Page 201 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
Morus’s snicker was nightmarish. “Fair enough.”
“Nobody would listen to you about the portal just because you’re a Kobold?” I folded my arms. “Or did you play games with them too?”
“No games with them, honest.” He held up a pledging hand. “Forthright as a crossbow, I was. Yet, they wouldn’t trust me because—well, they remembered me.”
“Remembered you from where?”
“Your father’s inner circle.” Morus shrugged again at my surprise. “I served as his emissary to the human realm for four decades until—” His pit-like eyes swiveled toward Pete. “Until I helped the harbinger sent to kill him escape the palace.”
Pete winced as if Morus had prodded a wound, one still festering after 16 years.
“Why would you do that?” I asked the Kobold. Had he saved Pete in malevolence against my father as my kinsmen thought?
Dry as a drought, Morus looked to Myrrdin, who finally floated our way, his golden-brown hair knotted aback one arched ear. “He helped the harbinger escape at my request. I’d deemed the man worthy of clemency, as he’d saved—”
“That’s not your tale to tell, Myrrdin,” Pete snapped, his eyes knifing the prophet.
I rounded on Pete. “Thenyoutell me what happened. I mean, if you saved something—”
“Not something.” Morus blotted his bloody mouth on his sleeve. “Someone.”
“Enough,” Pete rumbled like a bear. “Both of you.”
“What don’t you want me to hear?” I asked. “You’ve already admitted the worst part! Gentian sent you to kill my father—which obviously didn’t work.”
He stomped away, but I dogged his back, ignoring the bystanders’ disbelief. I could give a flying fuck who witnessed me harassing the already peeved harbinger. Living in the dark had gotten old, and Iwasn’tscared of him.
“Is this really just about the guilt you feel over my mother’s death? You didn’t kill her either, Pete! My uncle told me it was Gentian, and Sedge said the same damn thing. And I believe that!”
Goddess, Ineededto believe that.
“Then you believe a lie,” Pete growled over his shoulder, storming into the cabin.
I barreled after him into a minimalistic room lit by dusky fae asters. “How is it a lie?” I barked at his taut back. He poured himself a mug of something from a cracked stone pitcher. Something alcoholic, I guessed, from how fast he downed it. “Tell me, Pete! Did you deliberately and maliciously harm my mother with any part of your body, any of your magic, or any of your weapons?”
“No.” He slammed the mug back down on the stump table beside its pitcher.
I shook my hands at him. “Then you didn’t fucking kill her!”
Pete whirled on me, his expression both anguished and enraged. He bared his teeth and thundered, “She died because she saved me, Shorty!”
I stumbled into a stool.
“It doesn’t matter if I harmed her! She still died because ofme! Because I gave in to my demons and allowed myself to be used as a weapon by someone with no scruples or morals.”
Chills raced along my spine. “The siren you told me about! The one who sang away the death poppy!”
Pete flinched.
“She was my mother, wasn’t she?”
Pete turned back to the pitcher, poured another mugful. “You seemed so ignorant about sirens during that discussion, Shorty. Was that a clever act to throw me off your scent?”
“No, I really knew nothing about her powers. Nobody told me. Well, I guess Briar did tell me she had nocturnal premonitions, but nothing else. Honestly. Uncle Neel said she had a rare power, that Gentian wanted her for it, but I never knew what she was.” I huffed, frustrated. “It was only through hints that I started suspecting she was a siren.”
“She was,” he croaked, drinking again. “And she sang her last song to blast me back to myself. Seared me right to my blackened soul, she did. Knocked me on my arse too. All to save her ceyla from me—the cold rotter there to kill him.” He took another swig, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “She died because she drained her magic to stop me. She had only enough left in her well to incant protection for the king before Gentian reached him. She saved nothing for her own defense.
“Gentian didn’t cast the blood curse for her,” Pete elaborated. “It was going to skip over her—she wasn’t meant to die. But Gentian’s rage at the protection spell—at being thwarted from the kill he most craved—it would drive him stark raving mad. She kent that much too. She also kent what he’d do to her. I could tell by the sadness in her weeping eyes.” His own eyes fell shut again, his continued confession a torture for us both. “But she spared not a single thought for herself as she turned to me, the man who’d just tried to kill her ceyla—who she quite obviously loved more than herself—and begged me to, ‘Save her. Please, save her.’”
