Page 91 of Valour

“This belongs to you,” he said, words like sandpaper, holding the harpoon out to her. “Would you like it back?”

She shook her head, ice piercing her veins. Her throat seized.

“A wise choice,” he said, smiling widely, revealing small, pointed teeth, white in the blackness of his face.

Hester couldn’t move, her feet like lead. How had he found her? She had no magic left for him to trace her. And she was utterly alone. No one knew where she had gone. Sweat prickled her back.

“You are afraid of me. I can taste it. Delicious. Do come closer.” He beckoned with a black finger. Against her will, Hester’s feet stepped forwards. Her pulse quickened. The harpoon was aimed at her heart. She stopped with the point of it sticking into her breastbone, a cold bead of sweat sliding down the side of her face.

“You are playing with me. Get it over with,” she said, her voice quavering, fists clenched.

He shook his head slowly, an awful smile showing all of his pointed teeth. “You are powerful. More powerful than I realised. What a waste it would be to end you when we could work together. You could melt the ice, drown the world. So many souls for the taking.”

She wanted to scream, but when she opened her mouth, no sound came.

He tapped the harpoon tip to Hester’s heart, and magic flooded into her, replenishing what she had spent all those months ago against the siren. “Come with me, and I can take the pain away from here,” he said, prodding her chest again. “I can tell you of your parents, your magic. Aren’t those your greatest desires?”

How did he know that? How could he possibly know that she lived with the ache in her heart every day. Drowned it out with mischief and madness. She found herself whispering, “Yes.”

After all this time, to know who she was, why she had been left, what the magic was. It was tempting.

“You could tell me?” she asked, wrapping her hand around the harpoon tip.

“I am the Lord of the Underworld, the Punisher of Broken Oaths. I am Orcus. I can tell you anything you wish.” He yanked the harpoon, and she stumbled forwards until her chest almost touched his.

A gust of wind blew from behind, and a female voice spoke, “Do not go with him.”

Hester whipped her head around, still unable to move her feet, and stared in shock at the winged female behind her. The aquiline woman with green eyes.

Orcus snorted. “You abandoned her. Why should she listen to you?”

Hester raked her hands into her hair, tugging on it, her head about to burst. Was she in a nightmare?

She was not.

“It was the only choice!” the woman screeched, anger contorting her lovely face, her wings lifting, golden-brown feathers shining. “What I did kept her safe all this time.”

Safe? Hester shook her head, bewildered. “Who…?” she asked the woman, the only word she could utter as her mind raced.

The woman’s eyes shone with tears, her mouth twisting. “You were once mine.”

Hester’s heart wrenched. The woman’s face. Oh, she knew now why it was so familiar.

The same green eyes, the same freckles on tan skin, the same golden-brown hair.

30

IN WHICH THERE ARE REVELATIONS AND FEARS ARE EMBRACED

“Mother?” It couldn’t be true. How could it be true?

The woman’s eyes softened. “Yes.”

A thousand questions sprayed up, like droplets on the crest of a wave, and she couldn’t catch hold of any of them. Tears sprang to Hester’s eyes, her face crumpling.

“Do not go with him. Own your fears. Embrace them. Do not magic away the pain you feel,” her mother said, moving to stand at Hester’s back, wings splayed wide.

Orcus’s face was twisted in a sneer. “So, now you know what you truly are.”