Page 94 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

“No. Perhaps not.” The creature didn’t so much as flinch at Garin’s outburst. “But I do know you’ve been reading.

” Its empty sockets bore into him. “I know you discovered a certain passage that struck your interest as you sat, contemplating your life choices upon her balcony. That it led you to seek yet another Daemon-authored book in your witch friend’s collection detailing the matrimonial tendencies of your species, when you had never bothered to know before. Odd, isn’t it?”

Garin had no answer, feeling stripped bare as the dead blood that coursed slowly through his veins rushed to his face. Lorietta’s book on vampire politics was long gone. “I was curious,” he muttered.

“I bet you were.” The creature let out a hack of a knowing laugh. “Ever the wanderer and researcher. Just like your father.”

Reeling, Garin lunged forward and snatched the creature by its rags, looking it in its non-existent eyes.

“My father’s research was in vain, more important to him than anyone else.

He chased fairy tales, mistaking magic for miracle, seeking an island kingdom of faerie folly and—and allowing it to drive him to ruinous obsession, a-and—” He was stuttering.

Garin never stuttered. “My mother found her purpose in helping women, and it infuriated him. Father was so bitter, he wanted to report their apothecary to the authorities. Pascal’s work was selfish, he never aimed to benefit anyone else but himself.

” He’d never voiced his disdain for Pascal this way, not out loud.

“At the very least, my purpose now is much greater than anything I once considered important. I am nothing like him.”

The creature remained silent.

Trembling, Garin dropped it to the floor. “What do you want from me? How did I get here and how do I return to the castle?”

The creature gave a pitiful sigh and shook itself off, as if aware there was nothing Garin could do or say that would harm it.

“If it is any consolation, none of this is accidental. My son’s greed set your fate into motion even before you were born.

Go where the current pushes you, my boy.

Fighting it will only bring destruction. ”

His fate was not botany nor the blade. Lilac’s sweet face and saccharine smile flashed across Garin’s mind.

Fury engulfed his fear like a torch to oil.

It was the same knee-buckling anger that rose after discovering his mother too late, the same rage that drove him to forge a note requesting Pascal’s immediate assistance at one of the battlegrounds rumored to anticipate an ambush.

Garin went to Alor’s tent immediately after—before his father’s body was even identified, and before the magistrate could come knocking to discuss the inheritance of the farmhouse.

Assaulted by memories he’d long buried, Garin staggered back. “Pascal has nothing to do with the man I’ve become except ensure I am nothing like him. You are not Loumarch. He’d said you were buried at a chapel in Cornwall, that the sickness took you before their departure.”

The creature laughed again. “Better that than admit he didn’t want to care for an aging father whose mind had failed him.

Especially when it became clear their boat had drifted off course from Roscoff, and that rations were slim.

” A fat worm crawled out of his left eye socket then—and a long, thick tongue darted out of the hole that was his mouth, sucking the worm in. It then chewed, squelching loudly.

Garin was done wasting time. He had to find his way back to Lilac. He’d send the corpse back to where it belonged. As he swung his foot back, a powerful hand seized his ankle, yanking his standing leg from beneath him.

His head slammed onto the bank, half his face in the mud.

Gasping, the last he saw was his grandfather’s rotting face twisting in astonishment before two hands pulled—dragged him down into the lake.

He kicked and thrashed once submerged, fighting to see where the bubbles went as they leaked from his nostrils, but his eyes stung in the murky water.

He pried the bony fingers off his ankle when another hand clamped down on his shoulder.

Garin managed a better grip on that one—he reached back and yanked, and when his fingers slipped, the Morgen’s hand latched onto his face, pushing him down.

He scraped it off, shoved its wrist into his mouth and bit down, tearing off its entire hand.

The water around him vibrated, erupting in frenzied hisses and black-green blood; with one powerful kick, Garin pushed himself toward the glimmer of moonlight finally visible above.

Spitting water and dirt, he lurched his arms forward with all his might and paddled toward the nearest gigantic lily pad, hoisting himself up. He glanced back. His grandfather sat watching him, his ghastly expression unreadable.

“What do you want?” Garin asked again. He wiped his face uselessly on his soaking sleeve, knowing there were tears there. “What do you want from me?”

A muffled chorus of laughter shook the lily pad Garin stood on.

Several orbs of dim light flashed in the murky depths.

Their warning—a beautiful display that had led countless to their doom.

He wouldn’t be the next. He bent his knees and sprung to the nearest lily pad, nearly missing and pulling his leg up, just before a bony arm shot out at it. He kicked it back into the water.

“ Live! ” Loumarch shouted from the shore as Garin scrambled to his feet.

He wiped the hair out of his eyes and rose, preparing to leap off before one of the Morgen slithered onto the edge of his, her mouth gaping over rows and rows of glistening teeth.

She was particularly long; her gaze particularly hungry.

A crown of thorns sat upon her head above a trail of green-blonde hair.

Instead of lunging for him, she slithered back into the water, causing a wave to rock the pad he stood on.

Garin teetered to the back edge and ran, launching himself into the air and landing on his feet this time.

“Especially ferocious, you are. Do you know what we do with immortals like you?” came the Morgen’s sultry voice, vibrating in his skull.

“We drag you to the bottom, tether you in strong vines and iron chains, and pick, pick, pick at you until there’s hardly any meat left on your bones.

Then, if you’ve regenerated, sometimes after months, we’ll do it again.

When we tire of you, we leave you to drown repeatedly. You all succumb eventually.”

There was sloshing behind him. She was getting closer. The next one was further than Garin could jump.

“ Live! ” the ghoul of his grandfather croaked once more.

Garin bent to center his gravity as the lily pad shook. He lashed out, snarling and swiping like a feral animal at the Morgen’s head, which popped up playfully, its rows of teeth hungrily gnashing.

“I’m already dead,” he snapped, his broken voice carrying across the water. “I’m a man who didn’t die when he should have died. I’ve been dead a long time.”

His grandfather’s next words reverberated in his bones as the morgens’ had, shocking him. “There are days, years that might feel like it. But you are a vessel of magic and knowledge. You are not dead, my boy. Not when you have so much life ahead of you.”

The morgen bucked beneath him, and he stumbled forward, barely catching himself.

Garin made a running jump for the next lily pad—and as he landed in the water just short of it, two hands clamped onto his shoulder, shoving him down into the dark.

They grabbed at him, yanked his clothes; when one pair of hands released him, two more latched on, pulling him down.

He didn’t need to breathe, but his human instincts were begging to kick in as panic filled him. Water in his lungs would render him just as unable to fight as any mortal would’ve been.

Live , the husk of Loumarch Trevelyan had said.

Chest burning, Garin glanced up at the moon through the sloshing water, finally stilling against the straining fingers digging into his mouth, ears, and nose—beneath the stands of white hair wrapped around him like a writhing tomb.

Maybe it was a creature Kestrel sent to communicate with him, just as he’d possessed Hywell. Maybe he’d dreamt this all.

Or had the arcana of this ancient land sunk its teeth into his grandfather, too?

Suddenly the water shook, bubbles and hisses surrounding him. Garin found himself free, his arms shielding his face from a blinding light that lit the sky. An explosion of warmth cast the surface aglow, radiating from something—someone—above him.

When he broke the surface gasping, he expected smoke to fill his lungs. Yet the night air had never tasted so clear.

Standing upon the nearest lily pad at the center of the lake, was a person.

It was Lilac, and she was on fire.

She was shrouded in it: flames encased her, an especially bright fireglow concentrated in her eyes, her lips, at the tips of her hair, and in the vortexes that encased both hands.

Unbound, her whipped in a vortex of ember around her, the ends of it also fraying in flame.

Her body was glistening and entirely bare, dripping in sweat.

She was burning. She was paralyzed by the pain.

“Lilac!” he thundered. Fangs burning, his weak heart thudding harder than it had in centuries, Garin frantically sloshed toward her, unfettered by Morgen or any of the lily pads that seemed to be making way for him across the pond.

He wanted to douse her. He wanted to shield her from the night and unsuspecting eyes—she was probably cold.

His own teeth had begun to chatter. “I’m coming! ”

He wouldn’t lose her, wouldn’t dare come close to anything like it again. He’d slit his wrist upon her mouth, allow her to take of him with her blunt teeth, heal her from the inside out like he should have when she was broken and bleeding in his arms.