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My ears began to ring. I didn’t want to be a bargaining chip. “What kind of deal?”
Althea took my hand. “He bound himself to the Maestro in exchange for his mother’s life debt.”
“I had fifty years left,” Elowen whispered.
Paesha cleared her throat. “He was seventeen when he made that deal. He would have been freed at sixty-seven. But he made the Maestro agree that we couldn’t be forced to turn you over.”
“And?”
“And he gave the rest of his hundred years for your safety.”
Chapter 30
Eiria’s Temple was less ominous without the storm raging. Still, I’d waited outside as Paesha inched forward.
She stood at the steps, bathed in moonlight, staring back at me. “You should really be standing somewhere that’s not so damn obvious.”
Rolling my eyes, I took a step back into the shadow of a nearby building. She blinked several times before squinting. “That’s really creepy.”
I couldn’t help my smile as the fiery woman turned and disappeared into the Goddess of Life’s temple. Absolute betrayal had surged through my veins when Orin told Paesha I was searching for the Life Maiden. I’d tried to trust him with my secrets, and he’d immediately gone to her, placing a sliver of that wedge between us once again. But when she cornered me in the gardens the next day, I realized if I let go of the reins and we worked together, maybe that was better than failing on my own. And her eagerness for the hunt officially obliterated any lasting thoughts I had of the missing person secretly being Orin.
I could have counted every damn brick on the building I leaned against by the time the Huntress exited the temple. She sauntered across the street without a care in the world, trying to fix her eyes on me. Clearly, she hadn’t been using magic.
When I stepped into the light, she smirked, bumping a shoulder into me. “Tell me that’s not magic.”
“You’re blind for an infamous Huntress.”
“Well, you’re fucking mouthy, and I don’t use magic when I don’t need to, so I guess we’re even.”
We started the journey from Perth back to the outskirts of Silbath, agreeing we wouldn’t speak a word of our mission on the streets. Paesha had warned me the Maestro had ears everywhere, and I knew Lady Visha was the same.
Breaking the tree line was starting to feel like stepping into a different realm. One that started as a prison but had shifted into a haven for the misfits of this world. Requiem held the grit and gore, the aftermath of an ancient war still present on every surface, but this sanctuary beyond? I could breathe here. Think and feel. Even sleep, though Boo had been finding his way to the foot of my borrowed bed. Each night when I’d taken him back to Quill, she’d begged me to stay with her. I wished I could have relieved her fear, but the settled mind of a child was unbreakable when it came to trauma.
“Nothing?”
“Just the flowery tree, like you said. Tell me again, why is this so important to you? I know a healer would be a reprieve for us, but why do you care?”
“Spend your life being the murderer in a world full of immortals and tell me how it feels to be the villain. Finding the Life Maiden is the only thing that will make me different from… them.”
“You’re worried about being compared to the other harbingers?”
“I’m not worried about it, Paesha. I am. My legacy is only bloodshed and tombstones. My soul is damned. I just wanted one single thing to vindicate it.” I took a harrowing, desperate breath. “Did you get any sense of her? Anything your magic could bind to?”
She swiped a stone from the ground and tossed it to me. “You see that rock? Now that I’ve touched it and I’ve laid eyes on it, you could hide it anywhere in Silbath and I’d be able to find it in seconds. But if you picked a random stone, I’d try, and the magic would fail.”
“A rock is just a rock until you can identify it.” I nodded, tossing it to the ground. “That’s what Orin said, too.”
“The temple was a long shot anyway. It’s been abandoned for so long. Whatever happened to you, there was probably just residual power. Of all the people that should have entered—” She stopped short, grabbing my arm. “Shit.”
I snapped my eyes to where hers had landed. Black as night and foreboding, the Maestro’s carriage sat waiting outside of the Syndicate house.
“He’s never come here,” she breathed. Turning toward me, she grabbed my arms, her face nearly frantic. “You have to hide, Dey. Go back into the trees. I’ll come get you when he’s gone.”
“And if he asks you where I am?” I started toward the house.
“Orin’s going to lose his mind if you walk into that house. The Maestro will bind you. It’s not worth the risk.”
I paused. “Do you think he won’t come back? Do you think he won’t punish all of you until he gets to me?”
