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My father’s prisoner. The one whose name Farryn had spoken in dreams.
‘Liar,’ a voice echoed in my memories, and my muscles tensed.
As I understood, a stripped soul lacked the ability to ever return to its former body. It roamed aimlessly, dormant. Invisible and lonely, until starvation sent it fading into the void. Without the ability to fully attach itself to a physical body, it languished over time.
Memories of a naked woman with a shaved head, stretched by rope between two posts, flickered through my thoughts, and I sipped the drink in my hand.
I hadn’t told Farryn the entirety of my encounters with Syrisa. What she’d done to me,wantedfrom me, and what I’d failed to deliver, but with the dreams and hallucinations Farryn had been suffering from as of late, specifically mentioning a malevolent blonde, I wondered precisely how powerless an unbound soul could be. Was it possible she had somehow made a connection to Farryn? It seemed unlikely, given how many centuries had passed since her soul had been stripped. Surely, she would have starved to death.
A vision flashed through my head, interrupting my thoughts, and I closed my eye and focused on the unbidden scene, a literal birds-eye view of a wall I recognized a few villages to the north. It surrounded the seedy town housed within called Dreadmire, a place overrun by The Fallen. Crime ran rampant there, and any human soul unlucky enough to be taken in was never heard from again.
Along the outer surface of the wall, carved into its chipped and weather-worn stone, stood an alcove, butted up to the adjacent woods. Within the alcove hung various objects on strings–symbols I recognized to provide protection and defense. The space contained a makeshift bed and blanket, which sat outside of a small firepit. I could hear Cicatrix caw in the vision, and a figure lying on the bed, bundled in blankets, shifted abruptly as though irritated by the noise, then turned over. Frowning, I mentally focused on the face of the old man, which was covered in dirt and grime. His hair had grown out, white and unkempt. One of his eyes had turned milky white, as if he’d gone half-blind. If not for the fact that Cicatrix could sense him in a way no human ever could–a sense I could feel as I watched through the bird’s eyes, which essentially confirmed his identity–I wouldn’t have recognized the old man.
Farryn’s father.
The view drew closer, as if Cicatrix had swooped toward him, and the old man shooed him off.
He swooped again, and Farryn’s father sat upright, the blanket falling away to reveal filthy and threadbare clothes barely clinging to a body that hadn’t been properly nourished in quite some time, given the sharp protrusion of his bones.
Cicatrix had found him.
I eased back into my chair, exhaling a sigh of relief while the vision fizzled away. Part of me felt a burning need to pour a drink and celebrate. The other part of me knew better. Finding him didn’t guarantee the restoration of my wings. The fact that he’d been tracked down in Nightshade was cause enough to cast aside celebration, because any human who resided here long enough could scarcely recall their own name, let alone the meaning of an ancient sigil. The trek to get to him could prove fruitless and nothing more than a reunion between father and daughter. I had to accept the very real possibility that my wings would be lost to me forever, but damn that sliver of hope burning inside of me. One would almost think me human, the way it titillated me to hop on my horse and seek him out right then.
I planned to leave for Dreadmire under the cover of night, however, to avoid being seen--which unfortunately meant having to leave Farryn at the mercy of Vaszhago. Though he’d proven watchful and trustworthy, I didn’t trust anyone entirely when it came to her.
Yet, given the events of the night before, perhaps it was better I left.
25
THE BARON
The baron swung his dagger to chop a path through the thick web of thorns slowing his pace, as he and Soreth trekked up the mountainside. “What are we looking for?”
“Wolfsbane.” Soreth stepped through a particularly dense cluster of thorns and jumped back. “Devils blood!” Red drops spilled from a small scratch on his forearm where a thorn must have caught him. “I’ve grown weary of this already.”
“Is Wolfsbane not poisonous?”
“To humans? Yes. Extremely.”
“What does Solomon want with it?”
The blond cast a scowl over his shoulder and snorted. “Offer one good reason why I should tell you?”
Swinging his blade over another ratted entanglement of thorns, the baron shrugged. “Because I may know exactly where to find it.”
A moment of silence hung between them, Soreth undoubtedly contemplating the consequences of telling the boy his master’s intent. On a huff, he glanced over his shoulder, his expression resigned. “When mixed with Nightshade, it is a very potent elixir known asla’ruajh.”
The ruse. He knew the language Soreth had spoken, as it was one his mother had taught him since he was a child. A language his father did not understand, and therefore, it had served as a secret language between them. “What is it?”
“It masks the scent of vitality by making you appear as one of the dead.”
“But you are not dead?”
Soreth’s top lip curled back as if repulsed by the question. “No. Of course not. Simple earthly flowers cannot kill my kind.”
“What exactly is your kind?”
“Pure-blooded Elysiumerian,” he said with a haughty tip of his chin. “Our ancestors are Seraphs.”
