The log behind it had collapsed into a steaming pile of sludge and seaweed. “I appear tonight as a husk of my mortal being, but rest assured, I exist beyond this form. I have been here, watching. Listening. Much like the forests, the Breton sea is one. More tumultuous, deceiving than the others—she is powerful, and all-knowing.” It lowered its voice to a croaking whisper. “A force to reckon with, and I have been slave to her since the day your father slipped me off his boat.”
Garin ogled. No one else had been aboard the small boat Pascal and Aimee sailed from Cornwall to Brittany. No one had ever mentioned?—
There was a quiet splash behind Garin, causing both him and the creature to jump. He turned and saw nothing but soft ripples spanning the surface near the bank. When he looked back to the corpse, his eyes were filled with moisture. Garin scoffed and wiped it away on his sleeve.
“Your physical resemblance to him is uncanny,” sang the creature, “but you are very different, aren’t you?” A smile began to grow on its hideous face, a twinkle forming in its eye. “You are more careful after observing your father’s tendencies. An academic with a heart for others, one who happened to pick up a sword when it had never been your dream. Almost as if destiny had aligned.”
“War was never my destiny.” The things Garin had done with his own hands and blade never seemed to haunt him as much as they did his peers,but not because he was heartless. By the time he got to the battlefield, he’d learned how to numb himself against violence.
Bastion was always an angry child after being separated from his merchant parents, and brawling at the old Paimpont orphanage became his forte. It was why Alor had often paired them both. Garin was able to skirt the grief until he became a creature of the night, until bloodshed was no longer an option, but a need. Then, everything caught up to him.
“It was a choice I’d made for survival. Out of loneliness and greed,” Garin said quietly.
“It was a choice you made, nonetheless.”
The creature cocked its head then, reminding him of Pascal when he’d started interrogating Garin on Aimee’s whereabouts after she’d started working at The Fool's Folly. Aimee had told Pascal she’d started helping at the bakery they often visited, and Garin kept his mother’s secret. Pascal was never truly convinced, and the kind baker’s family was generous to keep her ruse. The questions began whenever his mother was away.
“Survival and destiny often feel one in the same. Perhaps one nudges you toward the other, no?” The creature shifted on its haunches, the sound of its bones cracking pulling Garin from the memory. “Still, it didn’t stop you from pondering what your life could’ve been had you not gone to the duke’s son’s tent, though.”
Garin’s lip curled over his fangs, but he was at a loss for words. The thing had no right to be so invasive—this was blasphemy. How could it have known? Thees were things he’d never told anyone. Private, personal truths he’d willingly plastered over his bleeding heart with other trauma. His hand went to his chest, gripping the dark fabric there.
“It consumes you, doesn’t it?” said the creature. “Just as it did Pascal. That heart is but a slow-beating echo of what life could have been for you. With your mother’s heart and wit, you would’ve made a fascinating politician or orator. Or, would you have had a thrilling career in botany, like him? Had you not picked up that sword, what would have become of Garin Austol Trevelyan? A husband? A doting father? A respected citizen, at the very least.” It blinked slowly—one eyelid more delayed than the other. “But, had this monstrous fate not found you, you would not be standing here before me today.”
“You know nothing!” Garin spat.
“No. Perhaps not.” The creature didn’t so much as flinch at Garin’s outburst. “But I do know you’ve been reading.” Its empty sockets bore into him. “I know you discovered a certain passage that struck your interest as you sat, contemplating your life choices upon her balcony. That it led you to seek yet another Daemon-authored book in your witch friend’s collection detailing the matrimonial tendencies of your species, when you had never bothered to know before. Odd, isn’t it?”
Garin had no answer, feeling stripped bare as the dead blood that coursed slowly through his veins rushed to his face. Lorietta’s book on vampire politics was long gone. “I was curious,” he muttered.
“I bet you were.” The creature let out a hack of a knowing laugh. “Ever the wanderer and researcher. Just like your father.”
Reeling, Garin lunged forward and snatched the creature by its rags, looking it in its non-existent eyes. “My father’s research was in vain, more important to him than anyone else. He chased fairy tales, mistaking magic for miracle, seeking an island kingdom of faerie folly and—and allowing it to drive him to ruinous obsession, a-and—” He was stuttering. Garin never stuttered. “My mother found her purpose in helping women, and it infuriated him. Father was so bitter, he wanted to report their apothecary to the authorities. Pascal’s work was selfish, he never aimed to benefit anyone else but himself.” He’d never voiced his disdain for Pascal this way, not out loud. “At the very least, my purpose now is much greater than anything I once considered important. I am nothing like him.”
The creature remained silent.
Trembling, Garin dropped it to the floor. “What do you want from me? How did I get here andhowdo I return to the castle?”
The creature gave a pitiful sigh and shook itself off, as if aware there was nothing Garin could do or say that would harm it. “If it is any consolation, none of this is accidental. My son’s greed set your fate into motion even before you were born. Go where the current pushes you, my boy. Fighting it will only bring destruction.”
His fate was not botany nor the blade. Lilac’s sweet face and saccharine smile flashed across Garin’s mind.
Fury engulfed his fear like a torch to oil. It was the same knee-buckling anger that rose after discovering his mother too late, the same rage that drove him to forge a note requesting Pascal’s immediate assistance at oneof the battlegrounds rumored to anticipate an ambush. Garin went to Alor’s tent immediately after—before his father’s body was even identified, and before the magistrate could come knocking to discuss the inheritance of the farmhouse.
Assaulted by memories he’d long buried, Garin staggered back. “Pascal has nothing to do with the man I’ve become except ensure I am nothing like him. You arenotLoumarch. He’d said you were buried at a chapel in Cornwall, that the sickness took you before their departure.”
The creature laughed again. “Better that than admit he didn’t want to care for an aging father whose mind had failed him. Especially when it became clear their boat had drifted off course from Roscoff, and that rations were slim.” A fat worm crawled out of his left eye socket then—and a long, thick tongue darted out of the hole that was his mouth, sucking the worm in. It then chewed, squelching loudly.
Garin was done wasting time. He had to find his way back to Lilac. He’d send the corpse back to where it belonged. As he swung his foot back, a powerful hand seized his ankle, yanking his standing leg from beneath him.
His head slammed onto the bank, half his face in the mud. Gasping, the last he saw was his grandfather’s rotting face twisting in astonishment before two hands pulled—dragged him down into the lake. He kicked and thrashed once submerged, fighting to see where the bubbles went as they leaked from his nostrils, but his eyes stung in the murky water.
He pried the bony fingers off his ankle when another hand clamped down on his shoulder. Garin managed a better grip on that one—he reached back and yanked, and when his fingers slipped, the Morgen’s hand latched onto his face, pushing him down. He scraped it off, shoved its wrist into his mouth and bit down, tearing off its entire hand. The water around him vibrated, erupting in frenzied hisses and black-green blood; with one powerful kick, Garin pushed himself toward the glimmer of moonlight finally visible above.
Spitting water and dirt, he lurched his arms forward with all his might and paddled toward the nearest gigantic lily pad, hoisting himself up. He glanced back. His grandfather sat watching him, his ghastly expression unreadable.
“What do you want?” Garin asked again. He wiped his face uselessly onhis soaking sleeve, knowing there were tears there. “What do you want from me?”
A muffled chorus of laughter shook the lily pad Garin stood on. Several orbs of dim light flashed in the murky depths. Their warning—a beautiful display that had led countless to their doom. He wouldn’t be the next. He bent his knees and sprung to the nearest lily pad, nearly missing and pulling his leg up, just before a bony arm shot out at it. He kicked it back into the water.
