PROMISE

CHAPTER 13

"I think we should talk."

Hain stepped over the bushes rising from the peaty earth and scowled. Twice now Lilith had mentioned a 'need to talk', and twice now he'd shut her down.

"There's nothing to talk about."

Hain could almost taste the lie. There was something to talk about. Many, many somethings, starting with Lilith's hitherto unknown talent for walking through solid stone, and ending with how she'd called off a Cat who had, until she'd appeared, been ready to eat him.

Except, he couldn't. Not now. Not while his feelings were running so hot. Not while the sense of betrayal sat so deep inside his bones.

Rumors had followed Lilith since the day she'd passed through Echo's gates, the whispers trailing her like shadows from the gutter pubs in the lowliest part of the haven to the Regent's Court in the Keep.

Cursed.

Abomination.

Demon.

But not from Hain. Never from Hain. Because he was different. Because he'd never believe them. Not that she was evil, and not that she was a demon. No matter what, he'd never let his mind go there.

Now things felt different, his faith in his friend shaken. Lilith had literally walked them through two feet of solid stone with nothing more than a giggle and a promise to explain later. He wanted to trust her. To believe that it really was nothing. But no matter how hard he tried to shoehorn the event inside a mundane explanation, the thing just wouldn't fit.

"Hoxew wouldn't have done anything to hurt you," she said. "And you saw how he ran off when I told him to."

Hain's cheeks flushed crimson as he remembered the inky splotches dotting his vision in those moments before he'd fainted. Still, he said nothing.

"Isn't that proof?" she said. "Can't you see that you weren't in any danger?"

"I don't know, Lilith." Hain paused, thinking through his next words. "I need some time to think about it."

He heard Lilith huff from behind him, but she said say nothing more. The conversation seemed to die there, but Hain knew this wasn't the end of it. He needed to think.

Hain turned his attention back to the wood around him, and felt his resentment toward her recede a bit at the sight of it.

Trees stood thick around them, their moss-clad trunks stretching to the canopy like the frozen legs of giants, while a wet miasma of decay mingled with the dry tang of evergreens. Birdsong echoed all around them, mournful as lost love.

The look of this place, he thought as wonder bloomed in his chest. This wasn't the Godless of his boyhood–the forest he grew up fearing. Nightmares ruled that place. Nightmares borne from the Faith's fear of the Cats. Their fear of things like Lilith.

But this place–magic lived here. Hain was sure of it. Life bubbled everywhere. Every surface. Every breath of air filling the space between the trees.

Magic, he thought. Untamed. Free from the Faithful, and the Bishop, and their god. That god who accused. That god who hated. That god who'd set the rules of this world, and tailored them to his will, only so that Hain could be born into condemnation for merely existing.

That god who hated Lilith. That god who'd allowed her parents to abandon her in the Godless for reasons only known to him. That god who'd allowed the Cats to find her. To take her in. To raise her. Only to send her back as Homage to the humans who'd forsaken her, so she might silence the drums of war between Echo and the Clans.