by Lindsey Byrd
“Gods above,” Wild murmured once she’d finished her story. He reached for another glass of wine, and this time he pressed it into Kera’s hand. “Please sit,” he requested as he signaled for more food and drink to be brought out. One of the soldiers scurried off to do just that. “What is it that you want from me, Widow Montgomery?”
“I want you to send your men to Ship’s Landing and Willowisric and arrest all of those responsible for this. For working with and profiting from a wraith’s desire to seek revenge,” Kera requested. Wild nodded but with great consideration. He poured himself another glass of wine and spun the fluid about.
“I’ll need physical evidence that this is Travers,” he informed her. “I cannot send an army to arrest a family for profiting from tragedy.”
This, Kera thought, would be the moment her husband would start screaming. Would stand on a table and shout for all the world to see that Wild was a brainless oaf. Couldn’t he tell that time was of the essence? Couldn’t he understand that lives were at stake? He and the overseer would devolve into quibbling, never to get anything done. And from the pensive expression on Wild’s features, Kera had no trouble believing that he assumed she would react much the same way.
But she was not her husband. And she’d had a three-hour flight from the Long Lakes to discuss this very concern with Raslidor. “I can show you.” She took careful sips of her wine, letting the fluid fill her mouth. It was fruity and sweet and she liked the flavor. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d drunk something other than water, but she liked it now.
“Show me?” Wild questioned.
“If I can show you Travers’s wraith, summon him here and have him before you—will you believe my story and send your men to Ship’s Landing and Willowisric?” Aurora would be furious when she found out, but that was fine, at this point it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.
“If it is Travers, then there would be enough reasonable doubt for me to orchestrate such a thing. But summoning a wraith . . . that is no easy task. And I had not known you were a charmer.” He was being polite, just barely avoiding calling her a hexer or a witch.
Kera took another sip of her wine and settled it on the table. “I’m not, but Raslidor has offered to assist us in ridding ourselves from Travers’s wraith.”
Wild’s brow furrowed once more. Kera almost felt bad for this, she almost felt bad for interrupting his day. She’d been raised to feel perpetually guilty no matter what she did, but after everything he’d done to destroy her and her husband’s lives by virtue of his position as the leader of their country, she found she honestly didn’t care if he was uncomfortable. If anything, she hoped it hurt.
She stood with her back tall and waited for him to spin an excuse, offer another protest, or attempt to challenge her. He did none of the above. Instead, he bowed his head, and invited her to summon a wraith to Hame Argyll. What did they have to lose? Feeling as though her heart was about to burst, she contained all of her tumultuous anxiety deep within her body. She smiled like a lady, and said, “Excellent. Do you have a smith I could use?”
Night fell over Hame Argyll, and Kera stood alone outside the gates. But she also knew that Raslidor was lying in the trees not far away. They watched her, and from the wall, Kera could also feel Wild’s eyes on her back. He had petitioned his men to line the wall, burning arrows and muskets at the ready. The measure was absurd. It did nothing to make her feel better. The shots would never reach her in time, even if they did, they would be just as likely to hit her as they were to hit Travers.
The men insisted on it, however. They told her it was for her own safety. But it was only when Raslidor assured her that they would keep the soldiers from shooting her too that she felt even the slightest taste of relief. In any case, standing out in the open like this, exposed and in more willful danger than she cared to be in, Kera couldn’t help but imagine Aurora shouting at her for being stupid again. For rushing back into the thick of things. She really was just as foolish as her husband.
Unlike your husband, Raslidor’s voice echoed within her head, despite being well out of sight, you actually have a plan should things not go your way. Perhaps it’s time you stop comparing yourself to him, and realize that you can stand on your own without him? After all . . . he’s not the one who actually knows how to defeat this wraith, you are.
Kera closed her eyes and took a deep breath. I am, she thought. I am. The sky darkened further, but the night didn’t start its howling. Not yet. There was a dull sense of anticipation, one that ratcheted her anxiety tighter and tighter, faster with each passing moment as the darkness grew thicker and any hope of moonlight was overcome by clouds.
She had no crystals, there was nothing to blind her from view. And even though John had healed her scars, they were vestiges of Travers’s attack on her body. Raslidor had been very clear, Travers could find her from that alone. Aurora, Faith, and Aiden were safe at the Long Lakes, and so she was the only one that Travers could see.
He will come for you, Raslidor informed her. They did not try to lessen the impact those words would have on her. They already knew. He wants you dead.
It was a strange feeling, knowing that someone wanted her dead. She used to bring Henry Travers a basket of apples from her garden; she used to dine with his family and offer him her felicitations at the births of his children. They had laughed by the fire and shared stories. They had been friends once. And yet, here they were, standing in the dark at the precipice of a conflict generated solely by greed and misplaced hate.
Something fluttered in front of her. A black cloak flickered into view, the shroud of a dead thing that was torn along the edges. There was a hole in its skull from where her husband had shot him. Henry Travers’s wraith was worn and ragged, but he screeched all the same.
Kera took a deep breath. Her hand closed around the hilt of the blade she had requested Wild make for her. Her mind raced with instructions she’d been given time and again. Words she knew she had to say, and more than that—words she wanted to say. She wanted to speak to the Henry Travers she knew.
She wanted to see him for who and what he really was. “I know who you are,” she told the wraith.
It floated closer to her. It had no body. Just a floating form that hovered in the air and slid above the ground. Closer and closer. Black sockets boring into her soul. She could hear Raslidor whispering in her head. She could feel her breath catch as her fear reminded her it still existed. The manager wanted to leave the premises. She locked all the doors. No. She was staying still.
She would carry this fear with her until the end of her life. No matter the outcome, no matter the joy of winning or the thrill of success, she knew that it would never shake loose the memory of that night in the woods where a wraith tore her apart and killed her horse.
How dare he kill her horse.
“I know who you are,” she repeated. Travers raised one bony hand and aimed it at her throat. She could almost feel the fingers wrapping about her neck. Coiling along her skin and compressing so tight. There were words she knew a braver person would say. I am not afraid of you. I am better than this. You will not hurt me. But those were lies. They were statements that she couldn’t make. She found no truth nor comfort in them. Instead, she said what she did have faith in. What she knew she could hold on to, because nothing else was right. “I am not letting you kill me.”
Her fingers tightened around the handle of her knife, and Travers’s wraith-screeches filled the air. He flew toward her, black shroud fluttering in the wind. Her body trembled. Her anxiety pinwheeled into terror. His skull was nearing, and Kera’s eyes went to the gaping hole Mori’s bullet had left. Her husband always did have good aim.
But not as good as hers.
Wild shouted for his men to be at the ready, but it would be too late. Travers’s claws extended toward her body. Kera’s heart skipped a beat. She turned sideways and slashed her arm up, pulling her griffon talon knife with her. It slashed clear t
hrough the wraith’s body, and everything burst into a cloud of black ash.
Kera clung to the knife as hard as she could, turning her head away as the ash coated her skin and the wind blew it away. When she dared to open her eyes, the skeletal figure of the wraith was gone. Instead, lying on the ground, one hand clutching his heart, was the very ghostlike visage of Henry Travers.
Wild yelled over the wall, levying commands she couldn’t track. She didn’t look back. She didn’t dare take her eyes off of Travers. She stared down at him and rationed her breaths. Tried to calm herself. She could allow the anxiety and the hysteria to overcome her later.
Right now, she needed to act. Right now, she held the knife in her hand and felt Raslidor approach her from behind, no longer hiding. They were willing to intervene if he tried anything.
“Griffon talons cure all ailments,” Kera recited by rote. “And can even turn a wraith . . . back into a ghost.”
“You bitch,” Travers hissed. Kera flinched at the word. She squeezed the hilt of her knife so hard her wrist ached. There was a faint smell of sulfur in the air, and she could taste it on her tongue. Bitter and acidic.
“You tried to kill my son,” she accused.
Travers rose up. He lunged for her, but she slashed at him again. This time, he screamed in agony. Light streamed from the tear she’d made across his body. He flickered in and out of reality.
When they’d flown to Hame Argyll, Kera had asked Raslidor why they’d never set John’s ghost free. If griffons could lay souls to rest, why had they let John continue his death march when they loved him as much as they did? Raslidor had responded, “We don’t put their souls to rest. We give them oblivion. And John Sarren deserved so much more than oblivion.”
Travers didn’t.
He screamed and howled, and Kera attacked with one final swipe. She cast Travers’s soul into an eternity of nothingness, and ended his wraith’s call once and for all. Setting free all those he bound in his attempts to stay alive.
She could feel the shift in the air. The moment he vanished, she felt his mark on her disappearing. Her back lost some of its tension, and her chest no longer constricted her breathing. Kera turned and looked up to Wild. The overseer of their nation looked down.
“I want a message sent to Willowisric and Ship’s Landing,” he announced. The men at his side watched him in rapt fascination, prepared to do anything he said. “Find me every member of the Travers family and their associates.”
“Yes, Mr. Overseer,” one of them replied.
Kera’s hand was still locked around her knife.
We won, Raslidor spoke in her head.
“Not yet,” Kera replied. There was still more work to do.
The overseer fetched Kera food and water. He provided her with a blanket and a warm room. She accepted, but only when Raslidor squeezed themselves through the doorway so they could curl up by the fire at her side. Their wings folded along their back, and they rested their great head beside Kera’s thighs. With Travers put to rest, Kera found that her legs were quite incapable of keeping her upright. All her energy had been sapped, and she trembled as the startling reality of what she had just done made itself known in her mind.
Aurora was going to kill her.
Wild stopped by to deliver an evening meal himself, deigning to kneel and press a glass of brandy into her hand. “You’re a brave woman, Kerryn Montgomery.” If he noticed the knife still in her hand, he didn’t say anything about it. She, in turn, didn’t inform him that she wasn’t going to sleep tonight. Too afraid of what might be lurking in the shadows, shivers wracking her body. She didn’t feel brave. She just wanted to see her family and make sure that they were all okay.
“By the time you return to Ship’s Landing, the Traverses will all have been arrested. We’ll have a trial. Find them guilty. The homes they stole will be returned to the ones who lost them.” Wild made promises like he had the power to enforce any of it. She supposed he did in a sense. He could influence the courts to put things right, and the people wouldn’t stand for the Traverses to be let off easily. He needed to make a show of this.
“Don’t let them become wraiths this time,” Kera said. “He died in debtor’s prison. Someone should have been called to ferry his soul and to provide last rites. This never should have happened to begin with.”
Wild winced, but he didn’t argue. He agreed, and she found that as long as he kept agreeing, he could be managed. She wished he’d acted a tad more diplomatic in the past. It could have saved them all a great deal of trouble.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Widow Montgomery?” He was being polite. Polite and perfunctory, and that was fine. It was all fine. Kera drank down the rest of her brandy and met his eyes.
“I want my husband’s pension,” she told him.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, she’d stunned the man. He stared at her, blinking as he tried to change gears and understand what she was saying. She didn’t give him time to pause and ruminate. She stated her case. In small words, lest he pretended to not understand. “He fought for this country during the revolution, and he accepted no pay. He served as the minister for finance, and he rarely took a salary in order to improve the government’s revenue. He fought again when Trent tried to return, not receiving pay at any point. He died a general in the army, and he barely received a single cent for his efforts.”
She took a deep breath and straightened her spine so that with him kneeling before her, she was the one who towered above him. “After he died, you refused to allow my husband’s pension to be paid. You enabled the conflict with the bankers and nearly put my family on the street. Mori never tried to kill you, sir. He tried to tell you about Travers. And you shot him for it.” Wild swallowed, diverting his eyes despite her firm attention on his face. “I want my husband’s pension, sir. I want my house to stay in my name. And I never want to see another banker at my door asking me to sell my home.”
Wild’s jaw worked. First to the left and then to the right. He seemed to be rolling his tongue about his mouth. As if the words were a garbled mess and he couldn’t work out which he wanted to say first. “There are . . . many challenges in freeing up those funds for such an extended period of time.”
“Challenges you saw no trouble overcoming when you ensured that your monuments and houses could be constructed for your government. When you allotted yourself a salary, and you enjoyed the frivolities that came with it. Challenges that hardly seemed to bother you when it came to freezing them in the first place. Hundreds of people might still be alive today if you hadn’t shot him, sir. This is truly the least you can do.” He opened his mouth, but she still wasn’t done. “You told the world that he had an affair with Aurora Sinclair, breaking your attorney-client privilege and turning the public against him so he didn’t get elected as overseer after Zakaria stepped down. If your wife were in my shoes, if she were sitting here before my husband, and not the other way around, would you not wish to have your pension paid to her so that she could continue to survive long after your death?”
Wild’s expression turned guilty, but she was unmoved by his attempts at placating her. She was indomitable, and stared at him, unblinking. His neck bent. “It’s . . . no less than you deserve,” Wild agreed, as if the words were killing him to speak.
“It’s far less than I deserve,” Kera corrected. She hadn’t asked Wild to fix the narrative. Her husband’s story would forever be lost in the annals of history. She knew full well Wild wouldn’t admit to his wrongdoings. She didn’t expect him to in any case. There was nothing more that could be done on that front. “But I will hold you to your word as a gentleman on this matter, sir. As my overseer.”
Wild nodded. “I’ll see to it. All of your husband’s back pay and finances will be opened up and returned to you.” She looked at Raslidor, and the griffon nodded. Wild’s intent was clear. He was not lying.
“And you will also see to it that the griffons at the Long Lakes are not d
isturbed,” Kera added, because damn him if he thought she was letting him off this easily.
His face tightened. His nose wrinkled, shoulders turning stiff. “Widow Montgomery—”
She raised a hand in the air and spoke over him. “They helped us because they were given the choice to help. If this happens again, if someone else seeks out their care, and you have made an enemy of the griffons through your own poor management of their territorial grounds, then you’ve directly done harm to the very people you claim to want to protect. Leave the Long Lakes alone.”
At her side, Raslidor shifted to watch as Wild attempted to come up with an appropriate response. He didn’t seem interested in making an enemy of a griffon when one sat so close, and he scowled. “I will do my best to keep it off the table, but I have no control over what happens in the future. I will not be overseer forever.”
“That’s all I can ask of you . . . that’s all I will ask of you.” Standing up, he bid her good night and did the same to Raslidor before hurrying from the room. He almost seemed worried she would ask him for something else.
Still, the moment the door clicked shut, Kera crumbled forward. She squeezed her eyes shut, and Raslidor nudged her legs with their head. “Okay,” Kera said. “Okay. I’m done now. I want to go home.”
Raslidor didn’t say anything in response, but that was the beauty about someone who listened. They didn’t have to.
Raslidor flew Kera back to the Long Lakes in the morning. There, Kera met four other griffons who had come to spend time with Aurora, Faith, and Aiden while they waited for her. One was an adult like Raslidor, but the three others were small. One was so tiny they fit in Kera’s arms. Aiden could wrap his whole body around them.
Aurora pulled her to her chest the moment she could, cupping Kera’s face between her palms and looking her over. It was almost as though she’d expected Kera to come back wounded, and Kera smiled at the open concern. “I’m fine,” she promised. “I was perfectly safe.”