Page 57 of The Bound Mage
“Are you alright?” she asked softly.
He cleared his throat, blinking hard as he turned back toward the parade. “The last Bloomtide parade I saw was in Tirnavel,” he murmured. “With my parents. Eloria was only fifteen.”
Araya squeezed his hand. “Did that one have phoenixes then, too?”
Loren nodded slowly. “Always. My mother used to tell us the stories—how the phoenix rises from its own ashes, how nothing beautiful is ever truly gone.”
“Will you tell them to me?” Araya asked.
Loren glanced down at her, surprise flickering across his face. “You want me to tell you fae bedtime stories?”
“I’ve never heard them,” Araya admitted, staring back out at the parade rather than meet the pity in his eyes. “I’d like to, I think.”
Loren was quiet for a moment, his thumb brushing lightly across her knuckles. “All right,” he said finally, his voice rough. “I’ll tell you what I remember.”
And he did.
Loren whispered in her ear, his soft words bringing each float to life as it drifted by in a riot of color and life. He told her of the great stag, its silver antlers crowned with blooming flowers, each step leaving a trail of new life in its wake. Of the serpent, who guarded the hidden paths that led to the Goddess’s last sanctuary coiled among thorny vines and poisonous blossoms. Of the dusk-winged moth that drank magic straight from the shimmering starlight that gilded the still pools deep in the Eldergreen, weaving dreams into silk.
“The last float is always the Absent Goddess,” he said. “A reminder of the duty she left us with.”
“Duty?” Araya asked. “We were taught that she abandoned the fae.”
“They would say that.” Loren snorted, shaking his head as the final float rolled into view. “She didn’t abandon us. She charged us to protect this world—to serve as her stewards. Of aether. Of the Eldergreen. Of each other.”
The float was enormous, almost as wide as the street itself, and impossibly tall—gliding forward on a platform so thick with flowering vines it seemed to hover above the ground. White blossoms spilled over the wheels and trailed behind like the train of a dress. The Goddess stood at the center of it all, her upturned face veiled in silver and her arms raised in what could have beenwelcome or blessing, petals piled high around her feet like drifts of snow.
Araya leaned forward to see better, squinting at the shrouded forms that rested at her feet. “What do the bodies at her feet represent, then?”
Someone in the crowd gasped. The music faltered, laughter and cheering giving way to horrified whispers. Araya jerked her hand away from Loren, shoving her way to the very edge of the barrier where Eilwen clutched her son to her chest, shielding his eyes.
Because those bodies—they weren’t part of the float.
“Gods.” Araya clapped a hand over her mouth, choking on the reek of rotting flesh mingling with the sickly-sweet perfume of crushed flowers.
“Araya—” Loren reached for her, his shadows wrapping around her ankles, but she shook them both off, unable to tear her eyes from the grisly site as the float groaned to a halt just feet from where she stood, showering them all with delicate white petals.
Some of the bodies had been laid out carefully, their hands folded over their chests. Others buzzed with flies, their waterlogged flesh bloated and heavy. Every one of them had red hair. Clipped ears. And the same message burned into their flesh.
RETURN HER
Araya staggered, the world spinning around her. She couldn’t breathe, every gasp of air she managed rotten with guilt and fear as people around them started to scream. The message that had been carved and burned into every body echoed in her mind, seared into her soul as surely as it had been burned into every female Jaxon tortured and killed.
“Halfblood whore.”
The insult sliced through the horrified murmurs, silencing the crowd. The male pulling the float ripped his harness open, dropping it to the cobblestones. He stalked toward her, his face twisted with hatred. “You should never have come here. Go back to your master before he kills more innocents just to send you a message.”
Araya froze. The noise of the crowd dulled to a distant roar as her muscles locked, her hands plastered uselessly over her mouth. Her fault. All of it was her fault?—
Shadows curled around her ankles, their cool touch racing up her back to fall over her shoulders like a living mantle of darkness as Loren stormed forward.
“You donotspeak to her like that,” he snarled. “She is under my protection. Threaten her again and I will add your body to the next pyre.”
The man blanched, his bravado crumbling. “But she?—”
“She didn’t kill them,” Loren snapped, his words ringing out in the hushed horror of the square. “You want to blame someone? Blame the Arcanum. Blame Jaxon Shaw—the monster thatactuallytortured and killed these females. Not his victim?—”
“Youknew?”
