Garin had never wanted more badly to put his hands on someone. To tear into them with his bare fingers. When he started for the house, the rest of the crowd scuttled into the back rooms. He limped past Yanna and Lilac all the way to the porch. He stumbled on a divot in the dirt, barely catching himself in time on the railing.
Myrddin was at his side to help him, but Garin growled in warning, and the warlock backed off. He righted himself, shuffling up the last two stairs.
In the doorway, Artus was waving the deed like a festival prize. “Come quickly. Even as the mongrel of the house, I think it only fair you witness the moment it is gone from your family name.” He held it teasingly under the torch at the base of the stairwell that led up to his childhood bedroom in the attic. “Imagine, decades’ worth of toil and tears. A sacrificing voyage across the channel to escape sickness. Safety from the plague, I’d imagine.”
An overwhelming rage swept over Garin when Artus tilted his head knowingly.
“A journey like that will test anyone’s character. Your mother struggled with melancholy, didn’t she? I’m sure scorning your father for pushing his own dad out of their boat when it had started taking on water did not help, either. They were only minutes from shore.”
Garin was beyond response. He thought of his hallucination. Of Loumarch being dragged back under by the Morgen.
No one had ever told him.
“Although he was not her own father,” Artus continued, “she often got on with him quite amicably. She appreciated his insights and humor as someone raised by strict physicians, long dead.”
Wiping at his eyes, Garin startled at the brush at his side; he hadn’t heard Lilac approach him. She enveloped his hand in hers, twining herfingers between his and rubbing the back of his knuckles as they itched to tear into flesh once more. Rage, sweat, and heat radiated from her, only driving his aching need to taste her.
“She despised Pascal for it,” continued Artus, loud enough for everyone to hear, “even as your parents turned from trying to sell their crops to harvesting illegal flora at the edge of the Low Forest. Your father, anyway,” he added with a look of disdain. “Your mother was not better by any means, murdering unborn children. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when your father tried to pawn you?—”
“Enough!” Garin shouted. He never wanted to hear about his father again. How could Artus have known these things? “What dark magic is at play here?”
Lilac remained silent beside him, but he could hear andfeelher heart thrumming away.
Artus regarded them curiously, taking notice of their intertwined fingers. Sighing, he tucked the deed beneath his arm and reached back into his pouch. He fished out a palm-sized book—tattered brown leather with purple stitching at the binding. Swirling leaves and flora were etched into the leather with a fine-tip knife.
Garin’s mouth went dry. It had beenyearssince he’d laid eyes on the tattered journal Aimee would occasionally scribble in before bed. When he was small, he’d curl up behind her in their cramped room, the sound of the fire and his mother’s quill soothed him to sleep on nights Pascal was out foraging..
The last time he’d seen it was after her burial at the abbey. He and Pascal had walked home in the snow that evening; not a word exchanged between them after thanking their neighbors at the parish for their condolences at her funeral. Not even a quarter of the church had been filled, and most of them were nuns from the convent. As his father hung the kettle, changed clothes, and threw a tangled clump of jewelry—two necklaces and Aimee's ring—on the table, Garin watched from the doorway.
Pascal had last withdrawn her journal from his coat last, tossing it next to the jewelry.
“Tuck this in the envelope at the back of your mother’s book,” he’d demanded, his expression cold.
He remembered wondering why Pascal hadn’t buried these things withher. Knowing his father, he’d probably spent the night before the funeral pouring through it. It felt like a hostile violation of privacy.
“What do I do with it?” Garin had asked. The last words spoken to his father.
“Get it out of my sight,” Pascal had snapped. “I never want to see it again.”
Garin had done what his father asked of him with shaking hands, barely able to touch his mother’s accessories. He’d just shut the aumbry door when Pascal Trevelyan shouldered his medic bag and walked through the door without another word, and took their only horse to the battlefield Garin had assigned him to with the forged note he’d written.
Artus frowned, lingering on a page a little over halfway through, then glanced up. “Her last entry was in autumn of 1354. You had just turned fourteen and she couldn’t believe how much you’d grown.” He flipped through the rest of the book, finding empty pages. “That’s it? Did she end up getting apprehended by the Church? Did your father finish the job?”
Seething, Garin gently loosened his hand from Lilac’s and all but lunged at the door. He grunted at the pain shooting up his leg and placed both palms flat against the threshold. “Give it to me.”
“No. No, I don’t think I will.” Artus shut Aimee’s journal and nudged Bog’s body with his toe. “If I’d known all it took was a musket to slow you down, I would’ve put one to your skull ages ago.”
“I’ll shoot an arrow through yours if you don’t give that book to him.” Yanna stood off to their right, just beyond the porch. The girl’s longbow was angled expertly at the door.
With a withering glance back, Artus strode down the hall toward the parlor.
“Artus,” Garin called out. He couldn’t bring himself to beg.
The old man slowed, watching the hearth cast eerie shadows upon the trembling crowd. There were murmurs amongst them, discussion of finding a way out. Jumping out the windows, climbing up to the second floor. If they’d be able to run fast enough with his apparent injury.
When Garin said no more, Artus stepped into the parlor and tossed the deed into the hearth.
A tinny ringing began in Garin’s ears when the room burst into anuproar, every nerve in his body alight with the sound and scent of so much fear.
