She huffed a frustrated breath, then dug a small cup from her pocket and thrust it through the cell bars. “Fine. Eat your stew, and I’ll tell you.”
Shan tilted the serving cup and shook more of the stew into his mouth. It was good.Jaffinggood. The best food he’d had in years, possibly even centuries.
“So there’s a secret place in your mind where you can hide thoughts from the Mages?” he repeated as he chewed the flavorful chunks of meat. The littleumagihad told him about how one day she’d discovered that she could keep secrets from the Mage, and how she’d been testing it over the last months. “So where did it come from? How did you create it? “
“I don’t know. One day it was just there. And I realized that what thoughts I keep there are private. The High Mage can’t see in. It’s like a room protected by privacy weaves, and it gets larger the more thoughts I keep there. That’s how I can have this conversation with you and know he will never learn of it.” She watched him dip his cup into the bowl again, and when he carried it to his mouth, she licked her lips.
Despite a thousand years of horrendous torture, despite a soul-deep enmity for the Eld, the Fey called Lord Death felt his heart squeeze with pity. Poor child. Those big, hungry eyes of hers had been tracking every move of the serving cup since he’d begun to eat, and even the hand pressed hard against her stomach hadn’t been able to quiet its growls. If her presence was another of Vadim Maur’s twisted games of torment, it was the best attempt of the millennia. Because, gods help him, he had fallen for it.
“Do allumagihave this secret place?” Shan drained the cup in two mouthfuls.
“I don’t think so. I think I’m the only one.”
“The stew is very good. You should have some yourself.” He offered her the serving cup and nudged the half-eaten bowl of stew towards her. “Go on. Every child deserves a treat now and again.”
Her eyes flashed up, molten silver and full of sudden ire and cynicism. “I’m no child. And treats are just bait to trap the stupid.”
“No bait here, child. Just a shared cup to seal our…” he started to say “friendship” but realized the littleumagiwould probably ruffle up some more, so he settled on a different word, “… agreement.” It hurt his Fey heart that any child should be so misused she suspected a trap in even the simplest kindness.“Teska.Please. It’s really quite delicious.”
The offer was too much temptation to refuse. She snatched the cup from his hand, dipped it in the bowl, and poured the still-warm stew into her mouth. Her eyes closed in bliss. Judging by the look on her face, she’d probably never tasted anything so good in her life. That realization hurt, too. His heart wept for her—almost as much as it wept for the daughter of his own blood whom he’d never seen, never held.
“In the Fading Lands,kaidina,you would have been cherished and pampered every day of your life. Not a chime would go by that you did not know how greatly you were loved. Your father would have carried you so proudly in his arms, and sung young songs from ages past to make you smile, and rocked you to sleep spinning Fey-tale weaves of beautifulshei’dalinmaidens and their braveshei’tans,while fairy flies sparkled in the gardens outside your window. And every warrior of the Fey would willingly lay down his life to save you from the slightest harm.”
Rather than growing misty-eyed by his maudlin confession of fatherly dreams, the littleumagitook umbrage. “I am Eld. Your warriors would have killed me on the spot and left my bones for the rats.” She handed his serving cup back through the bars. “So will you kill the Mage, or won’t you?”
Shan understood. She was an Eldenumagi,brutalized since birth, suspicious of the slightest kindness. She did not need or want his useless dreams of a Fey-tale childhood. She did not need or want his friendship. Very well. He would not let his Fey heart be softened by the vulnerable appeal of too-big eyes in a too-thin face.
“I need mysorreisu kiyr,”he said. “My Soul Quest crystal. I tried to kill your Mage without it and failed. If you want me to kill him, you need to get me that crystal.”
CHAPTERTHREE
Damn the Fey! Damn Dorian and that Fey-lover Barrial!
Grief and rage writhed like snakes in Great Lord Dervas Sebourne’s chest. He paced the confines of his study in Dunbarrow on unsteady feet. Small waves of sea-green Sorrelianquist—a highly intoxicating liquor distilled from a fermented blend of sweet sea grapes and deadly moonshade—sloshed over the rim of the crystal tumbler clenched in one fist.
Dervas lifted his glass and tossed back its contents in a single gulp, barely feeling the fiery burn as the potent liquor slid down his throat. This wasn’t his first glass ofquisttonight, and it wouldn’t be his last. When a man lost his only son and saw the end of his Great House looming on the horizon, his soul craved a stronger balm than pinalle.
Dervas harbored no illusions about his future. King Dorian would not leave unpunished the Great Lord who had spat defiance and insult, then taken his men and ridden away from the coming battle with Eld. Sebourne had broken with the king, and Great House Sebourne would soon sink into disfavor and, ultimately, into obscurity.
And with it would go the power he’d meant to pass on to his son.
His onlyson.
Hisdeadson. The son who’d been murdered, his body so completely destroyed there wasn’t even a corpse over which Dervas could mourn, as a father should. Nothing. Just emptiness where a life had been.
All because of the Fey—and that weak, spineless puppet of a king who sat on the throne of Celieria while the Fading Lands pulled his strings.
Damn them! Damn them all! He hoped the Eld slaughtered them and left their corpses for thistlewolves andlyrantto feast upon. Renewed fury seized him, amplified by intoxication. Dervas shot to his feet and hurled his glass ofquistinto the hearth. Crystal exploded. Flames leapt with a roar as the potent liquor ignited.
The blast of heat and the sudden change in attitude left him overwarm and swaying on his feet, so he stumbled to the window that looked out over Dunbarrow’s western fortifications and threw open the sash. Cold winter air flooded in. He thrust his head out the window and took a deep breath.
The moons overhead were both three-quarters full, the Mother waning, the Daughter waxing. This week, the brightest nights in the last three months signaled the last hurrah of Light before both moons went new two weeks hence.
Something about that was important. He frowned and rubbed his temple as a band of pain tightened around his skull. With a groan, he pressed the heels of his palms against his bloodshot eyes and staggered away from the window, only to freeze when he saw a dark shape move in the corner of the room. Suddenly, the air in Dervas’s lungs grew short. Each breath became a labored gasp, and his heart beat a rapid tattoo. Shadow flickered at the edges of his vision, and a strange, sickly sweet smell filled his nose. For an instant, he wasn’t standing in his study in Dunbarrow, he was back in Old Castle Prison in Celieria City, watching in mute horror as a figure wreathed in icy shadow stepped towards him.
The image of Old Castle faded, but the shadowy figure remained. It stepped into the light. Blue robes gleamed richly in the candlelight, and dark jewels glittered on a silken sash that hung from the intruder’s waist.
Dervas reached for his sword, but his waist was bare, his weapons belt lying useless in his bedchamber. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing here? What do you want? “
