“Fine.”
“Tell me about your daughter.”
As I watched him contemplate, the Remnants roamed the empty halls. I could not see through them, only hear as theywhispered their reports. There was nothing. Only a single robed figure somewhere close to the entrance, standing completely still. So still, he might’ve been a statue had his burning eyes not whipped toward my power.
“Today is not the day for misery,” Alastor said, yanking me back into the room. “Sylvie was her mother’s prodigy and my misery. That is all there is to be shared.”
I felt an unbearable weight of sadness with his words. As he walked toward the door, I realized it was Sylvie’s sadness I was feeling. She might’ve been cruel, and clearly a little mad, but she still loved her father.
“You get him to take you to the Forgotten. Get him to bring my Ever back to me, and I will grant you your freedom, Huntress.”
My Remnants crept back into the room as the man with vibrant green eyes turned back to me, a half-hidden smile on his face. “I should have never tried to bargain with the Keeper when the one in true control was already mine.”
I lifted a shoulder, letting my head tilt a little too far. “What’s one more betrayal between lovers?”
The look in Alastor’s eyes told me I was finally becoming everything he’d planned. And I would let him believe that lie until the very end if I needed to.
27
Thorne
Though the little thing sat in the corner of the room with her nose stuck in a book, though I could see Paesha in the way she turned the pages, the way she didn’t blink when she was stuck in the depths of the story, I knew she was still here in this room, listening, learning. The woman that’d raised her would’ve done nothing less. Even at the age of nine, I was sure.
Paesha hadn’t responded when I’d told her of the rainy day. Nor had she answered whether she was eating. Or sleeping. She hadn’t opened the book after her final note. But at least she’d sent the first.
I was so distracted by thoughts of Paesha and watching Quill, by the mannerisms that belonged to a woman that I didn’t deserve, for a moment, I forgot why I was here in the Syndicate house, that seemed to have no Syndicate at all, but rather a mix of made-up family.
The older woman, Elowen, handed me a hot cup of tea, keeping her eyes cast to the floor. Out of respect and absolutely nothing else, I took a sip, letting the juice of bitter grass sour on my tongue while forcing a smile. “Delicious. Thank you so much.”
She looked at me then, peering through the curtain of dark hair with the eyes of an old soul. Sometimes mortals shocked me in that way. When the past lives they didn’t remember peered through. Not in the way of Paesha’s madness, but something different. As if their soul held every memory of every life, though I knew it didn’t.
“You’re welcome here for now. But when Paesha comes home, and she will because she always does, if she says you go, then you go. I’ll stand at the door and you will not come across that threshold until I’m staring at Death’s handsome face. Are we understanding each other?”
Sometimes the easiest way to maintain power was to let others think they had it. “We understand each other.”
“Good.” She pulled a small book from her pocket and handed it to me. The hard cover was so worn, there was no longer a title, and the pages so limp, I worried they may fall from the spine. “This is her favorite. Read it. Learn something.”
Suddenly the book had a heartbeat. A lifeline. It was precious to her, which made it precious to me. “What’s it about?” I asked, scanning the ink along the title page.
“A broken woman that finds her glue.”
“A romance. Understood.”
“Something tells me you’d be surprised to learn that men are not the answer to every problem. In fact, they are usually the source.”
I slipped the book into my back pocket, accepting my role as everyone’s villain. I’d had to be the villain to save her. Had to be. “Noted.”
“If you sit on that and rip the binding, she’s going to kill you,” Quill said from the corner, finally putting her book down on the little coffee table. “Which is fine, I guess. Since you’re the problem.”
Her casual tone was far more menacing than her words. One shouldn’t fear a child. A god should fear very little. But she was chaos in a mortal form, darkness and light. She was an unknown. Innocent, but only just. Still, the threat flickered through her eyes in a flash of power. So quick, mortals might not have seen.
The snap of cards against a table grabbed Quill’s attention. She’d given me an inch and no more when it came to being in her space. An inch was a win though. She skipped out of the room and I was left with my own thoughts as I waited for Archer to join me. I could hear him teaching Thea another of his card games and Elowen had asked me to wait here.
I waited. Each step in equal distance to the next as I paced the floor. Within minutes, I’d straightened the stack of books on a side table, wound the clock in the corner to match the correct time and straightened the curtain on the north wall. A painting hung across from me, its frame tilted at a slight angle that made my eye twitch. I fixed it with minute precision. Each imperfection seemed to call to me, begging to be corrected, set right.
Dust motes danced in the thin light that filtered through the lace curtains. I ignored them. But I couldn’t ignore the wilted flowers in the vase. I plucked one petal and the entire flower crumbled.
Fuck.
