“You think he has something to do with the stags?”
Vesper didn’t want to think ill of the child. “He saved me from being burned to death—even while under the impression I was an assassin. There’s good in him. I can’t see him as the one who fatally wounded our gatekeepers. He was furious that I harmed the Pegasus. Still, it’s possible he knows something.”
Alger, Thea, and Leo started toward the opening that led out to the ravine where Tybalt and Uric already waited. At last the soot had cleared away.
“Wait.” Vesper scooped up his sister’s pet. “Take Nysa; she can scent the fox. I suspect if you find it, you find the boy.”
Selena reached for her pet, but Vesper passed the dog off to Leo. “I need you here, Selena. We’ll set up camp . . . surround it with rocks to stave off quag-puddles and gather some twigs for a fire. Cyprian can use some nourishment, and the horses have earned oats and rest. There’s a cascade of fresh water running down a steep embankment of rocks, just on the other side of that passage. It leads to a small tarn where we can fill our skins. There are even fish we might roast for dinner.”
“How do you know all that?” Selena asked, but before Vesper could search for an answer within himself, Leo interrupted.
“What of the witch?” he asked. Distracted by the dog’s licking tongue, he hadn’t heard the question on the table.
“Thana is watching over her,” Vesper answered. “If you happen to run across them, try to apprehend the witch and bring her to camp for questioning. But do not cross the threshold to her home. According to Dyadia, it’s accursed with violent magical wards. Whatever happens, be back by the cessation course. We’ll resume the mission when the denizens are sleeping.”
“So, the boy is our priority for now?”
“Yes. Let Nysa concentrate on the little thief, before his scent is gone.” Vesper chose his words carefully, trying to justify his sudden change in priority. Truth was, he needed to find the orphan for himself, to absolve the confusing emotions awhirl within him. “The boy might offer aid in what’s happening at the Rigamort, considering his smuggled items. I intend to know who he is, what he’s about, and where he’s from, before this day is over.”
Leo nodded, bid his wife good-bye, and left with his group.
As others guided the horses through the clearing and into the exit passage, Cyprian joined the prince where he crouched beside the sword handle—all that was left of the blade.
Vesper gripped his friend’s shoulder, careful to avoid his neck and collarbone where bandages covered his burns. “I’m sorry, Cyp.”
His friend did an admirable job suppressing his disappointment as he sheathed the handle. “I’ve never seen a beast like that. What other mystical secrets does this forest hold?”
Vesper had no answer, for he was keeping a secret himself: the effect the Pegasus had on him; how the beast had beckoned to his own blood, how even now he could feel that telling prickle spread through his left arm. Like golden vines, the metallic shimmer expanded where his wrist and the back of his hand showed between his sleeve and glove. He would have to make an incision and drain the poison before it petrified and left his fingers completely useless. Vesper’s dagger had been stolen, so he needed Selena’s, and he’d need her assistance closing the incision—too private a procedure to ask help of anyone other than family.
He’d soon have a new scar.
Vesper clenched his jaw against the brittle, creeping sensations, determined to understand how the Pegasus had the power to affect him. Since the orphan stripling seemed to have a mental connection to the beast . . . he might be key to that as well.
Vesper assured himself these were logical reasons for this urgency to retrieve his small rescuer—to prioritize this vexing fascination for those lips and eyes, for that fighting spirit, over finding the witch and getting to the castle.
Madame Dyadia would say the fates had set the boy in their path for a purpose; that there was no such thing as an accidental meeting where the prophecy was concerned. But what role could a ragamuffin thief possibly play in reuniting the sun and the moon?
15
Charitable Secrets and Merciful Lies
In any other part of Eldoria, a man carrying a bleeding, bedraggled boy who wriggled to break free would raise eyebrows. In the ravine, it was little more noticed than having the same “man” run alongside that boy’s ankles moments earlier as a fox. A metropolis filled with villains had a unique code of ethics: apathy was a courtesy everyone extended without question, in hopes the same would be passed on to them. So, as Luce carried Stain past men and women going to and from market, or off to spend their lucre at the Wayward Tavern—located in the hollowed-out trunk of the forest’s widest tree—no one even glanced their way.
Upon their escape from the labyrinth, Luce had morphed into his human form and, without a warning, lifted Stain and pinned her between the edge of his rib cage and his hip bone—much like he toted large sacks of ash from their home after Crony had swept the floors. Luckily, he’d kept Stain facing the same direction as him.
Put me down. Signing from this awkward position wasn’t easy. She jostled with his every step, causing her shoulders to jerk and making it difficult to form her fingers into anything legible.
“I will not.”
She sighed at the resolve in his voice, resigning herself to his brisk, bumpy stroll over ambling tree roots and around quag-puddles. Urgency gnawed behind her sternum, so much more agonizing than the ache in her shredded feet. She needed to get to Scorch. She’d wounded his pride, and that lesion would fester and spread even faster than the slash to his wing if she didn’t find him soon.
I wish to walk on my own beside you. This is humiliating. Please.
Luce directed a grimace her way. “You were fool enough to go gallivanting about without your boots, but I’m not fool enough to turn you loose just so you can chase your fancy donkey.”
His mention of Scorch pricked Stain’s heart deeper, as if a thorn had wedged within it during her tear through the labyrinth. Her eyes stung, but no relief would come. Much the same as her hair wouldn’t grow, she hadn’t shed a single tear since she’d first awakened on the lumpy mattress in Crony’s house, no matter how sad, confused, or brokenhearted she felt at times. Perhaps she’d cried so hard on that day someone tortured her and left her to die that she had no tears left in her body. Yet that didn’t stop her soul from weeping when someone she loved was in pain.
He’s wounded, Luce. He’s bleeding.
“Dammit, Stain. You’re bleeding, too. He can wait.”
Until when?
“Until I get you home and have Crony dress your wounds. All you needed was more scars. Top it off by the fact that you didn’t even get the moths. Shadows and crickets! What did you think to accomplish with those?” He cursed under his breath.
Stain fell limp, bobbing along with Luce’s gait, letting his scent of feathers and fur soothe her panicked state. He’d been so angry when she told him she lost the items from market. Why did he care, considering he was unhappy with her selections anyway?
She suspected he’d wanted the moths so he might watch them fly, to live his lost ability vicariously through them. For that reason, she could tolerate his harsh scolding.
“You know, we didn’t save you all those years back just to watch you rip yourself to shreds again. You’ve no idea the crimp you’ve made in the plan.”
Those words gave her pause. She was used to being at the whipping end of Luce’s tongue. From a sylph’s perspective, grumpiness was the equivalent of chivalry. And it wasn’t the first time he’d referenced saving her. Yet he’d never made it sound as if there were a motive. A plan, in fact. She readied her hands to insist he explain, but he took back the conversation with an annoyed snarl.
“Whatever possessed you to leave the market and attack a group of strangers in the first place? You’re in rare form today.”