“I’venotbeen dead,” Damien insisted slowly. “What exactly do you believe happened?”
Diana looked about, eyeing two other priestesses walking through the courtyard. Though they were in discussion with one another, she guided Damien to the fountain’s other side. “Of course you would not remember, you were so young. I too would like to forget,” she said, taking another drink, “but nothing canremove that awful vision from my mind when I was brought to you that night. You’d gone missing, and she found the two of you. No marks, no blood—it was as if you’d simply fallen asleep, but you weren’t breathing, and your heart, it didn’t…” She thumped a hand on her chest. “All of the power Isldrah had ever given me was useless to bring you back. I’d never seen anything like it, and all I could think to do was bring you here and to pray that someone who had not fallen out of the goddess’s favor could save you.”
“Wait, are you talking about when you took me from Aszath Koth? You’re saying I was dead?”
“Yes, you and another little boy just like you had been taken from your beds and—” Her voice hitched, and she closed her eyes. “That place had so many enemies, and I foolishly thought I could protect it, could protect you and your—” Again she stopped herself, shaking her head. “Something got through, and it left the two of you dead as a warning.”
“You’re speaking of both me and Xander?”
“You remember?” Her hand went to her chest, and she flicked her gaze nervously around the courtyard again.
“I just saw that bastard yesterday.”
“Damien, language,” she hissed, then sighed, glancing off into the middle distance again and taking another drink. “So, both of you have been brought back.”
“Diana,” Damien snapped, “please, be clear. Are you speaking of the same night that you and my father had an argument, and he left Bloodthorne Keep?”
She shuddered. “The night he was gone, yes. The other boy’s mother came to me, frantic because she had found the two of you and knew I could—well,thoughtI could help. When I failed, she used that arcana of hers to travel quickly—”
“Translocation.”
“Yes, that. She brought us here, and I begged for help. Thepriests and priestesses tried, but there was nothing they could do, and then…”
“Then?”
Diana took another long drink. “Then you walked into the temple,” she said as if only just remembering.
“There are twenty-three years between then and now.”
“Twenty hours, twenty years, what is time to the grief over a lost child?” she whispered.
“My father thinks you stole me and ran off. Didn’t you want to return to Aszath Koth? To your husband?”
All of the sorrow drained off of Diana’s face, fear splashing over it again. “Your father?”
“Yeah, Zagadoth, my dad.”
Diana gasped. “You cannot speak the name of demons lest they be brought forth unto our plane.”
“If it were that easy I would have done it years ago.”
“Damien, do not even joke about…but you are not joking, are you?” She appraised him, placing the jug on the edge of the fountain and wringing her hands. “That vile place has taken its hold on you just as he said it would.”
“Aszath Koth isn’t vile,” he murmured though it was only partly true. There were parts of it, at least, that weren’t, and according to Zagadoth, Diana herself had been enamored with it. “The orb in Bloodthorne Keep’s throne room bears Isldrah’s symbol. It still protects the city, and Zagadoth says it bears a piece of your heart.”
She touched her chest, eyes no longer peering into his, brow creased with worry.
Damien swallowed hard, mouth dry as the questions piled up and fought to be asked in his beginning-to-pound head. He let them spill out before they put him in too much pain to ask. “Was Zagadoth lying? Did he keep you as his captive? Force you to—to create the orb? Did you not love Aszath Koth or…or him?”
“Love?” As Diana stared into the falling waters of the fountain, the prism reflected over her face, and he saw something in her features he had really only felt, a longing for something he hadn’t believed he could have until very recently.
“Mother,” he said with a renewed conviction, “Zagadoth loves you, even after everything. He would tell you himself.” He pulled out the crystal shard from his pouch. “If I could show you, I would, but—”
“What is that?” she hissed, pushing his hand back toward him and scaring away the little birds that had settled on the fountain. “You cannot have that evil here.”
“It’s just a bit of rock.”
“It’s infernal—I canfeelit.”
