Chapter 7 Theo
Theodore Branch, of the Versini line, was having a bad hair day, which meant things were pretty fucking dire. The entire kingdom was going to shit and now he had to grapple with the bird’s nest on his head. It must be the sweat. The constant raking and tugging.
Stress was a beast, and it had its claws in his back.
You’re working yourself to the bone.
As he stood at the cloakroom mirror, combing his hair into submission, his mother’s voice echoed from a dusty room in his head.
He pictured her standing in the doorway of their cottage back in Halbracht, chastising his father as he bent double over his workbench, eyeglasses fogging as he tinkered with some madcap new invention he swore would make them rich.
Come to bed, Piers. Your genius won’t desert you in your sleep.
Bed was the right idea. But Theo couldn’t sleep. Not while the city trembled in wait for the Silver-tongue Saint, and their weapon was not yet made. Not while that thing inside him writhed, growing restless, insistent…
Not while he was lying to everyone he cared about.
Bad Versini.
He glowered at his reflection, the dark circles under his eyes.
At this rate, he looked as bad as Hale. And he didn’t have the creepy shadows to pull it off.
Ugh. Flinging his comb, he abandoned his fight and reached for a cloak instead.
It was vanity that made him don it on his way out of House Armand.
A grave mistake.
The second the Shade-imbued cloth brushed his skin, the magic inside him perked up.
The one he had been trying really hard to ignore.
Power rapped on the door of his soul, hissing:
Let me out.
Let me play.
No fucking way.
Ripping the damn thing off, he shoved the cloak in his satchel and took off like a bullet, leaving the door to House Armand swinging on its hinges. The sooner he got out of here, the sooner he could breathe.
Tobias ran after him. ‘Hey! Wait for me!’
Saints, this kid. The jars of Lightfire in his satchel clinked as he turned, shooing his mini-me back into the house. ‘I’m heading to the blacksmith. I’ll be back late.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
What Theo needed was a break. A moment to contemplate the festering darkness that prodded him day and night, begging to be set free.
‘Anatoli doesn’t take kindly to strangers,’ he told his cousin. Especially the kind that would talk his ear off.
Tobias rolled back on his heels, pouting.
Theo sighed. ‘It’s cheesecake night in the dining room.’
‘All right, have fun. See you later!’ He was gone like a shot, the echo of his footsteps rattling after him.
Theo’s relief was short-lived. Ruined, as usual, by the gargoyle that flew down from the roof, making a circle around his head.
He looked up to where the Saint of Nightmares was standing on the roof, like an avenging angel.
This guy. Seriously.
Hale’s golden eyes pinpricked the falling dark.
That force inside Theo stirred again, an answering to the power in his midst.
Mine!
All mine!
Theo shoved it back down, pressed invisible hands against the door in his soul and did what he always did whenever he found himself alone with Ransom Hale.
He raised his middle finger.
The gargoyle followed him all the way down the street.
Anatoli Fischer, the Hollows’ blacksmith, was more tree than man.
Tall as an oak and with arms as thick, he wore a sweat-stained vest three sizes too small and gold earrings big enough to swing from.
He was bald and cranky and allergic to idle chit-chat, but he was also open to bribery and fairly good-natured after a couple of jars of whiskey.
He greeted Theo with a grunt, standing like a bouncer at the door of his forge.
‘Anatoli.’ Flashing his best grin, Theo fished out a bag of coin and a bottle of whiskey and held them up in offering.
He was welcomed like a king.
An hour later, Anatoli was drunk and Theo was pouring with sweat. Bent double over a furnace, he had the makings of the first true blade of Lightfire in his gloved hands. The heat was everywhere, in his lungs, his bones, the air so hot breathing was becoming a struggle.
His magic was wide awake too. Practically gripping the bones of his ribcage, trying to shove its way out. A moth drawn to all that irresistible Lightfire.
Ignoring his discomfort, Theo continued hammering, beating the metal compound into shape. He soon lost himself to the rhythm of his strikes, bringing the anvil down again and again, until his arm ached and his mind emptied.
You cannot ignore your gift, for ever.
‘Shut up,’ he muttered.
It is rooted in your soul.
He started to sing. Anything to drown out that strange old voice. The incessant pull of his magic. It was dark – too dark. He had felt it that night in the catacombs. He had run from it for a reason. He was still running from it.
This is not who I am.
This is not who I want to be.
The blade was taking shape, this new compound – steelfire – gleaming like a beacon in his hands. Almost done.
Sweat stung his eyes and dripped down his nose. It plinked off the blade, dancing along the sheen of his own reflection. His eyes were wild, teeth gritted tight.
‘Anatoli!’ he yelled. ‘Do you know any folk songs from Farberg?’
‘Of course I know folk songs!’ bellowed the blacksmith, rising unsteadily from his stool. ‘We drank them down for breakfast.’
‘Sing one! Sing all of them!’
Swinging the half-empty bottle around, Anatoli sang his favourite folk songs. He sounded like a sheep in the throes of labour. A cow dying in a field. A flock of gulls coming in from the harbour.
A blissful reprieve.
Every warbling note drowned out the voice inside Theo, enough that he could finish the damn blade in peace. As he plunged the hammered steelfire into a cooling vat of oil, he wished he could plunge himself in too. He was sweating in places he didn’t even know was possible.
Shucking off his gloves, he went to the window and gulped down a lungful of fresh air.
Anatoli stopped bleating. ‘Done so soon?’
‘I feel like I’ve been here for a hundred years.’
The blacksmith took another swig. ‘The moon is still up.’
‘Good for her.’ Theo reached for his satchel. ‘I’ll be back to temper that.’
‘Bring more whiskey.’
‘Only if I don’t die of heatstroke.’ He practically hurled himself into the night, offering a silent prayer of thanks to Saint Maurius for the wind. It tossed his hair and whipped his face, making him feel like a human again.
It was after midnight and there was time to kill. He wasn’t about to spend it with a drunk yodeller or an unhinged saint and his fifty creepy gargoyles.
Fiddle music wafted from the the Drunken Swan. Good enough.
Ducking inside, he made for a quiet spot in the corner when a flash of silver hair stopped him in his tracks. Even from the back, his aunt was unmistakable. If not for the distinct colour of her hair but the way she braided it so intricately down her back.
Paola, who was sitting by the bar, nursing a tumbler of brandy, jerked at his hand on her shoulder. She reached for whatever weapon she had concealed in the inner pocket of her jacket.
‘Easy, warrior. Don’t hairpin me.’
Her shoulders slackened and she eased into a grin. ‘You could do with one. You look like a scarecrow.’
‘You wound me.’
She patted the stool beside her. ‘Sit. Drink with me.’
Pressing a quick kiss to her cheek, he took the stool beside her. ‘What are you doing down here?’
‘Went for a walk. Heard fiddles. Was powerless to resist.’ She swigged her drink. ‘Honestly, there’s something creepy about that big old house.’
‘Hale and his shadows.’
She hummed. ‘I mean the whole… eerie silence thing. I hate this whole damn place.’
Born and bred in the mountains of Halbracht, Paola was as wild as the horses that roamed there. She hated the capital. Narrow streets thronged with people and houses packed tight like sardines.
House Armand was beautiful in its austerity, but it was not for the likes of someone who named their barn spiders and ran barefoot in winter.
Theo knew what she meant by silence. Not the absence of people but creatures.
No crickets chirping at dusk, field mice squeaking in the gardens or roosters heralding the dawn.
‘I used to feel like that too. Back when Papa and I first came here,’ he admitted.
After Mama died, and his world pitched sideways, Theo didn’t feel at home anywhere.
After settling in House Armand, he refused to return to Halbracht at all.
He didn’t want to stand on the earth where she was buried, or sit in the same room as his aunt, who looked so much like her – only younger, more vibrant, with a whole life yet to lead. It had been too painful for Theo.
After Papa died, he’d surrendered himself entirely to House Armand, made a home there. Found a family.
But Paola, like Tobias, was his blood. His heart. A living chain to his mother. He was glad now to have them both under the same roof, even if it made her grouse and guzzle cheap spirits.
‘I suppose you’ll say the place will grow on me,’ she remarked.
‘Only if you decide to stay.’
‘Where else would I be on the brink of war but with my boys?’
Theo smiled. ‘We’re hoping it won’t come to that.’
‘That’s a lot of hope to hang on a blade made of Lightfire.’
And the unhinged saint who wanted to wield it.
But as much as Theo despised Hale, he trusted him on one matter; Ransom would go to the ends of Arthos to protect Seraphine. He didn’t need magic to kill for her. He would rip apart anyone who even looked at her sideways.
Paola’s gaze turned hawkish. ‘You’re troubled.’
‘I’m thirsty.’
She ordered him a whiskey.
It went down like a bonfire.
‘Better?’
He hovered on the cusp of a lie.
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t bother.’
‘Fine.’ He looked into his glass. ‘I’m not all right, Paola.’
‘It’s the ritual, isn’t it? The making.’
He looked up.
‘Tobias told me about it. He said it failed. That you’re beating yourself up over it.’ Her slender brows knitted, her frown so familiar that for a moment Theo saw his mother sitting across from him.
A crack fissured through his heart.