Page 28 of The Devil In Blue
“How can I if the doors are locked?”
He shrugged. “There are always ways. This place has a mind of its own, you’ll find.”
He turned to leave, but my tongue got away from me. Petris was easy to talk to and I didn’t want him to go. Not yet.
“Wait,” I said. “Tell me why I’m here.”
He paused, staring at me for a long moment. “I’m not sure it’s my place to speak of—”
“Please. I have been passed from one place to another with no control. If you tell me not to ask again, I won’t. I’m good at complying, but… the things he said to me. I can’t stand them. I need to know.”
He hesitated a long while before turning to face me again, sighing softly.
“Rune is the King of the Glyn. You must know what that means. He controls the half-world and sees all the souls that pass through it into the afterlife. It is a taxing existence. One that drove him mad for a time. And a mad King of the Glyn is a dangerous one. He was unhinged… until he fell in love with a mortal. She gave him joy and joy stifled his dark urges. He gave her everything… and she ripped him in half in return.”
“I don’t understand. What does that have to do with me?”
“The king believes youareher.”
I stared for a while, waiting for him to tell me he was jesting. When he didn’t say anything more, I shook my head.
“No. I’m an orphan. My family was killed in a massacre when I was young. Fae caught in our realm slaughtered everyone I knew and the sisters at Southminster took me in.”
“Where did you come from then?”
“Haydenside. My family bred horses. My mother looked just like me. My brother looked like my father. We lived in a small cottage and then… and then…” I couldn’t see it. I had never been able to see it. I just knew it. I’d repressed the memories, but over and over, Father Eli told me everything. Told me why I needed help. Why I was a danger to others. I felt a twinge in my chest as I spoke of the horrors, trying to keep calm, but my voice was already shaking. “Half-worlders came and destroyed everything. My home. My family.”
“Half-worlders do not venture into the mortal realm without consent from its sovereign. The laws made after the war forbid them. They cannot even cross if it is not the week of Allhalloween,” he scoffed.
“Well, that is what happened. They slaughtered many. I escaped, but not without wounds of my own.”
“Wounds?”
Father Eli’s voice spoke to me and I closed my eyes. He helped me. He helped me put those memories in a box where they became just words instead of violent, terrible visions. I was lucky. He made me hate him in order to lock it all away so I could live. He sacrificed my affection to fix me and I was thankful.
He twisted you up, inside and out.
He saved me. They all did.
“Briar.”
My eyes shot open. I knew how close I was to sinking into that dark pit where my memories from Southminster waited for me and Petris had pulled me back. I would have pulled myself out eventually, but he’d saved me the time and discomfort. I looked at the empty shadows that were his mask's eyes and took a long, deep breath.
“I have a past,” I whispered. “And it wasn’t with your king.”
Perhaps the king and his castle were all in my head. Perhaps I’d finally broken and fallen victim to my insanity for good. If I was being honest, it was far more interesting to be a prisoner in the madness of Rune’s castle than it was to be trapped in the bore that was life at Aedon Heights. It was a stagnant life there.
But I could not forget that Lucien, uninteresting as he was, saved me. Like so many others, he had sacrificed his time and expenses to take care of me. Speaking ill of his company made a knot of guilt form in my stomach. I shook off the feeling, slowly pacing circles in my room. Lucien wasn’t fond of letting me take any walks outside unless it was around the groves and well within the walls of his estate. Otherwise, he was always with me and the path was always his, not mine.
But that was for the best when my path had led me so far down dangerous roads before. I was liable to walk right off a cliff just to find out what it felt like to freefall for a few seconds.
Staring out the glass doors to the balcony, I felt a need to spread my wings a little. There was a garden beneath my room and when I opened the now unlocked doors, the floral scent wafted toward me, so pleasing I couldn’t help smiling a little. I walked out into the night with a moon so large and so full that it lit up a vast courtyard in a cerulean glow. There were willow trees far in the distance. I saw apple trees filled with white apples. Flowers lined a cobblestone path, the grooves of which were packed with veins of green grass. There were things glowing in the yard, but from the second floor, I couldn’t make out what any of it was.
I wanted to see it.
Petris told me I was allowed to go anywhere as long as I didn’t walk through any locked doors. Seemed easy enough to avoid.
The air outside was neither cold nor hot, so there was no need for a cloak or a coat. I did, however, need shoes, which I found in a small armoire across from my bed. A pair of black, leather slippers were just my size so I slipped them on and walked out into the hall. I looked both ways as if I’d see guard dogs at my door. There was nothing.
