Finn Ashford's Arc

Chapter 11 of 12

Finn woke on a cold floor. Above him loomed a marble wyvern, wings spread, claws hooked over a stone base. It filled half the round room. The light came through narrow colored windows, red and green across the floor. He sat up slow. His head hurt. His daggers were gone. Roses pressed against the glass from outside, dark against the panes. He was inside the pale tower now. The lodge door was somewhere below. He could not think past the woman. He kept seeing her face. Blonde hair, green eyes, the strapped corset at the tavern table the night before he was supposed to find the relic. He had told her to find someone else to bother. She had giggled and leaned in. No one here is as good looking as you. She had poked him where the map sat folded in his coat. What are you going after this time? None of your concern. What if it is? He had walked away. He was sure he had walked away. He pressed his palm to the scar above his eye and tried to push further, into a night after that night, and found nothing. A blank wall. Whatever she said they had shared, his head did not hold it. A small sound moved behind him. He turned. She stood at a low table he had not seen, a dark red box open in her hands. The silver locket set into its lid caught the colored light. Two initials wound together on the metal. She lifted out a single orange button, polished, four neat holes, and set it on her palm where he could see it. "You lost this off your shirt," she said. "I kept it." She tilted the box. Inside lay a folded square of paper, a dried sprig, a thin ring. She turned the locket so he could read the letters. One was an H. The other curled into it like a vine. "You don't know what these stand for, do you," she said. It was not a question. Finn shook his head once. Her mouth moved, not quite a smile. "Then I will keep telling you," she said, "until you do. You signed your name next to mine. You are my husband, Finn. The relic was ours." The word landed wrong in him. Husband. He waited for it to ring true and it did not ring at all. He looked at the button on her palm and knew only that he could not call her a liar. He had two days he could not account for from the expedition. He had a night before it he had walked away from too easily. He had no memory to set against hers. "Tell me your name," he said. She closed her hand around the button. "Tomorrow," she said. "Tonight you sleep under the wyvern. Tomorrow we start walking toward what you lost." She shut the box. The lock clicked. She carried it with her to the stair and did not look back.