THIRTY
FAELAN
It’s late into the morning and Sage hasn’t emerged from her cottage yet. Marius hasn’t come by to see how she’s doing yet either. Which is maybe a good thing. I feel like I need to talk to her first before I tell him my concerns about Kieran and the new torque. Before I confess what I’ve already kept from him, like the fire, and that kiss.
I knock on her cottage door around ten. No answer.
I sniff the air for smoke, but I don’t smell anything except the overcast day—the morning dampness of the plants, the crisp water from the lagoon pool. I search for her power, for the connection I should have with her after the ceremony last night, but I don’t sense anything. I’m not sure how to feel about that. I know it’s working to a point, since I felt her anxiety at the tribunal, but I still can’t tell how solid the connection is. It’s possible her power is rejecting it.
I turn the knob, and the door clicks open as I call into the entrance, “Sage?” I step inside, looking around. The dim sunlight gives a gray tone to the room. I walk toward her bedroom door, deciding I should just wake her. But as I move through the small living room, I hear her breathing.
She’s there, sitting on the floor, legs curled under her, head resting on the coffee table. Sound asleep.
I move closer and see she’s lying on top of the scroll that I gave her. Her hand is resting beside a half-full cup of coffee.
I crouch at her side and touch her shoulder. “Sage, wake up.”
She sighs but doesn’t open her eyes.
“Sage.” I brush her hair from her forehead and see she’s drooling on the ancient script. Good thing it’s protected by magic. I grip her shoulder and shake it gently. “Wake up, Sage.”
She gasps, “Lailoken!” and sits straight up, eyes wild. “I need your help, Lailoken, I . . .” She pauses her panicked words and blinks, looking around. “What happened?” Her eyes find me, and she squints, reaching up to wipe the drool from her lip. “Faelan?”
Shock fills me. How could she possibly know that name, Lailoken?
She covers her brow with her hand and moans. “What the hell?” She sits back against the couch. “That was nuts. I dreamed . . . I think I was dreaming—what was it?”
A dream about an old monk she’s never met? Could she have a memory of the other night when I took her to the Caledonian wood?
“Can you tell me anything about it?” I ask carefully.
She squints again. “I was . . . well, oh wow, I can’t remember. Damn. I was definitely freaked out, though. My heart’s racing.” She puts her palm to her chest and picks up the coffee, then cringes and sets it back down. “Ugh, I’m so tired. Whatever it was, it was probably because of everything I read in this scroll. I was up all night.” She yawns. “The part about her killing that guy and being put in the nunnery had me messed up in the head.”
“You don’t remember any of the dream? You said the name Lailoken.”
“Perfect. I’m making up gibberish names in my sleep?”
“He’s a monk.” A hidden monk that only certain people would know.
Her eyes grow. “A real one? How . . . how would I know his name?”
A very good question. “He’s the one who brought you back after Kieran killed you. Maybe you remember some of that night? I took you into the woods, we went to his home. He lives in a tree.”
She shakes her head, a lost look on her face.
It’s all so strange. How in the name of the goddess could she know that name if she doesn’t remember that night? Unless . . . “You said you had memories of Kieran,” I say as a thought comes to me.
Pink fills her cheeks. “I hope they’re not memories. I think they’re a trick.”
“But what you see is detailed?” I ask, ignoring her embarrassment. “They seem familiar, right? Do you think we could try something?”
A gold mist of fear filters from her chest. “Like what?”
“I think we should put you to sleep and have Aelia enter your dreams. Then we’ll be able to tell better how Kieran is messing with you.” The dark prince meddles in dreams. He could have sent visions to Sage, making her think she’s living things that she isn’t. It will be clear very quickly if her sleep is being messed with.
She chokes out a laugh. “Uh, no.” And then she adds, “On second thought, make that a hell no.”
“It’s painless.”
“For you, maybe. Aelia is the last person in the world that I want rooting around in my subconscious.”
I move to the chair across from her and sit, leaning forward on my knees. I don’t want to push her, but this is important. There’s a reason her power can’t be held by a torque, a reason she’s feeling drawn to Kieran. If I’m going to help her through the transition—do my job—we have to clear this up. “You only have ten days until the Emergence, Sage. That’s ridiculously soon. And choosing a House is the most important choice you’ll ever make in this world. Don’t you want to find out what’s going on with Kieran before you have to make it?”
“No,” she says quickly. She blows out a puff of air and adds, “But yes. You’re right, I need to figure out what’s going on. It’s why I stayed up until my eyes bled reading those scrolls.” She cradles her head in her hands.
“What did you find?”
She sighs, leaning back. “A whole lot of sad. My sister had a bummer of a life. She killed her first boyfriend by accident, then ended up basically sold into a prison marriage, and I’m guessing she killed Kieran’s brother because he was some horrifying dickhead. It doesn’t say much about the Black Death or the murder, though.”
“She was Bonded to the king for several hundred years.”
“Seriously? The scrolls only went to the first year in her slave marriage.”
“Some believe they were madly in love.”
“And then she killed him? That’s even worse.” She stands and shuffles over to the kitchen, then sets her cup down. “I want to sympathize with her, you know. It feels like I’m condemning myself when I judge her, like I could turn into a psychopathic murderer myself.”
“I doubt that.” But then I remember the Queen Lily I knew as a boy, how gentle she was, how kind to me. It was impossible to believe she was capable of what she did too.
“You barely know me,” she says, walking over to her bedroom door. “But we’ll worry about Homicidal Sage after I’m clean and coffeed. You check with Aelia about the dream thing—God, I can’t believe I just said that.”
She slips into the other room, and I sit for a minute, listening to the shower turn on, staring at the scroll, half rolled out on the coffee table. I lean over to see what part she was reading when she fell asleep. My pulse picks up, and a vision of Kieran and Sage under the tree last night pops into my head as I read:
And so eventually she succumbed to him. In the season of Samhain, the settling began. It wasn’t clear what broke her, but what was clear was that she had given in fully. And once her power and his began to mingle within their Bond, the hope we had for our salvation instead became our doom.