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“I wish you’d done it sooner.” It might have saved us a great deal of frustration and embarrassment. “What is it you need me to do to help you gain another vision? One a little more accurate than the last, if you please. Clearly, I haven’t shaped up to be quite the treasure you first assumed.”
“Not every treasure sparkles at first glance,” he said, lifting those bushy brows that seemed to coil in whichever direction they pleased. “My visions are a capricious thing, often triggered by something so utterly unassuming, we might as well exchange our opinion on how best to tie the laces on boots. My mate, Marla, has an easier time with hers.”
“She’s a fate as well?”
“Yes,” he said, slowly striding beside me around a stone fountain that prattled next to the old oak, the flowers around it wilting from the night frost. “But where I get glimpses of what lies in the future, she sees what has happened in the past.”
“I read about that.”
“Have you?” That rise on the corners of his mouth wasn’t exactly a smile, but I could tell he approved that I tried to learn all that had been kept from me… all I had ignored. “Many of our written accounts had been destroyed on the order of King Barat. Ignorance breeds lies, and lies breed wars. But this wedding? It will mark the beginning of a new era, a better era. There is power in this union. House Khysal and Brisden united in deed, Raven and human united in love.”
Hardly, but my wish for love in life seemed as foolish as my worldview. “Yes.”
Giving me another side-glance, Asker pouted, probably well aware that there would never be love between Malyr and me. “What other insights did the books provide?”
“I mostly read up on your magic,” I said. “I focused my reading on voids. Why are they so rare?”
“Because we killed them,” Sebian said from behind us. “Ravens are smart and all that…”
That slowed my steps as we passed a group of congregating females, snickers and mumbles now replaced with curtsies and false smiles as if I couldn’t tell how they all hated me for getting something no sane woman should want. “Killed them?”
“A tale from our darkest times, when our own kind slaughtered each other like animals.” Asker crossed his hands behind his back, letting the crushed seashells shift beneath the weight of his steps. “Equally dark was the Raven whose actions gave birth to said tale. A man with the gift of void, but so strong, not only was he capable of absorbing other’s gifts, but to steal them forever and adopt them as his own. We call this—”
“A thief,” I said. “The shadows killed him.”
“Yes. Yes, exactly. A sin, his son and heir called it, for one Raven to amass such power. He ordered to have every thief killed, so history would never repeat itself. Many echoes and voids were wrongfully accused of being a thief and were put to death. Others went into hiding,” Asker said, and that certainly explained why they were so rare. “It was King Omaniel who tried to do away with the stigma voids had burdened for much too long, especially after his mate revealed as an echo. It’s a bloody stain not easily washed from the cloth of our wrongdoings. Marla has seen it all, told me about how voids have—” He stopped and turned to face me, his eyes narrowing. “Gallows on a cliff, with the sea stretched out behind it. A golden-haired woman’s body dangling from a noose, drowning beneath salty waves.”
A vision.
Ice-cold shivers climbed my arms, rising the fine hairs. I knew that place. Had seen it once or twice when I’d managed to lean out of my window far enough to glimpse the gallows behind Tidestone. The cliff there hung low, where the waters were the roughest, pounding against the rock with such force, waves shot up and coughed down on whoever twitched at the end of the rope.
“The gallows behind Tidestone, on the northwestern cliff.” I crossed my arms, rubbing them in search of warmth. “Whose body?”
“I cannot say.” He sighed and stared at the gray sky above us. “I must contemplate on this, and why the goddess wished me to see it.”
At that, he was gone, flapping upward and away to disappear behind the roof while my heart gained speed. Malyr and I had agreed that I would travel to Tidestone to free Marla in a little over a fortnight. Why was I getting the feeling that, perhaps, I hadn’t secured my future, but my death?
ChapterTwenty-Seven
Galantia
Present Day, Deepmarsh Castle, a meadow
The smell of roasted meats and sweet ale clung to the evening air, along with the oak smoke coming from the dozens of iron-forged fire baskets that illuminated thekjaer. It took place on a meadow behind the castle, and right beside a creek that slowly trickled into the surrounding marsh.
I cast my gaze over the occupied benches where I sat beside the Raven prince at our richly decked and decorated table, eyes nervously jumping from one black shroud to the next. Captain Asker. Tjema, who danced with another young Raven girl. Darien. Where was Lorn? Killing puppies? Digging my grave?
“No more for me.” To my other side, Sebian placed his palm over his empty cup until the girl with the wine carafe had passed, the quail before him eaten down to its tiny ribs, the vegetables around it untouched. A bird he might be at times, but his appetite was all man.
Malyr turned his head ever so slowly, staring at Sebian with furrows between his brows. “And here I thought I would certainly find you sleeping in the stables come morning.”
“Why would I? It’s much warmer between your wife’s legs,” Sebian murmured, flashing Malyr a lopsided smirk. “Besides, I have to keep a true aim. Remember? Your jilted lover is seething shadows somewhere nearby.”
“She ought to be plenty distracted for the night,” Malyr said with a shrug, attention drifting to the shadowy edge of the festivities.
I followed his line of sight.
And I saw her.
