A Court of Innocents

19: Truth

The sun was fading in the distance by the time we made it out of the cave. We'd dressed once we were a safe distance away from the lake, and I found myself pausing once again at the sight of Tamlin in all that black. With his golden, scarred skin, he would fit in perfectly with the Illyrian soldiers that roamed these mountains.

Tamlin caught me staring but didn't say anything about it. He merely said, "We need to get going. I don't want to be out in the open in the mountains after that sun sets."

I had enough experience with the war camps to agree with him. Being out here on our own wasn't a good idea. The time of day or night didn't matter. If they bored enough, Illyrians would attack a trekker in the middle of the day. I wasn't exactly eager to cross swords with a band of them tonight.

"The cabin is a few miles west of here," I told him. As the sky grew darker with each passing minute, I gripped Illyria in my hands, keeping my ears perked up for the sound of anyone or anything around us.

The smell of sulfur was strong in the air, and I turned to find Tamlin's black wings out again. He held out his hand to me, more than ready to find shelter before we ran out of daylight. His expression was tight, refrained. I didn't have to ask him to know what was upsetting him. He hadn't spoken more than ten words since he found out about the bargain I'd made over the Tithe. He was no doubt seething about it on the inside.

But I took his offered hand anyways and squeezed my eyes shut as we took off towards the sky.

"I didn't have time to make a better deal," I insisted a minute later, breaking the long silence between us.

His eyes stayed on the mountain beneath us, scanning for the cabin. "We're not talking about it."

"We have to talk about it at some point—"

"Not now!" he barked, his green eyes finally looking into my own. They flashed with a fury so intense that I realized... If I was anyone else, he probably would have lashed out long ago. But the mating bond—even if he didn't recognize it for what it was—kept him from hurting me. Still, the realization was painful enough. "Just... talk about something else. I need a distraction."

I told him the first thing I thought of, the thing I'd been wanting to tell him for days now. "Zachariah was wrong. What he told you about the Faechild fire in Montesere... it wasn't true."

He was silent as his gaze moved to the mountain again, and I realized he was waiting for me to continue.

"When I started running from my cousins, I fled to The Continent first. I thought that, with an ocean between us, I would be safe. And for a while I was but..." I paused. I'd never told this story to anyone—not even Lucien. But for some reason, I found myself wanting to tell Tamlin. I wanted him to know every part of me, and this was one of the most important things. "I was in Montesere for five years when I met a man. His name was Silas. He was a mortal, a bastard. He had no last name, just went by Silas of Montesere. He was a soldier for one of the kings there, but when we met... He left his post for me. I married him, and because he had no last name and I wasn't about to use my real one, we started a new line of Faechilds. That was the name we gave our two sons—Mikhael and Caden. I was fortunate enough to raise them into adulthood, to see them fall in love and start families of their own. Caden, my youngest, had a child at fifty-eight, which is practically ancient in mortal years. His child— my grandson—was Zachariah. I loved him with everything in me, and then one day...

"Eris must have caught word that I was in Montesere because one day, on my grandson's fifth birthday, I went to town to buy him a present. I had saved up to buy him a set of paints. He was an artist, even at the ripe age of five." I smiled at the memory, and some of my tears fell onto my mouth. "I bought him these beautiful paints of golden and green and orange, and when I came back home... The damage had already been done. The house was nothing but ash. I spent an entire afternoon searching through the debris, but they were all gone. Their bones... that was all that was left of them."