“Of course, if you don’t wish to, then you could just take the money and sell elsewhere.” She smiled.
After looking between the paintings and Evelina at least four times, he finally regained his composure enough to speak again. “I don’t need charity,” he said harshly.
But his eyes told a different story. They didn’t match hissharp tone because they were filled with tears. Evelina’s heart broke at seeing him so affected by selling a crate of paintings.
He spun around toward the door and angrily wiped away a tear, taking several deep breaths. When he turned back toward her, he wasn’t looking at her with as much anger. He stuck his hand out to help her stand up.
“Lawrence.” He cleared his throat. “My name is Lawrence.”
“Nice to meet you, Lawrence,” said Evelina softly. “I’m Evelina.”
He stood incredibly still. She wasn’t sure what possessed her to treat him as a friend rather than a subject. Perhaps she felt guilty for all he had lost in her reign.
He nodded his head sharply. “I’ll deliver the paintings to the palace later this week.”
Seventy-Three
Daimon
The soundof wings beating against the sky accompanied the cries of agony. Wings soared over the tree line. Daimon only caught a glimpse of its spiked tail, so large that it could clear ten trees in one fell swoop.
Dragons. One of the deadliest creatures of the Shadow Realm.
Daimon’s chest ached as he thought about Zephyr—his companion and just as much a friend as any other fae. Even after all this time, the pain of losing her still felt like an open wound that hadn’t closed. He didn’t see dragons often, only a handful of times since the night Moros died.
A shrill cry pulled his thoughts back to his current task. He followed the tug on his chest leading him through the woods, toward the soul he was about to pluck out of the Wailing Woods.
“Please!” a woman pleaded. “Please, help me.”
She was like every other soul here; she looked and sounded like any living fae, but the moment she reached out to grip his arm, it went straight through him.
Her eyes widened and she screamed again. “What’s happening to me?”
He tried to be sympathetic—he really did. But listening to the same question for over two centuries made it hard to find pity. Especially knowing that they weren’t entirely innocent, otherwise they would be in the peaceful fields of Caelum.
Instead of trying to explain what was happening—like he tried doing the first ten years after Moros died, before he finally gave up—he called on his shadows. They were just going to scream either way.
The shadows wound around the woman, binding her hands together and snaking up her arms. Daimon turned his back as she continued shrieking at the top of her lungs, pleading for him to let her go. But it was too late for her now; her fate was already sealed. He was about to deliver her to the Goddess of Vengeance.
As they walked through the woods, he no longer battled against his guilt or searched for an escape. Instead, he wondered,What layer of the Vale will this one go to?
There had always been stories about the layers of the Vale, how the somewhat tainted souls were right on top—still miserable, but less…tortured—while several layers down were for murderers and thieves, a place of pure agony.
She begged him to stop the entire journey to the Vale’s entrance, but the words drifted through him as easily as her hand had. Even as his shadows brought her to the end of the cavern, he ignored her cries.
As he watched the invisible wind suck her into the darkness, he felt the great void in his soul. The one that had once been his, and, in a life he could barely remember, Evelina’s too.
Seventy-Four
Evelina
Evelina visitedClara every week after that, buying several of the portraits Lawrence had delivered and hanging them in an art room in the palace.
One of Clara’s workers delivered the paintings, a Woodland with a soft smile and hair that brushed his shoulders. It didn’t surprise Evelina that Lawrence arranged for someone else to deliver them, not with how afraid he looked in her presence.
The bell on top of the shop door dinged as Evelina entered.
“He’s in the back,” Clara called out from behind the counter.
