Bereft: Foretold

49 | A Final Parting

The house in Verweald's Evergreen Acres was the same as I'd left it: disorderly, but clean. Filled with my misery and my loneliness, her memories and her scent. Only days ago I'd cursed this house—had cursed this entire city—and yet so soon it felt like home, like the place where I belonged. It was where I decided to take her. 

Appearing in the living room, I tossed the black mage toward the armchair and lowered Sara to the couch. I tipped her chin to the side and felt her pulse again, then measured the steadiness of her breath against my palm. I needn't have worried, as she was still resting, lost to those unknowable dreams that lurked in the depths of her slumber. 

She was home. Safe. 

The street beyond the front window was drenched in the rich colors of the late afternoon and it was warmer here, the clutches of winter long since vanquished in these western climes. The dry heat in the air was reminiscent of the summer, when I'd first met Sara Gaspard, and when I'd laid her on this sofa for the first time.

I'd been a recalcitrant creature then. I liked to think I was different now, that I'd grown in some manner, but I knew I was the same Sin I'd always been.

As Cage groaned and situated himself in the armchair, I sat on the coffee table's edge and stared toward the window, hands clasped before myself.

"How long have you been in the Baal's service? How did your association come into being?" I asked, the demand implicit in my uttered words. "Did he send you to spy on me? To report to him?"

"Not exactly." He sunk into the cushions, legs sprawled before himself, and exhaled. He did so with the mien of a man releasing a crippling burden. "He encourages me to chase information, to follow whatever attracts my interest. His instructions are rarely explicit, but every so often events occur that he feels require monitoring, and I am bid to entrench myself in the issue, feeding him information."

"You didn't answer me." I steepled my fingers as I lifted my feet to crouch at the table's lip—like a gargoyle, Sara had once said. "How long have you been reporting to him? How are you associated?"

"It's not obvious?" He fanned a hand across his face as the sun glowed on his simpering smile. "I'm the latest in a long line of shadeborns created by the King Below. We are somewhat like a true King's familiars, though it is not quite the same. We are...imperfect. I am not immortal. I am not omnipotent. He can channel his awareness through me when he so chooses, though I've since learned to...suppress this awareness. I do not enjoy possession nor being a victim to his fitful rage—though that's a story for another time, I'd wager."

The Baal's shadeborn? I knew Kings created familiars but hadn't considered that the King Below would attempt to create something similar. I wondered if there were more men or women like Cage out in the world, acting as the Baal's unseen spies, relaying information about this realm to his pointed ears. The King was not as ambivalent as he pretended.

"Well." Cage got to his feet and grumbled about his sore back as he came to the couch. One of his hands was broken, finger swollen to twice the proper size, but the mage was unconcerned with it for the moment. He propped a hip against the couch's side and crossed his arms, looking down at Sara. "What will you do now?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly what I said: what will you do now? Are you going to insinuate yourself into her life? Be her partner? Her demon? Though your soul has been healed, you still require a host, do you not?"

I blinked, lowering my gaze toward the dusty floor. 

"You're not answering me, Pride."

"Do not presume answers from me, mage. I owe you nothing."