He nods.
That makes me doubt the sincerity of the Shadowbane’s hunt for a culprit. Door-to-door investigations are normally reserved for unprotected villages, where the threat level is higher. Sure, an increase in Shade activity can pose a threat to a protected village. Without silver walls, Shades can enter a town if they find a large enough patch of shadow to hide in. But even when Shades do enter protected towns, they never get far enough to cause any damage. The Holy Brazier makes it too bright, the shadows sparser the closer one gets to the heart of the village.
“I suspected then that the search had been a ploy,” Bard says. “Lord Doan wanted a plaything, and the Shadowbane was hoping he’d findjust enough evidence—even if it was fabricated—to arrest someone Doan would like. That’s why the Shadowbane was so disappointed with me. Because I wasn’t quite to Lord Doan’s taste. Still, I fought. I pleaded with the duke, the aristocrats, the higher-ups. I at least wanted to know if my daughter was alive. During this time, my wife worked on our daughter’s behalf too, unknown to me. One day, I came home to an empty house. My wife left a note that she was going to offer Lord Doan a trade.”
He pauses for a few moments, eyes darting across the flames as if seeing his past in them. “The next time I saw my wife and daughter, one was dead and the other…”
Tears stream down his face, and I find my eyes are leaking too. Harlow watches him with a trembling hand over her mouth. Calvin’s head hangs low, hidden from view. Only Dominic watches him without outward emotion.
No, that isn’t true. I’ve studied that stoic face of his long enough to see the tells of his rage, written in the pulse at the corners of his jaw, the thinning of his lips, the paleness of his knuckles as he curls them around his knife and whetstone.
I cling to his rage, using it as an anchor to keep from getting swept away in the tide of Bard’s sorrow.
“My wife…she’d been drained of blood until she died,” Bard says, “while Mary had been fed from too, but it was so much worse than that. She’d been played with like a toy, made to bleed not for food but for entertainment. It was evident in the countless cuts that marred her body. They were everywhere. Everywhere. She was barefoot. Discarded at our doorstep only half conscious. I cleaned her up, called for the doctor, but it was too late. Half her cuts were infected. Her body was already shutting down from sepsis. She took her last breath in my arms. And I…I forfeited my life the same day.”
His tone darkens, sending a chill through me. “I knew I could never atone for what had been done to Mary and my wife. It was my fault. I’m the one who kept the music. I’m the one who made forbidden art available to my child. I’m the one who couldn’t stop the Shadowbane from taking her. So I opened my flesh, marking it with every cut that had been inflicted upon her, and I let them bleed.”
I look at his scars with fresh understanding. All those cuts on his face, his hands, they were all…self-inflicted. Not only that, but they were first marked on his daughter.
My rage simmers beneath my skin.
“I stalked Lord Doan,” Bard says with deadly calm. “For days. Weeks. Learned his habits. The places he liked to go, especially alone. Then, when I had my chance, I abducted him. A Sinless may be stronger than the average human, but I was much larger than him and used to manual labor on our farm. Lord Doan was weaker than me. So badly I wanted to crush his skull, but first, I wanted him to suffer. I took him outside the barrier of the brazier and hauled him deep into the forest. There I tied him to a tree and proceeded to open the same cuts I now bore. The same he carved into Mary. Once they sealed closed, I opened them again. Again. By the time night fell, I had an audience of Shades, but I didn’t care. I’d die torturing the man who tortured my little girl, and I’d do it with a knife in my hand and his blood on my blade.
“What I didn’t expect, as the night grew darker and the Shades drew closer, was for their interest to be inhim,not me. Nor did I expect that when they clawed at me, it was only to get to him. Or, more accurately, inside him.
“Seven Shades entered his still-healing wounds, and that’s when I saw his cuts could no longer close. That’s when I held his head by his hair and opened his throat. That’s when I learned the secret to ending the Sinless’s immortality.”
Silence stretches long and vast as the weight of Bard’s story settles over us.
Harlow is the first to speak. “I…I don’t understand. You’re saying if Shades enter a Sinless through open wounds, they can be killed?”
Bard shrugs. “I don’t know why, but yes.”
I exchange a glance with Dominic. It’s time they knew.
Dominic opens his mouth, but Bard rushes to say, “That’s not all. There’s more.”
Dominic gives him a nod. “Go on.”
“I joined your crew under false pretenses. I didn’t agree to be your Summoner for the promise of freedom, but in the hopes that I’ll findthe Shadowbane who gave my daughter to Lord Doan. I know it isn’t you, and I suspect it isn’t Henderson either. The Shadowbane wore a mask, so I never saw his face, but he saw mine. He’ll recognize me. And when he does, I am going to kill him, and anyone who tries to stop me.” Bard gives Dominic a seething, pointed look.
Dominic doesn’t blink away. He only says, “I won’t stop you, so long as you remain loyal to me.”
Bard’s jaw tightens, then he uncurls his fists and gives a sharp nod.
“Besides,” Dominic says, laying down his knife and whetstone and propping his elbows on his knees. “You aren’t the only one who entered this partnership under false pretenses.”
He glances at Calvin, then at me.
Then, with a deep breath, he says, “It’s time you knew the truth.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Inana
Nothing really changes once the others know the truth. Bard takes it all in with stoic silence, Harlow with a rare expression of fury. It casts a somber mood over our travels, but I know none of Dominic’s fears of betrayal will transpire. Not with us. Because the truth doesn’t change any of our plans. Bard wants revenge, regardless of who or what creates the Shades. Harlow wants off this continent for the same reasons I do. Her bounty may not be as impressive as mine or Bard’s, as evidenced by Henderson’s lack of interest in her, but she’s still a fugitive. And now that we know the outside world isn’t crawling with Shades like we once thought, the prospect of freedom is more alluring than ever.
It isn’t until we reach Eldeen that I realize thingshavechanged.
