The Scourge of Muirwood (Legends of Muirwood #3)

“I will be cautious,” she answered, smiling at him. “I want you to sleep, Colvin. I will watch over you.”


He shook his head. “Not yet. I hunger to talk to you. There is so much I have learned in this place. So much the Medium has taught me. There is no one here that I can talk to. There is no one here who knows my heart like you do.” He leaned forward. “Lia, there is something that has weighed heavily on me. It has been growing heavier and heavier. This is a dark place, but I know that I will be free from it. I long to leave these shores, to leave the shores of Comoros and find a place where such evil cannot exist. There will be a scourging. I can see it. Those who accept the ways of the Dochte Mandar will fall to the Blight. Those who support the hetaera will be killed. I know this is a place of pure darkness where the Myriad Ones roam free. Yet despite this knowledge, I still feel the Medium with me. I have remained true to my oaths. I have not surrendered to their ways.” He looked down, his face turning anguished. “I hardly know how to say this to you.”

“Tell me, Colvin,” she answered, leaning forward. “You can always tell me.”

He looked haunted. His eyes were full of emotion. “The Medium bids me do something.” He breathed heavily, his jaw trembling. “It is not what I wish. But I cannot mistake the intent of it. Every day the urgency grows stronger. The Medium bids me…it whispers to me with great urgency…that I must marry Ellowyn Demont by irrevocare sigil.” He licked his lips. “That I must do this before Twelfth Night at Billerbeck Abbey.”





CHAPTER NINETEEN:


Martin Evnissyen





For a moment, Lia was breathless. The force of the Medium rushing inside her heart nearly made her gasp, confirming what Colvin said to be true. It was her heart’s deepest desire to be his, and only his, and to hear it spoken from his lips caused a surge of pain and excitement she had never experienced before. The problem was that he did not realize that Ellowyn Demont was in front of him.

She tried to say it out loud, but her jaw clenched shut, swollen by the Medium before she could say anything. She swallowed, nearly choking on the words and looked down, struggling with her feelings.

“I am sorry,” he whispered in anguish. “I wish I could express to you my feelings. That I could make you see how it made me suffer, knowing…”

Lia put her hand on his and squeezed hard, silencing him. She felt tears in her eyes, tears born of frustration and hope. Blinking the tears away, she stared into his eyes, using every scrap of strength to push the thought at him.

I am Ellowyn. It is I, before you now. I am Ellowyn Demont!

He stared at her in confusion. “Say something,” he pled with her. “I have disappointed you so often. I cannot bear your silence. I deserve your rebuke. I deserve your scorn.” His eyes burned with emotion. “I love you still. But my heart bids me on another path. It grieves me to cause you so much pain.”

Lia shook her head violently, trying to master herself, to find safe words that she could speak. Instantly, she thought of the orb. What if she used it to prove to him who she was? As soon as the thought entered her mind, she felt a wedge of blackness divide her. Shuddering, she understood what it meant. That any attempt to thwart the Medium’s will would rob her of its use. The orb was the Medium’s tool to help her discover her own identity. But it would not help another to that knowledge.

Lia was desperate. If there was a way to find her father’s tome and undo the binding, she would be able to tell him then. If they could find it before reaching Billerbeck Abbey, then she would be free to admit the truth. Hillel would suffer, but Lia knew that Colvin did not love her.

“Tell me what you are feeling,” Colvin said, his expression one of tortured confusion. Yet she was not free to speak her true feelings. Her words had to be guarded and permissible.

With a quavering voice, she answered. “I am struggling with my words and my feelings. My heart bids me tell you that…” she swallowed, yearning to speak words that she could not, “…that you should. It is the Medium’s will.”

He looked at her in astonishment. “You encourage me? You are not hurt by this? It threatens to rip me in half. I do not love her. Yet still the insistence.”

Lia closed her hand on top of his again and patted it. “It is not for us to understand why the Medium wills something. We cannot see all things now. But I have learned to trust it, as you taught me to in the Bearden Muir. When you were abandoned at the Abbey, we did not perceive this moment. Yet we were supposed to meet. I believe that. I will trust that all will happen for the best.”