If his demands were too ostentatious or if he grew too troublesome, I’d simply kill him. Where I once feared retribution from an allied Lishahl and Vespera—a threat d’Leocopus made on numerous occasions to force my compliance—the death of the Warlord negated that possibility. At some point, the new Lord of Vespera would come asking us for support, which we would eagerly give—it wasalways supposed to end with our factions united. Until that day, or until the Lord of Lishahl’s usefulness ran dry, we were stuck in Imena.
“You’re going to wear a hole in that gods-awful carpet,” a feminine voice remarked dryly from behind me as I strode away from the wall and back toward the bed. I quickly glanced at Ellowyn, assuring myself for the thousandth time that her chest rose and fell, before turning to face the Bondsmith on a deep sigh.
“Bondsmith,” I greeted drolly.
Her lips quirked at the corners before flattening again as she emerged from the shadows, a small tumbler of caramel-colored whiskey held loosely in her fingers.
“Drinking already?” I asked with a quirk of my eyebrow.
“Looks like you could use one, too.” She gestured lazily with her occupied hand. I hesitated for a moment before cautiously approaching and grasping the glass. When the Bondsmith made no move to remove the tumbler from my hand, I quickly pulled it free and shot it back in one swallow. The alcohol burned my throat before fire exploded in my belly.
“Fuck,” I rasped, eyes watering. “I will never get used to that shit.”
“Still more of a vodka man, hmm?”
“You and I both know I am no man,” I scoffed before setting the glass on an offensively gold side table next to the arm of an equally ghastly blood-red sofa.
The Bondsmith gave me a true smile before sinking onto a cushion and curling her bare feet beneath her body. The movement was fluid and oddly catlike, reminding me both of her daughter and her daughter’s feline companion.
“I spoke to Faylinn,” I stated, eyes never leaving the half-goddess.
“Oh?” Her eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch as her head came to rest on her hand, curls falling around her propped arm. “I figured that would be the case, considering you are here and not dead.”
She laughed at my obvious look of surprise. “That’s the punishment for breaking a bargain with Fate.”
“Could have warned me beforehand,” I muttered as I flopped onto the couch opposite her.
“And where would the fun be in that?”
I grunted, much to the amusement of Faylinn’s mother.
“Are you all this insane?”
“You tell me, godling. You’ve had more contact with my siblings, father, and offspring than I have in the last three centuries combined,” the Bondsmith admitted dryly.
The answer to that question, then, was undoubtedly yes.
“And before you ask, yes, you are also a touch less than sane,” she said with a nod toward Ellowyn. “Does she know?”
I shook my head once and averted my eyes from her disapproving stare.
“You had months to tell her, godling.Months.Now she is going to wake here, weak and afraid, and have to come to terms with who and what she is without the support system she established in Vespera.”
“There was no support system,” I muttered petulantly, but winced when I thought of who she’d unwittingly left behind. Faylinn, most obviously, but also her task force—Leal, Talamh, and Tine. Though the latter was dead.
The Bondsmith hummed softly, judgement etched in every line.
“Did my daughter figure it out?”
My lips twitched slightly at the fact that even a goddess couldn’t help but ask about her child when the opportunity presented.
“Yes.”
“She’s a smart woman.”
“She’s the Rune Master to the deceased King of Elyria, the Bondsmith’s daughter, and Fate’s granddaughter. Yes, I’d think it’s safe to assume that she’s smart,” I deadpanned as the Bondsmith rolled her eyes.
“What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be watching over Itanya, especially with Peytor and Folami still gone?”
