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Frayne’s mind hadn’t stopped racing since Nelda had told him who he was. He didn’t understand how it could be true, nor was he sure he believed her. He felt no connection to the people she claimed were his parents. And if it was true, how and why had his father—no, the soldier—taken him so far away? That was the hardest to understand. They were his family—his mother, his father, his twin. Although that was a lie as well. The brother who was willing to follow him anywhere, the brother he was willing to follow.
“You can’t say who you are,” Heath blurted, and Frayne stopped to look back at him. “Papa took you for a reason, to keep you safe. We must keep you safe. If people learn who you are, they may try to kill you.”
Frayne shook his head, not sure he believed his brother’s thinking, as though trying to shake such an idea away.
“Nelda, tell him.”
“He will know what to do when the time comes,” she said, still calm. Although he had seen her hurt and vulnerable when she’d realised and shared who he was. Or at least who she thought he was.
“Why were they so sure I died that day?” he asked.
“Ahh,” the other witch murmured, as though he was finally asking the right questions. She watched him too closely. Did she see something no one else did? His brother wasn’t impressed with where her attentions were focused.
“There was a child in the cradle,” Nelda said matter-of-factly, “or at least the remains of one.”
“You saw it?”
“I tried to save you,” she said. Her voice wobbled, and the calm disappeared. “It was all I could remember, the charred and blackened little body in the cradle.” She looked off into the trees then. He was so tempted to step forward and put his arms around her again. As he would do for his mother if she were distressed.
She had loved him just the same. There was never anything to distinguish the two boys in the way either parent treated them, and yet Frayne wondered now at the hurt it must have caused them.
“Did they place another child in the cradle?” he asked, clutching for a reason the confusion had started. “Would Papa have done such a thing?”
Nelda shook her head as Grace opened her mouth to respond. Nelda put her hand on his arm. “We don’t know,” she said.
“But we can guess,” Grace said.
“Then tell me your guess,” he demanded, crossing his arms, unsure if he really wanted to hear what she had to say.
“You had a twin.” Grace said it so calmly that he looked at Nelda to confirm whether she was joking, but Nelda’s gaze was focused into the trees again.
“Well of course he does...” Heath started and then trailed off, and for a moment Frayne thought his brother might cry.
“I’m still your brother,” he said.
Heath nodded, but he looked lost.
“Why do you think that? Why would one die and one be hidden away?” he demanded, focusing on Grace.
“She was a witch,” Grace said. Again, the same too-calm tone. As though it all made perfect sense, and yet it didn’t.
“Why would you think that?”
“Because you have a sense that marks you. As Nelda’s brother does. Despite neither of you wanting to face such a thing. You have much in common. You are not witches.” She stepped forward as though to comfort him, but he stepped back. “You are witch-like given you shared the womb with one.”
“That was the reason to send me away? There are no male witches.”
“But it is enough,” Nelda said. “If the one who killed your sister and hid you away understood such a thing. I didn’t.”
“But you felt him, sensed what he had,” Grace said to her, indicating Frayne with an outstretched arm.
“I never had the same feeling of Nuris,” Nelda said, something almost like anger in her voice.
“You didn’t understand what you were,” Grace said, stepping forward and taking her hands. “I don’t understand how you couldn’t know such a thing, didn’t feel the fire burning through you. Like I feel the earth pull and ground me.”
Nelda shook her head slowly, as though there might have been something that she hadn’t understood as the young woman she’d been at the time—or she had never felt the fire’s pull.
“What did you do when you learnt what you were?” Frayne asked, focused on her. Trying to get her to look at him.
“It was only as the flames surrounded me. I could hear people calling. The smoke closed in around me, making it hard to breathe, hard to see...”
“Nelda,” he prompted when she didn’t go on.
“I felt alive and lost. You were gone, and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it, and then Nuris was looking at me as though the world had ended.” She brushed at her face. Although Frayne couldn’t see the tears, he knew they were there. She had held this in for far too long. “There was someone else, after Nuris tried to end me, who helped me leave the castle. Eventually, I hid with the Goddess,” she said, the calm returning. “She held me close and kept me safe.”
“Until she didn’t,” Heath murmured. “Until the cardinal came calling.”
“How did he know what you were when you didn’t know yourself?” Frayne asked.
“I knew. Despite the help of the Goddess, I felt it pull at me every day, until I had convinced myself it was my fault. That I had started the fire that had hurt so many, killed so many.”
“I’m not dead,” Frayne said softly, stepping forward and resting a hand on her arm. She nodded absently, and he wondered if she was feeling the loss of the other child. “Did you know there were twins?”
She shook her head.
“Were you there at the birth?” he asked.
Nelda opened her mouth and then closed it, looking up at him with frightened eyes. He realised it was the first time he had seen her show any real fear, other than the first time he’d seen her as she ran through the forest with the child in her arms.
“I should have been,” she said. “It was my place as the queen’s maid to be the one to watch over you.”
“Why weren’t you?”
“I can’t remember,” she murmured, looking down at the ground. He wondered then what she might have been doing that she wasn’t where she was meant to be. “I remember the call that a son had been born.” She put her hand to her chest. “I was so happy,” she said, smiling at him. “I raced to the nursery, but the flames had already started. By the time I reached you, there was nothing but flames and little else...” Frayne reached forward and pulled her against his chest again.
“She must have known that the girl was a witch,” Grace whispered, and he glanced over Nelda’s head at the young woman.
“Are you saying the queen understood what her daughter was and killed her?”
“No,” Nelda said, pulling back. “She wouldn’t.”
“Someone understood.”
Nelda nodded and wiped at her face again, smiling sadly up at Frayne. Then she reached for his face and stopped short. He took her hand and placed it against his cheek. If he were upset, his mother would have done the same—and there was something in this woman, a connection he couldn’t explain.
“I know you,” he said as he had before, although he couldn’t explain how.
She smiled and pulled at her hand, but he wouldn’t let her go.
“Is it because you were there as I grew, or because of my sister?” The word seemed odd on his tongue. He glanced at Heath, who was looking at him seriously. Heath was still his brother; Frayne hadn’t lied when he’d told him that. No matter who their parents might be, they were brothers first.
“I don’t know,” Nelda said softly as he released her hand. “You are familiar. I can see your father in you. Although I can see Jamie as well. I know you, too.” She took a deep breath and brushed at her tattered dress.
“Could we find some fresh clothes, and maybe a proper bed?” Heath asked.
“How much silver do you carry?” Frayne asked.
His brother gave him a look of frustration and shook his head.
“We can’t draw attention,” Nelda said.
“I don’t mean to draw any attention; but if someone came across two young men and two women looking like they barely escaped a burning convent with their lives, I fear there may be more questions than we could answer.”
“True,” Grace murmured. “What do you have in mind?”
Heath waggled his eyebrows and even Frayne, somewhat nervous of what he might be planning, smiled with him.
“I’m going to let Frayne lead the way,” Heath said, followed by a short laugh.
“I’m already leading the way.”
“And then you will know the best place to stop next to hide our sisters of the Goddess and make it easier to travel.”
“I think we will be easy enough to spot,” Nelda said. “No matter how we are dressed, the cardinal and his men will recognise what we are.”
“Will they?” Heath asked.
“Yes,” Grace said. Heath sighed, but the smile never left his lips. “You can’t just hide us in a market. If he comes racing through with his soldiers, the whole town might die.”
Heath staggered for a moment. “Would he do that?” he asked.
“He burnt convents filled with innocent women and children to the ground. Many of them,” Grace continued. “In some ways, I wish I had gone with them.”
“You don’t mean that,” Heath said, something desperate in his voice.
“No matter what you think I might be, I am still a witch. A woman to be feared and killed on sight.”
Frayne shook his head. He had heard stories of women being burnt, and his mother had whispered of it when they were little. But he didn’t fear these women, despite seeing what they were capable of. Perhaps that was because of his connection to them, to a sister he never knew.
“Do you fear her?” he asked Heath, who looked at him with open surprise. “Do you?” he asked more forcefully.
“No,” Heath said, the simple honesty a relief. “I knew we had to help Nelda the moment we found her, and despite what Mama said, I couldn’t let her head out on her own.”
“I know,” Frayne said with a sigh. He’d had the same feeling, although he wouldn’t admit it at the time. There had been something in the way his father had looked at her, as though she was important—special for more than just the power she had with the flames. “Papa knows you didn’t start the fire,” he said.
“Your father was thought to have died that day, another loss I have lived with for so long.”
“Did you love him?” Heath asked, his voice low and gentle.
“As a friend,” she said, turning her smile on him. “He and Nuris were close. They ate together often, usually served by me, and they would drag me into whatever conversation or debate they were having.” She had a wistful smile.
Frayne ran his hands through his hair. “We should move on,” he said, turning back from the group and feeling the pull of the path before him. It was already growing dark, and they should find somewhere soon to stay.
The lights of the tavern tucked amongst the trees were both a relief and a worry. It was late, and they were all exhausted. Likely there wouldn’t be many people lingering in the main part of the building. He hoped they had rooms. It wasn’t until they were pushing through the door that Frayne realised they should have come up with a story.
Several long tables ran the length of the room, with only a few people seated in the middle of the one closest to a roaring fire. It was dimly lit, only two candles per table lighting the large space. The smell of stew made Frayne’s mouth water and his stomach growl.
“We need a room,” he said as an older man stopped to put two earthenware jugs on the table by the group.
“Just the one?” the man asked, looking between them. Heath stepped forward, both of them trying unsuccessfully to shield the women.
He nodded. “We only have a few coppers.”
“I don’t go for that kind of thing here,” the man slurred.
“We are family,” Frayne said, allowing the indignation at such a suggestion to be heard clearly.
“Family?” someone else asked. “Who is that woman to you?”
“She is my mother,” he said without hesitation, hoping that Heath didn’t give the lie away. “She and my siblings have been through an ordeal.”
“An ordeal?” an older woman asked as she stuck her head out through the door from the kitchens. She looked them over and then came out into the room. “It appears so. You can have the back room. I’ll fix a bath.”
“There is no need for you to go to so much trouble,” Nelda said. “A basin of hot water would be enough.”
The woman nodded and then nudged the older man, who wore a doubtful look. “Key, Thomas.”
“Yes, duck,” he murmured, his gaze focused on Nelda at the back of the group.
“Thomas!”
“She is dressed as a sister of the Goddess,” he said, his voice too loud.
“We met with some trouble,” Nelda went on. “The sisters helped us.”
“You poor thing,” the woman murmured, moving forward like a barrel, pushing Thomas out of the way and throwing her arms around Grace. “Look at you—it is lucky your brothers were nearby.”
“It could have been far worse,” Heath murmured.
“Come,” she said, dragging Grace and her oversized dress between the tables and towards another doorway as Heath skipped along behind. Frayne waited and held out an elbow to assist Nelda. She took it, patting at his arm as his mother might have done.
This was the only place they should be, but something worried at the back of his mind. There were too many watching them, and he doubted their story would be believed.
The room they were shown into was simple, dusty and sparsely furnished. There was a table with two chairs pushed against a wall, one large bed and two smaller ones at the opposite end of the room. Overall, it was near to the size of the cottage they’d grown up in, and he was sure it was going to cost them more coin than he had.
He opened his mouth to say so as the woman tapped a screen leaning against the wall. “I’ll find you something to change into—always people leaving things behind. And I’ll send Thomas with the water. It is one for the finer folk; not that many come this way,” she said, smiling at Frayne, although it looked somewhat forced. “Usually empty, you see, and so we don’t mind letting you have it cheap.”
“Are you certain, madam?” Nelda asked.
“You have been through something, dear,” the woman said softly, reaching for her but stopping short of taking Nelda by the hands. “You is all a quiver. Three fine children and no husband?”
“Lost years ago,” she said with a sad shake of her head.
“Well, well. We’ll look after you,” the woman said and turned quickly for the door.
Alone in the room, the four of them looked at each other. Then the door opened without a knock, and Thomas pushed his way into the room with a small basin. The wife followed with a jug of hot water. Although steam rose from it, it wasn’t enough water for all four of them to wash. “You could have used the bath,” she mumbled.
“I think we need the sleep more,” Nelda said.
“Of course. Fresh cloth here,” she added, dropping a small pile on the end of one of the beds, “and I’ll find you some clothes.”
Nelda smiled, and they put down their load and left. Although Frayne was sure they would return soon enough. He sat at the table while Nelda studied the room.
“Who is sleeping where?” Heath asked.
“There are to be no arguments about it,” Nelda said. As Heath opened his mouth to question her, the door opened and the woman appeared again with armfuls of cloth.
“Children never grow up,” she tutted.
Nelda gave her a smile. “Thank you.”
“It isn’t much, but you should find something to fit you both amongst this. Good night,” she said, bowing her head. As she left, Nelda turned the key in the door and breathed out slowly.
“You start with the water, Grace,” Nelda offered, although she was just as grubby as the girl was.
“You should share that bed,” Frayne said, indicating the larger one with a sweep of his hand. “Heath and I will take the others.”
“You are too tall,” Nelda said.
“I’m good here,” Heath said, sitting on the end of one of the narrow beds.
Nelda held up the first dress and looked at it seriously.
“Not your style?” Heath asked.
“This is my style,” she said, lowering the dress in her hands and indicating the tattered one she wore. “But it is time to let it go.”
“What did you wear before?” Grace asked as she worked the damp cloth over her arms.
“Nothing quite like this,” Nelda murmured.
“You just need to look like any other woman,” Frayne said.
“But we are not like other women, and a change of clothes won’t hide us.” Nelda lowered the dress and looked at him seriously. He understood that—he could feel it. In fact, the longer they sat quietly, listening to the gentle slosh of Grace’s cloth in the basin, the more certain he became that this was a bad idea. A very bad idea, but a necessary one.