Griffin’s stomach wrenched into a tight knot. He couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “Because you’re not ready. You have to grow your power. You saw Rendicryss and heard the voice. Your mother’s voice.”
She looked at Griffin, startled and confused. “You heard her too?” She sounded relieved, then her expression soured. “First I thought the woman in the other memories Rendicryss showed me, the banshee who cursed me, was my mother, and now this woman calls me daughter? She couldn’t even show her face!”
“Maggie—”
She beat the bars. “I suppose it shouldn’t matter who my mother is. She abandoned me!” she said, way too loudly. “Whoever she was, she left me in the middle of the woods! Gleefully, no less! What kind of a person does that? And for what? Destiny? Prophecy? Conquest? So more can come? If they’re anything like she is, who wants them here?”
Rendicryss whined, likely in agreement.
Maggie looked at Griffin as if he had answers . . . and maybe he did. “Rendicryss saw your mother, as you did, and I did. Maggie, she was and simply is the moon.”
Griffin looked up, blinking through raindrops. Maggie too.
When he stared into her eyes again, he saw confusion melt to comprehension. He nodded. Griffin cupped Maggie’s cheeks, wiping the mixture of rain and tears spilling down them. “She gave you a great power. A weapon that can free Rendicryss.”
“A weapon I don’t know how to use!” She looked at Rendicryss, and her face crumpled. “We have to get her out of here!”
The ground shook. Chains on pulley wheels creaked. The gate in the arena was going up. The match was over.
“We have to go!” Griffin said, but Maggie didn’t move. “Perig and all the guards are about to descend upon us. Maggie, please!” Griffin started to walk away. He wouldn’t force her. Not this time. She needed to decide if she was willing to trust him. He looked back and saw Rendicryss shaking her head and scraping her hind legs, moving away from Maggie’s reach. When she didn’t leave, the dragon swung her head, banging the bars.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but she knows I’m right, Maggie. She wants us to go.”
Maggie gave the tiniest of nods, and they ran.
As they sprinted out the open gate, Griffin heard Perig yelling. Twenty soldiers posted outside of the Oughtnoch’s wall paid little attention to two dressed similarly to themselves, running away from the crazed gamekeeper. They probably wanted to do the like.
Griffin’s mind raced as they climbed the stairs, taking two and three at a time. Rendicryss wasn’t a monster. She was intelligent, and she loved Maggie, and was distraught at not being able to find her. “Your mother said those draignochs would’ve been like Rendicryss if they’d stayed in their forest. What do you think would happen if they returned?”
“You’re changing your mind about them?”
Griffin’s sword weighed heavier on his belt with every new step he took. “They killed my parents. They killed many.”
“So have you.”
Maggie scooted into an alcove, catching her breath. Griffin slid beside her.
“Killing them didn’t bring your parents back, Griffin. I don’t think they’d want you spending your life avenging them in this forsaken place. That’s not living, is it?”
He shook his head. He could barely speak past the lump in his throat. He took her hand and pulled her out of the alcove, back into the rain, and started climbing again. “Let’s go to the tavern and dispose of these clothes.”
“I rather prefer these clothes to the flamboyant costumes Jori puts in my room,” she huffed, keeping pace with him.
“You smell, Maggie. Badly.”
She sniffed. “Really? I’m not sure I can smell it any longer.”
“How nice for you. . . .”
Thoma was unlocking the tavern door when they arrived. His gray cloak soaked and dripping. He shook his wheat hair, glued to his head like a wet dog, in greeting.
“Oof, you two are more of a mess than I am. Come.” As soon as Thoma got a fire going in the hearth in the middle of the room, Griffin unclasped Maggie’s dung-drenched cloak and threw it on the flames.
He knew Thoma had no time for them. He had work to do. Stools were still stacked on tables. Kegs needed tapping. Thirsty crowds would descend soon, and he was likely due at Hugo’s shop shortly. Thoma draped his cloak on a hearthstone and started on the stools. Griffin helped him.
“Where’s your father?” Griffin asked. It was unlike Thoma to return alone.
“At the market,” Thoma explained. “How did you get here so fast from the arena and why are you dressed like that?”
“It’s a long story.” Griffin removed the red cloak. “Did you have other clothing? This outfit might give you away,” he said to Maggie.
“I lost my dress. I don’t suppose you have an old flame’s downstairs?” Maggie asked, cocking an eyebrow in expectation of an answer.
Thoma laughed at him, giving away that the possibility existed. Griffin glared at him.
“No. Griffin would never,” Thoma clarified. “I know of something that might do. Follow me.”
He led them upstairs, to Thoma’s father’s room. Griffin had never been in here before. His father was a very private man. It looked like Thoma’s, bare mostly, with only necessities. A bed, wardrobe, and washing table. Thoma lifted the lid on a wooden trunk beneath the only window.
“My mother’s clothes are in here.”
The musty smell of wool stacked away too long filled the room.
“Take what you need.”
“Are you sure?” Maggie asked him.
He smiled warmly. “Been seventeen years since this has been opened. Da won’t mind.”
Griffin wasn’t sure that was true. Thoma’s mother had died when he was born. His father never remarried. Never talked about women. Never looked at a single one in the tavern. “You find one worth dying for, and she feels the same,” he told Griffin one night when he’d had too much to drink. “That kind of love is enough to carry you even when you’re not together, because no matter what, in this life or the next, you know you’ll find each other.”
Griffin had never believed in love. He’d never believed in magic either.
Maggie lifted the first one, a simple wool dress dyed dark blue. “This is perfect.”
Griffin waited for her downstairs, helping Thoma finish the stools and carry up enough kegs to be grateful he didn’t have to do this anymore.
As they set the last one behind the bar, Griffin remembered the tournament. “How did Oak do?” he asked Thoma.
Thoma shifted filled mug trays from the drying rack to the bar. “You left the tournament and time with your precious king and prince to go to the Oughtnoch with her? I know she can, you know”—he leaned in even though the room was empty—“heal things. Dres told me. And Da, and most of the tavern that night.” He plunked another tray down. “She’s quite the celebrity round the Bottom for healing that boy . . . but she must be something really special for you to do all that, risk being caught, for her.”
Griffin hammered the tap into a keg harder than necessary. “I went because she’s headstrong and foolish and was going to do something that would’ve likely ended with her dead.”