“I’m a Magi, not an agent of the law,” Aylen said. “Last time we spoke of this, you denied it. Why tell me now?”
Ember fought back the tears. “Something is... changing inside me, and I don’t know what to do about it. I have no one to talk to about it. No one to help me understand it.”
Aylen nodded. “I saw the mess you left in the forest.”
Ember gasped. “You saw that?”
“I suspect many did, but another magic dealer would have attributed the work to you.”
Ember’s eyes blurred. How she hated to cry. Her frustration pushed at the back of her eyes, the tips of her fingers, demanding escape. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
Aylen stepped forward and rested a hand on her arm. “I know. And I know you’ve come to me for aid, and I will do what I can to help you, but I’m a healer. I teach young healers. I know next to nothing about the magic inside you, and if it comes from your Ravenwood blood, I know even less. I don’t have to tell you their magic is different, or that we’ve never had a Ravenwood in our halls.”
“Magic is magic, right?”
“We’ve had no opportunity to study the magic of the Ravenwoods, so I cannot say.”
“But you can help me?”
Aylen tucked a stray hair behind Ember’s ear. “I’ll do whatever I can, but in return, you must promise me something.”
Ember nodded furiously. “Anything.”
“Nothing again happens like what happened in the forest,” Aylen said. “If you want to try something, to practice, we try together. And for the love of the Guardians, Ember, please do not do anything foolish without consulting with me first.”
Ember grinned, heart racing. “I can agree to that.”
* * *
“We found a sword, sir.”
Christian ducked under the branches of the pearapple tree and moved back toward the path. He took the sword from the man and turned it over in his gloved hands, regarding the hilt and guard. “See the etching of the crossed swords, Father? This came from the Rhiagain armory.”
Holden took the sword in his own hands. They bowed under the heft. “Would this have come with our friends when they fled Duncarrow?”
“It’s possible. I know they had steel with them when they got here, though I never got a close look at it. We only brought them bows, for hunting.”
“Too large for a woman’s hands.”
“That doesn’t mean a woman wasn’t wielding it,” Christian countered. To the man who had recovered it, he asked, “Was there anything else?”
“Remnants of a camp in the cave. Blankets. Clothing. Some provisions. Two bows.”
“Signs of trouble? A struggle?”
“It would seem they left in a rush. But I see no other signs beyond the discarded sword and the disturbance in the snow near where we found it.”
Christian nodded. “Thank you.”
“Have you seen him yet? Your brother?” Holden tapped his head. “You know what I’m asking.”
“I haven’t had any visions,” Christian said. “It doesn’t work that way, as I’ve told you. We get what we need, the elders say, not what we want.”
“We must find your brother.”
“And we will, Father.”
“We cannot return to your mother without her son.”
They both turned at the sound of deep, harrowing sobs. Alric knelt at the base of the tree, face flushed dark with emotion, howling his words.
“Why? How? What must we do to understand your desires? What must I give for you to return our Pieter? I have already given you everything!”
Holden closed his eyes and grunted. “Get him out of here.”
“The men know to ignore him when he’s like this.”
“Well, I cannot. Have one of them escort him back to Wulfsgate.”
* * *
“I feel terrible not going with the men to the pass,” Marsh moaned. He was splayed in his chair, watching her change to her nightclothes. “I was the only one who stayed behind.”
“You could’ve gone,” Ember said. She tossed her filthy clothes in a corner pile. She’d been wearing them nigh a week, and it had been a few days too long, according to the stench wafting off them and her. She sniffed twice, scrunching her nose. Well, Marsh didn’t seem to mind anyway. “No one stopped you from going but you.”
“I won’t leave you.”
Ember scoffed. “Please. It’s never been like that with us. Let’s not let it become so.”
Marsh leaned forward, dropping his feet to the floor. “Like what?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Maybe you should tell me, just to be sure.”
She didn’t want to feel this way about Marsh. Like he was an annoyance, and only in her way. He’d said he loved her, and maybe she loved him, too, she didn’t know. She was unclear on how one would even identify such a thing, and for it to happen now, of all times, meant she was even less capable of recognizing it. She had nothing more to give him. Not when her mother was missing, her homeland was in turmoil, and her own internal conflict was raging unabated.
Ember pushed herself to speak calmly, though the urge to take his head off was about as strong as any other urge she had toward him. “I only meant that I don’t need protection, not here.” She waved her hands around. “Look where we are. I’m safe in Wulfsgate. If you wanted to go, you should have gone.”
“You’re safe from some things, but not others. What if Alasyr is only waiting for me to leave?”
Ember laughed. “And you think I cannot protect myself from Alasyr Ravenwood? That you have more ability to do so?”
March recoiled, wounded. “You think so little of me. I know I was not always the strength you needed, on our journey here—”
“It wasn’t your strength I needed! I had enough of my own, thank you.” She could see in his darkening expression these had been the wrong words. Ember knelt before him. “What I needed was your companionship. You.”
Marsh looked off to the side. “I know you’re tough, Ember, but I’m not nothing.”
“Did I say you were nothing?”
“I said that I loved you before. You said nothing then.”
Ember dropped back on her heels. “I suppose I assumed you said it in the chaos of the moment. I was upset, you were upset.”
Marsh snorted. “I would never say such a thing to you if I didn’t mean it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Thank you.
“Thank you?”
“What would you like me to say?”
Marsh jumped to his feet. He lifted his hands over his head, winding them through his hair. He regarded her with one purple eye and one green one. “Nothing you don’t mean.”
“I… uh...” Ember fumbled her words. What could she say? Not the truth. That while perhaps she did love him, her love would have to wait, and no, she couldn’t say for how long. She had too much on her mind, in her heart, that took precedence.
He laughed. “Right. Why am I even here? There’s a war brewing in the Westerlands and instead I spend my days and nights pining after you, wishing for... for...”
Ember knew she should say something. Anything! Anything at all, to change how he was feeling, to refute his fears. She reached for him, to touch him, to hold him, a language she understood far better anyway. “Marsh.”
He pulled away. “Don’t hurt yourself, Ember. You’ve told me how you felt in the absence of the words that are so hard for you to say.”
“I don’t know what you want to hear!”
Marsh wrapped his hands around her arms. “I don’t want you to tell me what you think I want to hear, Emberley! I want... I want you. I want to be at your side, for whatever terror faces us next. I want to be strong for you, even though I know good and well you don’t need it and never have.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I want you to let me be there for you as you grieve your father, and worry after your mother.”
“I’ve been.
.. I’ve had too much on my mind to grieve my father properly,” Ember confessed. “If I think on it too long I’ll go mad. I can’t talk about it. Not with you. Not with anyone.”
Marsh kissed her. “We don’t have to talk. I just need to know what you need from me.”
Ember dropped her head. “I don’t need anything from you. I mean... nothing else.”
Marsh lowered his back to the chair, nodding. “Okay, then.”
27
The Midnight Goat
Alasyr heard her call. He’d heard all her calls over the preceding days, every last tortured one. He didn’t even have to be near her to hear them. He suffered the agonizing desperation of Emberley Blackwood all the way from Midnight Crest.
He hadn’t left The Rookery, not since the night he witnessed his father, and maybe another, apprehend and abscond with Ember’s mother. Asherley Blackwood was locked away in an apartment that had once been reserved for dowager high priestesses, but had, for years, been collecting cobwebs and coldness. The path there had crumbled away, leaving the only means of access a short flight across the gap of broken balustrades.
But he found he could not face the half-blood with this knowledge burning inside him. He felt no loyalty toward her, and yet... it was inexplicable to him, this sense of betrayal. She was nothing! Nothing to him, nothing to the Ravenwoods. Just a girl, with powers she didn’t understand, and not enough wisdom to comprehend her role in the world.
“Have you seen Father?”
Alasyr stiffened. He hadn’t even heard Ryandyr come up behind him. He’d grown lax, and there was nothing more dangerous.
“No,” he lied. He didn’t look back the way he’d come, for fear she’d see the truth in his eyes. Not only was their father harboring an outsider in the Rookery, Alasyr was fairly certain he was the only other one who knew about it. “He may be at the temple.”
“I checked there. Mother is looking for him.”
“What does Mother want?”
Ryandyr peeked back from under her velvet hood, her face flushed. She was still more child than woman, and he struggled to imagine her being ready for the Langenacht in two short years. She hadn’t been as closely watched as Ravenna. Ryandyr had been allowed to play—as much as any Ravenwood not destined for the scepter—and to eat and drink as she pleased. She could wear what she wished, and no one measured her waistline daily. Until now. The sweet childish plumpness in her cheeks had already receded. “I don’t know, Alasyr, but she seems cross with him.”
Cross? Now, this was intriguing. Did she know? “What did she say?”
“Only to tell her should I find him.”
“Nothing else?”
Ryandyr shook her head.
Alasyr leaned in close. “You’ll need to learn to read what others would prefer you didn’t, if you’re to be a successful high priestess.”
Ryandyr dropped her gaze. “Yes, brother.”
Alasyr reached gently for her chin. He tilted her head back. “You don’t answer to me, Ryandyr. Nor anyone. Not even whoever wins your hand at the Langenacht.”
Her violet eyes implored him. “Will you cast your lot for me, as you did for Ravenna?”
A wave of bile rose to the back of his throat, unwelcome. He didn’t answer; he turned and left her standing there, burning holes in his back with her confusion, and when he was halfway down the corridor, he turned his pace to a sprint.
* * *
Asherley didn’t turn toward the light click of the door closing. She had no energy for conversation with Argentyn, especially not the riddle-filled kind he favored when he visited. He’d ripped the last thread of her strength from her with the revelation about Byrne, and since that day, she’d failed to weave it back to life.
She didn’t understand what was happening to her. She hadn’t even mourned her beloved Hollyn to this depth. Her children were everything to her, and Byrne was... he was...
He was just a man, she tried, and failed, to tell herself. Asherley had attempted over the years to cull any excess pride she possessed, for she knew it would eventually be her undoing, but she could not ever let go of how swollen with purpose she felt at not ever having needed a man. She loved her husband, she told herself, but that was a choice. It was not the same as needing him.
Oh, what a lie that had been. There was more than one kind of need. More than one way to complete a life together.
Though she spun her grief to rage, it was a powerless fury. She could imagine her hands at the throat of Aiden Quinlanden, but she could not actualize it, not from here. Not when Argentyn Ravenwood had taken that from her.
“Your meals have been satisfactory?” he asked and she very nearly laughed. Her meals! Was he truly asking her this?
“Your plants are tasteless. It’s as if your cook is affronted by the very idea of seasoning.”
“We eat only what we can produce. We rely on none but ourselves.”
Asherley did laugh at this. “No? Is that why you hide up here, under the protection of the Northerland lord?”
“The arrangement is mutually beneficial. We have provided much in return. Even Lord Dereham’s wife would not be alive to see these times, if not for Ravenna’s skill and aid.”
Asherley sat up in her bed. “And how proud you are of Ravenna! Your shining jewel. Your beloved heir, symbol of hope and prosperity. Your... oh, yes. Forgive me. She’s in exile now.”
“A path she chose.”
Asherley shrugged. “If given the choice between an orgiastic act of sexual slavery with my closest known relatives and a life of freedom, I would’ve chosen the same.”
Argentyn scoffed. He folded his hands over his velvet robe. “And you wonder why we do not welcome outsiders to our world. They understand nothing about our way of life. That, too, is a choice.”
“You revile choices that do not align with yours, while pretending that leaves a choice at all.”
“Your attempt to simplify what is not simple at all is a function of man, one we have no use for here,” Argentyn countered. “We grieve for Ravenna. Not only for what she has left behind, but what she runs toward. She does not know the danger she is in. That all who bear Ravenwood blood are in.”
Asherley stood. She enjoyed his mingled look of fear and disgust as she stepped toward him. “My kin and I have borne Ravenwood blood for generations, living far from Midnight Crest. We have thrived with it. Whatever danger you’ve envisioned, it doesn’t exist.”
“It didn’t exist,” he corrected her. “It does now. The sorcerers are awakening. As was foretold.”
“What sorcerers?” she asked, willing her face to stay her thoughts from surfacing. This was the second time someone had mentioned the sorcerers to her, and in the form of a threat.
“The ones you call the Rhiagain sorcerers. But they are not Rhiagains. And where they come from, they have never served a Rhiagain.”
“Are you going to tell me, or leave me here to enjoy more of your tasteless stews for days?”
Argentyn leaned into the table behind him. He no longer wore the self-satisfied look of the one wielding the whole of the room’s power, but instead, looked troubled. He seemed weighted with something, and Asherley didn’t know if she wanted this burden, but she had nothing else to look forward to in this colorless, lifeless room, and perhaps not beyond it, either. Of all the things she had learned in life, knowing the value of living in the moment, of embracing what was given, even if not what was wanted, had served her the best.
“Argentyn,” she pressed. “I can do nothing from here, anyway. I am at your mercy. Why not put me to use and unburden yourself, as you so clearly want to?”
“You’re right, you can do nothing.”
“You are here for a reason. And I am here for a reason, even if you refuse to share it.”
“Varinya does not even believe the tales passed down. Why would a half-blood?”
“I have no reason to believe or to doubt, beyond the words you choose to share. I have none of your history, y
our perceived truths.”
Argentyn turned his head to the side with a light scoff. “You’re right. You have none.”
“Why am I here?”
“For your safety.”
“Safety from what?”
“How little you know.”
“Tell me!” she yelled. The sound startled them both.
“There are no written records among the Ravenwoods,” Argentyn said slowly. “Only what is passed through oral tradition. The chosen women are given visions of the past, while the men receive these tales by moonlight from other men who have been relegated to the fate prescribed us. We are there to aid our High Priestess, to see her purpose fulfilled. Never to rule her, no matter how foolish her choices.”
“And you believe your wife to be foolish?”
Argentyn balked. “There is nothing foolish about the High Priestess. Even if she does not share my concerns.”
“Maybe she didn’t see it after all,” Asherley replied with a light shrug. “This vision.”
Argentyn’s mouth parted, a tiny rage building behind his eyes. “You dare say such a thing. You dare defile the High Priestess of Midnight Crest with this blasphemy.”
Asherley wanted to roll her eyes. Thought better of it. “Go on, then.”
“Do you know where we come from? The Ravenwoods?”
“Beyond, like the Rhiagains. So they say.”
“Beyond. Yes. Though only the women who have experienced their vision know what Beyond means to us. The men... we rely on the distorted tales passed through one another. What we know lacks the clarity of what the women have seen. Do you understand? The High Priestesses, current and former, are the only ones who have ever seen our past. And so they are the only ones in possession of its truest form.”
The Broken Realm Page 33