Another surprise from him after he learned of her partiality for that specific cup. He told her he had it fixed according to an emerging Eastern technique—one that honoured an object’s resilience to hardship. Very fitting, considering their own tumultuous history. That cup was theirs now, where it once had been hers alone.
She loved it so much more this way.
Estevan sat across from his brother with a smirk on his lips and a glint in his eyes. “Do you want some cocoa with all that sugar?”
Cael nodded his thanks to her for the cocoa cup, then gave him a blank look. “No.” Only a small, withering glint in his eyes betrayed his aggravation at the jest.
Chuckling, Semras took a seat next to Estevan. “What brings you here today?”
After a long sip of his drink, Cael dropped a few letters tied together on the table. “Correspondence, for a start.”
Estevan opened them. Most of his former retinue had remained in Castereina, but only Ulrech wrote to them often—Sin’Sagar simply sent Maraz’Miri at the speed of wind to bring them news.
Over months of assiduous letters, Sir Ulrech had proven to be a far more skilled conversationalist on paper than in person and regularly gave them news of Nimue and their son Jaqhen. At Estevan’s request—and after the men discussed it privately for a surprisingly short amount of time—the Confraternity had honourably discharged Ulrech of his obligations to the knightly order, and the former Venator now enjoyed a well-earned retirement with his small family.
When they last went to the city, Estevan and she visited them. With the knight finally free to help her with childcare, Nimue’s mood had improved immensely, and Semras now understood why Ulrech had claimed men would kill for her smile. She looked radiant, a sun compared to the moon of the knight’s quiet, sombre calmness.
Semras had yet to ask about the curious circumstances that brought a seeress and a knight together. Maybe one day, she’d find the occasion.
“Baby Jaqhen started teething,” Estevan muttered. “Nimue is requesting a soothing syrup if you have one, Semras.”
“Ah, if only I hadn’t beeninterrupted,” she said, smirking at him. “Then I could have given a bottle to Cael, and they wouldn’t have had to wait for the next time we make the trip to Castereina.”
Cael frowned. “Did I arrive at the wrong time?”
“No,” she replied.
“Yes,” Estevan spoke over her.
Semras elbowed him, and he theatrically placed his hand over his heart. “Witness, Inquisitor Callum! A witch is casting violence upon me!”
Unfazed by his brother’s antics, Cael sipped his cup. “You deserve it after what you have cast upon me.”
Estevan stopped his theatrics, brow furrowing with confusion. “What are you referring to?”
“That witch you asked me to investigate, Estevan … was it …” Cael cleared his throat. “Did you mean to bring us together? Romantically, I mean.”
Semras pursed her lips. “Are you talking of Madra, perchance?”
“That is her name, yes,” he replied. “I tried speaking to her to establish her threat level, but she insisted on inappropriately flirting instead. As far as I can tell, the only threat she poses is to bachelors.”
She stifled a groan. Of course, the fleshwitch would take one look at Cael and decide she wanted his fey blood for her heirs. If the inquisitor ever had any, his daughters would all become powerful witches, even with Deprived women as mothers.
She shuddered to think what they’d be if he ever fell in love with a full-blooded humanoid fey.
But the Fey didn’t know love, only obsession, and Cael had no chance of meeting one on the Vandalesian Peninsula anyway. The ones powerful and cunning enough to hide from the Inquisition’s Nighthunts had been sealed away by weirwitches over centuries of coordinated efforts between the peninsula’s Covens.
Unless their prisons of ancient tumuli and dolmen stones were destroyed, those Fey Lords would never again wander among mortals.
Estevan whistled. “Again, Cael? This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Remember the Ostvaldi ambassador’s wife? Father worked so hard to fix that misunderstanding before it turned into a political disaster. You are a menace to all womankind.”
“I truly do not know why,” he said quietly over his cup. “I give no encouragement toward that sort of behaviour.”
His even tone didn’t betray any sign of distress, but Semras winced anyway. The past few months had made it painfullyobvious to her that the inquisitor didnotknow about his true nature or why women fell prey to his fey aura so easily.
The Fair Folk of the Night were apex predators—their beauty was an intoxicating lure for the unaware. Even with only half of a fey legacy, Cael exuded the same enticing charm that brought so many to their death over millennia of unheeded cautionary fairy tales.
Semras sighed. The fleshwitch might not even have known Cael was half-fey and had only been driven by the spell his nature had put her under, rather than by the potency of his bloodline.
