On the Subject of Griffons

by Lindsey Byrd

  While not pleased to hear of Gale’s death, Kera couldn’t help but feel an almost natural acceptance. Of course Gale would catch a chill running about as she did. Of course she had taken with fever acting as she did. Of course. Of course. Of course.

  Sitting on the floor of an inn, tears staining her cheeks, wearing clothes inappropriate for a lady of her stature, Kera couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t taken advantage of learning more from Gale while she’d had the chance. Jealousy, perhaps. Jealousy that while Gale never ceased to combat their parents and society whenever she could, Kera had never been brave enough nor talented enough to try.

  Not the social marvel of Ciara, not the fearless harpy of Gale, Kera loitered in stagnation between them both. Two days of traveling had left her muscles sore and aching, overworked and misused. She was filthy and reeked of the road. Her hair was tangled, and there was dirt beneath her nails. She could taste the salt of her tears as she licked her lips.

  Gale wouldn’t have been afraid to argue with Aurora. Ciara would have stood her ground. Kera hadn’t, and Aurora ignored her. Aurora’s focus was fixed on the reason she was here: Faith. Kera was here, acting out of class far too late in life, because her child was dying too. And because she was hysterical. Couldn’t forget about that.

  She had run out of her home without sparing a second thought, and she was surprised Ciara hadn’t sent some men after her. She half expected John Barker to burst through the door of the inn and demand that Kera go home. He would take it from here.

  The door remained shut. John Barker didn’t appear.

  He wouldn’t. The only ones on this journey were her and her son, and Aurora with her girl. Only there was no Ivory Gate waiting for Aurora at her journey’s end. She had no funds to finance her journey. She only had her daughter, a teenage girl who was cumbersome to manage. Faith didn’t have the luxury of being carried by her mother. Despite fever and exhaustion, shaking and pain, Faith needed to stand and mount a horse each day. They were stronger women than Kera would ever be. Stronger, perhaps, than even Gale had been. At least Gale had the benefit of knowing she had wealth and privilege to defend her. Aurora had nothing, but like Gale, the prospect of pain didn’t stop her from standing up and fighting for what she wanted. No matter the cost.

  And because Kera was so keen on torturing herself, she whispered one question into the night, “Why did my husband go to you?” and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see Aurora as she provided her answer.

  Aiden was asleep now, Faith too. They were as alone as they could be considering the circumstances. Aurora let out a long breath of frustrated air. “You told me not to talk to you about your husband,” she reminded, tone still tart. The viper had gone away, turning into a python instead. Squeezing her victim as slow as she could so Kera could suffer longer.

  Kera should wait until the tension between them cooled, but she just wanted it to be over. She was tired of preparing herself for the next blow; she just wanted it to land. “Please,” she whispered. “I . . . would like to know.” Aurora had every right to refuse. She could brush Kera to the side. Ignore her. Laugh in the face of her desperation.

  She didn’t. Even with her eyes closed, Kera could sense Aurora watching her. Could imagine the look on the other woman’s face. Swallowing, Kera dared herself to look back. The anger was gone. The fire had been doused. It was replaced by a blank mask that Kera knew all too well.

  She saw it each morning when she looked in the mirror. She felt it each night when she lay down for sleep, convincing herself she had done well and telling herself the day had been a success.

  “Your husband loved you,” Aurora said. It was not the answer Kera wanted, not the knowledge she wanted to hear. She tried to bite back on her frustration, ignore the feelings of inadequacy that multiplied with each passing second. A loving husband did not conduct an affair with a married woman. “Maybe it’ll shock you, but we didn’t . . . sleep with one another each time we met.”

  It didn’t make her feel better. It wasn’t even a shock. Mori had spent hours awake at night, staring out the windows and waiting for the dawn. Words would possess him and drive him to write. They would have driven him mad if he hadn’t followed their commands. He’d had moods where his thoughts seemed incapable of stopping and he would have to pace from one side of the house to the other to calm his mind. He even had a habit of walking the length of the city if the house felt too constraining. He walked until he was too exhausted to move or think or do anything at all except sleep. Kera couldn’t imagine Mori going to Aurora for sexual release, and then saying nothing at all afterward.

  “The first time . . . you’d left,” Aurora continued. “Gone to your father’s for a holiday, I think, along with the kids.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Kera whispered like it was a prayer. A recitation of words she had chanted again and again and again. The defense was all she had against the insipid thoughts that haunted her in a death march of their own. If you’d been a better wife, if you’d been what he’d wanted, if you’d stayed . . .

  Ciara would have affirmed her. It’s not your fault. He was the one who made that choice. It was his fault. His fault. Aurora didn’t. She kept the blank mask affixed, undaunted by her protestations. “The truth is, Lady, I needed money.”

  “We had no money—”

  “You had plenty of money to someone like me.” It was true. Kera knew that. Knew her standards and beliefs were far different from Aurora’s. But the silks and the dresses didn’t amount to prosperity, though Mori worked tirelessly to afford them. He never stopped trying to make enough to care for her and their children. He had been uninterested in giving her a life she might not be able to enjoy in luxury.

  She had attempted, once, to tell him that they didn’t need money. She didn’t care about that. She’d just wished he spent more time with them. He had looked at her like he hadn’t understood a word she’d said. Like she had blathered on about a topic and been so incomprehensible, he couldn’t readjust to her worldview at all. Of course we need money, he had started to say, before shaking his head and leaving the topic unfinished and mangled in the air.

  Mori had kept them in comfort, and he’d done it with a frugality that ran counter to his generosity. Their charity made them who they were far more than their avarice. They had money. The very idea they could think of things such as charity spoke to their wealth, however insignificant it might have been compared to that of their peers.

  “The night we met—” Aurora sighed “—he’d been . . . out of his head. I came up on him as he wandered ’bout the city alone, talking to himself.” Kera had heard this story before. She knew all the intricate pieces. “I came to him in bruises. Told him I needed aid, and your husband . . . he was a good man. He gave me aid.”

  Except for that. Kera hadn’t known that. “Bruises,” Kera repeated.

  “Jacob . . . my husband? He thought Morpheus would be distracted by ’em.” For a brief moment in time, Kera couldn’t help but wonder if she had known anything about the affair at all. She hadn’t read a single letter Mori had sent her on the subject. Whenever he’d tried to explain Aurora, she turned a deaf ear. She listened to him beg her for forgiveness and nothing else.

  And she had forgiven him.

  When their first Aiden had died, she had been desperate for salvation. Desperate for companionship and friendship, and he had been there. He had held her and whispered his own heartbreak into the void, joining his voice with hers. Neither of them capable of being alone one day more. Not for anything.

  She had taken him back into her heart, been his friend and confidante once more. He’d treated her like she was the most important thing in his life, and she wanted to be the most important thing in someone’s life again. She’d told herself she could ignore his affair, so long as he stayed with her. So long as he didn’t leave.

  Bruises.

  It was a strange thought. Mori had never lifted a hand to her. Never raised his voice. Kera was
not unaware that such men did exist. Young women (twenty-three, she reminded herself, Aurora was twenty-three at the time) were not always privileged enough to be with a kind husband.

  “I told your husband I’d been beaten,” Aurora continued. “Abandoned. That my daughter and I just needed some money to get out. He said he didn’t have any on him.”

  He never did. He always kept it at home. Unless he planned to spend money, he left it at home. He wrote checks more often than not. He liked keeping his ledger in good order with receipts and marked transactions.

  Aurora said, “I didn’t think he’d come. But he did. So I told him that I needed to repay him. He refused.” Discomfort swelled within Kera. “He was the first man to refuse.” Aurora’s features softened. Her eyes drooped some. Her lips tilted upward in a nigh unnoticeable smile. But Kera did notice it, and she found it fond. Aurora had been fond of Mori’s refusal. “Your husband tended to my wounds. He brought that book”—she pointed toward Absalon Herbalism—“and he created a salve that he rubbed onto my scars. He looked in on Faith, and he made me promise to tell him if Jacob came back.”

  “You didn’t sleep with him?” Kera asked. It felt like a lie.

  “Not that night,” Aurora replied. “He came to my home, at first, in kindness. And each night I offered to sleep with him. Thanked him in as many ways I knew how. He seemed . . . there’s a word. Not confused. More than. It has a b I think?”

  “Bewildered?” Kera offered. She recalled the moments when Mori was bewildered, and they usually came when he received a kind gesture or an act of familial decency. It was as if he’d never been aware such things existed.

  Aurora nodded. “Be-wil-dered. And each day more out of sorts than the day before.” She made a noise. Disgust. “I do believe those men at the Overwatch meant to torture him until he lost his mind.”

  Kera didn’t miss the deadlines or furious pace. The frantic way Mori jumped from one mess to another. Who knew winning independence from Trent required so much paperwork? General Zakaria trusted Mori to lead the charge as he always did. Come up and conceptualize an entire country’s laws and regulations? For Morpheus Montgomery, such things should have been easy. He worked and worked. He wrote and wrote. He compiled endless calculations and philosophical theories to help paint a portrait of Absalon’s future. He deserved so much more.

  “When he came to see me, he seemed in a fit of terror. That he hadn’t finished on time. That he needed to work harder. Faster. He started crying, so I held him.”

  It’s not my fault, Kera reminded herself. But I should have never left.

  Aurora went on, “When we did sleep together, I . . . I think he just wanted to stop thinking about everything else. He wanted comfort. Kindness.”

  “You blackmailed him,” Kera reminded this tender-hearted soul who offered her husband something as blasé as kindness.

  “It was the reason I even spoke to him,” Aurora confirmed. “Jacob wanted the money he felt your husband had. And he knew how devoted to you Morpheus was. With proof Morpheus had indeed been unfaithful, he knew he could make Morpheus pay him.” Biting her lip, Aurora almost looked guilty for what she’d done. She almost looked hurt by the words she was telling Kera now. “Don’ think I’ll ever forget his face when he came to our home, letter in hand.”

  Kera could imagine it. Morpheus simply wasn’t built for betrayal. He had only two close friendships aside from Kera, but John Sarren had died in the war and True Lord Amit had returned to Ruug. He never attempted to grow close to anyone else. Instead, he seemed to believe that if he had no one to lose, he wouldn’t have to suffer their departure.

  Aurora’s letter would have torn him apart.

  “Jacob beat me the night he sent the letter,” Aurora revealed softly. She reached for the laces on her blouse, untying them and sliding the shoulders back. There was a jagged scar running from the base of Aurora’s neck down across her collarbone, splintered like cracked glass. “I remember kneeling on the floor at Jacob’s feet. His hand in my hair, as your husband stood in the doorway. Jacob said he knew what your husband did. ‘Pay me, or I’ll tell your wife.’” Aurora grimaced. Redid her laces. “So he did. He told Jacob not to touch me again, and Jacob said a whore was a whore and he would do what he wanted with me if it meant he got what he wanted. Morpheus told Jacob he wanted his whore untouched, and paid Jacob to keep me that way. And he did. Jacob beat me less, he left Faith alone. Morpheus came, and offered salvation by making Jacob rich.”

  Kindness, Kera presumed, had always been her husband’s greatest flaw.

  “It was almost two years later, when he got me and Faith alone. Gave us a good sum of money, and a choice. Take the money and leave Jacob, or don’t. But he no longer would line Jacob’s pockets. He put me in touch with Mr. Wild and he helped arrange my divorce.”

  “Brennan Wild helped you divorce your husband?” Kera very nearly yelled. Aurora didn’t seem the least bit surprised by her reaction.

  “It was how he knew of the affair in the first place, and why he had the information to go to the papers during the overseer election.”

  Kera’s rage flooded her senses. She needed to look away from Aurora’s face, needed to take a few moments to steady her breathing enough to regain control of her emotions, to build levies strong enough to block the tide from drowning her completely.

  “Jacob,” Aurora continued once Kera managed to uncurl her hands from fists, “found himself in and out of prison, struggling to stay ahead of the law Mori moved around him. Wasn’t hard after so long for him to find other ways Jacob was breaking the law.”

  Aurora ended her narrative with a forced smile. A there you have it expression that left Kera feeling as though someone has scraped away at her insides with a trowel, digging through her soul and leaving her bare and barren.

  She lifted a hand to cover her eyes. Rubbed at them with her thumb and forefinger. “Mori didn’t need to respond though. After Wild published it in the papers, he didn’t need to confirm it. He could have just kept it quiet. He didn’t have to name you or say . . . just how he deceived me.”

  “Suppose he didn’t, but for someone like me? It don’t ruin my reputation any. So what if I’m hated? So what if no one likes me? Fine. Let them mock. It don’t matter. And . . . if nothing else, I was the woman who lead Morpheus Montgomery astray.” Kera flinched, and Aurora softened her tone. “I’m sorry.”

  “No . . . no, it’s . . . it’s fine. It’s true.”

  “Just because something is true doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to hear it said. Regardless of the political motivations he may have had . . . he made a poor choice.”

  “He likely saved your life,” Kera said, struggling to understand how Aurora could possibly say such a thing considering all the intricacies of the tale. “You believe it was a poor choice?”

  “I feel my own guilt over those years,” Aurora replied. “I think on how many years I took from him? How much stress and horror I inflicted when I followed my husband’s wishes. For my place in the act.” She took a long breath. “But . . . at the end of the day, when I embraced him that first night? When he allowed me to sleep with him? Even for the comfort he so desperately wanted? He made that choice. And for him? For you? For all the years you lost together? It was a poor choice. And . . . I’m sorry for my place in it.”

  Kera stared at Aurora, and she nodded. She believed her.

  Kera couldn’t sleep.

  Aurora and Faith slept soundly, but sleep didn’t come for Kera. Instead, she lay awake listening to the sound of the night. Aiden was curled up at her side. One of his hands clung to the sheet like a preferred blanket, and she kept an arm around his back to secure him. He was breathing badly. Each inhale was ragged and worn. But at least he inhaled. At least he exhaled too. As he breathed, Kera’s thoughts tormented her brain like flies to foul meat. Biting and tearing at her until she scratched open another sore and let that fester too. The more she tried to ignore them, the more they stung. It was imp
ossible to get any rest.

  Hours passed. Aiden’s fever raged, and his breathing was shallow. She watched his limbs twitch for hours, but she felt his heartbeat against her side. It was still strong, and perhaps over time his brow wasn’t as hot as it once was.

  Birds chirped the first few notes of morning. Doors opened as townsfolk began their day. She kissed Aiden’s brow and settled him on the pillow before standing to dress. Glancing over toward Faith, Kera was glad to see the girl was doing better than before. Her face was still damp with sweat, and she twitched just like Aiden, but she’d made it through the night. It felt like an accomplishment.

  Kera knelt beside her saddlebags and pulled out the laundry that she and Aiden had accumulated. She did the same for Aurora and Faith, though there wasn’t much. She used a sheet to tie the bundle together, then hesitated. Aiden was on the bed. Aurora was not far away.

  It won’t take long to go to the river. We have to wash to stay healthy. Mori had always insisted on cleanliness when they were ill. Wounds were battlefields filled with soldiers. If the enemy troops infested the land, the defending army couldn’t rebuild their decimated villages. The wound needed to be scoured and the excrement removed. Kera wouldn’t have time to wait for the sun to burn off the excess water once she finished, but there was a fire pit in their room. She could set the clothes out to dry there, and if she did it soon enough, they should be ready for when they left. But . . . she looked at Aiden.

  Looked back at Aurora.

  Biting her lip, she knelt at Aurora’s bedside and placed a hand on her arm. Aurora came to with a start. She jolted back and blinked at Kera like a lighthouse keeper catching sight of a ship-killing storm on the horizon. Clean the wicks and replenish the fuel, there be nasty weather ahead. Even the gods be afeared of this storm. The tide alone will kill them all.