Chapter 1 #2
“You want to know why she broke it? Why she was here in the sept when those traitors put a dagger through her heart?” Taven’s red eyes welled with tears.
“To free you. To help you. Poor Ellie cared more about the feelings of a pathetic, discarded bastard with no moral center than her own safety and well-being. Her last act was to save you, and it disgusts me. Its repellant!”
“We agree on something,” Jesstin spat. “But you know what you did before she died. We all know what you did.” He closed his eyes, tilting his head against the back of the chair.
“We’re off track! There is no reason for the silver tongues to be here uninvited.
To even get in...” Acheron scoffed. “No, it was all too easy, and none of us even knew until it was too late to rally a proper resistance. This was the work of an insider, Pretor. Someone here had to not just let them in but arrange for unhindered access to the sept. Had to know precisely how to get them past all the esguard checkpoints.”
“Your aunt is conducting this interrogation, Acheron. You will address her,” Estelar said. He was not the same person Sesto had met the night before, who’d commanded the very air in the room. He was a husk of that man.
Acheron flung his hands to the sides. “Aunt?”
“We do not incriminate men on accusations alone,” she intoned.
Jesstin snorted. “Someone needs to tell your cronies in Mythgarde.”
“We don’t claim those outcasts,” Ryquin said with an indignant chortle.
“They sure love invoking your name.”
“I’d prefer we not argue, Jesstin. We’re on the same side here.”
Jesstin shook his head at the ceiling.
“What side is that, Ryquin?” Acheron asked. “We speaking of the living now, or the dead?”
“No one cares about her except us,” Taven whispered to Jesstin. “So let’s stop quarreling and work together.”
Tansea clapped her hands. The sharp sound bounced off the bare walls.
“Aelloven was murdered, but we also have roughly forty dead esguards whose families will want answers. This family wants answers. But we will not cast judgment without evidence. Ryquin, your whereabouts during the attack cannot be accounted for, so until your involvement is ruled out, you will stay in your apartments under guard. Daire, we know you were with Sesto, so you may return to the haven with the other necromancers, but you will not meet with Ryquin until his innocence is proven, as you are too easily manipulated.”
Daire cast his defeated eyes toward his lap.
The fact that both Ryquin’s parents thought he was guilty was enough for Sesto, but he’d be na?ve to expect any real justice to come of it.
It was almost too obvious Ryquin was behind the massacre, but they had to be seen giving the matter serious consideration, so his eventual acquittal would be accepted by the soldiers’ families.
Sesto hated to shift his thoughts to more practical matters, when the grief was so fresh, but it was time to consider their positions there were far more precarious with Elloven gone.
Taven was ‘of the blood’ and tolerated, but Sesto and Jesstin were interlopers.
Elloven wouldn’t have participated in whatever they needed from her if they’d hurt her friends, but any thin protection they’d been afforded had died with her.
Jesstin looked ready to murder every single one of them. His sword was stored in a barrel in the corner, with everyone else’s weapons, but Sesto hadn’t ruled out him going for it anyway.
“Acheron,” Tansea said. “If I hear you’ve been questioning citizens or digging where your spade does not belong, I will see no alternative but to confine you to your apartments as well. This is my investigation. Are we understood?”
He gave a curt nod and muttered something off to the side.
“Lexsea, you’re with me,” Tansea said. “You often see what others fail to.”
“Mother.” Lexsea bowed her head. As it lowered, she grinned at her brother, sly and easy to miss.
But Sesto missed very little.
“I want to help,” Taven said. “I need to help.”
“Until we know why Aelloven was targeted, we can’t know if you’re in the same danger.
” Tansea had no warmth or concern in her response.
“You’ll keep to your croft. If you must travel to the village, we’ll provide an escort.
But you’re not to return to the sept until summoned. ” She glanced at Jesstin. “Nor you.”
Jesstin shoved back. He went straight for the barrel, but two esguards stamped forward. “Am I a prisoner here?”
“No, you are our treasured guest,” Estelar said quickly.
“Then I’ll keep my steel.” Jesstin stood until Estelar waved the guards off. “Sesto, you’ll stay with me.”
“I am not one who needs to be told twice.” Sesto leaped from his seat. “Daire... Would you like to come with us?”
Daire cast a shy, hopeful look at Tansea.
“That would be an acceptable compromise,” she said.
“You have my gratitude for looking after him,” Ryquin said. “His well-being is paramount to me.”
Keep lying so poorly, they won’t need hard evidence to seal your fate. “He’ll not lack for companionship,” Sesto replied as amiably as he could muster.
“I’m coming as well,” Taven said. His chair fell to the floor.
Jesstin swung his head around. “Not with us.”
“Yes, with you,” Taven snapped. “If we’re done here, Pretor, I believe the four of us could do with a walk back to clear our heads.”
Sesto’s attention traveled to Jesstin’s hand, the thumb positioned to flip his clasp. A tight, stern head shake made Jesstin’s thumb ease back an inch. It took a more pronounced one to compel him to abandon whatever fate he’d planned for Considine.
Jesstin’s silent surrender said, For now.
Sesto’s call for reticence wasn’t for Taven at all.
Taven was many disgraceful things, but he hadn’t murdered Elloven.
He had traveled to Rivenholde in bad faith, keeping close a number of secrets that might have, if shared, prevented this terrible night from ever happening.
But until they’d mined every last one of them, he was still useful.
As soon as he wasn’t, Sesto would cheerfully help dispose of the man.
Sesto had never kept Rhiain safe by pushing her down a path she wasn’t ready for. He’d protected her by following her down whatever path she’d chosen.
“Would you like an escort?” Estelar asked as the four moved toward the door.
“When you couldn’t even keep your niece alive?” Jesstin walked out.
“We’ll manage ourselves, thank you, Pretor,” Sesto said sweetly, dropping his smile when he reached the hall and saw Daire’s face. “What is it?”
“Ryquin needs to speak with Jesstin urgently.” He whispered just loud enough for Sesto to hear, but Taven and Jesstin were already ahead, walking paces apart.
“Oh? Will he astrally detach from his imprisoned body and float down to the croft?”
Daire shook his head. “Lexsea. Lexsea will come, and he can speak through her. She’s handling something important, she said, and then she’ll come to us.”
Could he? Interesting.
But unwise to indulge.
“If she so much as bats a single eyelash at Jesstin—”
“She won’t, Sesto. She won’t, but... You must listen to her. Jesstin must listen. She can help. She knows...” Daire shut down. He seemed to remember where he was. “We shouldn’t speak here. It’s not safe.”
Lexsea came sauntering into the croft like someone who’d gotten away with the same crime her brother was presently incarcerated for.
For now. The length of her continued existence was proportionate to the helpfulness she could offer. Jesstin would deliver her head to her father either way.
“Can’t you turn back time?” Sesto asked Taven in a harsh whisper, right as Lexsea entered and swept her bland scrutiny across the small cabin. “Aren’t you a time wizard or something?”
“No, that’s not how it works,” Taven said from the side of his mouth. He seemed just as suspicious of Lexsea as the rest of them and hadn’t taken his eyes off her. “Ashwind prominents bend time to see through it... can shape it into stories, but we can’t change what’s been written.”
“Do you ever stop and listen to yourself?” Jesstin snapped.
“I’m only being kind to you, Skylark, because of all you did...” His face pinched as he seemed to realize Jesstin was still covered in blood. “To protect her.”
“And you’re only alive because I need to conserve my energy.”
“For what? Pretending to fend off the advances of the siren?”
“Consent must be such a bizarre concept for you.”
Jesstin’s verbal sparring was instinctual only.
Numbness had taken over in the hours between the skirmish and the aftermath.
Sitting in the pretor’s office, he’d played out the fantasy of going for his sword, of taking one, two, three.
.. as many as he could before they struck him down.
The pain of the blades, the promise of them, was delicious.
To be sliced alive. To share one final trauma with Elloven.
Problem was, he didn’t think he’d feel a damn thing.
“Father could have found you more pleasing accommodations,” Lexsea said, tsking everything she ran her fingers over: the chairs, the hearth, the dusty banister leading into the loft.
“We have all we need.” Sesto’s friendliness was about as sincere as those magic dealers in the enchanted market. “Now, Daire says you want to help us?”
“She wants to help herself,” Taven said. Tears trickled down his cheeks. The sniveling, self-serving barn rat hadn’t stopped crying for hours. Jesstin was too exhausted to even be bothered.
“I know why you’re here. I know what you did.
” Jesstin waited for her to note the hand on his sword.
The sincerity of malice in his eyes. “I know what your brother wants. I know he had Elloven killed because he thinks it’s how he convinces me to do this thing he wants.
So I’m going to give you either two minutes or the end of my patience, whichever comes sooner, and then I’m going to kill you. ”
Lexsea’s eyes dilated in stunned offense. “Have not enough people died this evening?”