“It ended before it even began, Daire.” Jesstin stuffed down a deep ire he didn’t want to direct at Daire, who meant well but was about to send him down a dark spiral. “It ended the night I murdered her brother. Can we leave it there?”
“I’m afraid we cannot,” Sesto said. He held a hand out in gentle redirection, which Daire finally heeded. “We heard something today from Asterin’s solicitor. He’s been working with Elloven.”
“He’s what?” Jesstin flipped both of his hands up. Dropped them onto the table. “How? Why? There are hundreds of solicitors in the region.”
“Asterin has been helping her get her property and estate settled. He never stopped looking after Esme all these years. Asterin thinks the woman he’s helping is Elloven’s daughter, but that’s not relevant. What is relevant is something the solicitor mentioned offhand. I don’t expect he realized we’d take a deeper meaning from what he said or he’d have held his tongue.”
Jesstin closed his eyes to steel himself. “Sesto, Daire, I don’t know how many fucking ways to say this, but I don’t want to know about Elloven, to see Elloven, to think of—” He took a hard pause. “Why? Why would you bring her up?”
Sesto leaned in. “Because there’s something, dear boy, we believe you’ll want to know.”
“I assure you, I do not!”
Sesto glanced at Daire in hesitation. “There was an incident in Oldcastle two nights ago. She left the solicitor’s late and was waylaid by weather, then found herself at a tavern across the way for the evening, alone, where Castien and two dozen soldiers cleared the place out, cornered her, and threatened her.”
Jesstin’s hands traveled back to the table. “Say that again?”
“There was an incident?—”
“I know what you fucking said! I need to think. Give me a moment.” Castien. Fucking Castien. And Sesto had thought the man was neutered? Neutering a vicious dog didn’t make it less vicious; the only way to stop it was to put it down. “Is she all right?”
Sesto nodded. “Physically, she was not harmed. But a comment she made to the proprietor of this tavern made its way to the solicitor. It may be gossip. It may be nothing...”
“Well, you clearly don’t believe it’s nothing, or you wouldn’t be ripping my fucking heart out, would you?”
“Neither of us believe this is mere gossip,” Sesto said, as steady as if he were speaking with an unstable child. “She called herself Shioven, Jess. Shioven. Have you met anyone else with that name? If what she said... if she meant what she said... then tomorrow night will either end in her triumph or her destruction, but I daresay either outcome will be just as devastating for Elloven. And, whether or not you’ll admit it, you.”
Jesstin gripped the edges of the table. Hearing her name and the threat of danger had the same effect it’d had every other time, since the night he’d rescued her from the mobs screaming at her carriage. Perhaps it would always be that way. Perhaps escaping her was only possible when he knew she was safe, but when had Elloven Hawthorne ever been safe?
“Tell me what she said,” he said. “And I’ll decide how to handle it.”
Chapter 16
The Fiction of Her Own Purity
Elloven left her hood down and let her hair fall free, so it would be clear to anyone watching through windows that she was a woman. She had nothing to fear. No need to alert the guards. They’d be used to seeing women on their own, lured by the once-mighty Edevane stewards.
They were complicit, all of them. If Gennady had somehow discovered what Sestinn and Castien had been doing, it was unlikely the villagers knew nothing.
If any were foolish enough to stop her, she’d deal with them too.
Once she’d picked the evening and made her plan, Elloven had thought of nothing else. Had the idea come first or the conviction? They’d both been there all along, but never at the same time. Never when Elloven had been strong.
Before, when she’d reflected on Fabrien and his friends, she’d run through the justifications of her actions by reminding herself she’d endured seven years of his nightmares because she wasn’t like them. Only when pushed to the edge had she fought back. She’d had no choice.
But those late-night commiserations were a self-deluded asylum for a darker truth: she’d wanted to kill them. Not with magic, with her own hands. Jesstin had been right about her when he’d said she needed to be a victim. A victim was still in possession of their innocence. Elloven had always needed to believe in the fiction of her own purity, and that belief had done nothing but hold her back.
Through the evening fog, she finally spotted the hill leading to the manor house of the small parish. Only the gables were visible. From the ground, they looked like horns from the mythical demons the Reliquary preached about, demons that would tempt one away from the light of the Guardians using the desires that lived in everyone. Proselytizing about demons while elevating Castien Edevane to second-in-command of the spiritual heart of the kingdom was a level of hypocrisy that was hard to match.
She’d purchased a horse from the livery rather than using one of her own. Frankie was hesitant in the reduced visibility, but Elloven wasn’t in a hurry. Hurrying led to mistakes. Her chaos controlled her when she was in a tempest, but her calm afforded her command.
A few farmworkers milled about, cleaning machinery or stacking hay, but none paid her more than a moment’s mind, save an elderly woman wrapped in the garb of a kitchen maid. She set her water bucket aside and watched Elloven dismount and tie Frankie to a post. Her gaze followed Elloven through the gated archway and into the courtyard.
Trusting her instincts, Elloven turned around and went to her.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked her.
The woman shook her head. The solemnity in her expression was impossible to interpret.
