But Nathan had survived.
The sound of wood scraping across wood in the frame of the door roused me from my thoughts and I rushed to dab at my eyes, briefly hoping it was the prince but just as quickly reminding myself that he had probably gone to Athenea already to deliver the news about the Extermino to his father. When I turned, I found Edmund leaning against one of the posts that held the veranda up. The rain from the gutter was soaking his hair, but he didn’t seem to mind, even if he was shortly going to meet the king. The bangs that he usually kept carefully slicked back had sunk down onto his forehead, and the sun-bleached coils all but covered his very dark, very thick scars, which were about as intricate as a ninety-degree angle. That had clearly not mattered to Gwen, however.
I laid my head back down to watch the rain. I was not interested in his impending lecture. I knew the Terra backward, and I knew that in the eyes of the law, I was practically a hero for what I had done. My bookishness and interest in all things thought to be tedious by others paid off. It always had.
“Killing an Extermino with a death curse at age fifteen. Impressive. Stupid,” he reasoned, and I could imagine, almost hear, him folding his arms. “But impressive.”
I did not look up. I closed my eyes, because the rain was no longer streaking straight to the ground but across the garden in sheets.
“In fact . . .” The chair scraped across the grooved flooring. “If you were not a noblewoman with what I am sure will be a glittering political career ahead of you, I would recruit you on the spot.”
“How do you know I killed one?” I asked my arm.
He laughed. “It’s my job to know about it.”
I finally raised my head and squinted, because my vision was blurry. His outline gradually filled in and I was able to focus. “You didn’t tell them.”
“I don’t think your ability to wield that curse should be broadcast, least of all to the Athenea. Power scares people. If you were not in danger, I would advise you to bury the theory deep. But you are in danger,” he finished in a low murmur, drumming his fingers against the treated iron. His nails occasionally caught a fleck of the emerald-green paint and he would flick it away, staring at a spot just above my right shoulder. “They will want revenge on you for what you did,” he stated matter-of-factly, snapping from his trance. “And yet you are not afraid. You are apathetic toward the notion that you have killed a fellow Sage. None of your rash actions today resulted from the bloody staining of your hands. Why is that?”
He leaned forward so his elbows slotted into a gap in the table, and intertwined his fingers. It was a rhetorical question, and I kept my gaze as steady as I could under his pensive expression, sensing he was enjoying the challenge. He drummed his fingernails together twice more, and then clapped his hands in much the same way as when the fireman had turned him away.
“Ah, I see. You think the Extermino killed her, don’t you?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Get out of my mind.”
“You know full well I am not in your mind, my lady. It was simply a perceptive guess. And your reaction told me I was correct.”
I huffed and swiveled in my chair so my entire body faced the rain, presenting my back to him. “I’m right though, aren’t I? It was the Extermino. You know why, too. They all do.” I gestured awkwardly back toward the doors, earning a painful click of my shoulder as I did.
He didn’t answer, and I could hear the groans of the chair as he shifted.
“You won’t tell me, either,” I snapped, wrapping my arms around the back of the chair and gripping it tightly. I hugged it, using it as an aid to fight the tears from returning.
“Is that why you ran today? Why you push Fallon away? You feel cheated.” His voice had softened and all the taunting had disappeared. He sounded the way I had always wanted my father to sound. Concerned. “That is understandable.”
I jolted my head around. “It is?” I breathed.
“Yes. I would feel the same way if I were you.”
I returned to addressing the soaked garden, eyes fixed on the lawn beyond the flower beds, which was collecting water in puddles because the ground was becoming saturated. “Then why won’t you, or anyone else, tell me the truth?”
“Would you believe me if I were to say it is for your own good?”
I shook my head vigorously, frustrated that such a statement had been used to twist my arm twice in one day. I wrapped my arms even tighter around the chair, forcing them to stretch so my hands could reach and grip the sides. The bars dug into the crease between my armpits and breasts, yet the dull ache was the only antidote I had available to prevent myself from crying. And I would not cry in front of a man I had only truly known for a day.
He hummed in displeasure, and the chair groaned yet again. “My lady, what I and the Athenea know about the circumstances of your grandmother’s death will not bring you closure, if that is what you seek.” The stern, reprimanding tone of voice had returned, and I felt as though I had been reduced to the status of a child—gone was the fatherly concern.
Do not be so stupid, child! So reckless as to think you are grown enough to bear all my secrets, when they will only crush you.
Grandmother, it is you who stifles me. I wish you would leave, be gone! Then I could grow!
“Am I not mature enough to decide whether it will help?” I demanded.
A hand smacked down on the table, and I started. “Autumn Rose Al-Summers, you are in no fit state to make even the smallest decision yourself, because you are obsessed with a corpse. Nobody but you can provide closure, and if you do not let go of death then you will rot with your grandmother until you are little more than flesh on bone. And as you feel nothing, not even a pang of remorse, at killing a man who no doubt had family and committed no crime other than belonging to the wrong faction, then perhaps it is already too late for you!”
I sat in stunned silence, each and every word, delivered with increased volume and tempo, battering my back so it arched painfully. It took me a minute to find my voice, and even then I could only produce a breathy sigh of disbelief. “How dare you? How dare you speak to me like that?”
He stamped to his feet. “I dare because someone needed to whip the black veil from in front of your face.”
“And who are you to lecture me on morals? You’re just staff.”
Then, to my complete and utter surprise, he laughed. A true laugh that I could tell came from deep within his chest, and didn’t seem an adequate response to my venomous words. “I think you have spent far too much time with Fallon. And I am more than just staff to you, duchess.”
I huffed again, disappointed with his reply. It had not quenched the anger I felt. “Actually, as far as I was aware, we’re not related.”
His laughter gradually faded and he sat back down. “I have something to show you. Which will mean you must turn around and face me, my lady.” The taunt of his first words to me was back.
Slowly, I extracted my arms from the chair and slid around to face him, my eyes firmly narrowed. He waited with his arms folded, leaning back into the chair. Once my knees were tucked back below the table, he unbuttoned his jacket and reached into an inner pocket. I briefly saw a flash of metal, which I thought might be a gun, but then the lapels of his jacket had flopped back down and there was a wallet in his hand. Out of a clear sleeve safely tucked in the third fold he pulled a square of creased paper, and then returned the wallet to his pocket.
“Tell me who these people are.” Onto the table he placed a photo, a few inches wide, which was heavily creased and black-and-white, slightly faded from overexposure around the edges.
He had placed it on the dry part of the table, far from the reach of the rain, and I had to lean across to see it. I didn’t need to do anything more than tuck my sopping-wet hair behind my ears and out of my eyes to be able to recognize the woman in the middle. I had albums and albums of photos of which she was the subject, and had seen many of the portraits of her that hung in the mansions that b
elonged to the duchy of England. Not that I was in any need of those, either, because it was like looking at a photo of myself: the same fair, tightly curled hair; the same spiraling scars; the same dramatically curvy figure, exaggerated by her short stature.
“That is my grandmother.” She didn’t look as though she had yet entered her late twenties. Even when I had known her, she had been youthful. Her magic had treated her vanity well. I slid my finger to the right of the shot, to where, in contrast, an aging man was standing. “That is Eaglen. And that . . .” I frowned at the third figure, bringing the photo even closer so I could double-check what I was seeing. “Is that your father?”
Edmund nodded, once, very gradually. “An unlikely trio. But they were best friends.”
My eyes shot up and my breath rushed out in a rasp. Eaglen I had known about, but Adalwin Mortheno? The Athan’s leader? I looked back down at the picture. It was easy to see that what Edmund said was true. All three were laughing and none looking directly at the camera, as Eaglen watched my grandmother and pointed toward something outside of the frame, the other two squinting in that direction, my grandmother’s hand gripping the sleeve of Adalwin’s jumper as though trying to tug him toward her. They were standing in front of a circular pond, and judging by their style of dress, the photo had been taken before my father was born.
Edmund started drumming his fingers again. “How much do you know about your grandmother’s life prior to the time you spent with her?” I shook my head. “Not much?” He hummed; more in thoughtfulness this time. “You must know that your grandfather died when your own father was twelve, yes? And are you aware that my mother and father divorced some years before that?” I hadn’t known the latter, but nodded anyway. “What about the fertility problems in your family?”
My eyes lowered down to my lap. Yes, I know about that all right. It was the reason I was the only Sage left in my family. Most members had been unable to have children, or had only had one or two, and generation by generation, the House of Al-Summers had withered and now teetered upon death.
“Don’t look so downcast. By the time you come to have children—if you wish to—things will be better,” he reassured, and I managed a small smile. I would have to have children or name an heir to prevent the duchy from dying out.
He took up the picture and began absentmindedly smoothing out the creases, smiling at its image. “What you do not know is that after her mourning period, your grandmother very seriously considered marrying my father.”
I choked on the air that I inhaled. “What?!” I shook my head. “I mean, pardon?”
His smile widened and I noticed he was looking not at me but the space above my right shoulder again. “All platonic, before you get any ideas. They both sought companionship, and your grandmother also wished to bring security to your family name. It was apparent she could have no more children, and her only heir being born human had been quite a blow, I assure you.”
I didn’t know where to look, but I found my eyes could not settle on him when deep in the pit of my stomach I felt a slight resentment as I pieced together what he was saying. “Your family are not titled. So you would have taken the Al-Summers name and your family would be heir to my duchy!” I glared accusingly at my lap, which clearly didn’t have any impact on him, as he chuckled.
“Your grandmother was not as silly as you. In the draft of the marriage contract she ensured that her title, lands, and fortune would all pass to your father on the event of her death, and then, upon his death, to his child, if his heir were human, or directly from her to her grandchild if said child was born Sagean. If that child inherited during his or her minority, Vincent Al-Summers would control the finances in lieu of his child until such child turned eighteen, and the Athenea would become their proxy on the council until the child turned sixteen.”
“But that is exactly the agreement we already have with the Athenea, so what was the benefit of a marriage—”
He waved a hand to silence me. “One subtle difference. One single clause.” Surveying me through eyes pinched at the corners, he waited until I had taken several breaths, edging forward on my seat with every rise of my chest. I had to hand it to him: he was a good storyteller.
“If they had married, my father and my entire family would have retained the name Mortheno, except in the case of one eventuality. If you had been born human, and you produced no heir, or a human one, the duchy of England would have passed to my father in its entirety, and I would be next in line.”
No wonder he is so short with me. He must hate me! I ruined the chances of his family to climb! “Y-you gold-digger!” That wasn’t what I had planned to say, but it more or less summed up my thoughts.
He closed his eyes, shaking his head. I took the opportunity to switch to a seat nearer him and snatch the photo out of his hands, thinking, for one heart-stopping moment, I had torn it. I hadn’t.
His eyes snapped open and he jolted away from me in surprise, before his expression softened again. “No. None of us really wanted your title. It would have meant leaving Athenea and Canada—our home—and giving up kicking anti-Athenean backside, as your teacher so aptly put it. We are all quite old. We do not like change. But keeping one of the most powerful independent dukedoms in all the dimensions, and one of few not infiltrated by royalty, out of the hands of the Athenea was important to your grandmother, and we were willing to help her achieve that.” A smirk started to form on his lips and I saw him run his tongue across his bottom teeth. “Even if that was only until it could be returned and a young heiress could amalgamate with the Athenea on her own terms through, say . . .” He shrugged his shoulders casually and let his eyes wander around the veranda teasingly. “Marrying a young, attractive Athenean prince.”
I slapped the photo back down and crossed my arms. “Shut up, Edmund! I’m only fifteen.” All worry that I had felt the minute before faded with my flushing. They didn’t seem the type to want to become nobility, and in any case, the marriage had never occurred. Why the marriage had never happened was my next question.
He tugged his lips into a grim smile. “Yes. It was around the same time that your father started to become troublesome. Wanting to attend human university, go into banking and whatnot. Your grandmother felt marrying another Sage would only inflame the situation, and took the time to work on coaxing him back. When he married a human, we as good as started planning for my father and your grandmother to renew the agreement. But she insisted she wouldn’t give up, and remained with your parents through years of fertility treatment, and eventually ICSI and IVF. You have no idea of the sigh of relief my family and the entire kingdom breathed when you were born. No idea.” He ran a hand down his face in an even more dramatic fashion than Fallon always did when he was stressed or in shock.
I surrendered myself into the curved back of the chair, allowing everything he had informed me of up to his last few sentences—which I had already known about—to sink in. He waited for me, quite patiently, only moving when he stabbed the photo to the table with his index finger as the wind tried to carry it away.
“So, earlier, when you said you remembered me . . .” I probed.
He gave a single, slow nod. “You were four when you first came to court, and you and your grandmother stayed not in your apartments in the palace, or in one of your villas in Athenea, but with us. You spent much of the first week screaming for home and keeping us all awake. It played havoc with our shifts.”
I opened and closed my mouth, though my lips remained parted in a rueful pout of a smile. That sounded like my younger self—not that I could remember such events. I struggled to remember anything of living with my parents before starting at St. Sapphire’s around my sixth birthday. I had apparently attended preschool with Christy and Tammy until I had been driven out by angry parents, but when I strained to place their faces, I only found blank spots. This revelation was just another metallic tile in a gray mosaic.
“I seem to recall that when you attended at age eig
ht and ten, you would often run off and hide with the Athenean children so your grandmother couldn’t take you back home. On one occasion, the queen found you, Fallon, and Chucky in a closet. You had apparently cornered them in a game of good-bye kiss chase.”
The unappealing shade of red my cheeks turned was embarrassing in itself. I clapped my hands to my face, burying my cheekbones into hollows created by my palms. He laughed.
“But why don’t I remember you featuring in any of this?” I groaned through my fingers to cut him off. It worked.
“Largely because as you got older it became important to immerse you in society. And we work in the background. It meant we saw less of the pair of you.”
“And the Athenea? Do they know about our connection?”
I opened up gaps in my fingers to watch him. His brow had lowered a fraction.
“The older generation certainly do. I suspect Fallon does not. But when we were making plans to come here last week, the concern that Alya or I might be . . .” he trailed off and his frown deepened, “. . . emotionally compromised . . .”—his gaze settled on the table after a pause—” . . . by your presence was not raised. So I can only assume those that do know have either forgotten or see it as irrelevant.”
“Emotionally compromised?”
“Yes. To modify your earlier statement: I am not just staff. I was almost your step-uncle.”
When he put it like that, the whole story took on an entirely different meaning. He wasn’t just an almost-heir. He was almost family. In the back of my mind I made a note to search Burrator’s library to see if it kept marriage records, to verify what he was saying. Because if it really was all true, then in them I had an ally.
His eyes flickered shut and he craned his neck in the direction of the door.