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Chapter Thirty-Nine

Guinevere

There were four things Guinevere was immediately aware of when she came to.

First was the dull pain at the back of her skull. Second was the teak floorboards she was lying on in the center of a large, mostly bare compartment pervaded by a gentle rocking motion that had her feeling vaguely nauseous.

Third was the fact that she wasn’t alone.

There was a robed figure some distance away from her, standing in the shadows beyond the sickly yellow illumination of a few oil lanterns.

She squinted, trying and failing to make sense of the silhouette, with its dimly lit features that were slightly off for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint, the nose that seemed too long and curved and the arms that were too bony and the oddly shaped tufts around the head that surely couldn’t be hair.

“You’re awake at last.” The voice was cold and nasal, with a certain melodious croakiness. It sounded like a sparrow’s heartbeat, leaping into the wind.

The Spider’s Web had delivered her to this person, to this isolated place she had no idea where. And that brought Guinevere to the fourth thing: she was strangely calm about it.

It was a heavy, blank sort of calm. It tugged at her eyelids. There was a cloudlike timbre to it that drowned out the song of the universe.

“I’m under a spell, aren’t I?” she murmured to the wooden floor beneath her cheek.

“A calming one, yes,” said the figure. “After all, I could not risk your little friend getting loose.” He held something up; it glimmered weakly in the gloom, a chain of silver wrapped around his fist. Her totem.

There was something not quite right about that fist. The palm was too small, the digits too thin. They curved like…talons?

“What did you do to the real Mia Lavera? Is she all right?” Guinevere asked this because she needed to know, but her concern for this other woman who’d been endangered on her account was sheathed behind a wall of glass. The calming spell made it difficult to feel much of anything.

“Nicodranas’s brightest star is passed out in her own abode. I expect she’ll be coming to at any moment,” said the figure. “The Zhelezo will probably come knocking to question her on her abrupt disappearance from the ball, but that’s hardly my concern.”

He stepped into the light. That was when Guinevere realized he was an eisfuura, the first one she had ever seen in the flesh.

What she had thought was an overly long nose was in reality an eagle’s beak, and the tufts were a frill of brown-and-white feathers around his head.

What she had assumed were robes were actually feathers, dangling from his elongated arms like a shaggy pelt.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Accanfal.”

It clicked neatly into place. It fit in her mind, this thing that she had forgotten. This name that she had heard in a dream.

He pointed to something beside her, calling her attention to it for the first time since she woke. It was the pearwood trunk. “And your father stole that from me.”

“It’s not stealing to win a bet.”

Accanfal let out a raucous, cawing laugh. “Is that what Illiard told you?”

Guinevere fell silent.

“You don’t even know what this treasure is, do you?

” Accanfal sneered. “I sailed from my native Marquet to hunt it down. I followed the trail of arcane whispers to the ruins of the elves. And there it was. A trove of enchanted jewelry, each piece brimming with elemental power.” He strode over to the trunk and dragged his talons over its lid in what was almost a loving caress. “The Duskmaven’s Parure.”

The Duskmaven. Yes. Goddess of Death. Matron of Ravens.

That explained the magic she’d sensed within when she touched the trunk back in Zadash.

She should have brought it up the moment Wensleydale told her all that rot about the set belonging to House Truscan, but she hadn’t wanted to cause a stir.

Hadn’t wanted him to know about her magic.

Now that Accanfal had moved closer to the light, Guinevere noted the jewelry he wore. An emerald ring. An emerald bracelet. A diamond-studded emerald pendant.

“Your father was blinded by his greed,” said Accanfal.

“He sold these pieces on the black market, never imagining that I would be able to trace them. He also never imagined that I would find the arcanist who sealed the trunk.” The eisfuura’s pale yellow eyes glinted.

“I heard of a man with a ring that could cast lightning magic, and I found him. He didn’t know where your family had hidden, but before he died, he told me about his sealing spell.

It’s a blood rune, Miss Guinevere. Your blood is the key. ”

The dream of the blade in her father’s hands…not a dream. A memory.

This was why she’d been shut away in Rexxentrum all her life. Until her family’s fortunes changed and her father had been forced to play the only card he had left.

Guinevere suddenly badly resented the calming spell.

She’d always been afraid of her emotions for as long as she could remember, afraid of their consequences, but at something like this— the shock of the revelations, the pain of the betrayal, the anger at the unraveling of all the lies—she should have been able to feel the full scale of them.

“The thing is,” said Accanfal, “the blood needs to be given willingly.”

A door in the—ceiling?—opened, more light spilling down a ladder that she hadn’t been able to make out before. There was another bobbing motion that encompassed the world. It clicked for Guinevere then that she was in the cargo hold of a ship, and it was sailing away from Nicodranas.

Her betrothed came tumbling down in a flash of blond hair and fine clothes, his hands tied behind his back. The person who had unceremoniously tossed him into the hold—Selene—made a more decorous entrance, descending the ladder lithely, still dressed in the Opal of the Ocean’s clothes.

“It’s difficult to hire competent people when you’ve spent most of your resources on the trail of a thief for the past twenty years,” Accanfal complained to Guinevere, shooting a disparaging glance at Selene.

“I was still in Tal’Dorei following a false lead when my spies relayed the news of your betrothal and your dowry, or I would have intercepted you on the Amber Road myself.

Fortunately, the Spider’s Web does have its moments of brilliance. ”

Selene rolled her eyes. “The sooner you pay up, the sooner my subaverage men and I can be out of your feathers.”

“In a minute,” snapped Accanfal. “I’ll need you to take care of some loose ends after this.”

Wensleydale let out a whimper. Accanfal tutted. “I won’t kill you, my lord. You and Miss Guinevere will be rowed back to shore in plenty of time for a jolly old nightcap while I continue on my way back to Marquet. Assuming that she makes the right decision, that is.”

Guinevere slowly got to her feet. The hold tilted precariously—no, it was only her sense of balance that was askew. She’d never been on a ship before.

“What do you say?” Accanfal prodded. “A few drops of your blood, just enough to open the trunk so I can reclaim what’s mine. Then you and your betrothed are free to go and have a happy little life together. With my blessing.”

“You’re utterly mad!” Wensleydale shouted at the arcanist. “Absolutely barking! Taking the Duskmaven’s Parure out of the equation, I can’t marry a—a commoner !

That set is the only reason I was willing to sully my illustrious bloodline—” He caught himself with some reluctance. “No offense, Miss Guinevere.”

“I will take some offense, if you don’t mind,” Guinevere muttered. She couldn’t deny that it hurt to be called that, but…didn’t it hurt only because she let it? She’d met people on the Amber Road more noble in nature than so-called nobility.

Accanfal was clearly taken aback by Wensleydale’s outburst. “By the spires of Jrusar.” He looked at Guinevere. “This is who you wish to be with?”

“No,” she replied with complete honesty.

“Good call,” Selene piped up, the expression on her face one of sheer disgust.

A series of thumps sounded overhead. “Tell the crew to cease that racket,” Accanfal instructed Selene.

Once the mercenary had left, he fixed his piercing gaze on Guinevere once more.

“Well, my girl? Your blood for your freedom? A fair exchange, don’t you think?

Otherwise, I shall have to take you to Marquet with me. ”

The smart thing to do was agree. But it hadn’t been very smart to run away from her own engagement ball, either, and Guinevere found herself oddly reluctant to break her streak. Accanfal was presenting a choice that was no choice at all.

Finish your embroidery, or go to bed without supper.

Master all the table napkin folds by tomorrow, or be locked in your room all week.

Marry a stranger, or be the architect of your family’s ruin.

“I don’t want to,” Guinevere heard herself say.

And that, too, was freedom.

“Don’t want to what?” Accanfal cocked his head. “Give up your blood? Or be my captive?”

“Exactly,” said Guinevere. “I don’t want to do either of those things.” She lifted her chin. “I’m done with letting other people make my choices for me.”

“Oh, gods,” Wensleydale groaned. “We’re going to die.”

“Maybe you will,” Guinevere retorted, never taking her gaze off Accanfal. “But if I die, all hope of reclaiming the Duskmaven’s Parure dies with me. He can’t kill me. He would never dare.”

“You’re right.” Accanfal’s talons clenched into a fist, crackling with magic. “I can’t kill you. But I can hurt you. I can make it so that you would be so desperate for relief from your pain that you’d do anything. I have all the time in the world to do that.”

“ Over my fucking corpse! ” came a deep bellow from above, and Oskar dropped into the cargo hold, kicked Wensleydale in the stomach, then took a running leap at Accanfal and tackled him to the floor.