13. Maeve

13

Maeve

" W ho's Josalyn?" Maeve asked Pike the next morning when they were alone for training. It was something she wanted to keep up, even if she were to be crowned Queen and surrounded by guards the rest of her many years. It was important to her that she always know how to defend herself, in all the possible ways she may need to. Pike had stopped training her previously, but now that she had better control over her abilities, he was willing to do it again.

The room they were in streamed with weak morning light from Rizor and Tegal, the pale illumination gleaming on the well polished dark wood floors. This was a council chamber, typically, but she and Pike and requisitioned it for their use, pushing tables and chairs against the walls so there was enough space to spar.

The scrapper fumbled his weapon. Something she had never seen him do. Then his eye narrowed. "Read that in my head, did you?"

Maeve stared right back at him, unperturbed. "It was something that happened when I came back from Attica. Having the bond back, that thing off my wrist that kept me from my magic? It made everything harder to control the moment I had it back." She took a breath. "So, yes, I heard the name from you, but that's all I heard. I'm sorry. That's why I'm asking."

The older man looked away for a moment, and when he turned back his expression was somber, his single blue eye shimmering. "I had no choice, lass. Not before I met her, and certainly not after. Josalyn is… complicated." At her silence he continued. "You met her once, though you won't remember it."

Maeve's heart stuttered, recalling the Nyx going through her memories. There had been a part that seemed off. "When I was with the Nyx, there was a blank spot in my memories. They asked me about it endlessly. They hated it. Is that—was that when I met her?"

Pike looked even more mournful now, a frown deepening lines around his stubbled face. "It was the night of the first duel, wasn't it?"

She nodded, stomach sinking. "What happened that night?"

"I took you to Josalyn. When I found you that night, after Rodan had disappeared, you were in the chambers beneath the colosseum, where you were still brimming with the death magic. You were half-mad, lass. You set fire to things and even I could feel it. Here," he tapped his chest. "Like you were sifting through me without realizing it. I had to do something."

"And what did you do? Who is she?"

"She's a sorceress," he whispered. "As dark as they come. She's been operating in Realmsgate for at least a century."

Maeve set down her practice dagger, letting it clatter against the surface of one of the tables. "Tell me," she demanded. "How do you know her? Why did you take me to her? And what happened?"

"I know her because she saved my life, when I was little," he said, his voice soft. "At least I thought that's what she was doing at the time. I think she saw something in me and decided she wanted me for her very own. She trained me to be this," he gestured at himself. "And it was her who sent me to Sebastian, when he was first making noises about challenging King Rodan to the throne.

"I took you to her because I did not know who else could deal with magic on such a scale. Sebastian had—there were several convenient accidents where magical practitioners were concerned. And I never trusted him. I saw enough of his character to know he was not the man he tried to show you, that the songs sing of.

"I'll tell you what happened. I'll tell you everything." He took a breath. "I stopped reporting back to Josalyn around the time our original party reached the Fourth Realm. When you were attacked, I couldn't tell her. I just couldn't. You're my friend."

The way he said the words made something in her chest tighten. She bit back words she wanted to snarl. If you were my friend, why have you been keeping this from me? Instead, she motioned for him to continue, trying to keep a blank face.

"I was supposed to tell her everything about all of you, your strengths and weaknesses. She was very interested in you from the beginning, and I knew she had something planned, and whatever it was couldn't be good. But I cut off contact, kept her spies away and killed anyone sent to kill me." He sounded proud at this last, and cleared his throat. "There were a few attempts."

"You never found out why she wanted to know those things? Or why she was interested in me?"

"I'm not the schemer she is," he said. "I've always known my limitations. I'm good at this," he hefted his dagger, flipping it and catching it by the handle with ease. "But little else."

"That's not true," Maeve said, unable to help coming to his defense even if this reeked of betrayal that made her stomach twist. "You've always been a steady voice of reason, Pike, and I can trust you. At least, I thought I could."

He flinched when she said the last, and she had room for a twinge of regret. "I deserve that. Maybe a lot more." He sighed and fell back into one of the chairs that had also been crammed to the sides of the room. She came to stand before him, arms crossed over her stomach. He gave her a narrow look and then a bark of a laugh.

"You know, if it weren't for the murder and the scheming and the blackmail, I think you would really like Josalyn. Her intellect and yours ring similar."

Pike shook his head.

"So you found me beneath the stadium," she prompted. "And I was half-mad."

"More than half," he murmured, gaze in the distant past. "It was not the first time you had demonstrated such things to me, but it was the first time I was afraid of you."

Maeve pulled in a breath.

"But you trusted me, so much, even then," he said. "You followed me, did what I bade you to do, and I brought you to Josalyn's stronghold, where I knew she would be on the night of the duel. She nearly killed me where I stood for daring to expose her like that, and you…" he smiled wistfully, and then snapped his attention back to Maeve. "Well, lass, you were changed that night. You did what instinct told you to do, I'm sure."

She tilted her head, none of this pulling up even a sliver of true recollection. It was as though he told her the story of a stranger. Something someone else had done, a long time ago. "Why don't I remember any of this?"

"I'm getting there. You made their weapons turn to dust first, and that caught Josalyn's attention all the way. She realized what a powerhouse you were, and she wanted it. Said she'd take the magic from you, in exchange for a boon."

Maeve blinked. "What's a boon?"

Pike shrugged, palms spread wide. "Something important, by the sound of it, but you agreed. You gave your promise it be passed to her heirs." He swallowed hard. "And she brought us to a chamber under the earth, and took the death magic from you. It looked like it hurt. When she finished, she took some of your psychic magic as well, I think, or else she has some of her own, and she used it to make you forget."

He twirled the dagger between his fingers, a deadly form of a nervous tic. Maeve reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder, and he went still. Not through any power of hers, but because she made him fully aware, and offered comfort. Which, by all the gods, she still wanted to do. This was not just her friend. This was Pike.

He was into his sixties at this point, though the daggers Rodan had given him were smoothing some of the harsher lines and signs of age. He looked more like an athletic forty, with a mass of scar tissue where one eye should have been. He refused to wear a patch for it, and had yet to tell the story of how it came to be.

Before Maeve had returned alongside Rodan, when she had last seen Pike he had both eyes burning bright. All she knew for a certainty was that it had to do with Sebastian.

Pike was the best fighter the Realms had seen in decades, if not centuries. Someone who had come up against men three times his size and five times his number, triumphing over them all while remaining relatively unscathed. Those skills were being passed to Maeve, Jen, Bethany?—

Oh , it hurt to think of her, and what she must have meant to Pike, who had rarely shown such a tender side to himself except when he looked at the councilwoman. He wore a black armband. It had only been four days since the duel.

Four days, and Maeve knew there would be years of regret to follow. They should have been more careful. Why had they left Bethany, or anyone, on their own? With time and distance, more and more things looked so incredibly obvious, their moves so stupidly na?ve at times.

It made her sick.

"Where'd you go, lass?" Pike asked, voice quiet.

She blinked, steadying her gaze on him, and gave a small smile. Above all, Pike was a mentor and a beloved companion. Maeve hurt to think of all the years they had lost to time and distance, but now that she had him back? She aimed to keep him close. So long as some things were understood.

She dropped her hand from his shoulder and took a step back, taking a deep breath. "Why did you keep this from me? Did she threaten you?"

He nodded. "Said she'd kill you if I told you, because she knew you'd go straight to Sebastian with the knowledge."

"I see." She paced away from him, going to the wide windows taking up one wall. The curtains were pulled aside to let in the weak winter sunlight. She still hesitated to go out there. The snow remained. It was not so pristine now as it had been on the night she had been taken, but there was something about it made her shiver with more than cold. Fear slid like ice down her spine. "So there's someone else out there at a similar level to Sebastian, and I owe them a favor, from what we can tell."

"Yes."

"And now I'm to be crowned High Queen."

He was silent. It was enough.

"But you could have told me, Pike," she said, turning from the windows. She regarded him as he looked at her with some trepidation. "I tire of people keeping things from me. Especially if it could affect so many, and this does. What does she want? Do you know?"

He shook his head. "I can only guess. I'm sure we won't like it."

Maeve opened the link between her and Rodan, casting a message down it. Training didn't happen. I need you here .

There were no words back, but she felt his attention shift wholly to her location, and the next moment he was in the room. She jumped, unaccustomed to him being able to simply appear. He smiled at her. "Remember I could not do this while the trials were ongoing, otherwise the time limit would be meaningless."

"Can I travel like that too?"

He shrugged. "All Fae have different gifts and limitations but, generally, yes. We just need to find the time to practice." Glancing toward Pike, who had gotten to his feet, Rodan raised an eyebrow. "What's going on?"

Her friend shifted his weight from side to side, looking more uncomfortable as the silence stretched. Then he told Rodan what he had told her, finishing with, "Maeve gave Josalyn a boon, in exchange for taking the death magic away."

Rodan went very still, and his voice took on a dangerous edge. "A boon? You're certain?"

"Yes," Maeve said. "What is it?"

"High magic," he responded, glancing between them again. "A Fae can only give so many in their lifetime, precisely one every century, and when a boon is extracted, the magic works through you. You'll have very little control in your actions."

Stomach twisting, Maeve's eyes widened. "And they can ask anything?"

"Anything within your power to provide," he confirmed. "And that, my love, is vast."

Pike swore, slamming the dagger he'd been working with back into its sheath. "I'll kill her. I should have done so years ago."

"You said the boon would be passed to her heirs," Maeve said, feeling sick. "So does it matter? If you kill her, won't her successor just ask something of me in her stead?"

Now it was Rodan's turn to swear, and he stared at her. "Why did you promise such a thing?"

"I don't even remember this," she defended. "And I didn't know what a boon was until now."

"She was barely grown," Pike snarled. "And Sebastian would have killed her, if she had come to him still full of the magic supposed to be used to fell you."

Rodan frowned at that, then ran hands over his hair, sighing. "We need to meet this. If we wait until after your coronation? This could be so much worse." He looked at the scrapper. "Do you know where Josalyn is now?"

Pike shrugged. "I doubt she has the same stronghold, not after thirty years under Sebastian and knowing I know the way. But I could make inquiries. I can find her."

Maeve frowned at the edge to his voice. "Don't kill her. With her, we have something of a known quantity. We don't know who her heirs are and what they could want."

"You'll take Nath," Rodan said, his tone brooking no argument. "I've already sent him a message."

Pike nodded and left the room, striding with confidence. When he had gone and the door was closed behind him, Maeve sighed and collapsed into the chair he had recently occupied. Palming her temples, she spoke with her elbows on her knees, leaning forward. "I thought we were beyond these kind of secrets." Her voice started to break. "I didn't expect something like this from him."

Rodan's hand fell to her arm, then slid along the slope of her shoulders and under her braid to cup the back of her neck. "I'm sorry, my love."

Maeve said the words burning in her heart. "I didn't expect it from you, either." She looked up at him in time to see the flinch in his eyes. "Why does this keep happening?"

His hand fell away, but she grasped it before he pulled it back, staring up into his face. He swallowed visibly. "I used to think I knew the answer to such things. That there was an order, a certain… that some lines were not to be crossed. But I've proven with my own actions this is not true. I've done monstrous things, to you who I love above all else, even."

She opened her mouth to protest.

Rodan shook his head. "I will not stop seeking forgiveness from you, my love, for promising one of our children without your consent. For not telling you about the terms of the personal challenge when I could have."

Maeve's mouth was dry, but she spoke despite the rasp in her voice. "If we're being honest, Rodan, my being there probably wouldn't have changed anything."

She hated to admit it, but the words were correct.

If she had been cognizant during that time in the underworld, if she had been presented the same choice as Rodan? Perhaps her father had been trying to give her some small mercy, keeping her in a state of forgetfulness, and keeping the decision that of her bondmate alone.

And now he looked at her with such shocked gratitude she could not help a swell of love for him, letting it flow through the link between them. He sighed, shoulders falling. "Thank you for saying that."

"I don't want you spending the rest of our time together apologizing for it, either," she said gently. "Though," her voice hardened. "I could not exactly say the same thing for your decision to keep the terms of the personal challenge from me."

She remembered her time with the Nyx, and how they had settled on that moment with a form of glee. The Queen had whispered to her this is all the others are, duplicitous liars that need not be trusted . And a part of her heart hurt to extend trust again, even a little.

But she had to.

"I said yes, to the Nyx," she whispered. "I said yes, and that's how they got into me, how they started the process of turning me."

"You gave them permission." His voice was flat, but she was standing, breaking their contact and rubbing her arms instead, trying to raise some heat. It was growing chilly in the room, which had an unlit fireplace. Maeve strode to it and created wooden logs and tinder, lighting them with a long match. She stood near to the growing flames with her hands extended.

"I tried saying no, later," she said, her back to him. "They didn't care."

Rodan made a choking sound, and his voice was rough. "I am sorry, Maeve."

"Did it matter, though, when I had said yes to begin with?" She turned to half-face him, arms still extended, fingertips beginning to thaw. "I don't think it does. At least, it doesn't when it comes to the real monsters of the world."

Rodan drew closer, standing close enough that she could feel the heat of his body. "The real monsters?"

"Yes. The Nyx are real monsters. They don't care if you start to say no. You do." She faced away again, but shuffled a step back so that he was pressed against her. "You have done monstrous things, but that doesn't make you one of them."

"I killed so many people, to get to you," he whispered, his hands hovering over her shoulders. She pressed firmly against him and he let those hands fall. "And I've killed many times before, in war and beyond."

"So have I," Maeve whispered back, staring into the twisting, flickering flames of the orange fire. "And I would kill again, for you."

Those hands slid down her arms, and Rodan kissed the side of her face, his murmuring voice hot in her ear. "You are no monster."

She smiled, though she knew the motion did not reach her eyes, which were still fixed on the flames. "If you say so, my love, for I certainly do of you. But if we were to be two monsters, would we recognize each other?"

His response was to hold her tighter.