Chapter 27 #2
‘No, it’s better that you know,’ he said.
‘That you know what I did. What I let out into the world. Lots of people saw me, including my family. In the middle of the night, I lit a torch, and took it into the pony paddock, and threw it onto the grass. It caught terrifyingly fast—that’s what my mother said, afterwards.
It was one of the last things she said to me.
That it caught in a great woosh, and then the ponies were screaming as they burned. ’
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
‘How did they know…?’
‘That I was Sleepless, and hadn’t just lost my mind?
Well, I had no memory of it, for a start.
They found me afterwards in a dried-out creek on the edge of our camp.
I’d run away once the horses started burning, and everyone was occupied trying to save them.
And when I eventually fell asleep again, the elders of my people had a long talk with this Lucian.
He was a furious creature, they said, full of the need to destroy things, to kill things, and he told them he’d do it again if they didn’t let him go.
So they wrote to the Golden Tower of the Perpetual Morning, and I was sent away.
’ He rubbed the pad of his thumb along the line of his jaw and Elver heard the rasp of his stubble.
‘What you have to understand, Elver, is that losing the ponies destroyed my people. It was their wealth, their future, everything they had invested in for generations. Lucian may as well have burned them all too. My parents sent me to the monastery, and I never heard from them again. I don’t know what happened to them in the end. Perhaps they died too.’
He hung his head, and Elver saw a single tear track down his cheek, a pure glint of silver in the dirty little storeroom.
‘Artair.’ She shuffled over so that she was sitting next to him on the boxes, and she put her arms around him.
It felt awkward, and she was acutely aware that she had never held someone this way before, but the impulse was undeniable.
She looped an arm around his neck and pulled him to her so that his head rested against her cheek.
His head was warm and his arms circled her back, pulling her closer.
Her heart fluttered, a bird trapped in her chest.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Being this close to another being felt like nothing else she’d ever known.
She blinked, caught between sorrow for him and a sudden roaring hunger for this feeling to last forever .
My queen told me to kill him , she reminded herself.
This is exactly what she was afraid of. As if in rebellion at that thought, she pressed her lips to the top of his head, giving him a quick, dry kiss, and she didn’t let go until they heard the key rattle in the door.
Creg appeared at the top of the steps, silhouetted by the light in the corridor behind him.
Reluctantly, Elver and Artair drew apart.
‘Less of that,’ he said cheerfully enough. ‘This is a reputable place.’ He laughed at his own joke, then placed a battered tray on top of the crates. ‘I’ve brought you some lunch in case you were getting hungry.’
‘Where’s Sunay?’ asked Elver as Artair said thank you.
‘She’s been and gone—your faceless lads are out there in force, apparently.
Whatever you did got them mightily ticked off.
’ This seemed to please Creg enormously, and for that Elver liked him more.
‘She’ll be back in a while, don’t you worry, but you best eat while you can.
You might be leaving here in a bit of a hurry. ’
Creg left, and they set the tray between them.
There were large sausage rolls, heavy enough Elver thought they could potentially double as a weapon, as well as hard-boiled eggs wrapped in pork meat and seasoning.
There were four green glass bottles filled with a clear liquid that definitely wasn’t water.
‘What is this stuff?’ asked Artair after taking a swig. ‘It tastes funny.’
Elver shrugged. She was feeding pieces of the sausage roll to the cub, who was snapping them up hungrily.
‘Sunay must be looking for a safe route out of this place,’ she said.
They finished the food and the drink in short order, and made themselves comfortable on the crates once more. Outside, the daylight had grown mellower as the afternoon marched on. Artair yawned, and she looked at him sharply. ‘Are you alright?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, giving her a brittle smile. ‘I’ve not had an afternoon nap in five years.’
The cub was nosing at her for more food.
More of that, please , he said. That was good. There’s a lot of interesting food outside of the woods. Why doesn’t mother take us here?
Elver thought of the white light of Trilot, burning the monstrous right out of them. What would be left of the cub if that happened to him? Would he be reduced to a dead fox cub? A dead bird, perhaps? Her hand brushed her arm, which was still tender from the burn.
‘We’re not welcome here, little one.’
That’s rude , said the cub. I’m great company. Why are we still in this small, bad-smelling room?
‘We’re hiding,’ she told him. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be out in the fresh air soon enough. Although you might be back in the sack again for a little while.’
The cub snorted. The sack smells of poo.
‘That’s your own fault.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps we can get a new sack from this place, though. It seems like the sort of thing they’d have hanging about. Artair, do you think…?’
But Artair was asleep, his chin resting on his chest and his hair falling forward to cover his face.