by T. A. White
“Something’s wrong,” Lainey said, her expression dismayed as she gazed at the door.
Shea stepped close, seeing what had drawn her mother’s notice immediately. The door wasn’t fully closed, sitting open by several inches, unnoticeable until you were close.
“It’s never supposed to be opened,” Lainey said, not moving any closer.
“Well, it has been,” Caden said, moving closer.
Fallon snagged the back of Shea’s pants and pulled her out of the way as the Anateri armed themselves.
“Let them go first,” he cautioned her.
She nodded. That was probably best. They didn’t know what waited on the other side of the doors. The chamber they guarded could be empty; it probably was. Then again, Griffin might still be in there or have left a lovely surprise for anyone that followed him.
They waited, as first Caden and then several Anateri disappeared into the room. The rest of Fallon’s Anateri created a ring around them and the clan elders, some of whom were visibly impatient at the delay.
Her mother and father watched the doors like they expected beasts to pour from them at any moment, their faces resolute and slightly grim. Guess that answered the question of whether her mother had shared what was in the chamber with her father.
“It’s clear,” came Caden’s strong voice. “You’ll want to see this.”
Shea and Fallon moved forward, slipping through the partially open doors. She hesitated on the other side, taking in the room before her.
It wasn’t particularly big. The group with them would fit into it easily enough, but that was about it. The thing that struck her most was the amount of white, even the stone floors looked like they’d been carved from bone, washed out and almost gray. Runes had been inlaid everywhere—on the ceilings, the walls, the floor.
The same vine pattern that was on the doors was here too, but instead of metal it was made of something that had turned pearlescent white. Above, a ball hovered, shining so brightly it was as if the room had its own sun where the ceiling met in a domed arch.
Unlike the passageway they’d taken to get here, this place was perfectly formed. A lot of thought and work had gone into its creation. It was beautiful, a delicate work of art that very few would ever see.
“You knew this was here?” Fallon asked, his gaze coming to hers.
She shook her head. “I’ve never been inside. I just heard my mother talking about it and followed her as far as the doors. I put the rest together from there.”
His gaze was thoughtful. “So, you don’t know exactly what was here. What makes you think it’s important?”
Shea’s eyes turned to the pedestal in the middle of the room. “You don’t go to all this trouble to hide something unless you don’t want it found.”
Especially considering the other secrets her people protected, the Koa and whomper among them.
Before she could say anything more, Caden shifted giving Shea a look at what his body had concealed until now.
Blood pooled on the floor, red footprints disturbing the scene. The red was glaringly obvious in the monochromatic room, almost jarring against the elegance.
Shea stepped closer as Caden grabbed a handful of long brown hair and lifted a woman’s head up so they could see her face.
Shea felt a sick sense of recognition as Victoria’s blank eyes stared up from a face frozen in shock. Her disbelief at her son’s betrayal still obvious, even when the woman’s essence, that thing that made her Victoria, had fled.
Caden looked back at them with a darkly satisfied expression. “Looks like her son isn’t the dutiful offspring she thought.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Caden let go of the hair and Victoria’s head hit the floor with a thunk. He stood, wiping his hands against his pants before aiming a look of distaste at the dead woman.
“Poor woman,” Lainey said in a soft voice.
Caden stepped away from the body, his shoes leaving footprints behind as he joined Fallon and Shea. “It was a kinder death than any I would have given her.”
Judging by the expressions on the faces of those around them, Shea judged that her mother was one of the few to feel sympathy for the other woman.
Shea stared down at the body, not sure what she felt. She’d loved Victoria like an honorary aunt once. That had been a long time ago, however. The intervening years wouldn’t allow her to muster up the sympathy she felt was expected. That disturbed her. She didn’t like the thought that she was becoming hardened against death, not when it was someone she knew. At the same time, she couldn’t be sad that Victoria was gone. Not after her betrayal had affected so many.
What was more disturbing was the manner of her death. Her son had rescued her from the Trateri only to use her and then cast her aside when she had fulfilled her purpose. It, more than anything, said how far he’d fallen from the boy she’d known and loved.
“What kind of son kills his own mother?” Braden asked next to her.
“The kind that has gone mad,” Fallon said, his face shadowed as he stared at the woman. There wasn’t any of the fierce satisfaction at a justified fate that had been on Caden’s face—not because Fallon felt she hadn’t deserved death.
No, Shea suspected it was the fact that Griffin had been the one responsible. For a man who’d lost his own mother to a violent fate, such an act must have felt like someone piling wounds on top of open wounds. It must prod at memories that had never fully healed—ones that could never fully heal.
Shea slipped her hand into Fallon’s. She didn’t say anything, didn’t try to comfort him with useless words. She let him know she was there, that she understood and hurt with him. Sometimes that was the only thing you could do when words were an inadequate salve.
“It’s gone.” Lainey’s voice brought them back to the present and the suspicion they’d come here to confirm.
Shea turned to see her mother staring down at a pedestal, a stricken expression on her face.
Stepping closer, Shea saw that her mother was right. Whatever had once sat there was indeed gone, the pedestal empty, just a marble column with an intricately carved basin on top of it. Ruined bits of something lay on the ground. Shea was careful as she moved closer.
Fallon joined Shea at the pedestal.
“What exactly was taken?” Fallon asked, his words precise.
Braden and the other’s faces would seem emotionless to those who didn’t know them as they ringed the pedestal. For Shea who was just beginning to know the men, she would guess Van’s expression was one of boredom, while Gawain seemed pensive, his thoughts a mile away. Even Zeph seemed a little more impatient than usual, as if he’d like to be back on the battlements, preparing his men for the new threat they’d soon face.
Lainey didn’t answer, the pause stretching out until the others became restless.
“A weapon,” Shea supplied, her words simple.
“Big deal, we have weapons too,” Van said, his chin lifted in a challenging manner.
“Not like this.” Lainey finally spoke. Her eyes didn’t lift from the pedestal. “Nothing like this.”
Van watched her mother intently.
Fallon stirred. “Elaborate.”
Lainey looked up, her gaze going to Shea. There was regret in her eyes, anger too. “How much do your people know about the cataclysm?”
Barely masked impatience crossed Fallon’s face.
“This isn’t story time, woman. Get to the point,” Van snapped, saying what the others were thinking.
Lainey’s jaw flexed as she flicked an irate gaze at the Lion clan’s leader. “To do that properly, I need to know what you know about the cataclysm.”
Van curled his lip but didn’t comment.
Braden looked at her mother, his hands clasped behind his back. He seemed to be studying the room, cataloging its attributes.
Fallon’s sigh was long and heavy. “I doubt our stories differ much from most people
s’. We know our people came from somewhere in the Badlands. That once we were rulers of a great kingdom that was lost in the aftermath of the cataclysm.”
Lainey narrowed her eyes at him. “And you think to reclaim that kingdom.”
Shea stiffened next to Fallon, her gaze going from her mother to her warlord. She held her silence. That motive for his conquest had never occurred to her. It should have.
Fallon gave her mother a smile that bared his teeth, the type an apex predator might give to a bunny who amused it. “That would be impossible.”
Shea caught the subtext behind that statement. Reclaiming their original homeland was impossible—recreating their people’s kingdom on a new land, that was a different story.
“Your people have long been conquerors,” Lainey said, her thoughts mirroring Shea’s. “It’s one of the things that led to the cataclysm.” Seeing their instinctual denial and anger at being labeled the cause of an event so disastrous it had knocked humanity from their dominant position in the world, Lainey gave them a humorless smile. “Don’t worry. It’s not the only one. Just a small pebble in a landslide of others that led to an unescapable chain of events.”
Fallon watched her with an inscrutable expression, waiting, as any good hunter did when he knew he was close to getting what he wanted.
Even Shea couldn’t help but feel a hushed expectation, and she’d heard variations of the same story her entire life.
“The world was very different then,” Lainey said in that same measured way. “We flew through the sky, touching the heavens. We built cities so massive that the entire population of the Highlands couldn’t have filled them.”
“Yes, yes, we’ve heard this,” Gawain said, impatience in his voice. “Our ancestors were capable of feats only a god could perform. Perhaps that’s why they were struck down and punished.”
Lainey arched an eyebrow, her expression chiding. “Is that what your people say happen? That they were punished for their hubris?” Her gaze turned inward and she gave a small shrug as if she agreed. “You’re right, but it wasn’t the work of any god.”
She studied each of the people who’d gathered, her gaze enigmatic and remote. “It’s because of us, every one of us. We became greedy. We took our gifts and turned it on ourselves, again and again. Nothing was ever enough. We devolved until even our sense of right and wrong disappeared. The term cataclysm is a bit of a misnomer. One event didn’t usher in the end of the previous world. It took a span of decades—one mistake after another—that so shifted the land, that what was left was barely habitable.”
She pointed to the pedestal. “What was here was one such mistake.” She walked around it, her fingers trailing against the rim of the basin. “We call it the Lux. It’s one of the four empire killers. It wasn’t a weapon, not at first. It is said to have many properties, some wondrous. By the end of the cataclysm, its purpose had been twisted. They used it to turn entire cities into uninhabitable wastelands.”
Zeph stirred. “How does it work?”
Lainey clasped her hands and looked pensive.
“No one knows,” Shea said, interrupting. “But the Lux is capable of finishing what the first cataclysm started. In the wrong hands, it could wipe the Highlands and Lowlands clean of all human influence. It could devastate Fallon’s army. Some might survive, but I doubt you would be able to hold the territory you’ve conquered afterward.”
“And Griffin has it now?” Braden asked, his intelligent gaze shifting from the pedestal to Lainey, who hesitated before inclining her head.
Van let out a bitter laugh and shook his head. “Our time in this land just gets better and better.”
Fallon muttered a heartfelt curse that echoed what everyone in the room felt.
Hopelessness stole into Shea. The beast attack and now this. The odds seemed to stack higher and higher against them with each moment.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Gawain said, his face disbelieving. “Why wasn’t this thing under heavy guard?”
“Because it’s hard to steal something if you never know it’s there,” her father said from his post along the wall.
“That’s really worked out for you, hasn’t it?” Gawain asked, gesturing at the room around them.
“Secrets only work if they’re only known by one person,” Fallon said, giving her father a sidelong glance.
Her father’s lips twitched, and he tilted his chin down in agreement, just the barest bit. He turned his gaze on her mother, “Or you make sure only the right people know. I told you not to let that woman into the inner guard.”
Lainey gave him a sour look. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. She paid the price for her betrayal.”
“And the rest of us will pay the price for you trusting the wrong people,” Zeph rumbled, not looking at her mother.
Suddenly, her mother seemed older than her years. “You’re right about that.”
There was a short silence as they digested what this might mean for them all.
“Where do we go from here?” Van asked, turning to Fallon.
Fallon exhaled, his shoulders rising as he stared at the pedestal with a resigned look. “We’re going to have to retrieve it. If what she says is true, it is far too powerful to be left in the hands of our enemy.”
“That’s a death sentence for whoever goes,” Gawain said.
Zeph gave him a sidelong look. “What’s wrong, Rain? Are you losing your courage?”
Gawain scoffed. “Not at all. Just making sure we’re all on the same page.”
“There’s one piece of good news,” Lainey said. “He won’t be able to use the Lux. Not for several days at least.”
“How do you know?” Fallon queried.
Lainey nodded at the chamber around them. “This place was built to deprive it of a key element it needs to work. Until it gathers enough of it, the Lux will be little more than an ornament.”
“So, if we retrieve it fast enough, then there’s a chance we can do so without having it turned against us,” Braden said in a slow voice.
Lainey hesitated, looking back at Patrick for support. “We think so. This is all based off information passed down from guildmaster to guildmaster.”
“Did Victoria know this?” Shea asked, the sight of her body reminding her of the leak they’d had.
Lainey’s head tilted as she frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. She wasn’t interested in the details and I don’t remember ever imparting that information.”
Shea pressed her lips together. That was one good piece of news, if it was true. Another thought occurred to her, “When was Victoria brought in on this?”
When Shea had been banished, Victoria hadn’t quite reached her current position.
“Not until very recently. The last few weeks,” Lainey answered, seeing where Shea’s thoughts were going.
This entire chain of events had started long before this. Shea was sure of it. Perhaps as far back as when she’d still been assigned to Birdon Leaf. The escalation of beast activity had been so gradual it was easy to overlook until it was almost too late.
“So, the question is, how did Griffin know about the Lux?” Fallon asked, his mind jumping to the conclusion Shea had already reached.
She looked back at the pedestal, a niggling feeling at the back of her mind. The answer to that question hovered just out of reach. She had a feeling it had everything to do with the dreams that had been haunting her over the last few weeks.
“There is one other advantage that you have,” her father said, his gaze on Shea.
Fallon noticed where he was looking and went still, denial on his face. Shea took a deep breath as she turned to face him.
“No,” Fallon said, the word a vehement negation.
“He’s right. He’ll head for the Badlands, and I’m the only person here who would know where to even start looking,” Shea said, staring up into Fallon’s face, mentally willing him to understand.
&nb
sp; “Give us the room,” Fallon barked, his voice hard.
No one dared argue. The clan elders filed out. Her parents lingered. Her mother lifted her eyebrows, asking without words if Shea wanted her to stay. As much as Shea appreciated the gesture, she knew it was unnecessary. There were words that needed to be said that would be better received without an audience.
Lainey nodded, the movement elegant before she turned toward the door. Her father waited, his eyes lingering on Shea’s for a long moment before he too was gone.
“You too,” Fallon told Caden, not taking his gaze off Shea.
Shea sensed Caden’s hesitation and assured the other man. “There’s no other way into or out of this chamber.”
It should be safe from assassination attempts.
Fallon waited until they were alone, the door to the chamber shut behind the rest before he turned back to her, a rage on his face that once would have sent her searching for cover. Now, she felt only a sadness for the powerlessness he must be feeling. Her poor warlord. This was his worst nightmare come true.
“You’re not going,” Fallon said, his face set, the muscles tense. “Don’t even think it,” he repeated, giving her a look of such desperation, the bridge of her nose prickled as emotion threatened to swamp her.
“You think I want to?” she asked in a soft voice. She stepped close, the urge to touch him, to comfort him, strong. Her hand hovered just above his chest before she withdrew it and straightened, looking up into his face with a soft expression. “You know my nightmares. There are times I close my eyes and I’m right back there—being hunted, feeling like any moment could be my last. I see my friends’ faces in my dreams, hear their voices as they remind me of my mistakes. I would do everything in my power to avoid that place and all it means.”
He looked away and she moved with him, not letting him run from this. “You know as well as I do that there is no choice. I’m the best chance we have. We can’t let him get away with the Lux. Everything you’ve worked for, everything you’ve sacrificed will be for nothing.”
