I sat in the shifting shadows of the bedroom with a man who had made an impossible choice. And I think some small part of me now understood that.
I hadn’t forgiven him, but I finally understood.
I drifted off with our fingers entwined, and somewhere in my dream world, there was a faint awareness of weightlessness and warmth and strength banded about my body.
When I awoke, it was in comfort and soft, cozy sheets.
Sitting up, I found myself back in my bed, basking in glorious sunbeams as the mid-morning sun poured through the window he’d carved for me in my bedroom.
16
Graysen
Beads of sweat ran in rivulets down my bare chest. I felt lighter, faster, stronger, and, as usual, pissed the fuck off.
Our fortress’s inner courtyard housed the training pit, a stone-ringed well carpeted with sand. An open staircase spiraled around the pit’s inner curve, and a wooden railing circled the top. A few members of the warband lounged against it, watching my opponents and me duke it out below while placing bets amongst themselves.
Across the pit came the clash of steel as a couple of soldiers sparred with swords. Surrounding me were my brothers, and it had turned from a spar to an all-out brawl.
Sand kicked up beneath my boots. I was a whirlwind of grit and fury. Kenton, his mouth a grim line, moved fast, but I was a cyclone of spinning wind, driving my quarterstaff into his with a thunderous crack, slamming him backward.
All I had in my head was always my little bird, but at this moment accompanied by my mother. Two jigsaw puzzles in onebox, with all the pieces mixed up and no picture to help figure them out.
I’d groggily awakened as the sun had risen. It had taken me a while to recall what had happened and where I was. Much like when I’d awoken amongst the long, wild grasses in the Wychthorns’ aviary, I felt refreshed and recharged, and I found the reason slumbering nearby. Sprawled against the bed was Nelle. Her thick mane of wavy locks cloaked her shoulders and splayed like moonlight across the midnight bedding. Stretched over the mattress was her arm, and her little finger was curled around mine. Her plump lips were slightly parted, and I smiled at the quiet purr of snoring, something I hadn’t realized she did until I’d brought her to my residence.
There’d been a few nights she’d cried out in her sleep. Under Sage’s watchful eye, I’d gone into her room and sat down on the edge of her bed to soothe away the nightmare. Danne or darkness plagued her, as my own horrors did too.
Last night, it had been the same dream that had haunted me every time I fell under. A nightmare of the redheaded Horned God and my mother… My mother was always there.
But this time the dark dreamscape had melted like honey on hot toast, thinning and becoming watery. It became light and summery, like swaying wheat and lush springtime grass.
Unlike Sirro’s otherworldly threads of power, these were golden strands of magic.
And the dream turned into something new, a place I’d never been before.
Somewhere with rich, opulent colors…
…and row upon row of glass canisters.
My mother’s face wasn’t white with shock or smeared with blood. Her lips weren’t parted on a scream of terror.
She looked down at me with steel in her green eyes, but with a broad grin as well.
Her voice spun through the dreamworld as she tapped me on the nose. Young…I was really young…maybe five years old and wearing the kind of formal suit my mother liked me to wear when it was just the two of us visiting somewhere elegant in Ascendria.
“Graysen Crowther, you stand here with your hands in your pockets, where I can see you.” She turned away to someone I couldn’t see. “He’s a natural-born thief.”
And a raspy voice replied, “As he should be. Wouldn’t be a Child of the Houses if he weren’t. Taking after someone else, is he, little thief?”
It was like a suppressed memory, buried deep. Hidden from me, perhaps.
And somehow I felt that my two current problems were intertwined. Maybe unearthing a clue to my mother’s mysterious whereabouts from that memory would solve the missing link I had with Nelle’s puzzle. It was a feeling—a deeply rooted feeling—that I was right.
Taking after someone else, is he, little thief?
It was there…somewhere inside my head. She hadn’t been wearing her favorite necklace, so where had my mother gone? Who had she visited the day she was stolen? There was no one amongst the staff who could answer. Often, if she were to spend time in the city on her own, she’d drive herself there in the car she’d bought with her hard-earned savings as a servant. She had any choice of any luxurious car, but my mother loved her chili-red Honda City. The damn thing was so old you had to manually crank open the windows.
So who had she gone to see?
