Page 36 of Song of the Dawn
By the time Ezra returned, I’d finished feeding my uneaten muffin to the ducks and turtles. They gathered around, swimming in circles, waiting for another crumb to fall. Even the orange-and-white koi in the pond swam near the surface, their mouths moving up and down, begging for more.
Ezra appeared silently, hands tucked into his pocket as he came to stand beside me. His face was pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“How did your conversation go?” I asked.
Pressing his lips together, he considered my question. “Poorly, I think. Ginger and I don’t always see eye to eye.”
“But you trust her?”
“In most things, yes.”
“So what’s the truth, Ezra? What happened?”
He was silent a long time, staring out at the pond, a look of misery on his face. His stillness frightened me, and I wanted to ask, to press him to tell me, and I didn’t want to at all.
“I’ve run so far, trying to hide from the past, yet it always chases me and finds me. If I were truly selfless, I’d tell you it’s too dangerous for you here. You should leave, go live with your mother and sister. If I tell you the truth, I fear you’ll go, and I want you to stay.”
A flame of heat ignited within me at his words, and the air between us hummed with tension.
“I’ll stay,” I whispered.
“But you can’t promise to stay without knowing the truth. You bring light and life and happiness everywhere you go. Your aura, your spirit, shines so brightly it draws me to you, as if by basking in your presence, the rest of my darkness will burn away and I’ll be whole, complete, pure again. You make me want to be more, to be better than my past.”
“You are better than your past.” I took his hand, clasping it with both of mine. “I’ve seen you. You work just as hard as everyone else here, maybe even more. You put the staff’s needs in front of your own, to ensure they are happy, and you are generous both with your time and your wealth. You’re more than your past.”
“I’m not,” he choked out, words rough and hard. “Every time I think I’m free, something happens.”
His fingers curled around mine, but I sensed the trembling within his body. “Ezra, what’s going on? What are you trying to be free of?”
“Of her,” he said.
Her? The powerful queen he served? “I thought your punishment was banishment.”
“No.”
He was quiet again, even longer this time, and I perceived the warring within. My heart sank as the silence continued and I realized if he shared his secret with me, there would be no turning back. Perhaps this was what he’d meant about the layers of his personality, about it changing how I perceived him.
At last he blew out his breath and sighed. “What do you believe, Mila? About the supernatural? About magic?”
I wasn’t ready for the question, and I stumbled back to the bench. “I…I don’t know.”
“Magic surrounds us here in Lagoda. It is the cause of many, many things, but especially of what happened last night. Most of it is my fault. When I was banished, my punishment came with stipulations. If I don’t comply, someone pays the price.”
I swallowed hard because he was speaking in riddles again. “Is that what happened to Endia? And to Lady Elodie?”
“Yes, in part. Mila. This isn’t easy to say, but both of them are dead.”
Dead. I hadn’t expected that, and my limbs trembled. I wrapped my arms around my middle and rocked back and forth. Fear was sharp and dread cold within. “How? Why?”
“Endia did run away, and we never found her body, but I know where she went. She ran to the islands and got lost wandering the paths. There are cliffs, wild animals, and it was winter, too cold for her to survive there for long.”
I felt numb even though Ezra was giving me the answers I’d long sought. “Why would she go there?”
“She believed that was where the shadow creatures came from. She thought they were haunting her and if she could find the source, they’d stop.”
My eyes snapped up, because it was what Giselle had said, shadows and cold. So Endia had assumed the island was the source… A prickling sensation went through me. “Why Lady Elodie? What did she do?”
“Nothing. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I know how one of those shadow creatures got in. There’s an old tunnel that leads from the cellar of the inn to an ancient shrine. It’s a malevolent place, and I assumed the creatures that haunted it were long dead. I was wrong. I will block the tunnel to make sure nothing can access the inn through the cellar. The guests will be safe, and more importantly, you will be safe again.”
