“It didn’t take me long to mesh into them, especially when they found out what I was. The day Lavender came into the world was the day I changed for the better.” He smiled at the thought.
“You became her brother, though not by blood.” I tapped my chin. “Now, why does that sound familiar?”
“I suppose we have some things in common,” he chuckled.
We sat for a moment in silence and listened to the music of the mountain.
“Do you regret putting an end to Keagan?” I asked eventually. “It must have been hard to live with.”
“Keagan was the man that raised me. He wasn’t my father or my uncle, and I was never a son to him. He made that clear,” he sighed. “But yes, some days I regret it. I like to think that he could have been relieved of his darkness one day.”
The locket warmed under my touch. “Do you reckon Stephan will ever be cured of his?”
Ethan clenched his jaw and shook his head. “No, I don’t think he will. Whatever the reason, something evil buried itself so deeply within him that it changed who he was. It granted him powers no one in our history has ever held.” He paused. “Something like that doesn’t just go away.”
“And he was once Eldryn, like you?”
“Yes. We don’t know how much of his original power he retains or if he’s lost it entirely-”
“What if he has?”
“Then we’ll be in a tricky situation. There has always been five of us. If one of us died without an heir our power would have nowhere to go, no conduit to bind to.” He bit his thumbnail and noted the moon’s position. “The others have been updated on what we found, though I left out the part about you being fed visions – that is a killable offence so there’s no need to be insulted anymore. Other than that we should sleep. Of all the places in Vremia to make camp, this is probably one of the safest so both of us can get a decent night’s rest.”
“I don’t think ‘decent night’s rest’ sits in either of our vocabularies, does it? Especially not after being marked as ‘killable’,” I joked.
“Considering I’ve got the trouble lure with me, probably not,” he said. “But we can at least try.”
“The ‘trouble lure’ can handle herself, however I’d hate to see Miah’s fury if you try collecting firewood from her trees,” I said, skipping down the tree nimbly ahead of Ethan.
“We don’t need it tonight,” he said, jumping down beside me.
I scoffed. “That’s surprising; I thought you had a fire fetish.”
“No, I’m Eldryn, not an arsonist, we’re two completely different things,” he said as we headed back across the valley to the tunnel mouth. I opened my mouth to retaliate but he got there first. “Let’s just get our packs and try to get through another night without killing each other, alright?”
I nodded but when we reached the tunnel mouth I had to stop. Everything had been so overwhelming both in the Garden and in my own head, that I hadn’t noticed all of my ailments had disappeared the moment we’d stepped past the opening. As of then my head pain, sickness, weakness, and tiredness came down on me like someone had thrown a full saddle bag across my shoulders. After having those few hours of lightness I couldn’t quite believe that my body had been feeling like this. Ethan stopped and stared, though he didn’t seem bothered by anything now his arm had stopped bleeding.
But then there was something else that made it hard to breathe. Fear. Fear of what was going to happen to me. Fear of what the information I kept from Ethan would cost me. I felt like my head was going to explode.
“Sorry, I’m coming.” I shook myself out of it and gathered whatever strength I could muster to pull myself along the cave wall. Perhaps camping in a place without ailments was a smart thing to do after all, not that I’d ever let Ethan know that. No, I’d never hear the end of it.
CHAPTER FORTY
THE LITTLE DEMON bitch was alive. The disgusting Gnathian girl had seen it. The way she’d acted since arriving in Vremia, the things she’d said, were not the things to be spoken of by an ordinary Gnathian. Gnathians were blinded to the world around them. They cared only for the whereabouts of their next meal, the amount of money made from an occupation they never wanted, the passing of their seed. But the girl was different. Her dreams were unusual and disjointed. Sometimes I’d watch her as she slept and listen to her talk. The things she spoke of were not things she should have known.
My ears prickled at the sound of approaching hooves. I climbed the roof further to look over to the stable on the other side of the house and watched as Ethan and the Gnathian approached. Something about the girl was not right. Stephan had never specified his obsession with her – he said I’d realise it in my own time.
She laughed, a bright smile spread across her face despite her terrible condition and something cold crept up my spine. Her hair was similar, her eyes were different but there was no doubt she was as much her mother as the last time I’d seen the Witch disappearing behind that door.
I knew who she was.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
ETHAN HUNG THE reins and mounted the saddles on the far stable wall as I stood fussing the horses. Daniel’s mount was back in its stall and whinnied for attention along with a couple of others, and Theron padded lazily into the stable.
“Since you dragged me out on your escapade you can at least feed me the good kitchen scraps for once,” he huffed.
“Alright, that’s a fair deal,” Ethan agreed, chuckling.
“The others must be home.” I nodded toward the full stalls before we exited.
“So they should be. We’ve been gone a long time.” Ethan shivered. “I’m not looking forward to getting a lecture. I should’ve left them a note.”
“Just as well I wrote one out before I came to find you then.” I cocked an eyebrow and he smiled back.
I looked up at the house, suddenly realising how much I’d missed it. It had seemed a good idea a month ago to ride off into Daeus-knows what, but now I couldn’t help but feel like I’d run away. We had been ahead of a storm for most of the journey but the clouds burst above us, shaking the ground with thunderous bellows, and we ran to the house.
Theron pulled up short suddenly, his usual floppy ears alert and his golden eyes wide.
“What is it?” Ethan asked.
A few moments passed and he started to whimper feverishly. His ears were set flat against his bowed head and he began backing away from the manor. “There’s trouble. Terrible trouble,” he whined.
Ethan moved gently toward him, “What sort of trouble?”
Theron quivered and whined, unable to form any further coherent sentences. I placed a hand on his back, stroking his wet fur comfortingly as Ethan stormed in ahead. I turned to follow him but Theron barked at me, tugging on my skirt.
“Don’t go,” he said. “Don’t go.” He trembled.