He frowned, confused, and she wondered if her own words sounded slow and laborious to his ears. “Life is sacrifice, Siora,” he said. “Hard choices. Stay with me and Estred. Share your hours and days with us.” The plea in his question wrenched her to her soul.
She couldn’t think of anything finer, and his words—his expression—sent her heart soaring, then plummeting. “The ghost-eater can’t remain here. I have to exile it somehow, cast it out of Midrigar, out of this world entirely. For you, for Estred, for all of us—so that when we die, we won’t dread what comes afterward.”
“You have no idea how to battle such a monster,” he snapped, eyes flashing with frustration and fear. Fear for her.
“No, I don’t, but I’ll figure it out.” She exhaled a sigh of relief when her father’s spirit appeared beside her, bolstering her conviction she was doing the right thing, making the right choice, though it felt as if someone were slashing at her insides. She yearned with her entire being to step beyond Midrigar’s gates and join the father and daughter she’d fallen in love with in different times and different ways. It was not to be.
Siora raised a hand to wave. “You both sleep in my soul,” she said. “Farewell.” She put her back to the gate and walked away, not turning around once, not even when Gharek shouted her name and begged her to come back.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She’d abandoned them yet again for some noble cause that would likely get her killed, and even worse, get her soul devoured like those she sought to save.
Gharek cried out Siora’s name several times, imploring her to join him and Estred, to flee Midrigar. Estred herself had called out as well, the child’s siren song powerful enough to make Siora pause in walking away but not powerful enough to make her turn around. Her slim shoulders shook for a moment before her back stiffened and she strode deeper into Midrigar to disappear behind a derelict building, the strange mist trailing alongside her.
“Will she come back?” Estred asked with a sniffle.
“Yes, love,” he replied, and hugged her. If he had any say in the matter. He just had to figure out how without endangering Estred. He kept a tight hold on his daughter and took her farther into the woodland but always with the gate in sight in case Siora decided to abandon her maddening nobility and return to them.
It would be best if he took Estred and left altogether, put leagues between him and the cursed city with its fatal bewitchments and an ethereal shackle with his name on it.
“We can’t leave Siora, Papa,” Estred protested, thumping his shoulder with her chin.
“We aren’t, love. Just putting some distance between us and trouble while I think of a plan.” He leaned back to peer into her worried features. “Are you all right? No injuries?”
His heart had trebled its already rapid beat when he caught sight of her in Siora’s arms, surrounded by an eerie luminescence in the middle of a plaza under a weirdly convulsing sky. His blood had curdled in his veins as he drew closer to a grandiose temple whose entrance spilled a blackness over the steps, reeking of malice, of hunger. The awful, familiar tug on his spine froze the blood in his veins.
The terrifying compulsion of the geas had made running away a hard struggle. He hadn’t paused for niceties or assurances before taking Estred and urging Siora to flee with him to the gates, feet flying across uneven ground in a bid to outrun the inevitable net cast by the ghost-eater.
“I’m fine,” Estred said. “But I’m thirsty.”
Gharek paused in replying when the sound of voices reached his ears. He pressed a finger to his lips to signal silence. Estred nodded. He carried her toward a concealing clump of underbrush and let her slip from his arms. At his wordless gesture, she crouched behind the barrier of scrubby vegetation.
He paced several steps away from her and pulled the newly acquired knife he’d taken from a Maesor stall as he passed through the market to reach Midrigar. He was prepared to defend against whatever adversary was headed in their direction. The tree he stood behind didn’t offer much in the way of concealment, but it didn’t matter. He only needed to stay hidden long enough to gain the upper hand in an ambush.
Judging by volume, one person was close. “Maybe they’ve already cleared out.”
“They’d have to be faster than a deer to cover that much ground in so little time,” another said.
They hadn’t yet made it into his field of view, but Gharek thought he recognized the second voice.
“It could have been a deer.”
“Shouting curses and calling someone’s name? What kind of deer have you come across when you’re out hunting?”
Gharek’s hopes soared, though he remained wary and reminded Estred with a series of hand motions to stay where she was. He tucked the knife away but still within easy reach in case he was wrong and had to face another new threat.
At the snap of a twig underfoot, he stepped out from behind the tree and almost took a crossbow bolt to the gut for his trouble. “Don’t shoot,” he said, arms spread in a gesture of surrender.
Kursak, the wagon master for the free trader caravan that had a draga living among them, held a crossbow aimed on him and a bolt nocked and ready to fire. His eyes rounded. “Cat’s-paw?”
Gharek nodded. “I need your help,” he said. “So does Siora.”
The wagon master lowered his bow a fraction, his expression wary and not at all welcoming. “What are you doing back here at Midrigar, and where is Siora?”
His eyebrows arched and the crossbow lowered a little more when Gharek told him, “I have my daughter with me.” At her father’s signal, Estred slowly emerged from her hiding place before darting to shelter behind him.
Confusion replaced the suspicion on Kursak’s face. Hiscompanion’s expression mirrored the wagon master’s. “What are you doing lurking about Midrigar at all, much less with your child in tow?” He didn’t wait for Gharek’s reply before firing off another question. “And was that you shouting nonsense to the heavens earlier?”