Chapter 2079: Three Letters & A Raven

The pipe fell from Rhys’s lips.

It struck the edge of the desk, bounced, and tumbled to the floorboards in a little shower of sparks. Embers scattered across the old wool rug beside his chair, and the sharp smell of singed wool rose to mingle with the sweet smoke of Baron Dalais’s fine leaf.

Rhys dropped to one knee and groped for it without looking down. His fingers found the warm bowl, then the stem, and he snatched it up and ground the nearest ember out beneath the heel of his hand before it could catch. He hardly felt the burn. His eyes had left the bird for the space of a single heartbeat, and when they came back up, the raven was exactly where he’d left it, perched on the corner of his desk in a spreading pool of frost.

It hadn’t moved. It was watching him.

A talking bird.

Rhys’s mind raced back through the scrolls he’d pored over feverishly since his encounter with the Witch of Deep Currents. Phylip’s logs, written in his ancestor’s cramped, salt-stained hand. Phylip had written of the Eldritch who’d lived on these shores before the First Crew came, of clans that swam between the islands as easily as seals and clans with wings who’d had no need of harbors at all. He’d written of a clan of dark-feathered folk, with the heads of crows and ravens set on the shoulders of men...

"Are you..." Rhys said, his voice coming out rougher than he’d intended. He cleared his throat and tried again, setting the pipe down very carefully on the desk, well away from the frost. "Are you one of the Dark Feathered Clan?"

The raven made a sound.

It took Rhys a moment to recognize it as a laugh. A dry, flat huff of breath without any humor in it at all, the way a man might cough to clear his throat.

Then it spread its wings.

The air around it darkened. Shadow welled up from beneath its feathers and swallowed it whole, a cloud of blackness that moved like ink suspended in water, swirling and spreading above the desk. Frost raced outward from beneath it, silvering the blackwood from edge to edge. A sudden, icy breeze swept through the study, and the charts on Rhys’s desk lifted and fluttered toward the growing darkness as though it were drawing breath.

Two heartbeats later, the darkness tore in two.

It fell away like a cloak cast aside, and where the raven had been, a man stood beside the desk.

He was tall, taller than Rhys, with the frame of a large and powerful man, though he looked thinner than he should have, as if he’d been sleeping rough and eating sparsely for a very long time.

The man was wearing a heavy wool tunic and breeches, both of which looked to have been black before they faded to a dark, charcoal gray. Only the heavy, fur-trimmed cloak he wore retained its deep, inky color. Long white hair fell limply around a face that was gaunt with age, and rough white stubble covered his jaw, giving him an almost feral look. His skin was bone white. His eyes were dark and clouded, and his mouth was set in a sour expression that looked as though he wore it to bed each night and woke with it in the morning.

The stranger regarded Rhys for a moment, taking in every detail of his appearance. Then he pressed the tips of his fingers over his heart and gave a slight bow.

"I’m a vampire," he said, in a voice as rough and gravelly as his face. "My name is Wolstan. I’ve brought letters for you..."

"Vampire," Rhys said, swallowing heavily as he tried to command his heart to slow in the presence of such a fearsome Eldritch creature. His heart threatened to mutiny and pounded in his chest like a war-drum despite his best efforts.

"Then, you’re the thrall of the Eldritch Lady of the Vale," Rhys said as he struggled to regain his composure. No wonder the man seemed so... flat and emotionless. "And you, you’ve seen my family?" Rhys asked cautiously.

"Progeny," Wolstan corrected. "I am one of Lady Nyrielle’s progeny. Forget what humans have taught you about Vampires, Lord of the Black Sails," he cautioned. "Or you’ll embarrass your daughter when you see her again."

As he spoke, the vampire’s arm seemed to blur, and his cloak fluttered strangely before three folded letters, each sealed with a neat blob of wax, appeared in his hand.

"These are for you," Wolstan said, dropping the letters on the heavy blackwood desk. "Read them. I will return in an hour to answer your questions. Tomorrow night, I will leave with your reply," he said as the dark, inky energy enveloped him again, leaving a raven perched on his desk.

"Wait," Rhys said before the bird could leave through the still open window. "At least tell me if you’ve seen them and if they’re well," he said, hoping for some sort of clue as to what the letters might contain.

"I have, and they are," the bird said bluntly, without giving him any additional news to ease his troubled heart. "I will return in an hour, after you’ve read," it repeated before flapping its wings and flying out the window it had entered through, leaving Rhys alone in his study with three letters on his desk and a fading patch of frost where the vampire had stood.

For several moments, Rhys stood there, completely motionless as his mind grappled with the implications of what had happened. Three letters, carried by the same messenger...

"They’re together," Rhys whispered as hope surged within him. A heartbeat later, he quashed that hope ruthlessly, reminding himself that a messenger who could transform into a raven to carry letters could easily travel between the Vale of Mists, Lothian City and DuCoumont to collect letters on the way to him. Receiving the letters together didn’t necessarily mean anything...

A cold gust of wind from the open window shook him out of his stillness and he quickly crossed the room to close the window before the chill winter air could rob the room of its warmth, but then he returned to his desk and dropped heavily into his seat.

Three letters.

Each of them had been sealed in plain wax. Two of them bore the word ’Father’ in flowing script that was as unique as each of his daughters, while the third one said ’Rhys’ in Maela’s neat, practiced hand.

For a moment, he hesitated over which to open first. By rights, it should have been Maela’s that he reached for, but...

"Forgive me, Maela," Rhys said as he picked up the letter written by his eldest daughter. "In my place, I’m sure you’d do the same," he said as his thumb pried loose the seal. The letter wasn’t short, Ashlynn had filled two sheets of parchment with her precise penmanship.

Rhys’s eyes filled with tears as soon as he read the first words on the first page, and he let the tears flow without shame as his heart filled with joy...

~Father, it’s Ashlynn. I’m alive, I’m well, and Mother and Jocey are both with me...~