, Kal. Were you a Faithful Cursed?”
“No.” He barked a laugh. “Though you should know the Faithful Cursed is not the only religion built upon the godscripts.”
“Then, why keep all of these copies?”
He glanced up briefly. “They’re not copies.”
Felíne’s brow wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
“These are original texts.”
It took a moment for his words to process. When they finally did, the room tilted. “That’s…impossible.”
The Faithful Cursed maintained that the godscripts were based on one sacred book, the original book, kept safely interred deep within the elder’s city of Doceo.
The queen’s priests had copies that they referenced in their temple ceremonies, and the royal villa’s library kept its own editions.
Every so often, one of the elders would arrive from Doceo with a personal copy.
But this? To have so many purported original handwritten accounts? This was unheard of.
Felíne had a hundred questions, but her brain only seemed capable of producing one. “Why? Why would you need so many?”
“Research,” he replied.
Felíne picked up a scroll and nearly dropped it when she saw the date penned in the corner.
It was written five centuries ago. Her skepticism regarding the authenticity of Kal’s collection evaporated.
To her knowledge, the oldest copy in Asteros was four-hundred years old. “What were you researching?”
“Nothing that made a difference,” he eluded.
“And now?”
Onyx eyes connected with hers. Felíne’s breath caught.
He believes he can keep you.
“Hopefully something that will.”