Damien’s mouth turned down as his jaw clenched and arcana crackled in his hand. That was Amma’s cue. “Excuse me, gentlemen?” She stepped up beside Damien and beamed at the guards between the bars. “Valeria Vermissia wouldn’t happen to be on that list, would she?”
The lanky guard’s eyes went wide. “You’re the Voluptuous Valeria from the letters?” The other guard elbowed him, hard, and he coughed out an apology.
Amma took a deep breath, face going red as she made sure her cloak hid her body away. It was a perfectly find body, but voluptuous might not be the first word someone would use to describe it. She sniffled and gave Kaz another scratch. “That would be me, yes. I just loved Claude so, and I can’t imagine why Morel would do such a thing. I couldn’t bear to stay in hiding any longer and just had to come down and see the boy.”
“Ah, and this is your...” The guard looked dubiously at Damien.
“My steward. He’s a bit aggressive, but you understand how that might be necessary considering all the unpleasantness,” she said quickly and bounced Kaz in her arms. “And my little Fifi. She’s been my constant companion since I lost Claude.” At that, Kaz began to growl, but she planted a kiss on his cheek that silenced him.
The guards gave one another a look, and then the gates were opened. “Follow me,” one instructed and led them down the long path lined with maples to the house.
Damien leaned down to Amma as they fell a few steps behind the guard. “Who the fuck is Valeria?”
“Didn’t you listen to a word I said in the tavern?” she whispered back. “Valeria Vermissia is the mistress in the will. You know, the one that nobody’s seen?”
His brows rose, and he grinned. “You tricky, little liar.”
Amma grinned back. “Tricky, littlehelper,” she corrected.
Another guard was posted outside the front doors of the Stormwing Estate. The house rose up before them, imposing and grand, but dark even in the brightness of late afternoon. The two wardens exchanged a few, quiet words, and they were allowed entry through an opulent if dim foyer and to the exterior of a drawing room, its double doors shut.
Amma requested a moment alone with Morel, who she was told was inside, biting her lip and blinking fake tears out of her eyes. The guards let them enter unattended, and Amma was sure to have the doors closed behind them.
They stepped into another dark but lavish room, curtains drawn, fireplace out, a single figure sitting alone in a chair that dwarfed him.
“Who are you?” Morel Stormwing was a slender young man, maybe twenty, with hollowed out eyes and thin cheeks. He got to his feet when they entered, but remained hunched, like the weight of his own hair pulled his lanky figure down. A dark eye roved between stringy strands over the two of them and then down to Kaz who had been placed onto a settee.
Amma opened her mouth to fall back into the accent she’d used for Valeria, but Damien held up his hand, stopping her. He crossed the room to a clean hearth, sweeping past Morel like he wasn’t even there.
The boy stepped away from him as if he might be knocked over from the breeze off his cloak. “I asked who youare.” He clenched a fist but cowered, sidling behind an armchair. “Did that bastard who calls himself my brother send you? Or my bitch cousin in Aufield?” He looked to Amma for an explanation as Damien was ignoring him, inspecting the fireplace instead.
“Neither,” she said. “We’re here to find out what really happened.”
Morel’s jaw quivered a moment, uncovered eye searching the room and then the ground as he grabbed the back of the chair. Fingertips pressing into the overstuffed upholstery, he swallowed hard, thin throat bobbing. “What really happened,” he stressed. “I killed them. With an axe.”
Amma glanced back at the entryway. The guards were poised outside it, their forms visible through the opaque glass in the door. Looking back at Morel, she couldn’t imagine him wielding any weapon, let alone an axe, and bringing it down on someone with any kind of force.
“No,” said Damien, standing and glancing up at the ceiling. “What really happened.”
Watery and dark, Morel’s eyes looked past them both to the room’s far side but not at anything in particular. “Demons,” he said, voice a whispered breath.
Amma and Damien’s eyes met from across the room.
“I did it,” began Morel, “but it wasn’t me, not really. I don’t remember…don’t remember getting the axe. Don’t remember doing any of it, just being in the street after.” He came around the chair, sliding into it like his legs couldn’t hold him up any longer. “There was so much blood.”
Damien finally went up to Morel, interested for the first time. “You claim to have been possessed?”
Morel sank deeper into the chair. “What does it matter? They don’t believe me. They’ll hang me as soon as someone can claim the inheritance.”
Amma felt sick at his words. Clearly, something was going on, and there was truth in what he was saying. “It matters,” she said, crossing the room to stand beside Damien. “We need to know what happened. We can make them believe you, if it’s true, and—”
“We can’t make anyone do anything.” Damien glared at Amma, and she screwed up her face. He certainly could make her do just about anything he wanted. “But we do need to know. Everything.” He turned his cold stare back on the boy.
Morel swallowed. “It started off different. Just dreams. I thought they were dreams anyway. But they felt so real. Then I saw her, in the flesh.”
“Her?” Amma leaned in.
“She was beautiful. No, not just beautiful. Something more. Like a goddess. Shevyabu.”
