As the assembly cleared out, Drake leaned close to his mother. “Now that we’re done with all that, it’s time for you to explain everything. The reason I’m here, the reason Lord Crow summoned me, and why you fled after talking with the silverwood.”

She nodded graciously. “Of course, Lord Gloomwood.”

“You don’t have to call me that when it’s just us.”

She smiled knowingly. “I thought everyone in your manor was free to make their own choices. Am I the only one who must obey?”

He sighed and watched people file out of the courtyard. “Do what you like.”

“It would be best if only we speak of the matters that transpired twenty-five years ago. Can I not convince you to speak with me alone before you invite the others?”

“No,” Drake said firmly. “Lydia needs to know everything I do, as does Samuel, though I’ll keep it from everyone else if it’s terrifying enough. But I can’t lead this manor alone, and those two have helped me out of more scraps than I can remember.”

Marissa inclined her head. “If it is your wish to include them, I will not oppose you. But while I know you have altered the blood pact since you arrived, it is still possible for you to compel your people not to reveal our secrets in front of others. Isn’t it?”

“If they agree to that, and only while they agree.”

“They will,” Marissa assured him.

He didn’t like how certain she sounded about that. “So where are we having our chat?”

“The study would be best. The manor’s walls are thick and warded, but the study is the one room I know for certain we will not be overheard.”

“So where’s that?”

Her brow furrowed in surprise. “No one here has shown you the study?”

“I was busy trying not to die.”

“I see.” Marissa lightly tapped her cheek in thought. “If you do not know of the study, I suppose it may not have been opened in some time. I hope it isn’t musty in there.”

Drake frowned. “Can we go now, please?”

Marissa turned and walked off the stage. “This way.”

Lydia waited at the eastern door leading out of the courtyard. Drake had told her they were going to chat after the assembly, and he assumed Samuel would be along shortly as well. Once he and his mother arrived, Lydia offered him a warning glance.

“What you did was not necessary.”

He grinned. “Oh, I disagree.”

“You remain too modest,” Marissa said. “Every word my son spoke about you is true.”

Lydia inclined her head. “Thank you, Lady Gloomwood.”

“Now where’s Samuel?” Drake asked. “Don’t tell me he ran off to check his spy messages.”

“No,” Lydia said. “He awaits us at the study.” She looked at Marissa. “I assumed that was the best place to discuss the matter we could not discuss on the road.”

Marissa smiled warmly. “It is.”

Drake threw up his hands. “Why did no one tell me I had a study?”

“You never asked.” Lydia opened the door and led them inside. “Also, there was no way to enter the study until recently. That matter greatly vexed Lord Crow.”

As he followed Lydia through Gloomwood Manor with Marissa at his side, Drake glanced at her in wonder. “Wait, what did you do to the study?”

“I locked it.”

He remembered his mother’s rarity. Ward weaving. It allowed her to create magical locks only certain people could open. That hadn’t seemed that useful, not until...

“So even future Lord Gloomwoods couldn’t get in there?”

“Joshua could,” Marissa said. “The wards I made ensured entry to the study could only be gained by someone whom the lord of Gloomwood Manor personally invited inside. Given Joshua did not invite the man who killed him, that man could never enter my study.”

“That’s clever,” Drake agreed. “So what if you’d never returned to open it up?”

“I suppose someone would have eventually walled it up.”

They ascended a set of stairs and moved into the manor. Drake knew the floor plan well enough to know about where they were now—in the heart—but there were still so many rooms in this place he could spend days exploring and never memorize them all.

Marissa knew the manor, though. She knew it all. Maybe after he’d done this a few more years, he’d know the manor as well as she did. If he could get a few days without a major crisis landing in his lap or some asshole trying to suck his blood out through his eyes.

It wasn’t long before they turned down a hall with no visible doors save one at the end of it. The hallway widened out at the dead end, like the top of a T. There, two fine wooden doors made of silverwood stood closed and locked. They’d been cleaned recently.

Samuel stood beside the pair of closed doors with his hands clasped behind his back. As Drake examined the perfectly normal-looking doors ahead, he saw only two small keyholes and nothing else. Had this study really remained locked for near on twenty years?

“So no one can open those?” Drake looked at the walls. “What if you tried to cut in from the side or the floor?”

“The ward that contains the study guards this room on all sides,” Lydia said. “We learned that when Lord Kest, the lord before Crow, ordered us to hammer open the walls. He was vexed when we failed to provide him entry. Esme only talked him down by...”

She trailed off at what was obviously a dark memory.

Marissa touched her shoulder. “That is the past. We must look to the future.”

Lydia nodded and looked at Marissa. “I fear I will never stop missing her.”

“As will I,” Marissa said. “But with you as steward, our manor remains strong.”

Lydia rested her hand on Marissa’s and then stepped back. “I leave the rest to you.”

Marissa walked confidently to the doors. Drake expected her to say some magic words or make some magic gestures. Instead, she touched her thumb to the lock on the rightmost of the two doors. It clicked and opened inward onto a darkened interior.

“Remarkable,” Samuel said quietly. “I’d never thought to see that door opened again.”

Marissa glanced back and smiled at Drake as she pushed the door open with an open palm. “Now, Lord Gloomwood. Please, enter my stu—”

A bear-sized, midnight-black spider leapt out of the study and tackled his mother to the ground. Its fangs sank into her. The world slowed to a crawl as Samuel stiffened, Lydia pulled her glowing knives from her skirt, and Drake froze.

Spider. Giant spider. Giant fucking spider.

Drake slammed it in the face with fullstop.

The impact flung the spider off his mother and tossed it back into the study. Every arachnophobic sense in his body was screaming at Drake to flee, but the rest wanted blood.

This monster had attacked his mother.

As Samuel snatched a long knife from his boot Drake slid back, boots grinding the thick carpet. The huge spider was on its feet, all eight feet, and its mandibles clacked menacingly as it struggled toward the open doors. Drake raised his other hand and pushed, but keeping the spider at bay was like trying to push a car uphill. He was holding it back... but only just.

A line of purple butterflies slashed into the darkened study. Glowing spirit knives pierced the spider’s side and abdomen repeatedly. Blood spattered. Even as the creature chittered and spun toward her, Lydia vanished. She appeared behind it and stabbed away.

As the huge black spider thrashed, spun about, and snapped, Lydia stabbed and vanished twice more. She savaged the monster as Drake gradually gained the upper hand. The flat of one leg slammed into her and sent her flying. Lydia hit the wall and dropped.

Before the spider could go after her, Drake channeled fullstop with all his might. “No, fuck you!” Now wounded and facing all his rage, the spider slid back. Gleaming black blood oozed from its many wounds, wounds Lydia had torn open with her speed, bravery, and knives.

As Drake brought one fist back, the spider lurched forward with a hiss. His clenched fist returned with a vengeance. He hammered the spider backward like a flimsy piece of paper caught in a strong wind. The eight-legged monster slammed into a set of cabinets at the back of the study. It rolled off, legs curled tight, but Drake didn’t let it scramble to its feet.

He punched again and again, using both fists as battering rams. He punched that spider much harder than he had punched Elaran. This monster has bitten his mother and kicked his Lydia, and he was going to pound it into those cabinets until it was fucking paste. He was still punching when someone grabbed him from behind. He elbowed them hard.

“You have bested it!” Samuel roared in his ear. “You are destroying the study, and we must help Lady Gloomwood now!”

Drake threw another punch and heard wood crack, but the cracking, squishing sound had ceased. There was no spider in the study any longer. There was a massive amount of blackish blood, and something pulped. Like a grape that had been stepped on and then rotted in the sun. There were thin black sticks throughout the study, or... legs. Those were spider legs.

Drake trembled, recovered himself, and dropped gasping to his mother’s side.

Marissa’s features were pale. While she was breathing, each rattling breath sounded like the last one she was going to take. Spittle coursed from her mouth as she desperately sucked in each breath. Her eyes were wide with the horror of not being able to breathe.

Drake glared up at Samuel. “Get Val! Get some fucking healing down here!”

Samuel rose and dashed away, shouting for help. Why was this manor so big? Something clattered in the study, but as Drake turned and raised a fist he found only Lydia stumbling out of it, bruised and battered. She was alive!

She was also hurt. A single trail of blood started above her eyebrow and rolled around one eye, then traced the line of her cheek to her lips. There, it pooled against her chin. Lydia shouldn’t be hurt like that. He never wanted to let anything hurt her like that.

Even so, Lydia immediately dropped to his mother’s side and raised both of her battle maid healing gloves. She bared her teeth as she poured every bit of blood she could spare into saving Lady Gloomwood. Lady Marissa. Mom.

A woman Drake now remembered he loved so much.

“Just hang in there!” Drake shouted. “Lydia’s got you! She’s got you!

His mother trembled on the floor as if paralyzed by kromian blow darts. Yet as her eyes met his, her fear and horror faded. That wasn’t a good sign. Marissa looked at him with peace in her eyes, too much peace. Like she was ready to let go.

“Don’t you leave me!” Drake shouted. “You still need to tell me why you left, who I am, what happened before you fled! You are not allowed to die!”

“This poison is virulent,” Lydia whispered in horror. She continued to run her gloves over Marissa’s wounds. “It rots and destroys everything I heal, and it’s winning, lord.”

Where the fuck was Samuel? Why wasn’t he back yet? Drake knelt helplessly beside his mother as Lydia’s glowing gloves blazed away. She was fighting a fight she couldn’t win.

Lydia’s face was already visibly paler than it had been, and Drake knew it was only a matter of time before she spent more blood than she could spare. He also knew Lydia wouldn’t stop pushing, not with Lady Gloomwood on the verge of death.

So should he stop her? If he stopped her, his mother would die. Yet if he didn’t stop her, Lydia would push her blood into those gloves and heal his mother until she died.

Which of them was he willing to lose today? Why did he have to choose?

A frail hand grabbed his. “Drake,” Marissa croaked.

“Shut up!” he shouted. “Just keep breathing! Help is on the way!”

“Listen.” Marissa coughed as the blood oozing from the bites began to look more black than red. “Galen Proudglade... wanted to... summon. A demon.”

“I don’t need to know this now!” Drake shouted. “Just heal!”

“You were... to take... its rarity,” Marissa managed. “Absorbed... through blood.”

Drake stared at her in horror as her rasped words hit home. He was going to take the rarity of a demon? By absorbing a demon’s blood? Could he even do that?

“Silverwood... revealed... your rarity,” Marissa continued. “Galen... believed you could... bring peace.”

He had to ask. He couldn’t not. “How would me absorbing demon blood bring peace?”

He didn’t need his mother to say any of this. He needed her to live, to smile at him as she had on that stage, to hug him as she had when he was younger as he told her about his day. He didn’t need her to gag, cough, and struggle to breathe. He wasn’t ready for her to die.

“Demons... control minds.” Marissa spit blood. “You... would control... the court.” She coughed again, and the blood that burst across her chest was brackish. “Bring peace.”

“That’s insane!” Drake shouted.

She coughed blood. “I know.”

As Lydia wavered visibly above Marissa, gloves glowing bright, Drake knew with absolute certainty that the magic of Lydia’s gloves and the blood she was pouring into them was the only thing keeping his mother alive. Yet Lydia couldn’t truly heal her.

All she could do was delay her death.

“Galen wouldn’t... listen to me.” Marissa thrashed once, like she’d just been stabbed, and her eyes went wide as that spider’s poison ate everything away inside. “He couldn’t... be convinced. So I... we...” She coughed. “Killed him. And I... had to go away.”

“I don’t care about any of that!” Drake wrapped his other hand around his fist and her hand, kneeling close. “Just hang on! Help is coming!” Were those his tears?

“You... were always... my hope.” Marissa smiled up at him. “I... love you... Drake.”

As Lydia fell forward, not breathing, Drake caught her in time to stop her from landing on her face. Lydia’s chest no longer rose and fell. She was so pale Drake knew he was about to lose her too. Lydia had nothing left to give them. Nothing left for anyone.

His mother smiled up at him. “Keep them safe for me. Lead.”

Marissa coughed hard enough her whole body thrashed, and then, and only then, did she go still. His mother’s eyes stared peacefully at nothing as many feet thundered in the hall.

Help came then, so much help, and far too late. Too late to save his mother.

But they might still be able to save Lydia.