Chapter Fifty Five
Murder At The Inn
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Ousca, Vrethian.
Gedeon.
The quaint village of Ousca was one of the sea-towns south of the Sarlal Plains.
Oysters as big as Gedeon’s hand were their delicacy, washed down always by a rich red wine.
It was a wonder anyone could walk straight and talk coherently; the wine seemed to replace water as an essential thirst quencher.
Busy boardwalks filled with merchants’ stalls stretched around the horseshoe shaped coastline.
Frost dyed the wood a limpid white in the early morning, and though the sky was free from clouds and painted with the pastel pigments of dawn, the sea below was a murky green and sure to be colder than the air.
Throughout the days, that chill did not remain. As the sun arced, the frost melted. The townsfolk’s layers were stripped off and cast aside, waiting to be donned again when the moon took the sun’s place.
Gedeon observed all this through a small, cobwebbed window at the top of a reluctant innkeeper’s residence. Bound to this room and wary to show his face in public, it had been the only way to spend his lonely time.
Behind him, Kyra lay sleeping. She had been that way for three days.
On the first night here, she had awoken, and Gedeon rushed a glass of water to her lips.
He could not remember the last time he had seen her drink.
She gulped it down, muttered a few unintelligible words, seemingly unaware of her surroundings, then fell back into a coma.
She had not woken since.
Part of him wished they had gone straight back to Phaenon. Maida would have known how to rouse her. The healer would have known what fragrant concoction Kyra would need to find her strength again.
But awaiting them in Phaenon was accusatory eyes and reprimanding tongues. He wanted to give her a respite, if just for a little while, before she would be forced to face the music of their reality.
Fleeing Dracyg’s crumbling castle was a blur, even for him.
His magic had been near spent even before he and Kyra were towed to the Throne Room.
Afterward, with Kyra limp in his arms, conjuring his darkness had been no small feat.
With the Black Castle falling to ruin around them, however, their escape had been well met by no one.
Gedeon bolted for the royal stables, securing himself, with Kyra straddled in front of him, on the back of a black-haired mare before riding into the night, leaving his former, smouldering home behind.
Only the River Emor had halted his furious riding.
He left the mare behind, created a bridge of lava rock across the blazing flow, then continued on foot with Kyra slung over his shoulder for what seemed an eternity.
Desert sands turned to greenery, and soon the landscape was a sea of grass that stood as tall as his knees.
After a while, that grass shifted into meticulous corridors of grapevines, and Gedeon knew they had made it.
Ousca was only half a day away from the wine county of Sarlal, and the first settlement of Vrethian’s sea towns.
At nightfall, he’d approached the inn. The Sea Queen, it was aptly named. A surly blonde man received them at the door, and upon seeing the bloody state of them, (not to mention the arch of their ears, and the fact Kyra was slung over his shoulder), was resigned to turn them away.
Gedeon prized an obsidian ring from his own finger, (a gift from his mother on his twenty-fifth nameday), and offered it to him in return for a few nights rest, with enough food to keep hunger at bay.
The innkeeper’s eyes fractionally widened.
Obsidian was native to Zarynth. Civil wars had been waged over its trade in the early days of the Age of Mothers, and the spark of excitement in the man’s eyes told Gedeon he knew that, and knew that selling the ring to the right buyer would fetch a price that would pay for their refuge fifty times over.
Gedeon bade him ask no questions of who they were, and the ring would be his.
The man had taken it and showed him a room mere minutes after.
Gedeon sipped on a glass of water. Wine had been offered, more times than he could count, but he declined it each time. If trouble found them, he needed his senses alert and ready.
Embers glowed in the grate of a small fireplace, always tended to multiple times a day by a servant. Gedeon looked at it. An almost burnt out piece of wood lost its balance and tumbled, spitting sparks as it did. The sight sent a chill skittering over his skin.
A slight rustle of sheets had his head turning.
Kyra was awake. Her gaze was fixed on the grate.
After filling her glass with water from a ceramic jug, Gedeon sat at the chair by her bedside. Kyra drank tentatively at first, and then she guzzled down the whole glass. Gedeon refilled it thrice before she was seemingly satisfied.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then cradled the third, half-empty glass between her palms. Scars that would never fade marred the skin around her wrists where the bolts had shot through them, fresh alongside the burn his own fire had left on her arm.
A chemise with frills around its neck and arms hung on her body.
It did look quite ridiculous on her. She was a lethal weapon, clad in what looked like a doll’s nightgown.
Untouched at the end of the bed was a corset and petticoat, and Gedeon himself wore a plain sand colour shirt with puffy sleeves over cheaply made trousers.
The innkeeper had also found both of them something to change into, at his request.
‘We were both covered in blood,’ he told her by means of an explanation. ‘Changing was necessary.’
Kyra sniffed her arm. ‘Did you… did you bathe me?’
‘Yes,’ he said, unabashed. One of the servants drew a bath upon their arrival, and Gedeon had made sure to scrub away every inch of red splattered on her skin.
He understood Vrethans to be prudish about the naked form, but Gedeon had rather felt it was crucial to wash the Throne Room from her body.
He tried not to look too closely at the scars all over her.
The whip lashings on her back. Claw marks on her shoulder and ankle.
Countless, short scars all over her torso, like those made from swiping blades, all of them so at odds with the utter divinity that was her beautiful form.
Yes, it had been necessary to bathe her, to wipe away the memory. He hadn’t wanted her to wake with Rosary’s blood still staining her.
Though he should have known, if not physically, the woman’s blood would always leave an irreversible mark.
‘I lost her,’ Kyra whispered. Hateful eyes pierced him. ‘Because of you.’
Before he could even fathom a response, she threw herself upon him.
They tumbled to the floor, the wooden boards beneath groaning upon the impact. Nails slashed at his neck, knuckles colliding with his abdomen as Kyra snarled and hissed on top of him, a feral beast enraged.
They smashed against the dresser. The jug of water tipped off the side and fractured into pieces, liquid spilling.
Gedeon managed to untangle himself for a moment before she shoved him against the wall, battering his chest. The ceiling above him cracked, and Gedeon knew it had nothing to do with the impact. ‘I will kill you,’ she screamed in his face. ‘I’ll kill you!’
Gedeon caught her wrists. ‘Stop. Kyra, stop.’
‘I’ll kill you,’ she choked again. Her struggling slowed, even as she still tried to beat him.
‘Stop,’ he said again.
A sob retched from her then, and Gedeon did the only thing he could think of.
He crushed her against his chest, hand cradling the back of her head as the other arm wrapped around her back like a vice. For a few moments, she struggled, relentlessly bucking her body, pushing against him, desperate to be free from his hold.
Gedeon said nothing. Just held her close. Held her tight.
And then she gave in. Sagging against him, she despaired into his chest. Those same fingers that had sliced thin lines on his throat folded in his shirt, gripping the fabric with such intensity it might have been the only thing that would stop her drowning in her grief. Soon, his shirt was wet with her tears.
Gedeon let his back slide down the wall, taking Kyra with him and cradling her between his legs. For a long time, he just listened to her bawl. He did not slacken his hold, nor did he say a word. Her grief was his grief. Her pain was his pain.
Never, in his entire life, had he imagined his flames devouring his own mother.
Now it was all he could think about.
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Kyra.
In silence, Kyra ate a particularly pungent fish stew. On a now broken and wonky chair, Gedeon did the same. It might have been delicious. It certainly looked like a hearty, flavoursome meal. Oil from thick butter was a sheen on top of it.
But her tongue was numb to the taste. The most fundamental pleasures, like just eating good food, now seemed a useless task.
She’d welcomed the scolding of the stew on the roof of her mouth upon that first spoonful. But then it had cooled. Now, it was near cold. Just like everything else. Cold and worthless.
Rosary had taken every ounce of warmth from the world when she’d left it.
Kyra set the bowl on the bedside table. She could eat no more.
After her sobs had subsided, Gedeon explained how they escaped the Black Castle. The scenes from before were a fractured puzzle in Kyra’s mind, the pieces scattered. Gedeon helped to fit them back together, and painful though the recollection was, she was glad to have some clarity.
‘This night is the third we have spent here,’ Gedeon said. ‘I didn’t want to stay so long. We are too vulnerable. If you feel able, we should make for Phaenon in the morning.’
‘Not yet,’ said Kyra quietly. ‘There’s something I need to do.’
‘What is it?’