by May Peterson
“Eirlys?” The forlorn way Rhodry looked was how I imagined he had when he’d first found her, dead in the grass.
“Mamma!” I waved to get her attention. “What do you know about her?”
She barely seemed to see me anymore. Her eye and Eirlys’s throbbed hypnotically in rhythm. “Sloppy, Mio. Did you really think I’d come to bargain with Lord Bedefyr?”
Eirlys was upon Rhodry in a blur of steel grace. Her sword pierced Rhodry in the side, tearing through the other side of his abdomen.
Rhodry’s scream should have killed me. It was a miracle I could hear that and survive. He coughed blood on folds of torn carpet. Black, ancient blood, drawn from where her blade pinned him to the floor like a stake.
“Mamma. Mamma.” I made the sign over and over again, but she no longer saw. No longer cared.
“Power is why you appealed to me.” She sneered. “It is why you—lord, immortal—bow to me. It is why I could have taken my boys back any time I chose. Power is the fruit of your wife’s pain, which serves me now—as it should!”
“My lady!” Rosemary grappled with Eirlys, tried to gain control of the blade and pull it free. Mamma gestured once, and Eirlys swatted Rosemary away like a gnat. Cecilio caught her, the two of them shrank helplessly under the bale of the occhiorosso. With a nod from my mother, Eirlys ripped the sword from Rhodry’s body and impaled him again, through the stomach. He strangled his screams down this time, reducing them to a wet heave.
Tibario watched, inert. I might just as well have been one of her puppets, for all I could do to fight her.
“I was taught never to attend another’s home empty handed. Do you know I forgot to bring a gift? Well. There is something I can give you. The knowledge that your plan would have failed no matter what you did.”
Rhodry’s breath gurgled around a mouthful of blood. “Fuck you, you red-eyed sociopath.”
Mamma chuckled, clapping. Tibario sprang to life, recovering her bag from the floor and producing an envelope from it. He neatly unfolded two sheaves of stationery and handed them to her. The same paper as used by House Bedefyr.
She handled them as if they were effigies of power, spells wrought in dried skin. “I am pleased to hear from my son, of course. But I am popular this evening, for as soon as I see he has written me—what do you suppose? A third party apparently held interest in whether I would visit you.” She waved one of the letters. “A person who knows you rather closely. They tell a tale of great interest.”
“If I ask what it said,” Rhodry spat hoarsely, “will you stop fucking gloating?”
“Oh, absolutely. It is this: General Santonino is not your murderer. You have summoned me for naught.”
Rhodry’s pause was like a weight clattering to the floor. “What?”
“His murderer, in fact, is standing in this very room.” She enunciated the name with exquisite care. “Lady. Eirlys. Bedefyr.”
Murderer? I searched her, her face caked in frozen blood.
Piero couldn’t be the killer. If he’d murdered her, her vengeance curse would have been satisfied.
Rhodry was silent for a moment. “You’re lying. You think I don’t know your type? Classic narcissist. Lying makes you feel in control.”
“Oh, but I don’t need to lie when I am in control. Unless you think I’ve found out some other scintillating detail of her past. Nod three times, darling, if I’m telling the truth.” Eirlys’s head bobbed, mechanically, once. Twice. Three times. “There, you see?”
“But why would she do such a thing?” Cecilio clutched Rosemary’s arm, the two of them looking as wan as children before Mamma’s power.
I signed numbly at them. “She thought what we did. That Piero had killed her.” All the life had gone out of me. I’d invited Mamma here, and someone—whoever truly commanded the incubus—had reacted. Someone who knew the truth.
“Enough games.” She clapped once, and Eirlys retracted her blade. There was an agonizing moment when Rhodry slumped to the floor, and tried to hold himself up, but couldn’t.
It was too much. Silence wasn’t protecting anything that wasn’t dying anyway. Not anymore. Tibario’s inertia stared me down. Eirlys and Rhodry may as well have been reliving their own deaths.
I needed power. Magic. Something Mamma must listen to.
Her gaze fell on me now, its full weight sitting where it belonged. “The only question is: Are you going to be a good boy and do as I say, or am I going to have to keep convincing you?”
My breath came in frost clouds. I’d done it before. At the incubus’s command. When nothing else could have saved Rhodry. I could do it now. Nothing mattered unless I could sing.
“Mio. I will give you until the count of three.” Mamma stepped forward, Eirlys mirroring her. “One.”
The silence rested in my heart. Where I could feel every vibration. Every note my barrier was pushing back. All I had to do was stop defending myself. And let them in.
“Two.”
My throat relaxed, the power rushing up the arc of my body. All my muscles relaxed. The song came to me.
“Three!”
I opened my mouth. And let the song out.
It had no form, no purpose yet. An instant of shock stretched through the room, a note spread across infinity. I had to strike now before—
The moment snapped. Crimson slammed into me. Her expression was cold—but her eye blazed like an iron.
She was too fast. The occhiorosso skewered me before I could draw another breath.
And redness closed around me like a fist.
“Mio!” Rhodry’s cry sounded muted.
Just as before, I could not fight it. My body lacked the ability to disobey; in the moments it took her to remember how to control me, I was standing straight. I swallowed reflexively.
Don’t think I enjoy this, Mio.
No. She didn’t enjoy it. Every nerve in me communicated exactly what she felt. Her control was a paranoid clench, the fervor of a warrior whose fingers would bloody before releasing her sword. There was no pleasure in it, only desperation.
I am never letting you go.
It sounded like something Rhodry might have said, with all the sweetness and care in it killed. Rhodry and Eirlys had taught me so much rage, how pure it could be. I had fought so hard to hold on to that. It only left me with more places to be wounded. The complete futility of this struggle was the most breathtaking, concrete thing I had ever seen.
Cecilio and Rosemary weren’t making a sound. Maybe they were too afraid to. Mamma had overtaken every other heart in the room. Only Rhodry bellowed on, calling my name, weakening with each syllable. Eirlys stood over him like an executioner.
Grimly, she forced me to move. I didn’t feel any compulsion. My body simply did what it needed. It breathed without me. It swallowed, blinked, shifted without me. And it took one step after another, without me.
I walked woodenly to her and, like an automaton, kissed her hand.
The lack of silence also exposed me, anew, to the sudden throng of emotion from every side. Eirlys’s tortured, restrained outrage. Tibario’s despair. Waves of anxiety from Rosemary and Cecilio. Rhodry’s anguish, filling me like smoke.
“I’ll kill you.” Rhodry gasped for breath, charging each exhalation with venom. “I’ll literally eat you, you goddamned rapist.”
And Mamma. The chaos of need, obsession, and fear in her.
Mamma. She could feel me now, the way I could feel her. You have to let them go. You got what you came for. I’ll do whatever you want. You win. Just let them go.
But she ignored me. Now my silence was one she could control. All of her was keyed on Rhodry.
“You’re accusing me of rape?” Her laughter was made of knives. “After you spent weeks winding my son around your finger. Making him dependent on you. Taking him into your bed. So that you wou
ld have a fine weapon for getting rid of your last lover.”
The flagrant accusation of her words was like a violation. Eirlys mechanically seized his hair, forced him up. Mamma swept forward, leaning so close that her light tinged Rhodry’s skin red. “Oh, my dear, dear Lord Bedefyr. I had been contemplating sparing you. And moon-souls are so very complicated to kill. But I think your death is one I will enjoy.”
She sneered. And scarlet broke through the silver of his left eye, as if she had broken my protection over him with a single stroke. Rhodry became rigid. Anger boiled in me like poison.
Yes. Only silence, spun around him in the minutes before it last closed over me, had shielded him. In giving it up, I had exposed him too.
Eirlys tore him from the floor, Mamma’s power forcing him to his feet. His own will might never have held him up, but he shook, bleeding and unsteady, in her grasp.
Mamma, STOP! I clawed at her, tried to peel her attention away. But she was too strong.
We were here again, with me reciting the canon of wounds to myself. Seeing all the spots she could enter. Only Tibario’s secret I could not pinpoint for certain.
Tibario’s and—
And mine.
Between my breaths flashed the many places Mamma could have stolen through. My desire to flee. My love for Rhodry. My guilt. It was real guilt, from real sins that hurt actual people. It was not guilt like Rhodry’s, for simply not having the answers.
Yet none of that I hid from her. None of that lay so low that my silence should rise up around it in defense of my heart. Whatever I hid, it was there. This was a secret between us, tearing me in two.
“You have violated all that I hold dear.” A primal, almost infant rage swelled from her. “For that I will leave absolutely nothing left of you.”
The secret flared in me like a detonation. It lay there, in seeing her do this to Rhodry, who had led me back to my voice. I had wanted her to be herself again so badly.
Mamma.
No more. I didn’t want her back.
Eirlys’s arms swung up, lifting the sword like an axe.
I hate you.
The thought shot from me like an arrow. Through the red corridors between us, lighting its way out. She stopped, turning on me, face bathed in horror. I took hold of the shame she had used to bind me.
And used it to sing.
I want to love you. But I can’t anymore. I hate you.
The song gathered force within, the first chord of a movement. This was the lesson of rage Rhodry had taught me. She’d taken away my ability to know, to choose. And I was allowed to hate it. To hate her.
“Mio. Don’t.”
The admission pulled me to some deeper plane, where Rhodry’s holy waters were still making me clean. It sent waves of light and sound through the walls that had held me together. At last came the angry song of my heart that I had strangled almost to death.
And that song roared out, silver and burning. The ruby of the occhiorosso did not merely retreat. It dissolved, hissing white and pink as the truth destroyed it whole.
“You are...my mother.” It was my voice, just as it had always been, and it came now with ease. My throat was rough with disuse, but it belonged to me. “I loved you more than anything. And you took that away.”
The words were barely more than whispers. And yet they rocked the room, fueled by convictions that rose above fear, just as my voice had when I’d summoned Tibario back from the Deep. Music spilled out, phosphorescent and self-sustained. Mamma recoiled, grasping the wall behind her for support. The glow of her eye grew pale as my power rose.
She did not give up—a throng of new attacks struck me. Surges of magic, bent on snaring my mind, regaining her hold over me. But my song entangled them, converted them into notes of music.
Eventually, the assault stopped. We were left at a standoff, our swords drawn. She leaned back, gasping for breath. I trembled with strain but held my position.
My strength was returning. And with it, insight. This was why Mamma had come. To provoke me into dropping the silence. The possibility that I could and still did resist her must have seemed unimaginable.
“Let them go. Now.” My voice radiated magic across the devastated room.
“No.” Her refusal was flat. Bitter.
Very well. The hard way. Taking a breath, I drew in my song, wove intention into it. The phosphor gathered around Rhodry like a cloud of fireflies. Music pulsed through his wounds, his blood-hungry muscles. The anger and terror and humiliation resounding in him. His posture began to relax.
“Stop!” She sounded distant, dwarfed. But an iron grip seized me from behind. Tibario appeared as if out of the air. Her control over him had not weakened, his agility flowing at her command as one being. Both hands twisted my arms, forced me down to my knees.
Tibario was wailing inside. I could hear it, but not change it. I had freed myself, but they were still at her mercy.
I released my focus on Rhodry, and the melody flared around me. A new intention, something shakier, something else I’d never tried. But I spun it over Tibario, his arms and legs, spooling him in a cocoon. It sealed closed, propelling him off me in a fluid bubble of song.
So. Another spell lurking in the quiet of my unconscious, waiting until I’d had the faith to shape it. I poised back on my feet, meeting Mamma’s gaze. I’d achieved greater spells when facing the incubus, but I didn’t know if I could keep doing it now. Not at her pace.
“How long do you want this to go on?” I asked. She couldn’t see into my mind anymore; maybe it would be enough to force a concession. “If you want to win through battle, you’ll have to hurt me. Badly. Beat me into submission. You spent years doing it. Do you want to try again now?”
That seemed to give her pause. Tibario was still struggling automatically against my restraint. The only breaths that seemed to be drawn were hers and mine.
Then, after a moment, something happened. A tear slid down her face.
“No.” Her voice was thick. “No.”
She covered her face. And her power vanished like a bubble popping.
Rhodry slumped, panting to the ground. Eirlys moved, looked down at her hands in horror. The sword slipped to the floor. Tibario seemed to recover the fastest; he stopped moving, scanned the room. But as my shell of magic dissolved around him, he only stayed where he was. Quietly studying his feet.
I clenched my fists to keep my hands from trembling. But every muscle in my body screamed with relief.
Eirlys crumbled to her knees and pitched her head back. A thundering shriek split the atmosphere. Even Mamma seemed cowed by the purity of her grief.
“Are you—” I faltered, tried to calm my breathing. Sobs were raking their way up my throat. “Are you happy now, Mamma?”
She revealed her face. Another track of tears had joined the first. And she said nothing.
“Let me—let me up.” Rhodry growled around a series of coughs. Eirlys was holding his arm as he strained to stand, but even after the touch of my song, he seemed too weak to rise from his knees. But he was fixed on me, a smile softening his beaten, swollen face. “Oh, God, Mio. Your voice. I’m so happy to hear your voice again.”
And his love reached over the space separating us like arms. Warm and solid and unwavering. I wanted to go to him, hold him. Never leave those arms again.
But this was not a victory. Only a stalemate.
Cecilio and Rosemary immediately flocked to their masters, forming a circle on the riven carpet. They’d been reduced to this again. To their knees. Lost and imprisoned in this house.
I counted three breaths. “We will go now. You, and me, and Tibario. And we will not come back. Do you understand?”
Tibario hadn’t turned his face up. Mamma maintained her pain-mottled stare. For a heartbeat, I thought she might refuse again.
But she
merely dusted herself off. Then extended her hand, her scarf fluttering off the wreckage into her grasp. And she started walking toward the door.
Tibario sprang into motion as though by reflex. He found her coat, helped slide it on, and opened the door. There they waited, red and silver eyes aglow like omens.
I spared one last glance back at Rhodry. He blessed me with that haggard grin, and even the slowly healing bruises around his eyes were precious. “Mio. Don’t be afraid. It’s just death.”
His death. All other routes were gone.
I bit my lip. And willed the tears to pass. “Goodbye. I love you.”
With that, I turned back to my family.
We stepped outside. Before the door closed, Mamma’s arm descended over my shoulders.
Chapter Sixteen
RHODRY
My wounds were already healing. Minitransformations, bending me brutally back into shape. I had the impression that both Eirlys and Rosemary were helping me up, but the details melded into a blur. The room was a haze of broken glass and blood. I staggered across the devastation and uncapped the whiskey. Thank God in his Heaven and all that was good that it hadn’t spilled.
“The general.” Cecilio was wringing his hands, staring at the destroyed room as if it could never be clean again. “He wasn’t the murderer.”
I sucked in a wet breath. “No.”
Which meant the curse wasn’t ours. The realization scoured my mind blank.
My eyes went to Eirlys. With all her ice around her, she had never looked so much like she was breaking. Hairline fractures of horror crossed her expression as she stared. At my wounds, the blood at my feet.
Oh, Eirlys.
The killer. Wasn’t. Piero.
In the next instant, she flew into hand signing, accompanied by thunder. It looked like the same signs, over and over, but as incoherent as the pieces of my puzzle. My mind seemed so slow, because it hit me like a glacier—she must have learned some sign, to take pressure off Mio.
“Eirlys.” I held out both palms in surrender. “I’m sorry. I can’t understand you. Not without Mio, not with him—”