Gemma didn’t want to hear what Devery knew. “We should just leave, Elam. The Guild is destroyed. Melnora and Fin are gone. They burned everything.”
“They didn’t.” He wiped away a tear that was running down her cheek. “Devery and I had a long, not entirely cordial conversation, while you slept, and he told me everything.” Elam met her gaze, then continued. “It’s all an illusion. Apparently, Devery’s daughter is the most talented mage woman, well, mage girl, in a millennium. She and Devery worked together—against Brinna and Elsha and without their knowledge—to save the Guild. Elsha’s marks were meant to trap us. Nearly everyone in Above was tucked into their homes for the night, so the sleeping mage marks that Elsha made held all of Brighthold, Merchant Row and Whitebeach at bay. But those of us down the hill—Shadowtown and Dockside—never truly sleep. The brambles were supposed to keep the Under trapped.”
He continued, as he scrubbed her arms and legs, “Katya realized that her aunt could easily slaughter the whole Guild, if she decided she wanted to. And Katya didn’t trust her not to want to, so she created the flames to drive us out of the Guild buildings before the brambles trapped us. Her mage marks created the fire, but the flames consumed nothing. They were meant to help Under, not destroy it. She gave you as much of an army as she could, even though they had both still hoped you wouldn’t need it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Devery had a deal with his mother. After they destroyed House Daghan, she would flee back to Vaga with the captive mage women. Elsha would take the throne of Yigris and their revenge would be complete. But you aren’t a Daghan and as a final payment for his help, you were not to be touched. You and Dev would be allowed to rebuild Under, remaking the pact in a new image.” Elam met her gaze, his eyes full of grief. “He really did mean to leave the Guild intact—entirely intact—save Melnora. Fin’s death was an accident. Fin caught Katya drawing the mark at Canticle Center. When he realized what she was doing, he deduced in error that she had killed Melnora. Fin was going to kill his daughter, Gemma. You know Devery couldn’t just …” His voice trailed off and she let it. Of course he couldn’t let that happen, but it didn’t make the truth hurt any less.
She waited several long minutes as Elam continued to scrub her clean. “Then what happened? Why did his plan go so wrong?”
“You were too clever,” he said, and squeezed the water from his cloth back into the tub. “You helped Tollan escape Elsha’s grasp at the palace, and then you figured out the mage mark on his back before it could kill him.”
“Shit. What happened to Tollan?”
Elam blushed inexplicably as he handed her a towel. He brought her a pair of clean breeches and a shirt and helped her wad rags into her smallclothes to absorb the bleeding. “He’s at Dockside,” Elam finally said. “There have been some developments.”
When Elam finished fussing over Gemma, he went to go fix her something to eat.
It had been more than half an hour since the last pain had ravaged her, and she could tell that the bleeding had slowed. It was strange how something so monumental could pass by so quickly. Gemma settled herself into the bed and vowed that she wasn’t going to let grief pull her under. She had wanted a child to solidify an heir before it was ever an issue. She knew of the trials Melnora had gone through to find her own replacement, and Gemma didn’t want that added burden. She wanted Devery’s child because she wanted to share a piece of herself with him that no one else could ever have, but perhaps everything about their affair had been unrealistic.
She watched as Elam pulled the door closed behind him, then she counted to one hundred. She slipped out from beneath the covers, padded across the floor and opened the door slowly. Glancing down the hall, she saw she was in the room that had once been Elam’s. She tiptoed down the hall and slipped past the entrance to the kitchen. She peered into Devery’s room. Four people she didn’t recognize were stretched out on the bed. She remembered what Elam had said and realized that these were probably the rightful inhabitants of the apartment, sound asleep because of the mage marks.
She continued until she reached the door of her old room. She turned the handle and slipped silently inside.
Devery lay atop the covers fully dressed. His eyes were open. He was staring at the rafters, his hands behind his head.
She didn’t wait for an invitation. She lay down beside him. Without speaking, he wound his arm around her and pulled her close. She felt as if there should be some unease but there wasn’t. She listened to the familiar sound of his heart beating—and his stomach growling.
“When was the last time you ate?” she asked. Strange how her first instinct continued to be his well-being, even when she knew she couldn’t trust him.
He shrugged. “It didn’t seem very important at the time.”
“It sounds like it might be important now.”
He rolled onto his side and cupped her face with his hand. “It is so far down the list of important that I can’t even see it.” He stared at her, then asked, “Are we going to make it through this?”
She bit her lip. “Well, if I have to go to war with mage women, there isn’t anyone I’d rather have beside me than Devery Nightsbane, so we have that going for us.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said as he ran his thumb down her jawline.
She stopped pretending that she didn’t know what he meant. “I don’t know,” she whispered hoarsely. “I hope so.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “That is all I can hope for,” he said, voice thick.
“You have to be honest with me, Dev. No more lies, not ever.”
He sighed. “We’re of Under, Gemma. We lie the way that others breathe.”
“Not to each other,” she whispered. “Not ever again. That is the payment I demand for Fin’s life. If you ever lie to me again, then I am gone. And it starts right now. Tell me about Katya’s mother.”
He sat up. “Do I have the right to say no?”
“Of course,” she said, pulling herself to sitting and leaning against the wall beside him. “But I’ll always wonder why if you do.”
Gemma watched as Devery paced the room. His eyes had a bruised look about them, his skin was pale and his cheeks gaunt. Gemma found it hard not to comfort him. All of her instincts were off when it came to him.
Finally, he said, “It was a long time ago. When Rucheal was alive, you were still living on Lord Ghantos’s estate.” He stopped, pausing to stare out the window. “I was nobleborn and the son of a mage woman. Tradition meant that I should have long since offered myself up to several wives as a proper breeding husband, but I … I was never very good with people. My mother had little time for me, especially once Elsha was born. I knew from the time I was a young boy that I was to be the instrument of my mother’s wrath, and I always felt that tools of violent revenge make terrible husbands.”
Gemma’s heart ached for him and she had to force herself to sit on her hands. She would not go to him.
He smiled weakly at his own joke. “Rucheal was a tavern maid. She was uneducated, half my age and kind. I spent more time than I should have at the tavern, and we became friends. Then we shared a bed. Then she became pregnant.”
The word struck Gemma harder than she’d expected. She clutched her hands to her belly and bit her tongue to keep from sobbing.
Devery stopped and looked for a moment as if he would reach out to her, but then his expression changed to guilt as he refused to meet her gaze.
“When I found out I was going to be a father, something inside of me broke open. I wanted to give my child a family—the kind I’d never had. So, I married Rucheal. It wasn’t love. It was, at most, kinship and familiarity. But it was enough. I was … happy.
“I went to the Balklands to pick up some documents my mother was having forged, and while I was there, Rucheal went into labor and died. My mother told me that the child died, too. In a fit of impotent rage, I came to Yigris to become an assassin of Under.”