Page 43 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

Ero: Letters from Finchton

Bardic Advice from Eroithiel von Dua to future generations: Some clichés exist for a reason. Do actually be careful what you wish for.

T he morning dawned freezing cold and gray. B?k’s room smelled strongly of mead and brimstone. He slept like the dead. One particularly harsh snore woke me.

The previous night, I’d managed—with significant help from my tendrils—to roll him off me after he passed out. I’d considered looking for another place to sleep, just so I could have space to think. In the end, I’d been too exhausted, and he’d been too warm.

Now, his strange words plagued me. I know you’re going to leave, and I don’t want you to.

I wanted those words to be comforting. They implied I wouldn’t be stuck forever, collar or no. That maybe I would actually find what I was after. And maybe it would take me away.

I sat up, once again considering slipping out of the room before B?k woke. But the choice fizzled when someone rapped on the door. B?k didn’t stir, and I didn’t answer—hoping it would go away. But after one more cursory attempt, Tavish wrenched the door open.

B?k sat abruptly, grumbling and glowering.

“Lord Austvix—” Tavish said quickly, with emphasis, as though the name might protect him from B?k’s wrath “—won’t call council for a few hours, but he sent me to deliver these.”

He held up a bundle of letters. My heart fluttered.

This was it. The reason B?k brought me here. The thing he actually wanted from me, whatever he’d said or implied last night in his sappy drunken haze.

A rare spark of hope ignited in my chest. Maybe my answers weren’t what would lead to my leaving. Maybe his were. If I could help him solve whatever mystery had tangled up the Fated’s plans, maybe he would choose to let me go.

A subtle heat spread from B?k, leaching the morning’s chill from the air. I glanced sideways. I hadn’t exactly expected him to be turning cartwheels after last night’s festivities—but I was surprised at how irritated he looked. Wasn’t this what he’d been waiting for?

“Thank you,” I told Tavish when B?k failed to speak.

I stood and reached for the letters.

“Don’t touch those,” B?k growled.

I looked at him again, frowning now. His eyes were still glassy.

He wasn’t just hungover—he was still half drunk.

I held my hands up in the universal sign of surrender.

But of course when I chanced a glance at Tavish for solidarity regarding B?k’s strange behavior, he was already gone.

The bundle of letters lay on the ground just inside the door .

“Any…particular reason I shouldn’t touch the letters you dragged me halfway across the continent to decode, or…?” I said, arching an unamused brow at B?k.

His cloudy expression grew darker. His voice was low and gravelly with the remnants of sleep. “It can wait.”

My brief glance to the heavens for help produced none. “For fuck’s sake, B?k. Wait for what?”

He stared at me. The air churned. Hot and cold, humid and dry.

Every breath was something new. I didn’t know what to think.

He looked tormented. He looked awful. He looked like he had no plans whatsoever to explain himself.

Had I been any less frustrated, I might have felt bad for him. But I couldn’t muster that today.

“If you don’t trust me, use the collar,” I said. “I don’t care. If you want answers, give me the letters.”

Another wave of heat.

What was his fucking problem? He’d not hesitated to compel me before, and now was the most obvious time to do so.

“Never mind,” I said. “I need air. Have someone get me when you’re ready?—”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I froze. B?k— B?k had just apologized? To me? I blinked, not even exaggerating my surprise.

“I saw things last night,” he said slowly, as if selecting each word with great care. “The war is coming. We need these answers badly.”

Sarcasm coiled like a snake. “So you want to wait…because this is urgent?”

Irritation rippled in the fine lines around his eyes. Yet he still didn’t bite back. What in every single corner of Hell?

A prickle of dread broke through my confusion. B?k said he saw things. Were his visions aligned with the Temple Mother’s warning? Did he fear I would betray the Fated? What power did I even have to do that? And if B?k was so worried about it, why couldn’t he simply make sure I didn’t?

B?k closed his eyes and groaned. “Just get them.”

Resignation? A second shockingly out of character move from B?k.

I still didn’t understand his hesitation, but I didn’t give him a chance to change his mind. Hungry for information, I pounced. I scooped up the bundle of letters and carefully untied the twine, pulling it open as quickly as I could without risking rebuke for endangering the paper.

The air stagnated, an apparent manifestation of B?k’s discomfort. But I no longer cared what he wasn’t sharing. I just wanted to see the letters that had commandeered my fate.

Some part of me hoped it really was seven-layered Finchton wit that had undone these warlords. For all the hatred I felt toward the royals and most of the highborn, the place had made an art of language. That much, I could appreciate. I probably even owed some of my lyrical talent to them.

No. Scratch that. I owed Finchton nothing.

The first letter was addressed to a highborn, based on the diamonds etched on either side of the letters. The name itself was a pet name—likely one of dozens the recipient had, each specific to a different friend. That was typical. I skipped down to the signature.

And my blood went cold.

Queen Rashada Finch

These weren’t military missives or official documents or even highborn gossip. This was a letter from my mother to one of her friends.

I tried to breathe. B?k had, by some miracle, not compelled me to share every single thought or discovery I had about the letters.

Which was good, because I didn’t want to side quest through a discussion about my unfortunate bloodline right now.

I hoped he would attribute my shock to the fact that I was holding a letter from the queen herself.

The letter was dated 1291. My birth year.

I swallowed a heavy lump and read my mother’s opening lines.

I have the most awful news and the most wonderful need.

A parasite has entered my court. In lieu of your typical blessings, I wish for a clever cure—as I know you are so adept at removing the miss from misfortune.

In the margin, a faded pen had scribbled, traitor? creature? scorned lover?

But as I read on, through tears I hated almost as much as the woman who’d penned this letter, I knew those guesses were wrong. This was not a matter of Finchton’s penchant for wordplay, which barely showed in my mother’s hurried prose.

These letters were about a baby . They were about me .

And the reason that was shrouded in confusion was that no one—not even the most pragmatic soldier in this company—expected a mother to describe her child the way my mother had described me.

Letter after letter. Plea after plea.

my cruel fate

the heavens’ scorn

a cursed weapon

I choked, forcing myself to focus on that last letter.

Into my hands a cursed weapon has fallen, which I fear I’ve no interest in having or using or even knowing. Should Trident provide an adequate solution, you, sir, might name your price up to and exceeding my own hand.

I read it twice. There was no love lost between my mother and the king.

A strictly political marriage—he, a powerless figurehead in the arrangement.

But Finchton did not allow polygamy among royals.

So, would she have banished the king? Shattered the alliance that marriage had brokered?

Or worse— killed him? Just to be rid of me?

My hands shook. I’d always known she hated me.

That came as no surprise at all. But I’d also thought it was my fault—something that grew and solidified after I was born because of who I turned out to be.

That I was not grateful enough, or too whimsical, or too strange for her taste.

That maybe I could have won her if I’d just been different.

I couldn’t decide if it was a relief to learn otherwise.

I turned from B?k, mind riddled with questions. Could he read anything in my desires that would give away the truth? Just in case, I gave a half-hearted attempt to center my desire for the queen’s death. Let him do with that what he would.

I flipped through more letters. They were all similar.

There would be plenty to pick apart later, if I got the chance.

It sounded like my mother had searched far and wide for someone to help her get rid of me.

But why hadn’t she simply ended the pregnancy?

That was the part that made no sense. A pregnancy wasn’t hard to end.

The right herbs would have done it early on, and the royals had no shortage of healers who could have helped at any point after.

And barring that, she might have just thrown me out of a window after my birth.

Unless.

My tendrils curled around me, comforting, like for once they were fully on my side. I thought of the way they’d lashed out at Wendlin when he’d come for the killing blow. The way they’d ended B?k instantly when he was inside me and the rock toad had taken me by surprise with an attack.

Brü guessed the Huntress thought I was a weapon. She’d had these letters. She had figured it out.

I took several shallow breaths.

I still didn’t have the answer. The final piece. What made me a weapon? Why couldn’t my mother kill me? Why did she want to? Why did the Huntress have her letters? Why did Lord Austvix steal them? Why were they both chasing my mother’s mysterious problem like it mattered?

Was my mystery also B?k’s mystery? If I told him everything, would he be just as determined as I to solve this last bit? Or would he turn me over to Lord Austvix and wash his hands of the rest?

“Anything you’d like to share?” B?k asked.