by A J Gala
“This one’s regenerative abilities include limb regrowth,” Cyrus said.
Ayvar breathed in deep with disgust and turned away. “Gods fuck.” He roamed around the room, shaking his head, mumbling under his breath. “What kind of people are we turning into?”
“Father,” Scara called to him. “The boy looks familiar to you too, doesn’t he?”
“He’s your cousin.”
Neither Scara nor Sola could manage words. The last time he had so much as mentioned any extended family, they had been little girls just learning how to read and write. They had all but forgotten anyone else even existed. And now their cousin was burned into a grim image in front of them.
Cyrus broke away from the viewer. “You know the identity of the Raven?”
“Don’t, don’t you dare, Lord-Hunter!” Ayvar raised his hand when Cyrus came close. “I wanted out. Why did you and your wretched duchess have to keep enticing my daughters and pulling us back in? Why couldn’t you just let us go?”
Cyrus ignored him. “You say he’s your nephew?”
Ayvar’s groan was almost a wail, heavy with grief. “My sister’s son. My dead sister’s son! That man she married, he was the death of her. And those damn children! But I couldn’t hide her away with me because my wife hated her—”
“Sir Ayvar, I have studied the genealogy of Mirivin’s rulers extensively.” Cyrus glared at him with something deadly in his eyes. “I knew enough to guess why you might have wanted to avoid Suradia. All must not be well in the family? You are a Garva, as was your sister. And according to the records, Garva married to Hallenar. Her son is a Hallenar, is that correct?”
Ayvar’s legs buckled for just a second, and his head swam. He stood with his back to a wall and rubbed his face. “Yes, Cyrus, that’s correct. His name is Aleth. My sister’s fifth-born child. I don’t know what happened to him or how he became this way.”
Cyrus clenched his fists. “If he’s a Hallenar, we must storm Suradia immediately!”
“You leave House Hallenar alone!” Ayvar yelled. “I may want nothing to do with them, but they are my sister’s family, and I will not stand for this! If you’re after a nightwalker, you hunt your nightwalker, but you leave the rest of them alone.”
“You’re emotionally attached to the situation.” Cyrus dismissed him with a wave of his hand and returned to the dragonquartz. “Your concern is noted, but I will not be considering it any further. Attracting him by attacking his home and his family is the best strategy I have.”
Scara saw her father’s distress, and Cyrus’s velvety voice suddenly irritated her. “Is it?” she asked. “Where was he when you found him all those years ago? Didn’t you say he was in the woods? And it certainly wasn’t his family who came to save him from you. I bet the only thing you’d attract with an attack on Suradia is Queen Anavelia of Saunterton’s wrath.”
“Don’t start fires where you don’t need them, Lord-Hunter.” Sola picked at her cuticles. “I bet the Hallenars don’t have a clue about him. Typical runaway story. How sad.”
Anger flushed Cyrus’s cheeks with red. “House Hallenar is affiliated with bloodkin, and bloodkin are vile, Forbidden creatures! Therefore, the Hallenars cannot be allowed to rule over Suradia!”
Scara folded her arms and sauntered up to him as close as was decent, then glared.
“What if they were affiliated with a daemon?” she asked. The tacit reminder that she knew his secret was enough, and he backed off.
“Very well.” He cleared his throat. “Finish your poison, Lady Scara. When I have made preparations, I am sending you and Lady Sola to Suradia. I will launch no attack until I have found out what House Hallenar knows.”
He left, and the dragonkind packed the viewer away and left too. Ayvar found a stool and sat, his defeated frame hunching over.
“How much did you already know, Father?” Scara asked.
“None of it.” He wiped his nose. “But your aunt, she did affiliate with daemons.”
Scara grinned and twirled a lock of her hair. “So does Cyrus. That’s why he shut up. He’s using one to help him find the Protégé.”
“What? He’s a fool if he thinks it will work the way he wants.”
Sola dusted her hands. “I think we need to find out what we want out of this alliance we’ve made and either get it or get out. I’m bored of the Lord-Hunter.”
18
Falsify
Vayven 22, 1144
Ilisha roamed the woods atop the plateau as the sun rose. She could feel both a chill and an exhilarating excitement in every leaf in the forest as the clouds began to part, and the light started to grow. Even though there would be sun, the day would still be cold. The first frost would come soon. The faerie breathed the frigid air in deep.
“Boy. I know you’re out there. I don’t like it when you just watch me.”
Aleth stepped out of the trees. His tattered black cloak was bundled up in his hand.
“I was trying to come up with what I wanted to say.”
“Just speak your mind,” she said. She turned and gave him the most reassuring grin she was able to, which was only just. “I will always allow you to speak your mind. There is bitterness in you today. Why?”
He pursed his lips over the words. Would she really want to know? But he was sick of protecting people from how he felt, including her. If she wanted his mind, she would have it.
“What is this?” He held the cloak out to her. His question wasn’t a question at all, but an accusation. “You gave it to me right after you brought me here for the first time, and you told me it was just ‘a nice old garment worn to hell.’ That was bullshit, wasn’t it?”
The faerie narrowed her green eyes. “I never told anyone. How did you find out—”
“The Hunters are calling it the Ravenshroud!” He shook it in front of her face. “Ilisha, what the hell is that?”
“I stole it!” she yelled back, grabbing it from him. “I stole it from them, but it was not theirs to begin with!”
He groaned and turned away.
“Listen to me!” she snapped. “It’s a Blight Fae artifact! From before their great war on the Glades, back when they were just a normal season of the land. The Hunters have no right to such an artifact!”
“You put a target on my back!”
“I protected you!” She grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. “Do you understand? This—” she shoved the cloak back into his hands, “—is what hid you for all those years. Why does it never rip or tear despite looking like it’s falling apart? Why do your edges blur when you wear it? Why do you look like a shadow, like a flurry of feathers when you run through the trees? I gave you this to hide you from your pursuers. To help you run until you learned how to do it on your own.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you? The boy with the biggest mouth in all the land?” She scoffed, then waited a moment for her temper to die down. “If you knew, everyone would know.” She watched as he shook the cloak out and started to put it back on. “And they would want it, and they would take it from you. But an old, battered garment that you held onto for sentimental reasons? No one would even want to touch it.”
“You stole it from Hunters.”
“It wasn’t theirs to have.”
He threw the hood up. “It’s not mine to have, either.”
“It was mine to give! Now quit being a little shit about it.”
They were quiet, listening to the branches rustle as a faint breeze kissed them. It was soothing and peaceful, but it wouldn’t last. Clouds deep on the horizon promised something monstrous that night.
“The Hunters call me the Raven,” he said. “My family calls me that too. It’s the symbol my father chose for me. It’s strange to hear the Hunters say it… doesn’t feel right.”
“What does it matter?”
He had no argument. “Good point. For a while, I was afraid they were all on the same side. But I believe Tizzy when she says
our family isn’t like that. I probably make them out to be a lot worse than they are. Well, no.” He leaned against a tree. “Some of them probably are still that bad.”
“It almost sounds like you’re maturing.”
“Almost.”
When he left Ilisha, he pulled his cloak around himself a little tighter. He didn’t know how he had been stupid enough to believe she’d just given him rags back then. Of course the cloak had been something special. And now he was infamous for it. Unfortunately.
He headed back to the Convent through the open courtyard, passing Tizzy’s Ethereal form. It would be time to plan their return to House Hallenar. Soon, he thought. And that meant leaving the Convent one last time.
Tizzy wandered a little aimless, but she was going in the opposite direction.
He grinned. “Hey. Where are you headed?”
“Haven’t a clue,” she chuckled.
They waved, and she watched him go inside the abbey. She knew he would go toward her room. Their sanctuary. She was glad to have had the chance to bump into him, but he was the only person she could afford to be seen by. At once, she marched to the forest, passing through trees, bushes, and rocks like they weren’t even there. She knew there was more out there. She had seen Torah head into the forest in the same direction only minutes ago.
Where did he go? What was he looking for? She wondered if he slept out in the plateau’s forest somewhere instead of in the abbey.
She would find him eventually. He couldn’t hide from her.
She couldn’t remember just how early she had started stalking him. His habits were normal and predictable from what she’d been told about him. He’d had one encounter with his sister that ended in cruel words, and then he drank. When the bottle of bloodwine was empty, he had gone into Davrkton next and found a person selling letalis leaf.
Tizzy had learned how to hide her form completely, thanks to Eidi, and no one had seen her shadow him into town. Well, she could hardly call it into town, she thought. He’d gone to the seedier bars on the outskirts, in the country where there was mud and dust on everything at the same time.
Her invisibility couldn’t last forever, though. She’d had to find a supply room to hide in until her head stopped pounding, and she could do it again.
Torah had come back from Davrkton drunk, high, and full of shame. He’d made the long ascent up the cavern walkway and stumbled straight into the treeline once he’d emerged from the antechamber. And she would find out where he had gone next.
A thin line of lightning traced through the faraway clouds. The faint rumble of thunder came much later. Tizzy hiked north toward the edge of the plateau until the trees were scarce. She stared up at an old, worn, gray-brick chapel. Half of the long southern wall had crumbled with age. There was no door, only rusted hinges where one once was. Last night’s rain dripped down into the chapel from a broken slat roof.
She wondered why the chapel was so far away from the abbey. And what purpose could a Botathoran chapel serve, anyway? Chapels were almost exclusively built in Emrin’s honor, appealing to the goddess’s domain of Family. Who would dedicate their marriage to the goddess of Death and Time?
It didn’t matter. Torah went inside, tracking mud. The interior was in shambles just like the exterior. Pews were rotted and broken, and wooden crates of linens and other supplies had been ransacked by wildlife over the years. Torah found a dry spot between the pews that was beneath a piece of roofing still holding strong. Light danced on his face as he struck a match and lit a roll of letalis.
Tizzy woke.
Two braziers had been built by the front steps of House Hallenar to provide illumination for its increased security. Flames twirled in the darkness, fighting the light rainfall. Jurdeir stood at the front doors with his cadets in a rare moment without words, just staring at the fire.
Standing watch at House Hallenar’s main entrance was his easiest job, and with the rotating company of his and Gavin’s cadets, it was even easier. There had been several incidents of angry townspeople demanding to see the queen after being fined at the courthouse. But some of those were stopped with the threat of jail time, and some were stopped by a follow-up trip to the courthouse for a second chance to complain. The queen did not have time for people these days, and rarely was Athen willing to meet with them in her place.
Someone approached in the distance, and he started wondering about it all over again. What would this person want? Why was there always someone approaching House Hallenar in the middle of the night?
But then he recognized the overconfident countenance.
“Would you look who climbed out of the lion’s pit!” He jabbed a cadet with his elbow. “I hear she’s in trouble everywhere she goes these days.”
Sinisia came up the steps and presented herself straight-backed and with a scowl.
“Master Jurdeir.”
He nodded. “Master Sinisia.”
“Let me in. I’m here to see someone.”
“Oh, yes. The queen will want to see—”
“I am not here to see the queen!” she snapped.
“If you come to the queen’s house,” he said, “you are most certainly going to see the queen.”
He led her inside and there were more cadets guarding the entrance from there. She had heard stories of the queen’s deserted manor and how it was ripe for the picking, but that was not what she saw. The security was not as solid as what was at Lovell Keep, but Allanis was building something strong and it was obvious.
She was taken to a waiting room that was dusty and decorated modestly. She was sure that about a month ago, House Hallenar would have had no need for such a room. She coughed, wiping a line in a layer of dust on a desk. The door opened, and Queen Allanis’s Master of Dusk stepped inside the room.
“Songo.”
Exasperated, the woman spoke. “What are you doing here, Sinisia?”
She narrowed her violet eyes and sat on the desktop. “I’m here to see Rhett Hallenar.”
“Not a chance in all the Hells!” Ravina folded her arms. “No one is to see Rhett Hallenar. You’re the last person we would trust to see him.”
“I’m not going to let him out if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“You’re damn right you’re not going to let him out because you’re not going to see him!”
The door creaked open, and Allanis stepped into the room, clutching a thick burgundy robe close to her chest. Gently, she shut the door and leaned on it.
“Master Sinisia,” she greeted with a small nod. “Does Anavelia know you’re here?”
Sinisia rested her chin in her palm. “I don’t know what she knows. I bet she’s too blinded by her newfound love to know anything I’ve been up to lately.”
Allanis tried to study her face, but Sinisia turned away. “Hm. Seems you’re both suffering the affliction.”
“Excuse me?”
“I heard why you’re here,” Allanis said. “Old King Byland was a paranoid man, you know.” She knocked on the wood door. It was hollow. “I hear a lot of things. I need to know everything about you and Rhett and what went on with those Hunters, and I want to know why Anavelia made you do it.”
“I’m not telling anyone a damn thing. You’ll all be out to get each other eventually, with or without my knowledge, and I would rather it be without.” She jerked her head at Ravina. “Besides, between what Songo has told you and all your other intel, you must have all the gaps filled in by now. You don’t need me.”
Allanis fought the urge to fidget. “Pardon me if I’m having trouble following along. You thought Rhett would get you closer to finding Aleth? Did you do absolutely no research about our family before going down that road?” She couldn’t stop her cheeks from burning scarlet. Her nostrils flared. “I thought that was part of your job! You could have spent two minutes in a conversation with anyone close to our family to find out they hate each other and that it would only end in bloodshed!”
Sinisia grumbled. �
��Yes, that was the discovery I made a little too late. Don’t think this was so premeditated, Your Grace. I knew my orders were to bring your brother in to Queen Anavelia for questioning, and then my intel came to me with sightings of Rhett in the Bogwood with Hunters, so I rode out to meet him immediately. That’s how it happened.”
“Why did Ana want to question him?” Allanis asked. “And that’s the question I really need an answer to, Sinisia. That’s the one. Tell me that, and I’ll allow you to see Rhett.”
“Fine.” She slid off the desk and closed the distance between her, Allanis, and Ravina. “Honestly, I don’t think she really cared. It was Duke Orin’s idea. He’s got his nose so far up everyone’s asses. He knows a lot more than any of us do, and for some reason, the information would have been useful to him. But that’s all I know. I don’t know what he plans to do with it, I don’t know how he knows anything that he does… but he was the one who cared. And—” she folded her arms, “—I am not interested in meddling in your family’s secrets anymore. You’re unsettling, to put it lightly, and I will not find myself suffering the curse of the Hallenars.” She mumbled under her breath. “You’re like a fucking plague on this land…”
Allanis could only shrug. “I don’t know what you hope to get out of Rhett, then, except exactly that. A curse.” A fire still burned in her chest, and she didn’t know what Sinisia’s information had done for it. She had never known Anavelia to be swayed by anyone. “Ravina, show her to Rhett’s cell. She has ten minutes. Then I would like her out of House Hallenar… and preferably out of Suradia.”
Ten minutes was generous. Sinisia did not complain. She felt an enormous burden lifted from her shoulders for winning the battle with Allanis, but like a disease it seeped back in and riddled every inch of her. She walked side-by-side with Ravina in silence, feeling suffocated by the simple, narrow halls of the manor.
The queen’s dungeon was tidier and smaller than the one at Lovell Keep. Rori guarded it with two students from Gavin’s battle mage barracks.