Page 16 of Fate of Echoes and Embers (Heirs of Elydor #3)

MAREK

Cormac watched us carefully as we sat. His eyes that never missed a detail were as cold and calculating as ever, but when he looked at Issa, something softened in them. He knew who she was already.

Not surprising.

He knew everything that happened in Valmyr. The moment we stepped onto the dock, his spies would have been watching.

“We’re seeking information about Lord Draven of?—”

“You know better than to ask without an offer, Marek.”

Of course I did. But a man like Cormac, his rugged, weathered face and silver-streaked hair evidence of his age and many years of these type of deals, thrived on leverage, always ensuring he had the upper hand. I would take it from him where I could.

“Have I forgotten that bit?” I asked, his eyes narrowing at my cheekiness. It was a delicate balance with a man like him. I wanted information, but he would never give it to any who cowered in his presence.

“Aye, and you know it well.”

Enough games. I pulled a piece of parchment from my pocket and slapped it on the table.

“This,” I said, voice low, “is a ledger of Thalassari supply shipments set to dock in Valmyr over the next month. Goods marked for inspection, patrol rotations, and which captains can be bribed to look the other way.”

His eyes widened. Leaning forward, Cormac inspected the information, slid the parchment toward him, folding it and hiding it away inside the folds of his worn, leather jerkin.

“Start talking,” I said.

Cormac turned to Issa, who had been watching the exchange with more than a measure of incredulity that couldn’t be helped.

I’d seen her expression as Mev and Kael relayed the conversation they’d overheard.

Issa needed the truth. She needed to come to terms with any guilt she might harbor for having trusted Draven.

“Lady Isolde,” he began, Cormac lucky he used her title and was giving Issa the respect she deserved.

“How do you know me?”

Cormac simply smiled. “Lord Draven has been making moves for years. Forging alliances. And looking for… something.”

Isolde crossed her arms. “Alliances with whom? What is he looking for?”

“With human nobles. He’s looking for something your father hid from him.”

A chill crept up my spine. Cormac’s knowledge might be more than we bargained for, but it was too late to hold him back now.

“My father?”

“It’s not a well-kept secret that Draven has always wanted Hawthorne Manor.”

By Issa’s expression, it was clear that particular secret was not one she was a part of keeping. I didn’t know Cormac’s sources but didn’t need to. This, taken with what Issa’s commander had told me, confirmed her allegiance to Draven was ill-advised.

“Draven,” Cormac continued, “has been asking about bloodlines, about the first humans who crossed into Elydor.”

That got my attention. “The Harrows?”

In response, Cormac simply raised a brow. One. Not two. It was an uncanny ability of his. There had been rumors about the Harrow family since they’d arrived. I didn’t give them much credence, but I was curious about how this tied to Draven.

“Aye, the Harrows.” He gave his attention back to Issa. “Your father knew something connected to that first family. Connected to the Aetherian Gate. Whatever your father kept from him, lass… it is keeping Draven from everything he’s ever wanted.”

Riddles. As usual. “Speak plainly,” I said, impatient. “She is more confused than when we came.”

Cormac shot me a look and sat back, crossing his arms. As usual, none in the dimly lit room paid us any mind. If they did, Cormac would have already shuttled them.

“Lord Draven positions himself to become Lord Protector of Estmere. He will use control of Hawthorne Manor and the southern borders, and his brokering of power with midland border nobles, as evidence of his influence.”

Damn. It was worse than I’d imagined.

“Lord…” Issa stuttered, clearly shocked. “We have no Lord Protector of Estmere. Humans have rejected a king since they came through in favor of sovereign lords governing their own lands,” she finished, her voice shaky.

Cormac nodded. “Aye, and Draven means to change that. With the right alliances, enough coin, and a firm enough grip on the borders, he’ll make himself indispensable. And once he’s indispensable…” He trailed off, letting the implication settle.

Issa’s hands curled into fists on the table. “He wouldn’t dare.”

Cormac arched a brow. “Wouldn’t he? He’s been moving pieces for years, laying the groundwork.

After your father passed, he continued looking for answers, but it seems whatever secret your father held in connection to the Harrow family died with him.

He’s shifted to finding something to push the nobles to rally behind him. ”

Issa looked at me, clearly panicked. “And I gave that to him.”

I would kill the man before I allowed him to take Hawthorne from Issa. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I shook my head. “No, you did not. You gave him your trust.”

“Stupidly.”

I had no wish for Cormac to hear Issa berate herself. Standing, I pulled her up with me. It was time to go.

“Until next time,” I said to the hardened smuggler. One I dealt with out of need and not desire. He was as unsavory as they came, but to his credit, Cormac had delivered.

“Good luck,” he said to Issa, pulling out my parchment, holding it up in gratitude that I took no pleasure in receiving. Willing myself to keep a smile plastered to my face, I nodded and led Issa from the room back out onto the street.

We walked back toward the dock, Issa silent.

It wasn’t until we stood in an abandoned spot with a view of Tidechaser and the sea beyond her in front of us, the tavern we’d return to at our backs, that Issa finally spoke.

Or tried to.

She lifted her gaze to me with such a look of despair, I acted without thinking. Pulling Issa into me, I wrapped my arms around her. It only occurred to me to be surprised she allowed it as Issa wiggled in closer, her arms going tentatively around my waist.

We’d held each other this way only once before, after our only kiss.

She felt better than I remembered. Too good, in fact.

With Issa’s head settled on my chest, I had to resist kissing the top of her head. Resist lifting her chin up and claiming those full lips once again. Familiar dockside sounds of water lapping against the pilings and the distant creak of ships at anchor filled the silence between us.

“Is it all true?”

If only I could confirm it wasn’t. That Cormac was full of shit and Hawthorne Manor was safe from Lord Draven’s designs. Unfortunately, the opposite seemed to be the case.

I pulled back to look at her, kicking myself immediately as Issa, seeming to realize for the first time she was actually in my arms, stepped back. I felt the loss of her body heat immediately. Maybe it was for the best.

“In all the years I’ve traded information with Cormac, I’ve never known him to be false. There are few ports, few people, in Elydor with more knowledge than him.”

She shook her head, as if still disbelieving.

“But… how?”

“How does he get such information?”

“That. And how… if it’s true… how could I have been so blind? Warren tried to tell me. Edric never liked him. Even Kael tried to tell me that Draven couldn’t be trusted. But… my father.”

“Was fallible too. We all are, Issa, especially with those closest to us.”

She looked so miserable. Draven was lucky he was so many miles from us. For now.

“I am not good at discerning men’s true nature.”

“Because you trusted a man your father clearly trusted too?”

“He wasn’t the only one I misjudged.”

She was talking about me. And she wasn’t wrong.

Biting back my long-held fear of vulnerability, the one that had kept me from letting anyone too close, I exhaled slowly. “Come with me.”

Leading Issa to a winding stone staircase not far from The Drowned Oath, we climbed it to my favorite view of port, a secluded outcropping of rock with a weathered wooden bench beneath it. We sat, the soothing sound of waves crashing below.

“All Thalassari have an affinity to water. Some prefer the gentle lapping of the tides along shore. Others, the trickle of a fountain. For me, it’s the crash of waves against the rocks.

No matter how fierce the storm, the waves always return, steady and unyielding.

It reminds me that some truths can be buried, but never washed away. ”

I’d sat here many times, Valmyr one of the ports that elicited the most information in all of Elydor.

Remembering the last time I’d sat on this bench, after leaving Hawthorne Manor, it was hard to believe Issa sat beside me now.

Convinced she would never speak to me again, and not willing to risk finding out, I had instead attempted to forget her.

A fool’s endeavor.

She looked out to sea while I watched her.

Even anguished, she was perfection. Some believed the slow aging of native Elydorians perfect, faint lines appearing only after hundreds of years.

I disagreed. Everything about humans, with their urgency to live and experience as much as possible in a way only mortality could elicit, was beautiful to me.

And none more so than the woman sitting beside me.

“I criticized him once,” she said. “I’d seen, perhaps, ten summers.

It was nothing more than a look, but something about the way Draven watched my father as he received petitions unsettled me.

When I told my mother this, she advised me to hold my tongue.

‘You must not criticize the lord of Hawthorne Manor publicly, Isolde. He holds no power over our people except that which they give him freely.’ I felt foolish for thinking ill of my father’s friend.

For saying as much aloud.” Issa looked at me.

“I loved my mother dearly, but never agreed with her ways. She was too deferential to my father. I always wished she would be more like a native Elydorian woman… I should not speak ill of her.”