Page 89 of The Moorwitch
I suppress a shudder.
Conrad continues, “My father took me down to Elfhame for the first time and told me the story of my ancestor, a man who attempted to kill Morgaine after the fae murdered his wife and a bunch of other women.”
AfterLachlanmurdered them, I now know, and left his sister to take the blame for it.
“The moorwitches?” I ask. “You’re descended from them?”
He nods. “Aye. And in exchange for sparing my ancestor’s life, she charged him and his entire line with guarding the gate to Elfhame. We’ve spent generation upon generation of North blood paying for that one man’s rash attempt at vengeance.”
Well, that answers one of my questions. His obligation to Morgaine does go back generations. And from the sound of it, he had little choice in the matter.
“What happened to your father?” I whisper, dreading the answer.
“Years later, when I was twelve, my father went on patrol and never returned. I found his body on the other side of Blackswire. He’d been burned to death with magic.” Conrad’s voice grows thick.
I imagine him at twelve, stumbling across his father’s corpse. Realizing he was now completely alone, with a little sister to protect, and that great house.
“Morgaine came to me in the wood shortly after that,” he goes on. “Sometimes she walks in the mortal world, says she likes toremember.”
That catches my attention, and I think of the two times I thought I spied the ghost of a woman in the fields—Sylvie’s ghost.
Could that have been the queen of the fae?
So many threads are finally falling into place, revealing the pattern I’ve been straining to understand.
“That very night,” Conrad continues, “she had me kneel at her feet and Weave a vowknot of fealty to her. So you see, my servitude is bound by magic as well as by my word.”
“I see.” I shiver, seeing him in mirror image to myself, only a little older than I was when I made my vow to his father’s murderer.Upon my heart I swear, a favor for a favor ...
We both bargained our lives away when we were too young to understand the weight of those vows. Mere children, manipulated and used by beings far older and crueler, made to dance upon their strings. And now, though Conrad does not know it, here we are set against one another, proxy soldiers in a centuries-old conflict I barely understand.
My heart aches to tell him my own truths, to show him how alike we are. But I know the truth would break the fragile trust we’ve built, and my mission would end at that moment. He would never let me near Elfhame again, if he did not drag me to Morgaine himself. Or kill me outright, as his father killed Fiona. Though I cannot bring myself to fully believe him capable of such measures, I remind myself of what measuresI’vegone to lately. I’ve done things I never dreamed possible, all out of forced fealty to a faerie lord. Perhaps neither of us yet have reached the limits of how far we will go to fulfill the bargains we’ve struck.
“Do you know anything else about this Briar King, or why he might be trying to return?” Does Conrad have any idea that the exiledfae are dying out, that they need to return home before they are all lost? For all that I know him to be a villain, Lachlan’s intentions seem true. He wants to save his people. Morgaine would abandon them all to die.
Conrad shakes his head. “I know only that he is devious, and Morgaine will do anything to stop him from taking back the throne of Elfhame. And it is my duty to see he does not slip through our defenses.” He pauses, then says, “I met him once.”
My eyes snap to him. “You ... did?”
“’Twas some years ago. He was standing mere inches outside the ward, just ...waiting. He was like winter bound by skin and velvet. His eyes were empty, as if no soul were left in him. When I demanded to know his business, he only said he’d come to have a look at me, and then he said I looked just like my father. I realized then thathehad killed my da, and likely my mum too, when she tried to run away.”
Lachlan killed his father.
Fates, I should have guessed it. But all the same, the horror of it punches me in the lungs. I shut my eyes for a long moment, overcome with a wave of dizziness that threatens to knock me from the saddle.
Conrad leans forward to run his hand over Bell’s neck, his eyes dark as the pools which dot the moors. “I’d never been so angry in my life. I rode through the ward just to get my hands around his neck, to make him pay for what he did.” He shudders. “He killed my horse, Julius. My father had given me that horse, trained me to ride on him. I fell and shattered my leg and had to crawl back through the ward before he could finish me off. I paid for my stupidity, and nearly paid for it far more dearly than this.”
He thumps his bad leg.
Nausea rolls in my stomach; I picture it all as if I’d been there myself. The hands which nearly killed Conrad—those hands have held mine a dozen times. They’ve stroked my hair, twisted it, tilted my chin so he could look into my eyes.
“He is a monster,” I whisper.
“Aye.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “If this is the creature you face, if you live in such danger, why do you forbid Sylvie from practicing her magic? Why deny her the ability to protect herself?”
He stiffens; as he always does when the subject arises, he closes himself to me, sitting straighter and hardening his jaw. “It would be better if she lost her magic and was of no concern to him or anyone else, than for her to become a threat. Or a tool.”