Chapter 71. The Man Who Gave Millie Sweets Came Back to Keep He

Chapter 71: 71. The Man Who Gave Millie Sweets Came Back to Keep He

It was a grim, tired, bitter thought.

I hated the part of me that had learned to expect it, and I hated the system for making me feel it.

It was a rank, a name, and a danger. It was a person on the other end of that notification, and for the first time... the window made me want to scream.

We rounded the last corner.

The corridor outside the shrine was a wreck. Six Hearth Guards lay sprawled on the stones in the torchlight, their weapons scattered and their faces slack.

I dropped to one knee beside the nearest and pressed two fingers to her neck and found a slow, steady pulse... Unconscious, and thank god... Not dead.

The great stone door at the end of the hall stood slightly ajar. A thin sliver of white light was spilling out of it across the floor.

Sylvara gripped my sleeve.

"Leon," she said, in a very small voice.

I nodded. I drew Gate Junior with a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking, and we went in.

The domed hall was full of light.

A pillar of it was falling from the ceiling, a column of pure, cold, and silver radiance that poured down through a perfect round hole in the dome and spilled across the glass floor like water.

It was beautiful... It was beautiful in the way a storm is beautiful when you’re standing in it.

The mirror at the far end of the room had gone brilliant white, and the pool beneath it glowed from within like a lantern.

A man stood in the middle of the pillar, brushing snow from his shoulders.

He looked entirely at ease. He had come down a hundred feet of sheer rock without a rope, apparently, and he was straightening his spectacles with the faint, apologetic air of a guest who had arrived a bit early.

Three golden-armored Chosen stood behind him in a loose half circle, smiling serenely. And in front of them, a few feet from the edge of the pool, a woman in a gold breastplate and a lion’s mane of tawny hair stood with a long-hafted halberd resting against her shoulder.

She was tall and broad, with a thick, lazy braid down her back and a smile so warm and loving that I felt it in my chest.

A halo of pale gold crystal glinted at the base of her throat. And I can see her eyes were the color of honey.

I’d never seen a smile that made me want to be sick before... and who would’ve thought that this asshole was a few steps ahead?

"Please forgive the intrusion," said Cassian Vael. "I did knock... But the shaft... it’s rather high."

On the far side of the pool, Millie stood with her back to the mirror.

She was very pale, but she hadn’t run. She had planted her feet on the glass, and her hands were clenched in front of her, and her ears were flat against her skull.

Bonette stood in front of her, small and plain and furious, with a silver knife in each hand. The ring of Hearth Guard that should have been around them lay in a crumpled heap against the wall.

Cassian turned his gaze upon Millie. His whole face softened, with such gentle, naked affection that it almost seemed real.

"Hello, little moon," he said. "Do you remember me?"

Millie made a small, wounded sound.

I saw it hit her... It was a physical thing, like watching someone get struck by lightning.

Her eyes went wide and glassy, and her hand rose slowly to her temple, and a faint ripple of silver light ran through her hair.

The seal was moving. I could see the memory rising in her face, surfacing from some deep and frozen place.

A garden, I think... A sunlit garden with white roses and a young man with round glasses kneeling in the grass.

He was holding out something wrapped in blue paper. He was laughing, and it was a warm, kind, happy laugh, and a very small girl was reaching for it with both hands.

"Uncle Cass," Millie whispered.

Cassian’s face glowed. "Ahaaa..."

"Yes..." he said softly. "Yes... that is right, little moon."

"You... gave me sweets."

"I did... I always did for my favorite."

"You said that... you’d keep me safe."

"And so I shall fulfill that today." He spread his hands with a bright, tender, joyful smile. "I kept your mother’s secrets, little moon."

"And I kept your real name..." Cassian gets closer. "Today... I have come now to keep you."

I charged.

I don’t know what I thought I was going to do. I’d run about thirty feet across that glass floor before something came down in front of me with a crash like a falling tree, and a long gold blade hit the floor an inch from my toes.

Aurelith Goldenmane smiled at me.

"Good morning," she said, in a rich, warm, delighted voice. "You must be the little thief! Master has told me so much about you!"

The halberd came around in a flat arc, too fast to see. I got Gate Junior up.

And it was a mistake.

The impact hit like a truck. And Bulwark did nothing at all.

I was lifted off my feet and thrown twenty feet through the air, and I hit the wall with a crunch that I felt in every bone in my body.

"Gghhh...!" I gritted my teeth.

I slid down it and lay there for a second, looking at the ceiling.

’Ouch,’ I thought, distantly.

"Leon!" Sylvara screamed.

She had raised her staff, and the small violet flame at its tip flared into a roaring torch. Threads of light shot out across the hall like a spider’s web, wrapping around Aurelith’s arms and legs.

But the crystal at the lionkin’s throat gave a brilliant golden pulse, and the threads slid off her like water off oil.

"Oh, how pretty," Aurelith said.

She sounded genuinely pleased. "But no, thank you."

She swatted the threads aside like cobwebs. Sylvara gasped and staggered back, a trickle of blood running from her nose.

I tried to get up. But my legs didn’t want to work.

My vision was swimming, and my ribs were screaming, and somewhere across the hall... a very kind voice was still talking.

I couldn’t see Bonette’s face. She had her back to me.

But I heard her voice, and I’ll hear it for the rest of my life.

It was... perfectly calm.

"You were the kindest man I ever knew, Master Cassian," she said. "That is... how I know what kind of human you are."

"Bonette." Cassian sighed. "Dear, loyal Bonette,"

"You were always the cleverest of them... I wondered whether you would recognize me."

"You taught me to read, and... you taught me to write my own name." She was shaking, very slightly, from head to foot. "You sat with me every night when I was sick!"

"And the whole time, you were just keeping us."

"I was keeping you safe."

"No! You were collecting us."

Cassian tilted his head.

For an instant, I saw something flicker behind those warm gray eyes, something very old and cold and tired. It was gone before I could name it.

"I do not hate the beastkin," he said gently. "I want you to understand that first."

"I have never hated any of you, and yes... I love you, Bonette. I love all of you, as one loves a perfect and fragile thing." He opened his hands. "But... I knew that the world is going to destroy you."

"Every year there are fewer of you... Every century, the humans grow bolder." He clenched his fists. "In another thousand years... there will be nothing left but a few bones in a museum!"

His voice softened. "I only wish to preserve you... safe, and happy, and loyal, and unbroken, forever."

"Surely you of all people can understand wanting to keep what is beautiful from being lost."

Bonette didn’t answer.

But... She moved.

I have never seen anything so fast.

One moment she was standing in front of Millie in her dusty robe, with her hair hacked off short and her face drawn with fear, and the next she had crossed fifteen feet of glass floor in a silver blur.

Her knives slashed in a tight X. Three Chosen stepped in front of Cassian, and she took them apart in a handful of heartbeats, ducking under a sword, kicking a woman’s knee out from under him, slamming a pommel into a woman’s temple.

She slipped past them like water. She came up in front of Cassian with her blade at his throat.

For a heartbeat, I thought she’d done it.

Then I saw his eyes. He was smiling, patient, and serene, like a teacher who had been waiting for his pupil to finish her sum.

He tilted his head very slightly, and her blade drew a thin line of red across his collar, and he didn’t flinch.

"Very good," he said softly. "Looks like you’ve really improved, Bonette... I taught you that."

He moved so gently that I almost didn’t see it.

I would like to say that I screamed. And... I would like to say I threw myself across the room.

In truth, I was still on my hands and knees on the floor, trying to get my legs under me. I saw his hand come out of his sleeve and the long, pale blade that it held.

It was made of glass... clear and bright as ice, with a faint silver shimmer inside it.

He... slid it into her chest.

It went in so softly. And that’s... what I remember.

It was so quiet, like pushing a needle into cloth. And Bonette’s eyes went wide.

Her knives slipped from her fingers and rang on the floor. She looked down at the hilt against her robe, and then up at him... and she didn’t look surprised.

"I am so sorry, Bonette," Cassian murmured, and his voice was warm and rich and heartbroken. "You were always the most loyal of them all..."