Eventide (Meratis Trilogy Book 2)

by Krista Walsh

  “He is a stupid pretty man,” Jeff grumbled.

  “Eat your pie.”

  Unable to let the food go to waste, he shovelled a large bite into his mouth, moaning in appreciation as the spices hit his tastebuds. Almost good enough to push all thought of Darcy and his predicament from his mind.

  Jasmine smiled and started in on hers, propping her elbows up on the table. The way her braid fell over her shoulder, stray hairs dancing, she looked softer than Jeff had ever seen her. He also noticed the sadness behind her sea-green eyes.

  “How about you, Jax?” he asked. The nickname still felt weird on his tongue after years of calling her only by her full name. Yet another detail he hadn’t learned until he came here. “How are you holding up?”

  “You’ve been talking to Brady.”

  “He may have mentioned something.”

  Jasmine frowned. “He sees too much.”

  “He cares about you.”

  Her shoulders slumped forward as she sighed, her turn to poke at the few bites left on her plate. Jeff eyed them, his own plate bare except for a few crumbs.

  “Enough,” she said. “Talking about it won’t solve anything, and it won’t bring us any closer to figuring out what to do about Raul. I can’t believe this still isn’t over.”

  She turned her head away from Jeff, hastily wiping at her cheeks. Then she pushed her plate away and got to her feet. Jeff did the same, swept away by the sudden change in emotion. It wasn’t unexpected—Jasmine would rather be seen in a pink tutu than caught crying—but he had to take a minute to adjust to Jax disappearing and Lady Feldall taking her place.

  “We’ll find him,” Jeff assured her as they strode out of the kitchen.

  “Of course we will,” replied Jasmine, glancing over her shoulder as she opened the heavy wooden door to the stairs. “There is no other option.”

  The reprieve in the kitchens hadn’t been nearly long enough. After the moment of serenity, the sudden burst of energy jarred him. So many battles to fight and no clear way how to start. But while Jeff became weighed down by the mind-spinning worry, Jasmine looked rejuvenated. Her eyes were bright, and her pace sped up the closer they got to her office.

  “I’m going to see if any of our messengers have come back with news. And you,” she jabbed a finger into Jeff’s chest, “are going to go talk to Cassie and get your issues resolved, yes? And then you’ll go see Maggie and see about going home. None of this is your problem.”

  “Venn is—”

  “Our responsibility,” said Jasmine, taking hold of the door. “I wouldn’t ask you to put her fate on your conscience. Go on, we’ll talk later.”

  She shut herself in, and Jeff stood alone in the corridor.

  Spend time with a whirlwind, expect to be disoriented.

  But Jasmine had left him with orders, and he thought that maybe he was ready to see them through. If Jasmine was right, it was long overdue.

  He headed upstairs to Cassie’s room to find it empty. From there he tried the library, his room, a few of the parlours on the main floor. He wanted to try the Haunt, but with all the pops and bangs floating up from the basement, and the fingers of smoke creeping up from the stairs, Jeff hoped Cassie was nowhere near it.

  He was just about to head back up to Cassie’s room to wait for her when he heard laughter coming from the direction of the foyer.

  “I’m not kidding!” Darcy said. “The sword probably had a few pounds on the kid, but somehow he held on, just waling at the queen’s champion until he pleaded for mercy.”

  Cassie’s face was flushed, the anger and stress from the morning replaced with an ease and joviality she didn’t show around Jeff anymore.

  Doesn’t show yet, the confident voice in the back of his mind said.

  Won’t, said the other voice that Jeff was more inclined to believe.

  She caught sight of him and the smile vanished, her shoulders drawing back. It was a difficult transformation to watch, and having Darcy as audience didn’t help.

  Have to try, said the first voice.

  The second voice grumbled, wanted to argue, but told him the same thing.

  “You guys taking the tour?” he asked, the forced cheerfulness grating to his own ears.

  Cassie didn’t answer so Darcy stepped in. “Miss Murphy was showing me the grounds. It’s got a good layout—the training yard especially.”

  A few quips rushed through Jeff’s head along the lines of “You would go straight for the fighting, wouldn’t you, you broad-chested, sword-wielding …” but he bit down on them and said instead, “I’m glad you’re finding your way around. I hate to interrupt, but can I talk with you for a minute, Cassie?”

  From the look in her eyes, the way her body turned towards the stairs as if ready to fly up, Jeff knew she would turn him down. Darcy looked from one to the other and opened his mouth, maybe even to be a decent guy and offer to leave, but he didn’t get the chance.

  A burst of chaos sounded from the dungeons. Men’s shouts and the clatter of metal against bars. The prisoner causing grief, it seemed. Then another silence fell, the problem contained.

  The interruption broke the spell of their stand-off, and Cassie took a deep breath. “All right, I guess we can—”

  Footsteps echoed, and the head of a servant appeared in the stairwell from below as he hurried towards them. He made for the next flight of steps, but when he saw Jeff he curtailed his path and approached.

  “Forgive me, sir, but I was asked to summon you to the dungeons.”

  “Why, what’d I do?” Jeff asked, only half in jest.

  The servant didn’t answer, just pressed his lips together in a forced smile before walking away.

  Jeff turned back to Cassie. “Later?”

  “All right,” she said, and he thought he caught a hint of disappointment. It gave him hope.

  Curiosity overwhelmed any other feelings, and Jeff headed down towards the jail. Jayden and Brady waited for him at the bottom of the stairs, both of them looking like their normal selves in their regular uniforms. Michael stood down the corridor in front of Venn’s cell, his arms crossed as he leaned back against the wall.

  “The woman’s insane,” Jayden stated. “We’ve been down here for the better part of the morning, and all she’s done is pissed in a bucket and tried to climb the bars.”

  “I thought I heard some progress just now,” said Jeff, trying to sound encouraging.

  “I took a trick from your book and mentioned Siobhan,” Brady explained. “She didn’t like that too much.”

  “Maybe not,” said Jayden, “but it pushed her to some sort of decision. Now she’s gone all calm.”

  “So why do I need to be here?”

  Even with his friends nearby, this place made him uncomfortable.

  “Looks like you’re up, Author. She says she’ll only speak with you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jeff followed the others down the corridor, past the three empty cells. More torches were lit today than the night before, removing a little more of the closeness of the dungeon. But the air still choked him, stuffy and warm, and Jeff wanted to run outside. He wiped his palms on his jeans and approached Michael.

  “Seems you’ve won yourself a friend,” the captain said, his eyes hard, the lines on his face tight. Jeff hadn’t seen him this serious since he’d volunteered to help find Raul.

  “I have that way with people,” Jeff replied. He stared at Venn over Brady’s shoulder. The woman sat in the middle of the cell, legs crossed, her piercing blue eyes looking right through him.

  “Out,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” Michael pushed away from the wall, straightening his shoulders. “You just give me an order?”

  “You want answers, I have questions. For the Creator. Out.”

  Brady gestured for Michael to lead the way, and although the man appeared incredulous and a little offended that they would listen to her, he left without further argument. Jayden cast one last look at
the prisoner, and then turned to Jeff.

  “Just yell if you need anything.”

  “No doubts about that,” Jeff said. He didn’t like the way Venn sat there staring, not moving. Like one of those cardboard cut-outs where the eyes followed you no matter where you stood. And the half-smile on her face, as if she were excited for what was about to happen. He shuddered.

  Grabbing the stool, he dragged it in front of her, perching himself on it. Last time he’d done so, he’d known what he was going to say. This time he felt like a kid in grade school about to give his first book report presentation. Only he’d forgotten all his notes.

  “You asked for me, here I am. What do you want to know? Have you given any thought to my story?”

  Venn rose to her feet, her grey outfit a little dustier after spending the night on a cold stone floor. She leaned against the bars and tilted her head, first one way then the other, appraising him.

  “You don’t look like much, Creator.”

  “I’m not,” he admitted. “Definitely not the big scary all-mighty some people made me out to be. But how do you even know that term—Creator?”

  Only two groups of people knew what his role was—or used to be—for this world. The Feldall core, and Raul’s people. This woman wasn’t one of the sorcerer’s family.

  “Word spreads. Especially when dragons topple fortresses and bears topple walls.”

  If someone knew enough to guess what happened with Jeff and Siobhan in that tower, it wasn’t too surprising they’d spread it around. It still made Jeff wary that she used the term her sister had used. As if somehow Siobhan were in the room with them.

  Apparently today was his day to be haunted by ghosts.

  “You have questions,” she said.

  “So do you,” Jeff replied. “Quid pro quo, Venn.”

  “What?” she snapped. She pushed herself off the bars and sank back down to the floor, one leg bent to rest her elbow on top and the other stretched out in front of her, a dark scowl on her face. Some people just didn’t appreciate a good reference.

  Jeff stood and pushed the stool away to sit cross legged on the floor in front of her. “I answer one of your questions, you answer one of mine. What do you say? We both win and maybe you get out of here a little sooner.”

  “They’ll only let me out of here to kill me. I think I’d rather stay. At least the rain’s off my head.”

  He allowed her a moment to consider, taking the time to think about his last encounter with her. He had no idea if she believed his story or not, and wasn’t sure if it mattered one way or another. He thought about her reactions, and one question rose above the rest.

  When it became apparent she wouldn’t be the one to start, he asked, “So you weren’t in Brindley at all?”

  He couldn’t help but come back to that. He thought of the guilt Venn must have felt when she learned her sister died for something that wasn’t true.

  For another long while Venn kept silent, until Jeff didn’t think she would answer. But finally, in a voice that sounded small and distant, she said, “I’d already left by then. Hadn’t been there in years.”

  “You couldn’t have been very old when you left. Where did you go?”

  Her eyes narrowed at him. “I was old enough. After they threw me in jail, I didn’t want to stick around, so I grabbed what I could and made a go at a life on my own. Trained myself to hunt. Found people to train me. Found people that would pay for information, or to have their enemies disappear. I made do.”

  “Siobhan didn’t know?”

  When Venn’s only answer was a stare, Jeff felt compelled to continue. “I carry your sister’s death with me every day. I see the life drain out of her eyes after she pushed me out of that tower. I see the determination she had to do what she could for you. She may have died helping me, but I didn’t kill her. Raul did.” His throat closed up with anger, and when he pushed out the next words, his voice was hard. “Maybe not directly, but it was because of his games, his narcissism. And obviously some of his followers survived Talfyr’s attack, are still helping him. If you tell me where you got your information, we can find him and make sure he pays for it.”

  Nothing but silence from inside the cell as the girl shifted her gaze down towards the floor. She crossed her legs and picked at the toe of her boot. Jeff scooted backwards to lean against the wall, his legs out in front of him, one foot crossed over the other. He would wait with her on equal ground, no matter how long it took. Their only other option was to hope Jasmine’s messengers came back soon.

  It had to be one of Raul’s followers that told Venn about Jeff. If they could get a lead on him, then finding Raul would be easy.

  “No one told me.” Venn’s voice came quietly, still directed at the floor. The hard edge and hoarseness remained, but underneath was an intense vulnerability that made Jeff’s heart hurt.

  He didn’t ask any questions, afraid to push her away; instead, he held his breath and waited.

  “I was at the Queen’s Head Inn a couple of months ago—the innkeep lets me stay in the stables some nights if I bring him a brace of conies or a deer—and I heard these guys at the table. They were well in their cups, so I doubt they knew what they were saying, because if they were smart they’d have kept their mouths shut about Raul in a place like that. But they didn’t seem to care. This one guy, he was going on about how the dragon had brought the fortress down, but not before Raul’s prisoner escaped, killing as many men as he could before he left. He said Raul’s second in command had fallen, shot by this bastard for standing in his way. Said Siobhan was an idiot for trying to stop him, that this guy was the Creator or something. I didn’t understand what he was talking about. He said that the man had run like a coward back to his friends at Feldall’s Keep and then vanished, taking Raul with him. That’s when the innkeep told the guy to leave. Said he didn’t want any of Raul’s men wasting his ale.”

  Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “I didn’t believe it at first. Why should I? Siobhan was always just … there. I thought she always would be. So I went out to the fortress. Took me a week to find the place, it was already so overgrown. And then I had to wait for that fucking dragon to leave. I spent days digging through rubble. So many broken bodies, but none of them familiar. Never the one that mattered.”

  Her voice grew harder. “When I did find her, I almost didn’t recognise her. Her body had been thrown into the river and bloated up with water. Her insides had started to rot, her skin peeling back from her—”

  Venn stopped and Jeff swallowed the acid in his throat. He wanted to ask her why she’d gone, why she’d put herself through that. But it would have been a stupid question. Of course she had wanted to know for sure.

  “What the man said was right. There was enough left of her to see the hole in her chest, the arrow still sticking out of it. So now all I had was my sister’s dead corpse, knowing that the man who did it had run away. That I’d never get to say goodbye to her or watch the life drain out of him. After that, I let it be known up and down the country that I’d have your blood on my hands if the day ever came.”

  Jeff swallowed in the face of her fury. To realise now how much of it had been directed at him, curious about how much still was after he had given her his version of the story. Had he swayed her? If she could, would she try again to cut his throat?

  “But that doesn’t explain how you knew where to find me. How you knew who I was or that I was back in this world. I haven’t been back long.”

  “Long enough when you’re dressed like you are, and being in the company you keep. Word spreads pretty damned quickly about things like that.”

  “Tell me.”

  Venn half-turned around again, leaning forward on both hands, her features twisted with concentration. “It was at the inn again. Two guys had crammed themselves in the corner for a bit of privacy. I make a decent living off of other people’s privacy, so I found a spot to listen. The first guy said something about how Raul was
back for sure, that he’d brought a bunch of people with him who looked like they were dressed for death. I guess because of the no armour thing or something. Then the other guy said Raul wasn’t the only one making an appearance. That another group had come out. One guy claiming to have created this world. Who else could that be but you? That man said you were heading back to Feldall’s Keep to go after Raul, that the innkeep would be busy on his own dime because you’d all be passing that way in a couple of days. That he’d better have put away enough over the last season, because the queen’s men never come cheap.”

  “Did you recognise either man? Anything about them?”

  “I didn’t see much of their faces, they were hiding in the shadows, and I was keeping out of the way, but one was nicely dressed. Not too high, but nice enough that he sort of stood out in a shabby place like the Queen’s Head. The other was a soldier.”

  “Good, that’s something to work with. About the soldier, did he have anything on him you’d recognise? Like a shield or—”

  “A bear,” she said. “He had a shield with a bear on it.”

  Jeff scrambled to his feet. “A bear? You’re sure.”

  “Of course,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I know what a bear looks like.”

  “On an orange background? Teeth bared?”

  “Could have been, it was difficult to see in the light. Why?”

  “Because you may have just saved us all.” He hurried towards the stairs and then stopped and turned back. “Thank you. I’ll be back soon!”

  He left her staring after him and ran to find someone, anyone. The revelation spun through his mind, pieces falling into place. The door to the library was locked, and although he knocked he received no reply. Jasmine’s offices were empty, as were Jayden’s rooms.

  Where the hell is everyone?

  As a last ditch effort, he rushed back down the stairs to the Haunt, Maggie’s workshop. She wasn’t there either, but Jeff dropped down on the bench at her work table to catch his breath.