“Mythgarde may think they possess the ultimate authority over what happens in their village, but it goes only as far as Lord Quinlanden allows.” He turned his eyes toward the door to his bedroom, where Rhiain was still sleeping.
Not for long.
“The same Lord Quinlanden who let his son...” Sesto hushed to a whisper. “Abuse this poor woman? Don’t forget your father is a close, personal friend of the lord.” He didn’t need to say the rest, that Asterin and Rhiain had been the catalyst for Sestinn’s expulsion as steward.
Asterin rubbed his knuckles against the stone wall. “And Jesstin is his son. He can do something useful, for once.”
“You know he won’t.”
“Doesn’t matter. Theo is steward now, and he’ll never let this happen.”
“Steward Edevane is in the Northerlands brokering a trade deal for Quinlanden, remember? There isn’t time, Asterin. They arrested Jess just after midnight, and they’ll execute him at dawn if we?—”
Asterin raised a silencing hand. “Stop. Talking. Sesto. Can I think?”
“Do you want to know what I think?”
Asterin’s eyes fluttered closed. “You’ll tell me either way.”
Sesto hated to say it as much as Asterin would hate hearing it. “I think it’s time to wake Rhiain.”
Jesstin had been in the Mythgarde jail once before, visiting an acquaintance accused of the same crime. He’d pleaded on the man’s behalf, even thrown both his family names in a desperate final attempt to make them see reason, but he might as well have been entreating with the walls.
It was an old ancestral crypt, once belonging to a family with a deep and proud lineage. They’d sold the land when the last of their line had been dying off, with the condition that the graves remained undisturbed. All the cells had been built around the various tombs. His was wedged between one that said, Our three angels, Esther, Rebecca, and Jerome, perished of the flux and another that had been carved into the bust of a man whose only name on the epitaph was Conqueror of Mythgarde.
While he waited, the young spectral Jerome, dressed in apparel popular in Jesstin’s grandparents’ era, watched him from atop the tomb across the way, labeled Antica and Simon of Eastern Haven. But he was quiet, and no other specters joined him, which was a small but welcome mercy.
The other cells were empty, but that was expected, because unlike everywhere else, Mythgarde welcomed sin in all colors and flavors. Few found themselves on the wrong side of the bars.
Light dancing along the dusty stairway accompanied a commotion he recognized even before it came into view.
Elloven had followed through then.
“Jesstin!” Rhiain stormed toward him, her auburn hair a windblown mess, her cloak half-fastened. She stopped just outside his cell, casting a wild appraisal over him and the surroundings. “What a macabre place.” Her head jerked with a sharp breath, her hands shaking the air as she took him in from the other side of the rusty bars. “Have they harmed you? At all? In any way?”
Jesstin shook his head. He had a twist in his shoulder from the rough arrest, and Taven’s messy, unskillful punch would smart for a couple of days, but he was fine.
He didn’t know where to start, with her or with Asterin, who arrived with Sesto moments after. Explaining the rules would be a waste of what little time he had left, and there were things he needed her to know, because the last thing he wanted was for her to spend her life avenging him. “Rhiain, can you sit down?”
She tugged at her cloak with a hard glance to her sides, then dragged a small stool over. “If you’re about to tell me not to fight for my baby brother...”
“I’m not a baby anymore. I never was.” Jesstin swallowed the lump forming in his throat. “But I will always be your brother. In this life and the next.”
“No. No. Have you lost your mind?” She reached a hand through the bars. “Jessie, you listen to me, listen. I don’t give a bloody damn about the rules of degenerates, and I will burn this entire village to the ground before I let them hang you.”
“Rhiain, listen to me. Please.” He couldn’t look directly at her or Asterin, who was standing behind her, deep in thought. “There are some fights you just can’t win. I asked Elloven to bring you here because... because this is the end, for me. And I know?—”
“You really have lost your cursed mind if you think I’m going to stand back and watch them?—”
“Rhiainach.” Asterin rolled his hands over her shoulders. “Let him talk.”
“But he’s accepted this madness! He’s speaking like a man drugged!”
“None of us will accept this madness,” Asterin said calmly. “But let him speak. We don’t know how long they’ll let us stay.”
“We’ll stay as long as we damn well please,” Rhiain retorted but seemed to ease some. “Tell me everything. From the start.”
“I could speak ’til my breath runs out, and nothing I say would do a thing to stop what’s happened.”
