Iron (The Warding Book 1) (33 page)

Obviously Gannon had told everyone that he had taken me along to dispatch Argoth, after the fact. She wouldn’t come right out and reprimand me for it—that was Kaine’s place, not hers. Instead, she made it very clear in her well-mannered way that I had upset her with my rash actions. As exasperating as I found her passive-aggressiveness, I couldn’t hate on her too much. It was a valid lesson, even if that particular enemy was now past tense. I went along with it.

After breakfast we had moved into the small room at the back of the house that served as her office. It was cozy, in a meditative day spa kind of way. Gauzy curtains, cream colored walls, plush chairs, soft instrumental music playing; the whole nine yards. There was even a little rock fountain burbling away in one corner. I found the atmosphere relaxing to the point of distraction. When my head nodded toward my chest for the umpteenth time, Seana noticed. “I’m sorry, is the lesson I chose boring you?”

I snapped to attention. “No, no—not at all. Very interesting stuff here.” I gave her my best endearing smile, complete with batted lashes, but I don’t think she bought it. When she continued to level me with that knowing mother stare, I caved. “Okay, I’m having a hard time getting it.”

She looked down at the book in her lap, brow furrowed. “I had not considered that. You’ve been a wonderful student. But if you’re finding the material too difficult…”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that.” I gestured back and forth between the scribbles of my notes and her. “I’m having a hard time getting this whole scenario. You, teaching me about hunting. It just feels weird.”

That look of mild bemusement continued. “How so?”

It was hard to find the words, without insulting her. I hedged and picked my words cautiously. “You just don’t seem very fond of hunting, is all.”

“Well, as a Healer, I am not fond of any violence. I wage my own war against death and injury all too often. To see brave souls putting their lives in such peril by throwing themselves between the monsters and innocents? That upsets me on a level I cannot begin to explain. I wish it were a different world we lived in, one where such valor was not needed.” She got a far-off look in her eyes. Her hands were clenched in a knot, resting on the worn pages of her ancient tome. She sighed. “But I know just how necessary the Hunters are to the safety of both our races.”

I didn’t need Mairi’s creepy empathy to know she was thinking of a different time and place all together. It raised goosebumps along my arms. “You lost someone.”

She nodded and looked away. “My son, Arland.”

I was struck dumb. It had never occurred to me, in all that time, to wonder who Seana had been before the exile. It had shocked me shitless to learn that Gannon had a sister, and even more so to learn that his sibling was Kaine’s wife—but I had never stopped to wonder about her. How had I never taken the time to ask her a single thing about her life before? I mean—how much did I really even know about her? I felt terrible. I fidgeted, torn between curiosity and anguish. “I’m so sorry, I never…”

“It was many years ago. A lifetime ago, now.” The unbelievable sadness in her expression seemed to age her ten years. It made my heart ache. She said, “I was foolish and headstrong, in my younger years. Arland was the greatest gift to come from that dark time. He brought such joy to my life, such laughter. Moreover, he gave me a reason to find my path in my life.”

The words pulled themselves out of my throat, slow and coarse. “What happened?”

“I had only just become a Healer, so we were still very poor. We lived outside of the city, on our own. It was a hard life, but we got by. He was only six when they attacked.” She stopped, blinking hard, and gazed up at the ceiling. I wanted to tell her to stop, to shy away from bearing her pain, but I felt I owed it to her to hear her out. She continued, “Ogres. They had ravaged the countryside, though I had no way of knowing that then. My home stood between them and the nearby city. They came on us in the dead of night. I told Arland to run, but they were so fast. I heard him scream, before the pain of my own injuries overwhelmed me.”

“Oh, Seana…” I didn’t know what else to say.

“The High Queen’s men found me. They had been tracking the ogres for some time. I was brought to the palace and cared for by the best Healers in the kingdom. Even so, I was lucky to live; they feared I would not for many days.” She stared down at her hands, which still wrung together in her lap. “I did not feel ‘lucky’ for a long time afterward. I had no hope, no reason to go on.”

I had no frame of reference for such terrible pain. I wanted to reach out to her; to empathize, somehow. I just didn’t know how. “What did you do?”

“It was the High Queen who saved me then. She came to me, as I lay lost in grief, my soul withering even as my body healed. She apologized for her failing me as a liege; for not having stopped the monsters before they happened across my home. She knew well that there was no recompense she could make for the loss I had suffered. Her Healers had healed my flesh, and her coffers could rebuild my home bigger and grander than before, but nothing could replace the precious gift I had lost.

“She may have come to me, at first, as a Queen, but Isobail spoke to me then as an equal; as a mother. She herself had just given birth to Tiernan only weeks earlier. Instead of promising me reparation that would never be enough, she instead offered me something I would have never considered. She asked me to come live at the palace and train under her Master Healer, so that I could serve as nursemaid to her children.”

My jaw hung open. “Wait, you mean you raised that wack—the High King?”

She nodded. “He and his brother both. Their mother was a wonderful woman; kind and strong, but often enraptured in the matters of state. I was their governess, as well as their personal Healer, from the cradle onward. Though nothing could ever replace Arland in my heart, raising them was a pleasure and a privilege.”

I was floored. There was just so much I did not know, so much I had never so much as guessed at, hidden in the pasts of these people. I could have lived among them for a dozen years and I never would have expected such a bombshell revelation. Suddenly all my loudly exclaimed defamations of the Nutjob King echoed back at me. “What happened to him? How did he get to be…?”

“Tiernan was very different as a child. We were so close, he and I. Even then, he was mercurial and often taken by strange fancies. One moment he was a sweet, loving little boy who ran to me with every new discovery. A pretty stone or a flower in full bloom—oh, how such things lit up his face with a smile!” She smiled at the memory; a sad, sweet smile that made me want to hug her. “When he was like that, he was utterly enchanting; the perfect little Prince, full of joy and curiosity. He loved me like a mother, and I came to love him like the son I had lost.

“But there was a darkness in him as well. Overwhelming sadness would overtake him with no warning, or a terrible rage would fill every inch of his tiny body. At first, those terrible spells would only last a heartbeat, and everyone said it was just the temperament of a child—but I feared it was something much worse. Soon he was withdrawing from all around him when the moods overtook him, including me. He would rave about the monsters lurking in the shadows, saying we were all out to hurt him. He would spend long nights awake, screaming with terrors. It was terrible to watch. After his brother was born, the bad times came more and more often, lasting longer and longer.

“Those were very difficult years for all who lived in the palace. He seemed to grow out of it with time, though the joyful innocence of the child I raised was long gone. He became a quiet, reserved young man and many thanked the gods that he had outgrown his childish temper. I have long wondered if he had only learned to hide his sickness from those closest to him, but no one listened to my fears before it was too late. By then, the High Queen had passed and the throne was his. When I had held him as a babe, I had hoped he would be as great a King as his mother was a Queen, but somewhere along the way, I lost him too.” She finally looked back up at me. A tear escaped and trickled down her cheek but it was quickly wiped away. “He was supposed to be a better man.”

I didn’t know which she wept for more: her lost child or the surrogate she had seen turn so very dark. I bit my lower lip. To hear my great, faceless nemesis had once been a happy go lucky child playing amongst the flowers was hard. Seeing Seana’s heartbreak was even harder. How it must have hurt her, to be cast aside in the shadow of growing madness. Her little idiosyncrasies started falling into place in my mind, making a strange sort of sense now that I could see a little bit more of the bigger picture. “Is that why you’ve been teaching me, even though you don’t want me out there risking my life? So that I can help stop Tiernan?”

Looking into her eyes was like staring into a pool of still, deep water. Even shimmering with tears, they exuded a primordial compassion that enveloped me. “I do all that I do in Arland’s memory. If I could have my way I would never see another innocent die, especially as a victim of Tiernan’s neglectful rule. While I may not be pleased to see you, a lovely, talented young woman, staining her hands with blood, I understand that these are desperate times. I would rather see you well prepared for what lies ahead of you on this path, rather than railing against the unfairness of a fate that cannot be avoided.” She cleared her throat and wiped at one eye daintily. Her nose was reddened and her eyes glassy, but the naked glimpse I had gotten of her scarred soul well hidden once more. “Now. Shall we continue?”

I nodded, throat tight. How could I refuse her, after what I had just learned? I tried my best to be an attentive student for the rest of the afternoon. I was listening to her describe—far too graphically—a particular breed of swamp-dwelling troll and their hallucinogenic skin secretions when Gannon appeared in the doorway.

I looked up from the notebook that was once again spread open in my lap, my heart instantly ratcheting up to third gear. He looked exhausted, more so than I had ever seen him before. Deep shadows hung beneath his eyes. He watched Seana, who was absorbed in the passage she was reading, for a moment. His eyes flitted over to me and the sorrow in them hit me like a brick.

I sat up straighter. Seana paused, giving him a puzzled look.

His gaze dropped to the floor. He rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. If what I had learned in his company over the past few months was true, he did that when he was uncomfortable. Not a good sign. He cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt, ladies.”

He was hesitating. Gannon. Hesitating. That went against everything I knew to be true about the universe. Doubly not good.

Seana closed her book and set it down on the end table at her side. I could see that crease in her brow as she frowned, the healer’s gears already turning in her head. “That’s quite all right. How can I help you?”

“I’m here for Caitlin.”

In that moment, I wanted to throw up. A million horrible, grisly things flashed through my head: my father coming home after work to find my mother slumped over in a puddle of blood at the kitchen table; my sister, decapitated in some dark back alley; Jenni’s mutilated body being found in the dumpster behind Gilroy’s. The panic must have shown on my face. He held up his hands, as if he was warding off my crazy. “No one has been hurt.”

I let out a gasp of relief. That news was good—but it could only mean one thing. He had come to update me on the hunt for Texas Pete. My heart kicked into high gear, now for a completely different reason. Everything felt floaty and weird; my head spinning. I gripped my notebook so tightly that the metal spiral bit grooves into my fingers. Why wasn’t he looking triumphant? Or battle hungry? Or even smugly satisfied, like he was about most things? He had solved the mystery, saved my sanity, and possibly even my life. Where the hell was that cockiness?

Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. The urge to throw up my bacon and eggs intensified.

I stared at his stricken face until he finally broke. “Liam is gone.”

“Gone?” The word was a whisper that wanted to be hysterics.

He nodded. “Yes. Gone.”

“What do you mean, gone? Gone from the city? The state? Are we talking, took a midnight train going anywhere gone?”

My feeble attempt at humor was lost on him but my rising hysteria was not. I loathed the sympathy I saw in his gaze. “Gone from this earth. You were right. He crossed back over the Veil, to our world.”

He didn’t have to say anything else. I already knew where he would go, now that he knew both who and where I was. Tiernan would pay highly for information on the last Warder. Gannon had done all he could, trapped on this side as he was. Until I found the Lynx—even if I had begged him to pick up the search, to stop that creature from ratting me out to the king—there was nothing else he could do now. Still, I had to try. “There has to be something you can do. Can’t you send someone to stop him?”

The look I drew from both Seana and Gannon was an odd one. They both looked at me like I had lost my mind. Had I suggested something bizarre? It didn’t seem all that strange to me. They got their leads on the Lynx from a source. I didn’t know much about the shadowy network of informants that seemed to be at their beck and call and, to be honest, I had never really wanted to know. If they had some sort of crazy fae mafia connections, it was all the better that I kept my nose out of it—until now.

When I said as much, Gannon just shook his head. “We can’t do that.”