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I hummed in bliss as the shadows soothed over the pain. More. I wanted more!
“Now, Galantia!” Wrapping an arm around my waist, he pulled me against him, pressing my body tightly against his. “Close the fucking box!”
With a start, my eyes snapped open, my chest heaving. “I’m… I’m sorry.”
His hard breaths filled the silence, ragged and broken, swirling together in the space between us before it puffed up in heated plumes. “We’ll have to practice that a bit more, hmm? Are you feeling better?"
I nodded. “A little."
“A… little,” he echoed, a strange tension settling on his features before he tugged me back into motion. “Where does this lead? What’s over there by the cliff that can possibly be this urgent?”
There was a strange roil in my stomach. “The gallows.”
“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,”Asker’s vision resonated in my clouding mind.
Shadowy figures by the cliff’s edge materialized into three distinct forms—Asker, Marla, and Malyr. They stood motionless around the skeletal silhouette of the gallows. Nothing more than three tall structures looming before the backdrop of the endless sea, one beside another, with empty ropes swaying on two of them whenever a spray of saltwater from the crashing waves hit. But on the third?
A body dangled there.
Cold sweat settled on my forehead. One moment, I held Sebian’s hand, and the next, my fingers slipped from his as I stumbled toward the woman hanging from the creaky rope. No, this couldn’t be.
My shaky hands lifted to her boots, fingers turning black from the thick, black goo that smeared across the brown leather.
“Tar,” Sebian said, who’d walked up beside me.
I forced my gaze up. Tar covered the green train of her dress, the blood-stained bodice, the blonde tresses that clung to the ornate embroidery like sticky cobwebs. Here and there, white down fluttered in the breeze as if it wanted to drift away, but couldn’t.
No. No, this was impossible.
My gaze lifted higher, to those graying strands, the hairline wrinkles, those regal features that had gone near-translucent. “Mother?”
The rope creaked in answer.
Muscles failed, and I sank to my knees, my upper body swaying with the corpse as I kept clinging to those boots. “Oh gods… Gods, no…”
How he’d gotten there, I couldn’t say, but Malyr knelt beside me, giving a little tug on my shoulder. “Come he—”
I threw myself at Sebian’s legs, clinging to them as if the wind might otherwise truly pull me out to sea. “He killed her!”
“Shh…” Sebian sank to his knees and pulled me into his embrace, hushing me and holding me so tightly. “I’m here, sweetheart. Everything will be alright.”
“Asker found her like this earlier.” Arms crossed behind his back, Malyr stepped back into view, his jaws tense enough that the valleys beneath his cheekbones filled with dark color. “I presume our suspicions were correct, and this is Lady Brisden?”
No, this wasn’t Lady Brisden. How could it be? If it was, then she would sit in a carriage heading for Ammarett, coldly frowning at the heavy pelt draped over her lap. She certainly wouldn’t hang from the gallows because she’d come back for me.
No, this woman had sacrificed herself to keep me safe and ensure my survival. And what did you call such a woman?
I nodded, the back of my throat filling with salty tears, overflowing from my eyes as if years and years of sorrow poured out of me. “Yes, this is my mother.”
ChapterEighteen
Malyr
Present Day, Tidestone dungeons
The wooden crate crashed against the claw marks on the damp, dark stone, erupting in a cacophony of splinters and echoing groans that reverberated off the walls. Fragments whizzed through the air, one slashing across my cheek, searing the skin with a hot burn.
I shouted—a raw, guttural roar that clawed its way out of my throat—my arms flailing wildly, hands clasping around anything within reach to smash and destroy. And if this damned dungeon wouldn’t happen to support an entire fucking wall of the castle, then I would lay ruin to the cell the way Brisden had laid ruin to me!
