Orla, wiping her hands on her skirts, appraises me with an odd look. “Why do you ask, my lady?”
I’m not about to divulge the details of my calamitous visit to Edgewood, so I stick to a shallower truth. “He helped me the other day, and I would like to thank him somehow.”
He did not judge me. He did not brush aside my fears. He did not abandon me. He chose to stay, and I am afraid of what it means.
Orla looks thoughtful. “The lord is partial to reading.”
Reading. I knew this. And then I remember one chance meeting in particular, after I’d spent the evening wandering cobblestone streets, when we’d discussed his fondness for stories. Maybe I’ll ask him to accompany me to the theater.
The idea takes hold. With a hurried thank you, I go in search of Boreas. Taking the stairs to the third level, I halt. The south wing entrance sits to my left. The north wing entrance sits to my right, an air of abandonment surrounding it.
No guards.
Boreas has dispatched the majority of his force to the Shade in an attempt to stymie the infiltration of the Deadlands. Today, there is no one to prevent entrance into this forbidden wing. I think of that kiss, and I wonder. Who is the North Wind? What scars does he bear that I cannot see?
Against my better judgment, I cross into the north wing. Resting my fingertips against a partially open door, I push. It swings open soundlessly.
I’m greeted by pale yellow walls that may have once been sunny, but now appear sickly in the gloom. The space is much smaller than I expected. A frayed blue rug covers the floor. A large, stuffed bear sits in the corner, black button eyes staring vacantly.
It’s a child’s room, with a child’s bed, blankets twisted atop the mattress as if someone has recently slept in them, though the air is stagnant and closed. Dust coats everything in a thick layer. Whoever slept in this room has been gone for a long time.
My feet carry me to the other side of the room. At the foot of the bed sits a wooden chest. Inside lies a collection of seemingly random objects, including a small box containing stick-figure illustrations. My heart beats unsteadily, for in some drawings, a man holds a spear. His hair is black, his eyes blue. They are dated over three hundred years ago.
Returning the drawings to their box, I shut the chest and turn away, my throat uncomfortably tight.
It never crossed my mind that Boreas could be a father. But is it possible he might have been, once? And as I stand here, surrounded by memories that are not mine, I wonder: where is the child now? Where is the mother of this child?
A stack of dusty books rests on the bedside table, as well as a piece of wood carved in the shape of a bird. The toy fits perfectly in my hand.
“What are you doing?”
I whirl to find Boreas frozen in the doorway, his silhouette backlit by the hallway sconces. The flat rage in his eyes sends me back a step. “Boreas.” My hip bumps the bedpost.
In three strides, he reaches me, snatching the figurine from my hand and, gently, returning it to the nightstand. The sight of his large fingers curved around the small object sends a wave of confusing sadness through me.
“Who said you could enter this room?” he hisses.
My attention swings back to his face. He takes another menacing step toward me, and it is like his arrival at Edgewood all over again: the pit in my stomach, fear sweeping across my skin in chill bumps. He could tear me in half so easily. “The guards”—my mouth is so dry it takes multiple attempts to speak—“said I could pass…”
Frost crawls from beneath his feet to coat the floor and walls. His gloved hands twitch at his sides. “There are no guards,” he growls. “You lie. You always lie.”
I slowly round the bed, not daring to shift my attention from the god whose eyes darken with unspeakable power. “You’re right,” I rush to say. “There weren’t any guards, but I saw the door was open…”
“So you took it upon yourself to enter a room you had no business entering.”
“No. Well, yes, but it wasn’t as though I was trying to upset you.”Hurt you.For is not anger the bud, hurt and betrayal the roots? “I didn’t know,” I gasp.
A rattle invades my chest as he takes another step forward, and my legs knock into a table in my haste to put distance between us. The air slithers and stirs. Strands of hair float around my head as a breeze picks up, crackling with a rage the likes I’ve never seen before.
“Boreas.” I flinch as a vase shatters. “Boreas, calm yourself!”
A gust tears through the room, tossing objects and pieces of furniture left and right. I duck to avoid a small projectile. Books are flung from their shelves. The blankets covering the bed peel away like dead skin as the room deteriorates piece by piece, and there the North Wind stands, in the eye of that squall.
“You have deceived me since the moment I took you from Edgewood,” he booms. His voice is the air, and the air is thunder. “You have done everything in your power to undermine my command. But this is where it ends.”
At the wordends, I grow cold. His face appears to be changing. My every breath screams at me to run, but terror has rooted my feet to the ground.
The first column collapses, a clean crack through the center. An ominous groan draws my attention upward. Fissures map the ceiling, widening into rifts. All at once, the stone caves in a spitting rain of rock and dust, and I lunge to the side as rock plummets onto the ground where I stood seconds before.
