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CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

M y presence at The Horned Table had become so frequent that I no longer received intrigued looks from my peers. In fact, they’d turned their simpering my way, my new position sitting at the side of our Earl affording me a level of respect that none of my plotting had ever come close to achieving.

Earl Tarlord sat to my right, his dominating aura casting a heavier shadow than usual today, his brow lowered in thought.

“What is it?” I murmured as an envoy from Earl Simper, whose domain lay to the north of us, exited the room.

“My gut tells me a storm approaches,” he rumbled, rapping his fingers on the table before him.

I glanced at the tempestuous sky beyond the windows, the thick clouds setting me on edge. Clouds could hide Skyforgers all too easily and I could never fully relax when they loomed over Stone Castle the way they did today.

The door banged open before I could make a reply to my Earl, a woman tearing into the room, her eyes wild, clothes stained from the road and a recent cut scabbed and dirty on her cheek.

“I come from the Underroute, Earl Tarlord,” she gasped, stumbling forward to slit her palms open on the sharp prongs at the head of the table.

The advisors all around us hissed and muttered to one another, spines straightening and gazes sharpening as she rushed through the sacred words before continuing her tale.

“The Sky Witch is being held in Pyros,” she blurted and my lips parted in shock and glee.

Finally, a lead which we could follow. But my hope soured as the reality of her claim landed with me. Pyros had already seized the Witch for its own prize, so how were we supposed to snatch her from them?

“Where?” Alestro barked, shoving away from the wall to the rear of the room, reminding us all that he’d been lurking in the shadows with the guards.

I glanced at him guiltily, knowing he wanted my place at the table, knowing he saw me as a usurper sitting here in his stead.

But our Earl had been clear as to his preference and even my husband’s pride hadn’t been enough to make me relinquish my place.

Who was I to question our Earl after all?

And so what if I coveted this position for my own reasons?

I’d given years to the promise of life as Alestro’s bride and my reward for my faithfulness had been a husband whose cock remained as flaccid as a day old salmon left rotting on the river bank.

All because he chose to bed our enemy instead of maintaining his fidelity for me.

“Speak,” Earl Tarlord urged as the Fae hesitated to reply to Alestro, wanting the word of her Earl in confirmation.

“Cinder Vale. She was captured spying in their lands. The whole city is whispering of her detainment and hoping for an execution, but I have it on good authority that they’ve been holding her for weeks.”

“You think she’s been broken?” Earl Tarlord rumbled, and a dark smile captured my lips at the thought of that woman screaming and breaking beneath the torture she deserved. But if she was spilling Stormfell secrets to Pyros, then she was offering them an advantage we didn’t want them to have.

“I don’t know,” the woman panted, her chest rising and falling rapidly. She must have run the entire way here, determined to deliver this news to her Earl as quickly as she’d learned it.

Discussion broke out around us, every advisor at the table swapping theories while Alestro yelled to be heard over the din, demanding a legion be sent to assassinate her so that he could be freed of his curse and able to offer up his secrets to us at last.

I was the only one to hear the spy as she went on. “Mavus Angelico has been trading information for gold too. I didn’t have the coin he required for his knowledge but whatever he was selling, he had Fae from every nation lining up to buy it.”

“The outcast who turned his back on our people to roam the lands as a trader?” I sneered, knowing well of the man who had refused to raise his sword for our people.

He only returned to Avanis when he could be assured of his own safety, bargaining for passage for Wandershire to enter our lands.

If it had been up to me I’d have denied him entry or at the very least hung him for treason.

But the wandering highwayman had built himself enough power to make that impossible. At least for now.

“He’s claiming to have knowledge which could shift the weight of the war into the hands of whoever makes best use of it. There is enough vigour to his promises that I couldn’t dismiss the claims and thought they needed to be brought to The Horned Table for attention.”

Earl Tarlord gazed into the distance, his eyes heavy with the weight of his thoughts.

“We must break the curse on Alestro and find out what knowledge Stormfell is so desperate to keep us from hearing,” I said urgently, willing to ride out myself and take on the Sky Witch if that was what I had to do.

Earl Tarlord looked at me, a furrow in his brow over his green eyes. “You believe the information he holds to be that important?” he asked me while Alestro tried to speak in agreement to my claim but instead crumpled to the ground, writhing in agony with boils erupting across his face.

I looked from my heinously disappointing husband to the man who owned our fates and nodded firmly.

If we could break this curse then Alestro would be cured of its ill effects.

I didn’t let myself think about my other hope, that the death of the Sky Witch would release him from her ruin too and he might be able to bed me like a real husband at last. Though as I watched him rolling around on the floor in a puddle of his own tears and piss, I couldn’t say the thought of that was particularly appealing right now.

“Then we’ll march, Lady Septa,” Earl Tarlord said gravely, making my breath catch in my throat at the intensity of his gaze upon me. “For the honour of your family and the secrets we may yet unlock.”