Cerise shook her head. If they were slowly crawling out of the mud, she could live with it. But they were sinking deeper and deeper. Her children wouldn’t know her grandfather, and her grandchildren, if she were to have any, wouldn’t even know he existed. All his knowledge would be lost. Already she was forgetting things, and the books didn’t help, because half of the time she was too tired to read them.
It was wrong. Cerise clenched her teeth. The whole point of working so hard was so her children and their children would be better off than she was. But they wouldn’t. They would be worse. The more time passed, the more exiles Louisiana stuffed into the swamp, the more vicious it would become.
No matter how hard she tried, no matter how hard the family worked, they made no progress. They just slid backward into the swamp, and all she had as a consolation were useless dreams of “what if” filled with pathetic self-pity.
And then there was William. She should’ve known that nothing in life came without a catch. He was everything she could ever want in a man: smart, strong, funny, handsome, a hell of a fighter . . . and he turned into a monster. Gods damn it.
She picked up the book she had been reading before William came in. The Nature of the Beast. It was an old text from Louisiana. She knew it was biased, but it was her best resource at the moment. She’d taken it out of the library a few months ago to read to Lark, to try to convince her that there were real monsters out there and she wasn’t one of them. It’s not that she didn’t trust Aunt Murid, but since Uncle High was involved, her aunt wasn’t exactly objective.
She wouldn’t have guessed that her uncle Hugh was a changeling. Would’ve sworn on her life he wasn’t. So not all the stories were true. Yes, her uncle was a murderer, but it wasn’t out of bounds for the Mire.
Maybe William was a wolf like Uncle Hugh. They were supposed to be noble creatures . . . She set the glass down. What was she thinking? He’s a murdering beast but that’s okay, because he is a noble murdering beast?
Poor William. She’d gotten a shock to the system, but it was nothing compared to what he got. Here he was, hunting his enemy. He met a girl in the swamp that made his head spin. And then he realized that the girl came with a clan of insane relatives, an eighty-year feud, and a horde of the Hand’s agents. That was a hell of a price tag. Being related to Kaldar alone would make most men run for their life.
Cerise toyed with her glass. William was hers. The way he looked at her, the way he held her while they danced, told her that better than any words. When she’d seen him come up those stairs, her heart had sped up, and it wasn’t because she was scared he’d rip her to pieces. She wanted him. But want alone wasn’t enough, because he was trouble. Aunt Murid was right—when William loved, he would love absolutely, but when he became jealous or angry, he would be uncontrollable. Life with him would never be dull. It wouldn’t be easy either.
She had to decide yes or no. To let him love her or to cut him loose.
All of this was useless speculation, she decided. In the morning they would attack the Sheeriles, and she had no guarantee she would make it out of that fight alive.
WILLIAM burst onto the balcony. She had a picture of another man on the wall.
He swung onto the rail and crouched there staring into the swamp. He needed a fight. A long exhausting brawl.
“What are you doing on the rail, child?”
He whipped around.
Grandmother Az stood next to him, smiling. “It’s not good to stare too long at the Mire. It might look back.” She reached over and patted his hand with her tiny wrinkled one. “Come on down off that rail. Come now.”
Snapping at sweet old ladies was beyond him, no matter how mad he’d gotten. William jumped off the rail.
“That’s it,” she told him. “Come, help an old woman to a chair.”
He followed her around the corner, to where the balcony widened and three wicker chairs sat facing the Mire. William held the chair out for her. Grandma Az sat. “Such a well-mannered child you are. Come sit with me.”
William sat. Everything about the old woman was soothing, but he didn’t trust her any more than he trusted the rest of them. She knew what he was, too, and kept it to herself. The question was, why?
Grandmother Az reached to a narrow wicker table on the side and picked up an old leather photo album. She flipped it open. “Look right here.”
A tall man stood next to a young woman. The man was dark-haired and lean, the woman looked like Cerise, but her features were harsher.
“This is me and my husband. Henri was a good man. I loved him.” Her eyes sparkled. “My father didn’t like him. My father was a great swordsman. In the old way.”
“Like Cerise?”
“Like Cerise. Do you know of the old way, William?”
“No.” The more information he got, the better.
“I’ll tell you. Once the New Continent of the Weird was filled with people. They built a great empire.”
That he’d heard before. In the Broken, the Europeans settled the Americas, killing the native tribes. In the Weird, the history had been almost completely turned around. The tlatoke had built a great kingdom, fueled by the magic born in the forest and jungle, and they had raided the Eastern Continent for years until they built a world-destroying weapon, which predictably destroyed them. When the Easterners finally scraped enough courage together to cross the ocean and make landfall, they found an empty north continent and a huge wall that sealed off the southern landmass.
“They called their kingdom the Empire of the Sun Serpent,” Grandmother Az continued. “They were great warriors, with a long tradition and great skill in magic. Their magic was their undoing. They brought about their own destruction and had to flee. Some of them fled here, into the Edge, and here they remained, secure in the swamps for centuries to come. That’s where we take our root. We keep their arts of sword and magic alive.”
“So that’s what Cerise does?”
The old woman nodded with a serene smile. “The path of the lightning blade. Very old art. Very hard to learn.” She picked up a small letter opener from a narrow side table and raised it straight up. A thin streak of brilliant white dashed down the blade.