“Where are you from?” Teryn asked.
“I’m from northern Khero, Majesty. Greenfair Village.”
Teryn pondered the village name. It was north of Ridine Castle. “How did you come to be in this cell?”
The ghost’s voice turned pleading again. “I don’t know. I was at the tavern after a hard week’s work, same as usual. I headed home after a few pints, and then…I have no memories of what happened. Next thing I know, I…I’m looking at my body.”
If the ghost’s tale was true, perhaps the gaoler was right after all. That was, of course, even more troubling. It meant the prisoner hadn’t been murdered for giving away intel. Instead, he’d been freed and replaced with a decoy.
Seven devils…
The prisoner was free. He’d left them with key information about the enemy, but what could he have gleaned in exchange? What had he learned that he could now use against them? And most pressing of all, who the hell had freed the man? Who was the traitor?
Teryn rubbed his jaw. This was bad.
“Take me home.” The ghost reached for Teryn’s hand, making Teryn launch a step back.
Yearning struck him then, the same he’d felt when the warrior wraith had looked at him from the charred field. “What do you mean, take you home?”
“I don’t want to be here. I’m not supposed to be here. I…I want to go back. I have a home, a family. You must take me home.”
Pity tightened Teryn’s chest. “You can’t go home. Your body is dead.”
The ghost stepped forward again. “You can take me home. You can make this end.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
The spirit’s tone took on an eerie quality, edged with desperation. The yearning sensation grew, multiplied tenfold. “You are a black flame, burning like the embrace of a cruel mother. As final as death. As comforting as home. Take me home. Take me home. TAKE ME HOME.”
“Fine,” he rushed to say. He didn’t know what he was agreeing to, only that he wanted to stop the specter’s frantic wailing. The ghost reached for Teryn’s hand again, and this time he didn’t flinch away. This time, he extended his palm.
Fingers he couldn’t feel closed around his hand. The spirit’s expression shifted from agonized to peaceful in the blink of an eye.
Then he was gone.
So was the yearning.
Teryn stared at the place the spirit had been, then down at his hand. There was nothing to explain what had happened, only the ghost’s desperate final words.
Emylia’s too.
…if I get too close, I’ll cease to exist.
Did Teryn have the ability…to send wandering spirits to the otherlife? Was that yearning coming from the dead, from their craving for oblivion?
His breaths pulsed sharp and shallow as his mind reeled to comprehend what all of this meant. His connection to ghosts wasn’t an Art of the six senses, nor was it an earthly power like the Faeryn wielded. He wasn’t a witch, an Elvyn weaver, or a Faeryn descendant.
Which left one question.
What am I?
36
Elvyn baths were disturbing. Not that they were unpleasant. Quite the opposite, in fact. Cora reclined in a tub that was nestled in a private, dimly lit room attached to the borrowed bedroom Garot had brought her and Mareleau to via pathweaving. Crystalline sconces lined the walls, lit with a faint luminescence that glowed too unwaveringly to be a flame. The floor was a gold-veined white marble, and the walls were a pale blue crystal, giving the impression that one was walking on clouds. The adjoining bedroom looked the same but with arched windows covered in gold filigree shutters.
The basin she soaked in was larger than anything she’d used at Ridine, twice as wide as her body. It was carved from the same blue crystal as the walls and was perched upon gilded feet. There was no need to wait for servants to haul in buckets of boiled water, for warm liquid poured from a tap at the turn of a handle. It was an impossible magic that Garot had explained as if it were commonplace. That was the disturbing part. For a land that utilized magic that was supposedly weakened by the Veil, this bath was nothing short of a miracle. What greater miracles were the Elvyn capable of when themorawas at full strength?
These were Cora’s musings as she soaked in the tub, submerged to her neck in lilac-scented water. Her muscles uncoiled with every breath, though she couldn’t fully relinquish her anxiety. At the back of her mind remained the constant chiming of an imaginary clock, one that ticked the hours that were passing in the human world. Hours where anything could be happening. Hours she’d never get back. There was nothing she could do, of course. Until the tribunal meeting was over and she had some form of an alliance to bring back to her people, all she could do was wait.
