He winced as he said this. He’d used more energy as he’d shifted. He felt something trickling down his side as his veins pulsed with poison. He saw the blackness that ran along his veins and arteries darkening. He swallowed.
“But you’ve never felt like a peasant, have you?” Marikoth countered.
“What are you talking about--”
“You’ve always felt special. Different.”
“Everyone feels that way.”
“But not everyone can drain life from the land,” Marikoth hissed.
“No, I suppose not. You say that there are only the two of us who can.”
And then the answer to that mystery popped into Finn’s head. It was so simple. It was so obvious, but it was also absurd. It couldn’t be true! He didn’t want it to be true, but parents passed down their abilities to their children.
And his father was a Fae…
Marikoth was a Fae.
Marikoth claimed they had the same magic.
That they were the only two who did.
Could Marikoth be his father?
No, no, no! It cannot be. Yet this thought had Finn’s tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. Mother would never have loved anyone like Marikoth. There is nothing soft or warm or loving about him. He’s cold and broken and… no, he can’t be my father. He can’t!
Perhaps if Marikoth were his father it would explain why his mother had not sought out his help. Perhaps instead of the great love affair that she had hinted at, Marikoth had tricked her into bedding him just like he’d pretended to be Rohan for Finn. Maybe she had never told Marikoth about being pregnant with his child because of this. Maybe she’d been tricked in the most intimate and terrible way and Finn was the result. Whatever he’d thought of his Fae father before, he had never contemplated it being someone like Marikoth…
He can’t be my father! I refuse to believe this!
“Ah, I see you’ve come to the same conclusion as I have. We must be family,” Marikoth’s voice was right in his ear. Finn jerked his head to the side, and he was looking into Marikoth’s red eyes.
“No, that’s impossible! We are not related!” Finn shouted.
“It is ridiculous. And yet…”
“There’s no yet!”
“Only my family produces Death Mages, Finn,” Marikoth said with a sad smile, “so you have to be kin to me.”
“NO!”
The world spun for a moment and Finn thought he would vomit. His side felt like it was on fire. He curled forward and rocked. Marikoth touched his shoulder. It was a brief touch, but a pulse of energy flowed between them. Cold sweat coated Finn’s brow, but the world was no longer a spinning top.
Then Marikoth continued to speak, “Now the question is: are you my father’s bastard? He hates humans, but love and hate are so intertwined that I wouldn’t put it past him to dally with a human lover and abandon a baby.” Marikoth shook his head as if dissatisfied with that explanation. “Or perhaps you are my precious baby brother’s whelp? That’s most likely impossible, because he would have killed you at the first signs of you being a Death Mage.” Marikoth tilted his head to the side as he looked down upon Finn’s with an almost vulpine look as he said softly, “Then, of course, you could be… mine.”
“NO!”
“You fear that. That I could be your father?”
“You’re not my father.”
Finn swallowed hard and found he couldn’t look away from Marikoth’s red gaze. Could this be his father? He searched that beautiful face for something, some trace of his own features, or, better yet, some evidence of a person his mother could have loved. He saw nothing, and he felt nothing but dread.
“I have taken my share of human lovers over the years,” Marikoth mused. “You could be the result of a dalliance. Though… though I thought that impossible.”
His voice had dipped down at the end, and, for a moment, there was something like sadness in his eyes, but it was gone so quickly that Finn doubted he’d actually seen it. Perhaps he had imagined it. For though he had always told himself he didn’t care about his nameless, faceless Fae father, perhaps deep down he did.
“If I’m your--your brother or nephew or… son,” Finn managed to get the last option out with great difficulty, “shouldn’t you want to help me? Shouldn’t you want to save me?”
“Oh, no, for you could be a rival,” Marikoth murmured. “I told you that I can’t let you get in way of my plans.”
Finn swallowed, trying to get some blessed liquid in his dry as dust mouth, and lied, “Or I could be your student. Your helper. Your…friend.”
Marikoth regarded him, unblinking, as he said those things. Silence, as heavy as a mountain, fell between them. The Fae’s expression was completely unreadable. Finn wouldn’t have said he didn’t mean what he was saying exactly. If Marikoth really were family to him then maybe… just maybe they could come to understand one another.
Finally, Marikoth said, “I’m going to give you some very important advice. And I’ll give it for free.”
“What advice?”
“Family will betray you in a heartbeat. Remember that,” Marikoth said and straightened. “You do not have anything to trade with me. So I think--”
In that moment, Finn arched backwards so hard and fast, he thought his spine would snap from it. His mouth opened and his eyes rolled back into his head. He saw nothing but blackness at first, but then he was staring into the face of a spider. A spider so large that he could see reflections in its eyes. He looked closely at those reflections, even as his stomach revolted at looking so closely into its eye cluster. He let out a cry of shock and horror. He saw Rohan with a sword in the spider’s eyes.
Rohan was in terrible trouble! Possibly even worse than his own!
HONOR
The spider that slowly lowered itself from an overhanging branch to the clearing was twice Rohan’s height and many times his width. As its eight legs--each as thick as a sapling and over ten feet long--stabbed into the ground, the brown-eyed woman screamed. The spider’s body was a glossy black with a red deathshead on its abdomen, as if to proclaim to all the world that it was death personified.
Its fangs dripped a clear fluid that, when it made contact with the grass, it blackened and smoked. There was a clicking sound as those fangs moved in and out, and a thin hiss like steam from a kettle was released from its mouth. The spider’s eyes--there were eight of them pressed together in the center of its head--reflected back Rohan and Lightbringer. He knew that it was angry because he was taking its prey. Or attempting to, in any event. Rohan guessed the creature thought that with him and Serxio there it just had two more creatures to feed upon.
“Cut my chains! Cut them!” The black-haired man shrieked. He had only one more ankle to be freed from the pillar. “Save me! You can’t save all of us! Save me!”
“Don’t leave us! Oh, by the gods, don’t!” begged the woman who had been shaking so badly before.
The man who had already been on his knees just gibbered as he stared at the spider.
Serxio breathed, “Rohan, there’s more than one.”