Chapter 4

ChapterFour

Alistair followed his family through the woods to the clearing that led toward their home. His stomach rolled with the injustice he’d seen at the altar.

No one should endure the horrible things his brother and father had said. She had such a bright look in her eyes the moment she realized the toad was hers, and he’d watched that light die while his family made fun of her.

And it wasn’t such a terrible creature. Toads were perhaps the most traditional familiar given to witches, and that very ancient history would serve her well as she honed her magic into a sharp edge. Of course, he had no idea what she could do. His father had made it very clear that he didn’t think anyone in her bloodline had any power. In fact, Balthazar had practically attacked her mother from the onset.

Lysander still snickered, coughing every now and then into his hand.

The motion and noise caught their father’s attention. Balthazar’s wicked gaze turned toward his middle son, and Lysander stopped laughing. “What has you in such a good mood?”

His brother gulped. “I’m still surprised those witches were proud of a toad, Father. That’s all.”

With an arched brow that called his son’s honesty into question, Balthazar let his gaze wander back to the clearing before them. “Keep your mind in the now, boy. Apparently, you have forgotten that there needs to be at least an ounce of decorum among Orbweaver men.”

That saying made Alistair flinch. How many times had he heard Orbweaver men were supposed to be a certain way? His father wanted them to reflect upon society that they were terrifying creatures who would tear the world down to get what they wanted, but... Alistair wasn’t like that.

His brothers might be. They had followed in their father’s footsteps a little too willingly, and he supposed that was to be expected. Their powers also leaned toward darkness, just like his father. And though he had never seen them weave magic–the way Balthazar claimed they could–he knew they enjoyed hurting people. Hunting people.

Gulping, he trailed along behind them to the wall that loomed around Wildecliff. No one came into the city other than through the port. At least, that’s what the officials claimed. Everyone who was anyone knew that there was a small crack in the wall on this side, which led to the altar should anyone need to seek guidance from the goddess.

Deities were unlikely to step foot into Wildecliff. The men who ruled their city said they never understood why, but Alistair knew better. The black magic within those walls would banish any magical creature who tried to enter or leave—even a goddess or god.

His father walked right up to the crack in the wall, then looked at his youngest son. Alistair was pinned beneath the sharp, angry gaze.

“You,” his father snarled. “Keep that familiar out of the house. You know it goes in the barn with the rest of them.”

Alistair had no intent on doing so. The raven on his shoulder had chosen him. Didn’t his father understand how rare a circumstance that was for the forgotten son of a very powerful man?

He knew better than to say that to Balthazar Orbweaver. Instead, he nodded his head and dropped his chin down low. Better to tell his father he would do it and then ask for forgiveness later.

Apparently, he would not need to argue tonight. His father gave another nod to his boys and then they all clambered over the rubble, slithered between the heavy stones of the wall, and then out onto the street beyond. It was a forgotten street of Wildecliff, but it still looked like the rest of them.

Magic made the cobblestones sparkle as though someone regularly ran over them with a broom and a mop. The empty homes, for no one wanted to live this far out in the town, were made out of white marble with black windows stretching up four stories. The houses were just boxes, which Alistair had always thought was rather boring, but they were all the same and immaculately kept. Even the black tin roofs gleamed in the moonlight, and a single chimney poked out of each home in the exact same spot.

A carriage waited for them. The well-oiled mahogany exterior showed their wealth without making it too obvious for vagabonds and thieves, as his father worried about. However, Alistair had never heard of a single instance of robbery in Wildecliff. The inhabitants here were far too powerful, and no one could ever guess when the person within the carriage could set the entire thing on fire.

His father got inside, then his two brothers. Alistair looked up at the top of the carriage to see a terrifying creature looming over the edge. The beast had the head of a coyote, although its mouth had nearly split to its ears. It had the tail of a horse that lashed about, while the rest of it looked like a black cat.

Pooka.

Apparently, the faerie creature hadn’t decided what it wanted to look like tonight and instead had gone with the macabre amalgamation of many.

Alistair hooked his raven’s claws with one hand, then held the squawking creature up toward the pooka. “Take care of him for the ride, will you? There’s plenty of milk in our area of town you can curdle. I think the maids would all be quite put out.”

That horrible grin split even wider. But the pooka reached out with gentle claws, took the familiar from Alistair’s grasp, and set the bird on its own shoulder. The raven let out another disgruntled squawk before patting its feet a couple of times on the pooka’s back. Apparently, the familiar decided this was comfortable enough.

If he had his choice, Alistair would have stayed on the roof with them. Instead, he was forced to go inside with his horrible family.

For a few moments, it seemed like they might have a quiet ride back. Maybe none of his family had anything to say, and that meant he could focus more on thoughts about that young woman.

Instead, his family were the cruel beings that they had always been. And the ones he knew so well.

Balthazar was the first to speak. “You know, Lysander, I’ve heard that toads are frequently given to young witches who exemplify what it truly means to be a witch.”

His brother’s face paled, and Alistair knew they shared the same thought. Their father had just told him to stop talking about the girl, and now he brought it up again? This had to be some sort of trick. The punishment that would come afterward would be swift.

Until Cassius spoke up with more venom in his voice than Alistair had ever heard before, “The day that is the truth will be the day I swallow my own tongue. That girl had no power; even I could see that. Small gifts have no place in Wildecliff. The altar is on our side of the river, so I don’t see why they had to come here in the first place.”

Why did they have to torment the young woman this much? There was nothing wrong with a toad!

Balthazar snorted. “Just mark my words, Cassius. You’ll have to deal with this long after I’m gone. The weak in Waterdown will never stop coming to our lands and never stop distracting our goddesses from their real work with pleas for familiars. They think it makes them more powerful to have one. But they know they are too weak to use the powers that familiars give them.”

“That girl didn’t deserve anything better than a toad,” Cassius agreed. “But she should have had nothing at all.”

Normally, Alistair would lean his head against the window of their carriage and ignore the acidic insults his family threw so easily. He’d tell himself that he was nothing like them. Words like that would never drip like poison from his tongue. He wouldn’t let himself become them.

But, as he looked out the window, it had started to rain. And the color of the sky paled to a shade like her skin, clouds faintly tinged with blue. The water drops on the window seemed to reflect her expression when they had insulted something she was so excited about. And those drops glimmered like the tears that had gathered in her eyes.

The young woman hadn’t snapped at his family. She hadn’t argued with them like her mother or even tried to defend herself. She’d gathered up the little life that had meant something to her, held the toad against her heart, and walked away as though they had no control over her happiness.

“Thea,” he whispered.

All the other men in the carriage stopped talking. Cassius glared at him, and his eyes turned that horrible shade of yellow. “What did you just say?”

Oh, he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. He’d just been thinking about how pretty her dark eyes were and how brave she had been in the face of his family when he hadn’t ever been brave around them at all. Maybe around his brothers, considering he had to fight with them on a regular basis. But she’d looked his father in the eye and hadn’t shown an ounce of fear. He didn’t know how to do that.

Or maybe he did.

“She said her name is Thea,” he said, straightening his shoulders. “You don’t have to be so hateful anymore. No one is ever going to see her again, so why are you still talking about her?”

Cassius looked like the thought of punching him was rolling around in his head, but it was their father who leaned forward to answer.

“Alistair,” Balthazar said. His voice was a low simmer of poison bubbling in a cauldron. “We talk about those people, so we never forget who is more powerful. So we never forget that they are using our home to get what they want when they should stay on their side of the river.”

“I don’t see any reason why they cannot seek what they need outside of the walls.” Alistair gulped but kept going forward. “We stay within the sacred walls and they are outside of them. Who cares what they do near the altar? It’s not ours.”

“All of this is ours, Alistair. Every rodent, insect, and all the fish that should be in our port alone.” Balthazar waved a hand in the air and leaned back on his cushions. “You’re too young to understand. You still have a few more years at the university to learn, and then perhaps you will come around to the right way of thinking.”

"I don’t believe there’s any right way of—“

His father twitched his fingers, and webs wove themselves over Alistair’s mouth. They were sharp and pointed, anchored to the sides of his cheeks where he felt warm blood well and drip down to his jaw. Touching the sticky webbing with his fingers, he frantically tried to pull it off, but he already knew he wouldn’t be able to.

The magic that silenced him was old magic. Spider magic that his father had always wielded. His father was the Orbweaver incarnate. Webs were his power, and Alistair should be thankful he only wrapped his son’s mouth and not the rest of his body.

Alistair remained silent for the rest of the ride home. His cheeks burned, and more blood welled so much that he had to cup his hands underneath his chin to catch all the droplets before it ruined his clothing.

His family continued to laugh. They kept insulting the young woman and her mother because they knew it had made him angry. For the remainder of the ride, Alistair had to sit in his own anger that they would be so cruel to someone who had done nothing to them.

Finally, the carriage rolled up to the front door of their manor. As one of the wealthiest families in Wildecliff, their exterior was permitted to differ from the rest of the white marble homes. His father had chosen black, fitting for their family colors. The wrought-iron fence outside depicted spiders and their webs all around the property, which led up to a black manor larger than life with three steeples on the roof.

His home looked like a gothic prison. And to Alistair, it was.

No one waited for him as the carriage stopped. His father and brothers stepped out and walked toward the house as though they had forgotten he existed. Perhaps they had. His father didn’t even take the spell off Alistair’s face.

He eased his aching body out of the carriage and suddenly felt like he was so much older. His cheeks hurt. Every part of his soul throbbed, knowing that his family had been so cruel to that young woman, and he hadn’t been able to do anything to protect her honor.

Turning to the roof of the carriage, he looked for his familiar. He’d thought the pooka would have taken off by now. But the faerie creature still clutched the wood with its massive paws, and it looked down at him with pity in its eyes. Rain had soaked its fur into a matted, flat tangle all along its back and face. The familiar’s talons were sunk deep into its shoulder, but it didn’t seem to mind.

He would have reassured the pooka that he was all right. His father had done this before, and the pain had dulled a bit. The magic of the webs couldn’t hurt him forever, after all. They had a salve to take care of the wounds or any scars they might leave behind. The last thing Balthazar needed was someone else sticking their nose into “family business.”

The pooka lifted a long arm and sliced through the webbing that covered Alistair’s mouth. It fell away in a sudden tangle of magic that sparked with flames before disappearing.

“Thank you,” Alistair said.

Eyes overly large and watery with emotion, the pooka reached up to the raven and let it step onto its hand. Water sluiced off the familiar’s wings as it shook hard, sending droplets flying. Its loud caw would have woken the neighbors if a crash of thunder hadn’t boomed at the same moment.

The pooka handed the familiar over to him, dangling precariously off the roof.

“I can’t leave you out here,” Alistair muttered, placing his familiar on his shoulder. “Not either of you. This storm will freeze you to the bone.”

He gathered the pooka up in his arms as well, though the creature weighed as much as a small child. Grunting, he had to keep using his thigh to nudge the pooka up higher because apparently, it had decided it quite liked being carried. It didn’t help him in the slightest as he snuck into the house and brought both of the creatures down the long hall to his room.

By the time he closed the door behind him and deposited them both onto his bed, they shivered so hard they made the frame quake.

“Right,” he muttered. “Let’s get a fire going.”

Though his father would prefer it if all the fireplaces in the house were unused, Alistair ignored that rule more often than not. He stayed in his room mostly because of the flames that crackled and warmed up the air.

It took him a bit to get the fire going since he was shaking quite badly himself, but he got it going. Then he grabbed two of his knitted hats on the way back to his bed and jammed them down on top of each creature’s head. For good measure, he wrapped the pooka up in a blanket as well.

“Better?” he asked.

Both of them looked at him. Miserable and sodden. He knew how they felt, and unfortunately, there wasn’t much more he could do for them.

Flopping onto the bed beside them, he stared up at the ceiling and linked his fingers over his belly. “I hope she’s not upset about what they said. I wish I’d said something in the moment. I could have stopped them if I tried.”

The lie sizzled over his head. He wouldn’t have been able to stop them because his father would have done the same thing to him. Only he’d have to endure the pain in front of her. His cheeks still hurt from the sharp points of that spell.

His new familiar hopped over and stood on top of his thigh. It crowed for attention until he sat up on his elbows and asked, “What?”

The creature turned its head to the side, and he saw something in its eyes that made him pause.

“Could you...” He hesitated, then continued. “Could you get a letter to her, by any chance?”

The familiar nodded.

And suddenly, he felt hope bloom in his chest for the first time in a very long time.