He looked back so sharply that I couldn’t help but make a faceat him. It was still Taran, after all, and he’d thrown me directly out of bed on this journey.
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny.” I said it with a hand over my heart. He should think it was funny, because Taran never stopped trying to make me laugh, even when we thought we were doomed.
His jaw clenched, and for just for a moment I saw the same well of grief and confusion I’d been swimming in for months reflected in his face. He smoothed it away and tried to turn, but I caught his arm.
“Taran,” I said softly, sliding my hand up his shoulder until I cupped his cheek, warm skin and breath against my fingers. “Just tell me, whatever it is. I’ll still love you.”
He searched my face, deciding whether to believe me.
He’ll forgive me, I told myself. Because I’d forgiven him. And whatever else he had to tell me, I’d forgive that too.
“Don’t make any more promises you can’t keep,” he said stiffly, and he strode off toward the stables.
The Mountain wasall around the Summerlands. Every road led to the Mountain, and the Painted Tower lay on the other side, on every side. It was a hard two days’ ride up and down a trail that few people had ever traveled, with Taran stopping only when I asked to rest. The Painted Tower was visible as soon as we crossed the rim, a stark white line against the dark sea on the horizon. The faint, glowing forms of dusk-souls were visible even at a distance when they disembarked on the shore, leaving their funeral boats behind.
Taran must have traveled this way before I met him, his freedom finally in sight after three hundred years subject to Genna’swill. And yet the first thing he’d done was bind himself to me, choose me, over and over, through death and rebirth and beyond.
Please, just once more. If you ever believed in me, believe in me now. And even if you didn’t, stay with me like you did then. Don’t make me sail back alone.
There were the ruins of stables behind the Painted Tower, surrounded by ages of uncleared scrub that had overgrown the gardens where none of the Stoneborn saw it or cared. Taran tied our horses before looking up at the tower. The one window did not face the Mountain, but I was abruptly certain that Wesha knew we were coming. Light poured out of the open doorway, drawing us inside.
Taran paused at the threshold and extended his hand to me. I thought he was seeking reassurance, and I gladly wove my fingers with his, but as soon as he set foot on the floor tiles, I was clutching his arm to stay upright. My vow to Wesha was unraveling in my soul, the threads of it tearing away from my bones to leave me gasping for breath at the sudden hollows it left behind. The ringing in my ears was so loud I nearly didn’t hear Taran’s shout up the staircase.
“Mother,” he called. “I’m back.”
33
Wesha had goneto some pains with dinner. There was nobody else in the tower but her, but when we reached the top of the stairs, we found her at the head of a banquet table dressed in rose linen, groaning under the weight of dishes sufficient for an extended family. A whole roast goose with crisped brown skin. A fleet of crayfish swimming in cream sauce. Five types of soft cheese on a sideboard, decorated with out-of-season raspberries. Three chairs.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Taran said, tossing himself into the chair farthest from her and reaching for a jug of undiluted wine. Wesha pointedly handed him a goblet, which he ignored in favor of sticking out his legs and leaning back to uncork the jug with his teeth. His throat moved as he gulped down more than a full cup before glancing back for me.
I was stuck on the landing, breath coming too quickly. The floor wasn’t moving here, but it felt uneven beneath my feet.
“Sit,” the Maiden said, pointing toward the free chair with a graceful arm.
I had a moment of vertigo, looking between them. They looked alike. Of course they did, even though Wesha chose to appear a few years younger than Taran. They had the same dark hair and thickstraight eyebrows, the same full mouths and long, tapered fingers. Taran had inherited those from his mother. Which meant Taran got his bright eyes and sharp-edged beauty from his other parent. Got that power to break bonds, even his hold over the dead—
That was from his father, Death.
“If I didn’t cook, how did you think I ate? There’s nobody else here,” Wesha asked tartly as I stumbled to the chair, my mind reeling wildly between the faces of Taran and the god of the Underworld.
“I supposed you might be gnawing your offerings raw so that you’d have more opportunities each day to feel sorry for yourself,” Taran said.
I took a cue from him and reached for the wine, mostly for the opportunity to hold something solid between my hands.
“I tried being sorry for you too, but you didn’t believe me the last time I said it,” Wesha said, taking a delicate sip from her own cup.
I wondered if I ought to give them a moment to catch up while I perhaps stuck my head under the ocean surface and yelled, but Taran hooked a thumb in my direction to bring me into the conversation.
“Your last surviving priest might also want some apologies. For the pack of lies she organized her entire life around. The story of the pure and beautiful Maiden who so loved humanity, the innocents, little children, that she sacrificed herself to keep Death from destroying the world. Iona here is very attached to that story, but we’ve been in a mode of rigorous honesty recently, and I think she’d appreciate the real one.”
Wesha’s expression toward me was dismissive, but I rallied enough to curl forward in my chair to face her, though my heart hammered.
She’d had a child with Death—not the monster she fought fromthe beginning, but the sweetheart she snuck into the City—and that child was Taran. Three hundred years later, he waded into the wreckage that affair had made of the world and helped kill his own father.
No wonder he’d looked so sad.
