Chapter 29
THE EAST WIND STARES AT me with eyes like voids. Beyond, storm clouds heap the distant cliffs. “Another lie, is it?”
“It’s not a lie.” If I could, I would claw my heart from my chest. I would hold it over open flame, watch muscle and tendon recoil, then wither into collapse. What is done cannot be made undone. The price must be paid. “Lady Clarisse really is my mother.”
“Your mother,” Eurus emphasizes. “The same woman who tried to drown you as a child?”
A wad of saliva clogs my throat. I choke it down with a whispered, “Yes.”
He shakes his head. “This can’t be real. You call her my lady.”
“Because that is wh-wh-wh—” I swallow, grit my teeth. “That is what she wanted me to call her.”
Following Nan’s passing, Lady Clarisse inherited the estate after having returned to Marles following many years away.
I was her daughter, our shared blood a burden, but I could be put to use, diminished to a set of hands that could slice and stir, press and pour.
The first time I called Lady Clarisse mother after her return, she threatened to cut out my tongue.
Let me be clear, she’d said. I am no more your mother than you are my daughter.
You cannot imagine what I would give to trade your life for my husband’s, but unfortunately, I’m stuck with you.
Whatever childish optimism you harbor in thinking we will ever be family, discard it now.
From this moment on, you will refer to me as Lady Clarisse.
“Gods.” Eurus regards me in outward horror. “And now you work for her? Why, Min? She’s horrible. She tortures people. She tortured you!” The intensity of his gaze, its furious simmer, pierces me. I am no better than an insect with its wings pinned. I could not fly away even if I wanted to.
“Because she—” I stop, try again. “B-because—”
“Why?” he demands, insistent now. “Why, after everything that she’s done to you, her every effort to belittle you, would you want to help her?”
“I don’t know!” I scream. “I just… I want her to love me.” There was never a time I did not crave that.
Drowning or not, abuse or not, she was the only maternal figure in my life, following Nan’s passing.
And maybe a part of me always saw Lady Clarisse as the wounded daughter Nan described her as.
Someone who did not fit into this realm, who never felt quite at home.
When she met my father, according to Nan, she was changed—for a time.
Then he was taken from her, and she was left alone to care for her infant child—all that remained of the man she loved.
“She was going to s-sell the estate,” I go on.
“It is my only tie to my grandmother. If I did this one thing for Lady Clarisse, she promised to sell it to me.”
He gazes down at me in disgust. “And you believed her?”
Yes. And then, no. But by then, it was too late. “I wanted to prove I w-was worthy,” I say, voice softening. Even to my own ears, it sounds pathetic. “If I gave her what she wanted—”
“She is no mother to you, Min. She doesn’t love you. She loves only what you can do for her.” He shakes his head, jaw clenched, and turns away.
The sight spurs me forward. “Eurus, please. I’m sorry, it’s just—”
“There is no just,” he barks with a crazed laugh. “Don’t you see? You were the first person I trusted in centuries. And now you’ve proven to me what I already know. People will use you, abuse you, discard you. It is a cycle without end.”
My eyes sting. There is truth to his words, for I once believed the same. I have now betrayed the only person who has ever truly cared for me, aside from Nan. “If I can explain,” I press, the words garbled, torn to pieces by emotion.
“What is there to explain?” he murmurs. “You have shown your true colors. As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing left to say.”
“Please don’t do this,” I weep. “I love you.”
He recoils, hand lifted to thwart a blow as his expression collapses into one of repulsed disbelief. “You love me? Did I hear that correctly?” He belts out a crow-like laugh, a vicious caw. “Unbelievable. Is there nothing you will not lie about?”
Distant thunder growls, and I question how much of the approaching storm is natural and how much is connected to the East Wind’s fury. The bare trees rattle ominously as, turning on his heel, Eurus heads for the front gate, his gaze locked on Lady Clarisse and her trailing army.
Catching the fabric of his cloak, I try to yank him back, but I have all the strength of a leaf in autumn, and he doesn’t falter. He is simply too strong.
“Eurus, please, you have to get out of h-here. They will catch you—”
The East Wind spins, breaking my hold. His eyes boil as he peers down at me. He is every shade of gloom, every facet of the realm’s darkest corners. My heart quails in his presence. “Let go,” he says.
I shake my head and manage to squeeze out, “They will kill you!”
“I am a god,” he rumbles, and a coil of air explodes from his palm, lashing toward Lady Clarisse. A shield erupts between Eurus’ power and her ladyship as Prince Balior casts the protective spell.
A flick of his wrist, and Eurus blasts the prince’s shield.
A band of wind loops around Lady Clarisse’s neck, yanking her clear across the grounds.
She screams, thrashing like a fish on a line, and my stomach pitches as she’s lifted high, legs kicking as they dangle, face blotched a ruddy pink, then violet, then blue.
“Eurus.” I am crying too hard to say much else. “Please…” Lady Clarisse has never shown me an ounce of kindness, but the thought of her brutally murdered, gone, plunges me into a spiral of confusion. “Please, don’t kill her.”
The East Wind’s expression hardens, masked by a rage so profound I can only assume that in this woman, he sees his father, who treated him no better than vermin. But I see it then—a crack running through the marble of his countenance.
His shoulders sag, and Eurus drops her onto the walkway amongst the dying grasses and weeds. Before I’m able to properly thank him, he brushes past me and launches skyward.
I race after him, but Lady Clarisse snags my ankle from where she has fallen. “I don’t think so,” she spits.
I kick out. She releases me with a snarl.
I sprint down the walkway, past the rusted gate, before lurching to a halt. Prince Balior’s soldiers have ceased their forward march, arrows aimed at Eurus, who dives, down, down, down. A ravenous darkness rolls toward the East Wind, who spins to avoid its touch.
“Now!” Prince Balior shouts.
Arrows loose. The East Wind drops to avoid the deadly points. While the men reload, he speeds toward a soldier and blasts a hole clean through the man’s stomach.
I lift a hand to my mouth. A second soldier succumbs to the same fate.
All the while, Prince Balior’s power chases the East Wind through the sky, over the surrounding forest. Another burst of shadow swarms Eurus’ torso, but he generates a sphere of air that expands outward, forcing the wisps off his skin.
Even I can see that his speed flags. He has yet to recover his strength from the final trial.
There must be a way to help him.
Spinning around, I dash toward the estate, the front door clapping shut as I trip across the threshold. I’m rifling through drawers when I recall The Practice of Herbal Remedies, nestled safely against my waistband. I rip the volume free, flip to a section in the back: airborne poisons.
“I’ll take that.” Lady Clarisse snatches the book before I’m able to consider my options. She tucks it into her apron smugly. “Whatever plans fill that empty head of yours, discard them. Prince Balior will overpower the East Wind easily.” Of this, she seems certain. “It is only a matter of time.”
My breath comes short. I fight the urge to shrink, as I have done countless times before.
Looking at Lady Clarisse, the woman who birthed me, I see how she has aged, fine lines charting the years of her derision toward my existence.
An elixir of immortality may protect her from death and the pain of losing a loved one, but it cannot eradicate the poison in her heart.
“Give me the book, Lady Clarisse.”
She quirks an eyebrow, gives me a scornful once-over.
Her facial scar, usually smoothed over by her beauty teas, is more prominent than ever, an engorged vine crawling across her features.
She received the mark when a splintered plank from my father’s capsized boat tore open her cheek.
According to Nan, Lady Clarisse was able to cling to a large rock until another fisherman rescued her.
By then, the sea had already claimed my father’s life.
“You are either with me or against me, Min,” she murmurs. “Remember who stole you from your home. Remember who gave you a home.” She reaches for me, and I recoil—yet her hand is gentle as it curves around my upper arm. She guides me to the bay window overlooking the grounds.
“See that man?” She taps a fingertip against the windowpane. “He is not from our realm. He has no interest in your life. I am doing you a favor, understand? One day, he will leave you. And you will be alone.”
I watch the East Wind fell four soldiers in less than a heartbeat. He wields no weapons, no arrows or tempered steel. He has only his fists, which find the soft, vulnerable parts of their bodies, and his winds, which act as his blades, slicing into guts or cutting across bared throats.
“Why are you doing this?” I whisper. “Why align y-yourself with this prince? He is dangerous.”
“It’s business, Min. I want the East Wind’s heart, and Prince Balior is all too happy to help me acquire it. When every last god in the mortal realms is dead, none will have the strength to oppose the prince and his growing army. The East Wind is all that stands between him and total control.”
“Eurus will give you nothing,” I whisper. “He will fight. And I already told you that his ax was lost in the tournament.”