Chapter 8 #2
With that lack of explanation, he turned and walked out of what I’d determined was his personal bathing chamber, and I had to trail behind him. The air of menace was gone. He was almost cheerful.
“I’m not your priestess! I didn’t even know who you were an hour ago.”
Taran waved a hand like this was a minor detail. “Better mine than Wesha’s. I’ll have to think about what your vows will be, but I’m sure they’ll be more lenient than hers. And you’ll have to be someone’s priestess. Trust me, you don’t want to look free for the taking.”
His tendency to treat every turn of events as a cosmic joke had never annoyed me before this moment. “Then are you saying you won’t come with me to the Painted Tower?” I clarified.
“Precisely. I have no interest in seeing Wesha ever again. Which she knows, given the terms we left on. But as you rather unwisely promised that you’ll bring me to her, I suppose you’ll be following me around for the rest of eternity.”
My jaw dropped open at his casual appropriation of my life. “Why would you do that?”
He adroitly stepped around me, expression chiding.
“Don’t be ungrateful. It’s not like I’m the one who came up with your deal. In fact, you’re lucky that I’m being so obliging.” He opened another door in the front room to reveal a bedchamber. “We can discuss the terms of your service tomorrow.”
“I’m also not serving you.”
Taran chuckled again, turning to favor me with a knowing smirk that hurt all the more for its familiarity. “You’re in quite the tangle, aren’t you? Tell me, do mortals make oaths so recklessly because they think they’ll only have to abide by them for a few decades before they kick off?”
I growled, anger rising, and stuck out my hand to stop Taran from shutting his bedroom door in my face.
“Why won’t you…” I began to demand an explanation, but my movement caught Taran’s eye.
Faster than I could react, he reached out with both hands.
One yanked down the neckline of my dress, and the other darted into it.
I was so tired that my first impulse was to object to this assault on my modesty, but he wasn’t looking at my meager cleavage.
Instead, he glared at the tiny bird trapped in his fist. Awi.
His air of cheerful indifference vanished, and the aura of violence returned.
Awi struggled in his hand as the dangerous dip of his eyelids suggested that he might crush her first and ask questions later.
“Stop!” I grabbed for his arm. “She hasn’t done anything!”
I got a look of surprise that I had dared to put hands on him, but his fingers relaxed.
“Who are you?” he addressed the bird.
Her beady little eyes bulged over the puff of feathers where he’d squeezed her body. “I—I—it’s your auntie Awi. You don’t know who I am?” the bird said in a tiny peeping voice, so high in pitch that I could barely perceive it.
“Sure don’t,” Taran said, not releasing her.
“I know you! I knew you as a baby. I used to slip you honeycakes when you turned up at your mother’s parties without a stitch of clothing to cover your dimpled behind.”
“My mother? You can’t come up with a better story than that?”
“No, it’s true,” Awi insisted.
“My mother has all the maternal instincts of the cuckoo, which lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. I’m sure I was nowhere near any parties until I was old enough to be decorative.”
As Taran’s face said that squishing was still on the table, I dug my nails into his arm.
“I can’t let you hurt her.” I wasn’t exactly fond of the goddess, but my vow had my chest in a vise. “She’s just trying to return to the mortal world. I promised to help her if she helped me get to Wesha.”
Taran scoffed at that, but after a moment, he released the bird. Awi transformed before she hit the floor, returning to her guise as a red-eyed raven. She was stiff and fearful as she shuffled away from Taran, feathers a mess.
“You really have made the most inconvenient vows possible,” Taran said to me, hand still hovering over the knife stuck into his belt. “And so many of them.”
I was beginning to realize that.
He heaved an annoyed sigh and turned back to the bird. “Vow that you won’t speak to Wesha about me. Or I vow you’ll be picking your way down the Mountain in brand-new feathers tomorrow, powerless and forgetful.”
Awi hesitated, and Taran took the knife out of his belt, face coldly murderous.
“I promise,” Awi yelped, cringing away from him.
I had my hands clasped over my throat, stricken at how easily Taran had threatened the little bird goddess. How easily he’d killed the Fallen. How easily he disposed of me.
Taran had been kind. As gentle as someone fighting a war could be. Whether it had all been a performance or whether that man died on the cliffs to be reborn as someone utterly different, there was nothing for me here now.
I had to get out.
“Just let us go,” I whispered. “I made a mistake in coming here. I’m sorry for your trouble tonight, but if you take us to the Painted Tower, we’ll both go. Please.”
Taran looked at me quizzically as he replaced the knife in his belt.
“Why would I?” he asked me, the line of his mouth cruel in a way I’d never seen before.
What was in it for him? I’d once offered him everything I had.
“Do it as a favor to me. Please. Just let us go.”
His laugh was silent this time, but equally mirthless.
“I don’t do favors for anyone. Not for you.
Certainly not for Wesha. She’s the one who taught me the lesson, in fact—though when I woke up on her beach six months ago, skull empty and mouth full of sand, she had some regrets about that.
” His lips didn’t part as he tested the point of a sharp tooth with the tip of his tongue.
“So, no. If you want me to take you to the Painted Tower, you’ll have to make me an offer. A good one.”
“What do you want?” I asked, my heart in my throat.
He considered it, then shrugged. He stuck the knife back in his belt and opened the door to his dark bedroom.
“Nothing comes to mind. But if something does, I’ll be sure to tell you immediately.”