Chapter 26

CHAPTER26

Lore stared down at the map on the table in front of her. The map that the Matriarch and her boys had been filling out since the time Lore had left. Margaret had been very, very busy.

Pointing to a particular spot high in the mountains, she asked, “So you think that’s where they’re keeping the humans?”

“I think that’s one of the places they’re keeping the humans.” The Matriarch sighed and leaned back in her chair.

This room was the only place where the woman seemed like a real person. Everywhere else she was this tall, imposing, wise queen who commanded attention. But here in her chambers, she could show Lore just how tired and worried she was.

It made Lore nervous.

Rubbing her chest where there was an ache that wouldn’t go away, Lore pointed to another location, near where she had first met Zephyr. “And here?”

“And everywhere, Lore. There are camps full of humans who are starving and weak and want to go home. She’s sending them all over our kingdom and keeping them away from everyone they know or love. She’s isolated them, but I don’t think she knows what she’s going to do with them yet.”

“Then that is in our favor.”

“Precisely. Which is why I think you need to go talk with her.”

“Absolutely not.” Lore took her own seat again, bracing her elbows on the table. “The last thing Margaret or we need is for her to realize that I am here and messing with her plans.”

“She already knows you’re back. Who else would be foolish enough to steal Zephyr out from under her nose?”

“Beauty,” Lore replied. “Who is now missing from Tenebrous. I’m certain Margaret was keeping watch on her and her father. Considering how helpful they were to the rebellion, they will probably be the last to be sequestered off.”

“Margaret needs a conscience.”

“Margaret needs to be removed from the throne.” Lore sighed and shook her head. “Something neither of us is going to do easily.”

“You could.” The Matriarch watched her with milky eyes that saw too much. “You could change all of this with a wave of your hand. Why are you not just doing that? Isn’t that what the prophecy said you would do?”

Lore pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m tired of prophecies. I’m tired of people telling me what I am meant to do rather than asking what I want to do. This kingdom will not fall because of the story a group of elves believed. I’m going to make the right choice for everyone.”

“And what is the right choice, young one?”

A wry grin stretched across her face. “And here I was, hoping you would tell me that.”

The Matriarch rolled her eyes at the insolence. “You are very young for an elf, but old enough to know that there is no right choice. Whatever you do, or choose, or even simply validate, that will make some people angry. And perhaps could lead to their deaths.”

Lore shook her head. “I’m tired of death. I have no need for it here, and I will not choose a path where more people die. There has to be another way.”

“And you will not find another way unless you speak with Margaret.” The Matriarch knew she was right, and Lore knew the same thing as well.

Nothing would change as they stood here grasping at what might be the reasoning behind Margaret’s decisions. None of them could assume they knew what was going through the shadow elf’s head.

They needed to know what Margaret’s plan was. They had to understand the choices, and if Lore was wrong for even wanting to spare the humans.

She knew she wasn’t, deep in her gut. Lore knew there was a right thing to do here, and that was save the people who needed saving. But would she always be stuck in this cycle of saving those who needed it?

Shaking her head, Lore dropped her forehead onto the table with a loud thunk. “I don’t know if I can talk with her, because I’m so angry I think I might rip her castle down the first moment she opens her mouth.”

“Use that anger, then.”

“But what if I see her and then she convinces me all of this is right and I have no choice but to come back here with my tail between my legs?” There were certain things about the world that she... liked now. Margaret wasn’t entirely wrong about her choices. The magic that flowed through the kingdom felt right.

But what didn’t feel right was the lack of humans when she knew they were necessary in this kingdom. And Lore didn’t know how to work through these complicated emotions or the complicated path that this realm now had to take.

A chair scraped out from underneath the table and the Matriarch rounded it to pat her hand against Lore’s shoulder. “You know the path you must walk.”

“If you say one more thing about a prophecy, I will turn you into a toad.” Her words were muffled against the wood, though, and that ruined the threat.

“You wouldn’t.” The Matriarch gave her one more pat and then added, “Now get out of my office, please. I have work to do that does not include you.”

“Of course you do.” Lore sat up and wearily blinked at the other woman. “You have a kingdom to command, sons to raise, another son to worry about because he’s not here, and now you have a goddess on your doorstep sweating all over your table.”

“If you left a forehead mark on my table, I will sink a grimdag in between your ribs.” The Matriarch leveled her with a glare, her eyes following Lore’s attempt to wipe it away with her sleeve. “Now go. Get yourself ready and I will gift you and your dragon two horses. The other two we will keep here, and healing. Your human pet has wounds that even my healers are struggling to piece back together.”

“Just the poison?”

“And the curses.” The Matriarch shrugged. “Margaret had plans for him, clearly. We are unraveling what she has knotted throughout.”

Wonderful. Of course Margaret had cursed the boy as well as beaten him within an inch of his life, poisoned him, and then captured him in a prison with no outside access whatsoever.

Sighing, Lore pressed her hands to the table and stood. “I will prepare myself and Abraxas, then. Thank you for continuing to heal my friends without question. I cannot express my gratitude for that.”

The expression on the Matriarch’s face softened. “You have no need to thank me, Lorelei. You saved this kingdom, and then you brought my son to the other half of his soul. You have given him leave to court her as she ages and grows. You have given him space and trust. I can only do the same for you.”

“If I’d known all I had to do was be nice to Draven to earn your trust, I might have been nicer to him earlier.”

Lore made her way to the door and then paused when the Matriarch chuckled.

“I wouldn’t have cared if you were nice to him,” the Matriarch said. “But the honor and strength it took to not use him or his infatuation? That I respect.”

With a firm nod, Lore cleared her throat and escaped out into the hallway. She didn’t know what to do with the Matriarch’s respect. That was... No. She was a girl from Tenebrous, who had grown up on the streets and had no right to have a woman like that saying she respected Lore.

She refused to think about it because if she did, then she would lose her mind. This was all too surreal. And she wasn’t prepared to handle all these emotions.

So instead of going to gather her things, Lore found her feet taking her to the one spot where she knew she would be reminded of why she was doing all this. Not for the fame or the respect or the love of a people. She hadn’t started all this to become a goddess.

She stepped into Zephyr and Beauty’s room to find him seated alone in a chair before their fireplace. The crackling magic inside was not an actual fire, the smoke was too dangerous this deep, but it gave off heat and looked correct.

He turned at the sound of her approach and a wide grin spread across his face.

“Lore!” He was still pale and thin, but he was alive and that counted for something.

She sat down in the seat across from him and tried her best to smile as well. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrible,” he replied with a snort. But then he shook his head. “No different, really. Much better than when you found me, but since getting here, it’s a lot slower.”

“The Matriarch said they’re untangling curses.” She ran her hand through her hair and slumped in the chair, staring into the fire. “Not a chance that you remember the words she used to curse you?”

“I wasn’t awake when they happened. Or if I was, I wasn’t in any state to remember a language I don’t speak.”

“Right.” Her heart twisted in her chest. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

A quiet silence bubbled between them, broken only by the sound of the crackling fire. But then he shifted, turning toward her in his chair to stare. “You know this isn’t your fault, right?”

Lore licked her lips and couldn’t look back at him. “I know that if I hadn’t left, you wouldn’t be in this state.”

“And that doesn’t mean that it was your fault. If you hadn’t left, Abraxas might be dead. Those dragon babies wouldn’t even know you existed, and this kingdom might still be in the same state it’s currently in. Blaming yourself for all this is foolish, Lore.”

Was it? They both knew that perhaps it wasn’t fair to her, but it wasn’t foolish.

Finally, she let her head flop to the side and met his stare. They both looked at each other, and she wondered if he felt as ragged as she did. Like all her edges were a little torn.

Zephyr frowned at her. “I’m telling you, Lore, this isn’t your fault. And if anyone can tell you that, it’s me. I’m the one who spent most of the past year locked up in a dungeon while elves tried to tear me down from the outside in. If it was your fault, don’t you think I would hate you?”

“I think you are the most forgiving person I’ve ever met in my life. You look at the evil in someone and you see it as redeemable.” Lore swallowed hard, trying to talk over that damned lump in her throat. “You make me so proud to know you, but also terrified to even think for a moment that I let you down.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. I should have been there, done something more. Even Beauty believes that, and she’s like you. So forgiving it’s almost a fault.”

Zephyr tsked and turned his attention back to the fire. “Beauty can forgive anyone who doesn’t cause me pain. But her blame is misguided and I’ve talked with her about that.”

“It will take more than just talk to make her forgive me.” Lore had felt the rift between them growing wider.

Beauty was still angry that she hadn’t saved Zephyr fast enough. Then she was angry that Lore hadn’t healed him immediately and without question. Though it made her heart hurt, it still was the right thing to do. Lore knew that the Ashen Deep were more talented at healing than she was, and knowing that he was cursed? She was very right to have brought him here.

Lore could have made him explode by pulling the wrong thread of a curse. Or killed him if she had tried to heal his wounds without realizing the curses were there.

Movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Zephyr reached for her, his hand held out for her to take. And when she slipped her fingers into his, she felt a terrible knot release in her chest.

“I forgive you,” he said, his eyes still on the flames. “And I thank you for saving me. That’s enough. No more blaming yourself for what happened or trying to say that you will fix what happened to me. Just keep moving forward, Lore.”

She squeezed his fingers in hers and took a deep, steadying breath. Then nodded. “All right.”

“Good.”

“The Matriarch wants me to go speak with Margaret in person.”

His fingers spasmed in hers before he controlled his reaction. “Why does she want you to do that?”

“No one knows what Margaret’s actual plan is. We’re all guessing at what she wants, why she’s doing this, what she’s going to do next. The Matriarch thinks I might either figure it out myself, or have her admit it to me.”

Zephyr let out a long, low whistle. “It’s a risk and a half to take. If she knows you’re here, then everything changes.”

“She already knows.”

“Because of me?”

Lore nodded. “The Matriarch thinks that was enough of a reason for Margaret to suspect, not to mention all the charred bodies. Beauty and her father might have planned that to make it look like we’re back, but then Margaret was probably already watching them. She might have known I was here since the first moment I hit land.”

“Then why hasn’t she done anything yet?”

Rolling the question over in her mind, Lore tried to put herself in the other elf’s shoes. And the Darkveil elf was one she knew well enough. “Because she’s waiting for me to come to her.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Margaret doesn’t know how strong I’ve gotten. Or if my magic is capable of what all the prophecies say it is capable of. She wants to see her enemy for herself before she makes any more moves.”

Again, the silence between them stretched thin. Then Zephyr said, “Like chess.”

“Precisely.”

“She’s trying to survey the moves you make so she can guess your end game.”

Lore nodded and smacked her lips together. “Yup.”

“So, how are you going to prevent her from doing that?”

“Fuck, I don’t have a plan that goes that far.” Rolling her head to look at him again, she grinned. “I’m not a real goddess, you know. I can’t see the future and I don’t know the right choice here. Abraxas and I escaped to get high on elfweed yesterday. We’re not the most responsible people to save an entire kingdom.”

His eyes widened, and then his mouth split into a grin as he burst into laughter. “You got high yesterday? And you didn’t invite me?”

Laughter filled the room and Lore settled in to tell him what Abraxas had been like while incredibly high for a dragon. She had Zephyr in stitches at the end while describing the moment Abraxas had tried to wear the smoke like a ballgown, and she had the distinct feeling that right now, this was where she was meant to be.

With him. With her family.

But tomorrow she would save them.