Page 4 of Her Cruel Redemption

Immediately, my eyes shot open, my stomach flipping at the sound of that name I’d banned myself from using. The graveyard in my mind quivered, like all those thoughts were turning over, not quite smothered after all. Elias’s brows were raised expectantly as he looked up at me. Like he was baiting me, offering me something he knew I couldn’t refuse.

‘I haven’t asked about him,’ I hissed through gritted teeth. I had been very, very carefulnotto ask about him, had guarded against my curiosity with an iron will and uncompromising boundaries. There were rules to my life, now. I didn't talk abouthim. Didn't ask abouthim. Didn't think abouthim. Pretended therewasnohim. Until I could control that arc of lightning and wield it against him, it would stay that way.

'No,’ Elias replied. ‘You haven’t. Not once.’

I stared him down, heart thudding in my ears, sick with anticipation, hating that he had somehow seen through my thin pretence. I hadn’t teased out the connection between the Yoxvese andhim. I hadn’t gone looking for information. But how was I supposed to resist when it was being so readily handed to me?

'Tell me what exactly?' I said finally as that iron will corroded.

'Enough to make you realise what danger you're playing with by holding onto the magic.'

I swallowed, pushing the awareness of my headache to the side, slowly sinking back down onto the ground. I turned my gaze back to the water, as though that would be enough to hide my sudden eagerness. Gwinellyn was watching us on the opposite bank, her expression pinched with worry. I shot her a quick smile to keep her from coming over here in some attempt to intervene.

'I'll listen to whatever it is you have to say. But I'm not going to change my mind,' I warned, half hoping he’d give up the conversation and leave my buried thoughts alone. Half scared he would, since they were going to rise now no matter what I did.

'You know we call him Koschei,' he began.

'Yes.' Baba Yaga had called him the same. And I'd heard the name whispered among the Yoxvese a handful of times, hissing away like a tap that was turned off tight as soon as anyone realised I was listening. A violation of those iron-willed rules I could never resist.

'It's a name we gave him after he was exiled from the Living Valley.'

'Exiled?'

'Forbidden from returning.'

'Yes, I know what exiled means.'

I heard him shifting in his seat, heard the angry little huff. 'I have no idea how you've managed to convince Gwin to love you,' he muttered. 'I'll try and start at the beginning, but you need to be civil to me. Whatever he did to you at the palace, it had nothing to do with any of us. I don't deserve your resentment.'

'Alright,' I conceded. I didn't want him to stop talking now. 'Sorry.' I jigged my knee as I waited for him to start speaking again, trying to bite down on the spill of questions I was barely holding back.

‘I didn’t know him well personally,’ he began. ‘But his arrival here was a shock. We hadn’t seen a magic-bonded human beyond Baba Yaga for a long time.’

‘So, he is human?’ I kept my face turned away to hide the hunger I was sure I had scribbled all over it.

‘Half.’

‘Half?’

‘Half Yoxvese. At least, we think he is.’

I was staring so intently at a pebble on the bank of the lake that it began to blur. He washalfhuman? And half… one ofthem?That didn’t seem possible. Draven was nothing like the people in the Living Valley. He was ruthless. Cunning. Unpredictable. The Yoxvese were a bunch of incomprehensibly serene peace lovers who didn’t even believe in eating meat. He couldn’t possibly share any characteristics with them. ‘How could that happen?’

‘There have been those who’ve left, who’ve wanted to take a chance on seeing the world beyond the mountains. None have ever come back, though. So, we weren’t prepared for a human half-breed with magic in his blood to find his way through the cavern system to ask us for help.’

‘What sort of help?’

‘The same sort of help you’re asking for now.’

The words landed like a blow. I flinched. Took a moment to recover. ‘That doesn’t mean I’m anything like him.’

‘No, unless you do nothing to keep his story from becoming your story.’

‘If this is just going to be some sort of cautionary tale to scare me into compliance, then you’re wasting your time.’ I said it as though I wouldn’t have hunted him down later for the rest of the story, as if the thoughts in my graveyard weren’t scratching at their coffins, sticking bony fingers out of the soil atop their graves, hungry and restless, stirring questions I refused to ask. I didn’tneedto ask questions. I didn’tneedto know about Draven’s life here. I didn’tneedto know whether he’d been as much an outsider among them as I was.

‘It’s a cautionary tale in part. But I also think you deserve to know. After what he did to you…’ I glanced at his face, surprised by the softening of his tone. ‘Whatever you’ve done to Gwin, I don’t think anyone deserves to be compelled, or have their mind meddled with. If you want to understand it, then I want to help you do that.’

I studied him, repulsed by that pity in his expression. Or perhaps I was repulsed by the reminder of the muddled story I’d given Gwinellyn, a story of being enchanted and controlled by the man now wearing the crown she should have inherited. It hadn’t been a lie, not entirely.

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