The Poison Season(86)

And then Sage entered the clearing, and they had their answer.

Leelo gasped at the sight of blood running from a wound in Jaren’s neck onto his tunic. Sage had her knife to his back, her intent clear. Leelo pushed her way through the crowd until she reached him.

“Leelo?” he breathed.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, a moment before she was ripped away by several Endlans.

Ketty materialized out of the crowd with her burning gaze fixed on her daughter. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the house.”

“I was the one who discovered him,” Sage said. Her knife was still inches from Jaren’s spine, but he didn’t appear to be in any shape to try to escape. “I deserve this kill.”

“She’s right,” a few people said. “She caught him. She deserves the kill.”

Leelo thought she might be sick. “She wasn’t even a part of the Hunt!”

Some of the Endlans seemed to side with Leelo, but there was so much commotion it was impossible to know which side was winning.

Fiona had found her way to Leelo, and they stood clutching each other. “Mama, say something,” Leelo urged.

“Ketty,” Fiona said, but her voice was too weak to be heard above the excited chatter of the crowd, which was growing more animated by the second.

“Ketty!” Leelo screamed. “You can’t kill him!”

“Why not?” Sage asked. “Because you think you love him?” Anyone else might only have seen the sheer loathing Sage felt for Jaren, but Leelo could tell that beneath her sneer of derision was a hint of sorrow and regret. Choose me, her eyes said. But it was a choice Jaren would never have forced her to make.

Leelo turned to the crowd. “Because he’s an Endlan,” she said, her voice ringing out over the clearing. “And he has as much of a right to be here as the rest of us.”

Sage lowered the knife a fraction of an inch. “What are you talking about?”

Ketty was gripping Jaren’s arm now, and it was clear that their battle lines had been drawn. “Lies,” Ketty said. “We know all Endlans. This boy is a clear outsider.”

Fiona shook her head. “Look again, sister.”

A flicker of doubt crossed Ketty’s face.

“That’s Nadia Gregorson’s child. The child she died trying to save.”

A murmur of disbelief went up amongst the Endlans. “It can’t be,” someone said.

“We saw her drown,” another added.

“Haven’t you noticed that your songs didn’t work on him?” Leelo asked Sage. “He was trying to escape, wasn’t he? He didn’t come to you of his own will. If he was an outsider, he would have run toward you, not away.”

Sage’s vicious scowl started to give way to doubt. “You’re wrong. He can’t be Endlan.”

Leelo stared into Jaren’s gray eyes, letting the rest of the world, his bleeding neck, her cousin’s fury, fade away. She stepped toward him, and this time, no one stopped her. “He is.”

“Is it true?” he asked, taking her hands.

“It’s the only explanation. Does it make any sense, with what you know of your parents? Would they have taken in an abandoned child, even if they knew he was Endlan?”

Jaren’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered against his chest. “I wish I could have told you some other way.” She leaned back, cupping his cheek in her palm. “Come on. Let’s take you home.”

Ketty, who had seemed speechless just a moment before, managed to find her voice then. “Home? You just said this boy is home. If he’s Endlan, then he is exactly where he belongs.”

“He has a family,” Fiona said. “He needs to return to them.”

“And let me guess. You intend to go with him. Your loyalty was always to them, never to us.”

Fiona shot her sister a warning glance. If them was Nigel and Tate, as Leelo suspected, then she likely didn’t want the rest of the island to know. “My loyalty is to my family, yes. It always has been.”

“What are you implying, sister? That mine hasn’t been?”

Fiona lowered her voice. “Let’s discuss this at the house, Ketty.”

“No. I think it’s high time these people know the truth about what you did. That you’re no better than your traitor daughter.”

Again, the crowd buzzed with speculation. “What is she talking about, Fiona?” someone asked.

“We deserve the truth.”

Leelo took Jaren’s hand and started to push through the crowd. “Come on, Mama,” she said.

But Ketty and Fiona stood their ground.

“The truth,” Ketty said, “is that my sister had a bastard. An incantu bastard, with an outsider father.”

There was a collective gasp from the Endlans. “What outsider?” a woman shouted. “When?”

“Twelve years ago,” Sage said. “Isn’t it obvious?”

There were more demands for the truth, and Fiona finally turned to face the crowd. “My sister speaks true. There was an outsider who crossed the ice twelve winters ago. He was injured, and I helped him. And I fell in love with him. My boy, Tate, was the result of our relationship.” She turned to Ketty and leveled her with a gaze that could melt iron. “And Kellan knew.”