“When did she save the Horned God’s life?”
“When she was a servant. Before she married my father.”
“At my grandparents?” Lower House Deniaud. Had my mother known? She’d kept Tabitha’s secret that she wasother;why not this one too?
Graysen nodded before breaking into a walk again. I let him catch up, and I strolled beside him. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Tabitha Crowther, a servant, saved a Horned God’s life. “Who did she save?”
He glanced sidelong, and shadows and sunlight brightened and dulled his warm complexion. “My father doesn’t know. He didn’t know any of it. She kept it secret, even from him.”
I hated to admit it, but I was starting to like Tabitha more and more. I tipped my head back to look at him better as we strode along the pathway. Excitement colored my voice. “Sirro? Do you think she saved Sirro’s life?”
“Perhaps… Fuck, I don’t know,” he said, slapping away a biting insect that landed on his forearm.
“How did she do it? You said she was another.”
“Not anything special, not anything that could save a Horned God’s life.”
“What is she?”
“She can steal pain.”
“How can she steal pain?” How does one do that? I’d never heard of anyone stealing pain. I knew there wereothersthat could influence the way you felt, but nothing like that.
“Hells, I don’t know,” he said, accompanied by a shrug. He shared the knowledge casually, but there was also an underlying note of pride in his voice and a hint of sadness in talking about his mother. “She’s just able to draw it from you.”
I whistled, impressed, the sound floating away in the murky recesses of the undergrowth. “Can she do anything else?”
He shook his head, flicking the stray locks of hair from his forehead. “She can detectothers, but that’s it. It’s not in-your-face like setting things on fucking fire or making the earth tremble,” he replied, his eyes sliding to mine, sparkling with amusement.
“Don’t forget I can spin squalls too,” I added with a cocky wink.
We fell into a comfortable silence, and after a couple of minutes of following the trail, while I was busy thinking on the impossibility of what had happened—Tabitha Crowther, a servant no less, saving a Horned God’s life, and discovering what kind ofothershe was, and what it meant—the path opened up into a large lawn.
Graysen jutted his chin at the expanse of lush grass. “This is where we share our space with our staff. We mingle, all of us, and here everyone can contribute to the garden and do anything they like.”
“One of your mother’s ideas?”
“Yep.”
A couple of young children were biking around the lawn where a few families lounged on tartan rugs, reading or sharing a picnic. The edge of the lawn had flowerbeds and vegetable patches. Toddlers were digging in a sandpit, flinging sand around, while an older child pushed a younger one on a brightly colored swing.
Sage prowled along the treeline, sniffing and pouncing on a dried leaf that rolled over the grass, caught up in a gusty breeze.
Graysen murmured a greeting to an older man, kneeling down and pulling out weeds, his shoulders slightly hunched and dirt lining the creases in his fingers. His dark-blond hair had streaksof silver through it, and the messy mop of curls bobbed as he nodded politely in return.
Sunlight reflected off the worn metal of a barbecue, where picnic tables were set up, and there was even a small wooden fort for children.
And roses—white rambling roses—were everywhere. They smothered trees and bushes and wound along the park benches set beneath the leafy boughs of oak trees.
It seemed like the gardens were tended to, except for the roses.
When Graysen first brought me onto the estate, I noticed them clambering up the ivy on the stone walls of the Keep. He saw me eyeing them and answered my silent question. “My mother has a green thumb. She loved…loves,” he corrected himself, scratching the back of his head, nose scrunching as he glanced away for a moment. He cleared his throat before returning his gaze to mine, his eyes a little brighter and silver-lined. “She loves white climbing roses. My father won’t let anyone tend to them until she comes back home,” he said, his voice a bit hoarse.
My brows slanted upward, and even though I wanted to shred his family to pieces, something like sorrow twisted inside my chest to think of Varen’s pain.
Graysen followed as I strode around a small pond and slipped beneath a weeping willow, its curtain of leafy branches giving us privacy. I looked about the garden with a new perspective and, despite everything, how Graysen had scared the hells out of me in the Great Hall, it seeped in that Tabitha was everywhere. All morning he’d guided me around the Keep, and everywhere we’d been had been influenced by her. Tabitha’s family was living in this place, this fortress and estate where her memory resonated in every single detail. She was kept alive by everyone, not only by her sons and daughter, but by their servants as well.
I tried to remember her when I was a child. I had vague memories of Tabitha. Golden hair and sun-kissed frecklesscattered over her nose and cheeks, and an unrestrained grin with a dimple. However, I couldn’t recall her coming to visit our House.
