“…dangerous…Aszath…priestess…”
Zagadoth’s eye blinked out, and Damien was left with only the sound of wind in the leaves and Amma’s hum that had dwindled into a sort of warble as she’d sat herself down on the ground. Damien almost chucked the stupid shard into the trees, but he instead pocketed it and shut his eyes, clearing his thoughts with a single, long breath.
When he opened his eyes again, there was Amma. She was sitting in the dirt with her fingers stuffed in her ears and moaning out a painfully dissonant tune, but she was there. He went up behind her and tapped her on the head.
She tipped her face up at him. “Can I stop singing now?” she asked much too loudly.
“For all our sakes, yes,” he chuckled and nodded.
She dropped her hands with a groan, falling back against his shins, the softness of her body pressing into him. It was such a simple thing, trusting that he would be there, that he wouldn’t step away and allow her to fall, that she wanted to touch him at all knowing who he was,whathe was, and it filled him with that warm, fuzzy feeling he now knew was love.
“Oh, thank the gods, my arms are killing me. How much didyou have to drink?”
“You know I wasn’t relieving myself.” He reached down and hauled her to her feet, and she squealed playfully under the too-fast movement. “But I do find it compelling how willing you are to follow commands even when they are unpleasant.” He spun her, keeping her close, and she caught herself on his chest.
“I just, um…did what you told me to.” Her unblinking eyes sparkled up at him, her words striking him hard in the gut—he liked that, but it was also a problem.
“Amma, I’ve not properly thanked you for coming to my rescue.” He cleared his throat, heat in his face at the admittance. “It turns out I may be just as abductable as you are, but if not for you, I would be…well, worse than dead, I believe. So, my deepest gratitude is owed to you. You must know that you have it, forever.”
“Oh, sure,” she said, biting back a grin and looking a little flustered. “Is that, um…is that what you wanted to discuss?”
Damien made a sound in the back of his throat, glancing toward the road through the trees. “I would like to eat. Would you like to eat? I think we should eat.”
They sat through a meal together, but it was stilted and quiet, Damien asking Amma if she was comfortable many times. After, he encouraged her to bathe in the small chamber attached to their room, the one they now had to themselves, while he sat on the bed and thought about how he might say the things he intended to say. By the time she emerged, clean and smelling wonderful, his thoughts hadn’t converged, so he too shut himself up in the separate chamber, bathed, double-checked himself for errant leeches, and continued to think until the water turned cold.
When he finally left the bathing chamber, half-dressed and wholly confused, he found Amma sitting on the bed as he had been, but a much more concerned look creased her face. Shepressed her lips together so tightly, as if it were all she could do to keep the questions in, the sweet thing holding back despite looking like she might explode, all for him.
“I believe my mother is here, in Orrinshire, at the temple,” burst out of him as if it were a living thing that had finally worked out how to free itself. Fuck, that wasn’t at all what he’d meant to say, and yet.
Amma’s face went blank for a full minute, and it seemed like she had stopped breathing. And then she jumped to her feet. “Damien, that’s incredible!” She sprung herself at him and wrapped arms around his neck, then froze. “Unless—oh, are you worried? You shouldn’t be—this is great! Unless it’s not.” She looked swiftly away, features screwed up, then shook her head. “No, it’s amazing! Your mom! You found her!” He was pulled into a tight embrace that he went to return until she pulled back yet again. “Oh, no, unless you’renotexcited about it, then it’snotamazing or great or incredible, and I am anidiotfor saying any of those things. Oh, geez, Damien, please just tell me how you feel about it already.”
“I, uh…I don’t know.”
She hung from around his neck, studying his face and chewing on her lip, all the anxiety he felt painted across her features so plainly. But then they fell off, and she narrowed her brow and patted his chest. “Well, that’s fine. Let’s figure it out.”
Amma pulled him down to sit beside her on the bed, threaded her fingers into his, and smiled.
“How?”
“Talk.”
CHAPTER 26
ALL RIGHT, FINE
As it turned out, Damien hada lotof feelings. Many, many hours worth that he repeated and rephrased and tried very hard to make sense of, and Amma listened to them all. He had spoken with his father, she guessed it had something to do with that stone out in the woods but didn’t interrupt him to clarify how, and he told her what he knew. In many ways, the story lined up with what Lycoris had told him in the karsts.
But the potential betrayal was quite a lot, not to mention confusing. If Damien’s mother had meant to let the crown capture Zagadoth, then why had she created that orb he’d mentioned that still protected Aszath Koth? Getting rid of the demon that protected the city was supposed to make Aszath Koth susceptible to attack, but Diana’s spell kept the place as well guarded as ever. Damien didn’t have an answer for that, only adding to his turmoil.
It would all require finding his mother and asking for clarification. And that was the scariest part.
Damien eventually fell backward onto the bed. Amma leaned on her elbow and watched his features as he continued to speak, how they would soften with worry and harden with anger, and his eyelids eventually grew heavy. The light through the single window in their chamber darkened with the setting of the sun, sounds beyond their door quieting, and in the shadows that crept in, his voice became quieter too.
“My father will be upset if I seek her out,” he said with a sigh that sounded so finite. “He may never forgive me, in fact. And maybe I shouldn’t—she hasn’t tried to find me in all these years;maybe she truly wants nothing to do with me, and I would just be upsetting her if I showed up.”
So concerned, Amma thought, with everyone else’s upset, but what about his own?
When he turned to her and asked the inevitable, “Amma, what should I do?” with his eyes glassy, hair a mess from constant tugging, and a soul that groaned silently with exhaustion, she wished she had a better answer for him, but there was only the truth.
