Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles #5)(125)

Tryon Palace was in New Bern, North Carolina. My father had taken us there to visit. Martin was NC’s last Royal Governor, and he’d fled in 1775. I knew this because dad remembered Martin and didn’t like him. Holy crap. This man was my father’s age.

“Why do you hate my father?”

“I don’t. The Wanderer got in the way. He always gets in the way. Now you are in my way.”

And we had come full circle.

“I know you are looking for my soul,” the man said. “You will not find it.”

“I want to understand why. What is it you want?”

“To kill us all.”

“But to what end? Something terrible must have happened to you but murdering everyone won’t make you feel better.”

“It’s not for me. I will feel nothing. The inns and innkeepers shouldn’t be. I will purge their symbiosys from existence. It’s not necessary for you to understand it. Accept it as inevitable and go.”

“No.”

A deep sigh echoed through the dome. He turned, his robe swirling. “Why do you persist in being difficult? Take my gift. Get out of my way, foolish child. Do not trample on my last act of kindness. There will be no more.”

“You were an innkeeper once. You felt the bond with your inn. They rely on us. They trust us. Whatever faults innkeepers have, whatever crimes they committed against you, the inns are innocent. Does that not mean something to you?”

“Why should it? My inn was taken from me. My family, my face, they took everything, and I will leave them with nothing. I will kill every inn in the galaxy, so the innkeepers can never resurrect themselves again.”

“But you still feel the pain. You still long for the bond.” I pointed to the remains of the room at the other end of the dome. “You brought an inn here, and now it’s dying. It’s rotting and suffering. How can you stand this?”

He turned to fully face me. His bloodless lips stretched, and he smiled, showing sharp conical teeth.

“I brought it here for you.”

What?

“Do you still not see? Look around you. Does it not look familiar? Does it not feel like home?”

I stared at the semicircle of the rotten floor, the slimy walls, the remnants of the decaying furniture… There was a couch on the left. Mildew had slicked its upholstery, but some of the original color remained, a happy summer sky blue with big yellow dandelions. My mother had upholstered that couch for me when I was seven years old. I had picked out the fabric. Our dog, an old boxer, had chewed on the front leg of it, and the bite marks were still there…

Oh my God.

I saw it now. The crooked lamp—Maud and I had knocked it over when she was chasing me around the house, and we could never get the lampshade to sit straight again. My old desk. The remnants of my rug.

This was my bedroom. This was my parents’ inn. My home. He ruined my home. He was torturing our inn.

I stumbled away from him, toward the rotting floor and the magic that waited for me there. It washed over me, stabbing into my heart, and I felt the last weak pulses of Magnolia Green. The magic I had sensed, the one so desperately trying to touch me, was the lifeblood of the inn spilling from its dying core.

His voice chased me. “Do you understand now?”

I made my mouth move through the pain. “Yes.”

I understood.

“This is a demonstration of my power.”

“It’s a demonstration of your fear.” I called on my magic and poured my pain into it. I shaped and molded my power as only an innkeeper could. “You feared my parents. You tried to kill them and failed, so you defiled their inn in your impotent rage. You used its suffering to convince yourself that you won. And now you fear me. You have gone through all this trouble to give me a warning, because deep down you are afraid. You’re right to be afraid.”

He sighed. “So be it.”

The man smashed his white broom into the floor. Corruption burst from him in twisted dark currents and bit into the walls, burrowing into the inn, forcing it to comply. The wooden floor moved like a churning sea, speeding toward me.

I sank all my magic into the floor under me. It burst through the currents and eddies of Magnolia Green’s lifeblood, colliding with the corruption squirming through them. My power shot through the fading inn, rushing through its branches, its roots, all the way to its injured core.

Our magics collided. The bond reignited in a blinding burst of power. The patina of corruption that permeated the inn, sliding over its branches and smothering its roots, burned away in an instant, opening a clear bath between me and the core.

Magnolia Green was mine.

The corrupted innkeeper screamed. His polluted currents slammed into me, battering the inn, hammering at my defenses, each blow sending an agonizing jolt through us both.

I held my hand out, and my broom landed in it.

“It won’t help you!” he snarled.

My power wound through the broom in a tight spiral, ready to be unleashed. My body buckled, struggling to channel all that power, and I had to force the words out.

“This inn cradled me as I took my first breath. No matter how hard you try, it will never be yours.”

I planted the broom into the floor.

Magic tore out of me like a magic hurricane and smashed into the corrupted innkeeper.

The corruption flailed around me, burning and raging. It was pure hate. Hate and anger, a torrent of it streaming from him. There was so much of it, more than any being could contain, and I could not understand how it didn’t tear him apart. Every lash of it frayed my soul. There was blood in my mouth. My chest hurt, every breath a conscious fight against the anvil sitting on my ribs.