Unless you had the blood of both.
Unless you could harness it by default.
Like me.
I shook off the thought, seating my sword firmly in its scabbard as I walked toward the door. That was when I saw the pendant.
5
Frey
Ruby had known. Maybe not that they were coming, maybe not that she’d be taken, but something. She’d left us a clue.
I clutched the pendant in my hand with no idea what to do. It had to mean something, to be some message that only I could decipher. I glanced through the room once more, wondering when she could have placed it. I had been sleeping when the guards had called; by then she must have already been contending with the fey. Something else had happened, some hint that had tipped her off, and whatever that thing had been Steed had tried to convey to me with his eyes. But what had it meant? He’d not known she was missing then, either. I’d sent them to find her out of my own fear.
This pendant had been a token passed to my mother when she’d become Asher’s Second, his heir. She had given it to me out of spite. I’d only worn the thing when I’d been bound from using magic, when the memory of what it had stood for was gone.
The metal clasp cut into my palm, sending heat and pain through my fist. We had put this all to rest. It should not still be the cause of so much distress.
Chevelle had left the door open, thinking I would be not far behind, and so Rider caught me standing before the high table, expression enough to give away my unease.
“What is it?” he asked.
I glanced at him sidelong, letting the chain slip through my fingers as I worked to decide what to do. “My mother’s pendant.”
Rider stepped closer, his voice quieting. “The one that was merely a symbol?”
“Yes.” I turned to him. “All that was left once she burned in the fire.”
The fire that should have ended the massacre. The fire that had only ended her.
The stone was all that was left of it. The chain that laced through my fingers was a replacement, the leather having been destroyed after I’d snapped it free of my neck the day Veil had placed a clue there. His clue had been a warning against Asher’s halfbreed children who might ascend the throne, a clue we’d figured out too late.
I stared up at Rider. “What happened? Before Ruby was taken?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t there. The others were playing in the study, an apparently affable game of chits. There was an argument, and things got heated. Rhys and I were posted on the east and far corridors, so both of us heard when Ruby stormed down the hall in a bit of a fit.” His eyes narrowed as he considered. “She must have been scarcely past the stairwell when Grey started after her. Anvil stopped him, warning with some poor metaphor about knocking over a boiling pot.” Rider almost smiled at the memory before his face lost all trace of humor. “Grey returned to the study, cutting off Steed’s attempt at conversation. It was silent for the next quarter hour or so.”
“And that was when the guards called?”
He stared at me. “No. That was when we heard the wolves.”
They were spiders. The guards had probably never seen them coming.
“She knew,” I said. “She knew and she left me this message.”
Rider’s words were steady, and I knew he believed them with unwavering conviction. “Rhys will find her. Whatever that means, whatever happens to that end, they will be together.”
I slid the pendant into the belt at my waist. He was right, but I would do whatever I could to help them so that being together wasn’t all they had. I walked past Rider on my way to the door, thanking him with a slight nod.
“Ruby is clever,” he added. “That doesn’t mean her motives went unnoticed.”
Rider spoke to my back, but I didn’t need to see him to understand the comment. Grey cared about Ruby, in a way that kept his eyes from straying too long from her form, that kept his mind preoccupied with her safety and well-being.
He would have noticed something. Something that might have had them bickering for longer than I cared to admit.
Something that had happened when I’d still been bound.
My feet turned automatically, heading to Anvil’s study to find the one person who could give us a better chance.
The girl was done stitching up Anvil’s wound when we found them. Grey stood beside her, both of them tall and narrow. His words were low, the girl’s face pale with concern. Her eyes met mine when Rider and I entered, and then she inclined her head and excused herself from the room.
“Grey, a word.” My command was more clipped than I intended. Something about the idea of him sharing Steed’s condition chilled me.
He nodded, giving me his full attention without a hint of concern for what he’d apparently just done. But why would he? Plainly the girl had known Grey well, which meant she’d know Steed. They’d likely all grown up together in Camber, before I’d even known Steed or Grey existed. And she was a healer.
We should be taking all the help we could get.
“There’s something you’re not telling me. Something about Ruby.”
Grey’s eyes never left mine, he never so much as flinched. But he didn’t speak a word.
I stepped forward.
Grey’s gaze didn’t follow, but stayed on the spot I had been.
“Do I need to rephrase that?” I did not make a habit of ordering my guards outside of their normal duties or of using a strong hand, but I didn’t like being kept in the dark. I would do so. If he made me.
His jaw shifted, his fingers twitching against a leg. “Whatever dealings Ruby had with the fey were kept from me.”
“That doesn’t sound like a denial.” I reached for the pendant at my waist. “Why would you hide information when Ruby herself meant to leave me a clue?”
He jerked to look at me, clearly unaware of the possibility. I held my fist high, allowing the pendant to fall on its chain before his face.
“When…”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I found it just now with my armor.” I let my words sink in. “A gift with a connection to the fey, hidden among my battle gear.”
“I—” Grey stopped, his mouth slack.
“If there is something you’d like to add,” I said, “now would be the time.”
Anvil cleared his throat, moving to stand. I didn’t relieve Grey of my stare.
“Go,” a voice said from behind me.
I turned, knowing it was Chevelle, hating the instinct that said I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say.
I couldn’t remember the last time he’d cleared a room to give me news.
“We will be waiting at the stable,” Anvil informed me. “Liana has been found, though the effectiveness of her treatments on Steed remains to seen. Two sentries and Thea have gone to sit with him.”
Thea. The new healer from Camber. I nodded, and the room was suddenly empty. I waited, watching Chevelle move toward me, feeling like the air was too thick to breathe.
“You know that difficult choices had to be made,” Chevelle said.
I swallowed hard.
“There were very few options I could live with. Time was running out.”
My stomach dropped. My knees locked, an old defense mechanism that had allowed me to stand at Asher’s side, to not let on my surprise or hurt, to hide those weaknesses.
To keep me alive.
“What did you do?” I said.
“What I had to do.” He stepped closer, not attempting to reach for me. He was a guard; he was my Second. He wasn’t sorry. “What I would do again.”
The pendant in my hand grew hot, my fingers tingling with power. It couldn’t have been him. “Not you,” I said, echoing the thought. “It wasn’t you.”
“To keep you alive,” Chevelle answered. “I cannot regret that. Even if it means this danger to Ruby.”
“You—” My words faltered, the idea so foreign I could barely process it. “You made a deal w
ith the fey?”
His eyes were soft, but it wasn’t regret for the deal, only the pain it was causing. “Why else would I have needed her?”
“That’s—how could you? You know what they’ve done. You know how it goes—after everything—”
“I’m not going to apologize for bringing you back. No matter what happens, Ruby made her choices, and I made mine.”
“She chose this? To be captured by the fey? I’m supposed to believe she’s all right with what’s happening to her… with whatever they are doing to her right now?”
“Of course she didn’t choose this,” he said. “Neither of us had any idea you would slay Asher, that the fey would take offense to this new power.” He gestured toward me, making me abruptly aware of the heat emanating from my person.
I shook it off. “All of this, all of it has been happening behind my back. Were you even going to tell me?”
“It was safer this way.”
I narrowed my gaze on him, but he made it clear he had no intention of backing down.
“It was not your bargain.”
The words cut me, and I knew he’d bartered too much. “What did you promise them? What prize do the fey think they have coming?”
He didn’t answer, only stood stern and severe and head of my guard. I dropped to a seat, pendant-fisted hand pressing the wood bench to keep me upright. “They will take her, and they will take you, and all of this will have been for nothing.”
Chevelle stepped forward, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Ruby made her own bargain. We were each not party to the other’s.”
I stared up at him, loose strands of hair falling over my face. Ruby should have been the one who braided it. Ruby’s work would have stayed in place. “Is there any chance we can get her?”
“No,” he answered. “She will have her own path.”
My jaw went tight, and I was suddenly on my feet. Liana’s words had just come out of the mouth of my second-in-command. “The changelings? You made a deal with the changelings?”
For an instant, I had a flash of understanding for Asher, the snap verdicts and sharp punishments he had doled out. But I wasn’t him. I would never be like him.
“I won’t bring you into this,” Chevelle said.
“You can’t refuse,” I shot back. “I’m not asking as your—” I pressed my eyes closed, searching for composure. I waited two deep breaths before I told him, “A deal made with my Second is more than my concern. We are nearly at war here, and I will not go into this blind.”
Chevelle’s expression remained unchanged.
I bit back a nasty curse. “Tell me you understand my position.”
“This is the fey we’re dealing with,” he answered. “Anything I tell you can only make your position worse.”
I cursed aloud this time, because he was right. All this time, I’d been thinking, How did we get into this again? But we’d never been out of it at all. This was still the same problem. This was still Asher and being trapped between bad and worse. The only thing different was that we’d exchanged Council for the fey.
I couldn’t say it was an improvement.
“Let’s go,” I told Chevelle, the words bitter on my tongue as I walked from the study without another look back at him. I hated that he was right, but I hated more what he’d had to do for me.
I hated that I couldn’t say I wouldn’t have done the same.
* * *
We found Anvil, Grey, and Rider at the stable, armored and ready for battle. Like Chevelle and me, they’d opted for metal and spikes, and long weapons that would allow them reach but ease of movement. Though the others didn’t have to worry about their magic being stolen, it was always a risk to use it fighting the fey: it had a way of turning against you. And that said nothing of the perils of fighting an enemy who could fly. We were heading into dangerous territory, with the deadliest of opponents lying in wait.
“Mount,” Chevelle ordered, and my guard—what was left of it—obeyed with an eagerness that belied our task.
We rode through the southern gate, switching back to follow the rocky path that headed into the grasslands between us and the fey forests. The boundary dividing the lands wasn’t a wide swath of earth, but it was enough: an open field cut by exposed bedrock and flowing water. It was a border that did more than signify the change, it protected us. It had been built by the elves eons ago, specifically to interfere with the fey powers.
Once we passed that, however, we would be on our own. The sky was ominously devoid of birds, the land surrounding us still. It wasn’t ill-omened, it was the fey. They knew my gift to use the animals, knew I could seek them out to survey the land. They’d planned ahead to stop me.
It wouldn’t be the last ploy we saw before the day was out.
6
The Changeling
Liana wrapped a fresh poultice over the Summit boy’s shoulder, though the motion was now purely for show. The last draw she’d taken from his chest wound had come out clean, no tang of poison left in his blood. She pressed and wove—fingers moving nimbly to interlace the gauze and plant bits across his skin—and tried not to look at the others in the room. She should have taken her patient elsewhere, but these prying eyes were not as dangerous as those of her own kind.
The elven girl moved closer, eyes narrowing on the way Liana’s hands had slowed, palm tracing the ridge of the boy’s ribs beneath his skin. “I’m not going to eat him,” Liana snapped, only to immediately regret her words.
The girl crossed her arms, the gesture bringing her closer, if anything. “Well, I should imagine not.”
One of the two sentries posted at the narrow room’s entrance watched as well, her hair in a too-tight braid, her fingernails tapping against a shining metal blade at her hip. The entire situation had Liana’s teeth set on edge.
A hundred years ago, she would have slaughtered them all and been done with it.
“Perhaps if you’d give him some space,” Liana said, “he could work the toxins out of his system.”
The cock to the girl’s brow said, Wouldn’t you like that?
Liana rolled her palms upward, the sticky ochre goo sending its scent across the space. “No matter to me, it changes things not if one elven guard lives or dies.” She let her gaze fall casually to the bedside bowls and bottles. “Enough of the high fey have been slain to even the balance.”
“Oh, please,” the elven girl answered. “I’ve known your kind long enough to know you’d never do anything for free.” The girl turned away, muttering something that sounded like, Out of the goodness of your own heart, my brown-haired lass, and Liana smiled at having a new idiom to take back to her collection.
She quickly put her grimace back in place before anyone had seen. “You and your kind,” she sighed, “always naming price for life and tasks.” She didn’t know why she was speaking. She couldn’t seem to stop herself. The words cost her something, each of them spelled out of her with the magic only an experienced changeling could muster. The changelings couldn’t speak naturally, the words had to be brought to life with a dark magic. It used valuable energy and time, and it tasted horrible.
Liana should have just killed that elven girl.
“Thea,” the girl said.
Liana’s dark gaze snapped up to look at the girl. She knew she’d not spelled the thought to life. She had not spoken aloud.
“If you’re going to glare and plot behind those beady little eyes, you should at least know my name.” The girl’s hand was still, too still, and covered in a thin latticework of scars. She’d meant Liana should know her name before the girl had to kill her. Liana laughed, the sound a bark of magic and ire.
She was done wasting words on this fool girl.
She stepped forward, not even bothering to clean the mess off her hands. And then the sharp plink of metal hitting glass drew her up short. She turned toward the window, crossing the space to find her pixie had somehow missed that the window’s panes were in place and crashed onto the
stone-crafted ledge.
Liana shook her head, moving to open the carved wood latch and swing one side wide. She stared down at the pale yellow form where it had fallen on the frame. The pixie sat up, dragging the metal link it was tied to—a punishment from the thing’s last betrayal, badly battered and dinged from exactly this sort of event—up to stabilize its weight.
“The lordling,” the pixie wheezed, pushing a wild nest of hair away from its face with the back of a filthy little hand. It stared up at Liana with those disconcerting daybreak-yellow eyes, panting for air, exhausted from flight.
“What?” Liana snapped.
The pixie gasped another breath. “She and the others,” it said, “the lot of them have fallen into a trap.”
7
Frey
It was the shadow stalkers. It had to be. No one else would have been able to leave such a large snare in place without some sign.
I was in a haze of darkness and pain, the worst of which seemed to be crushing my chest. Not one of us had seen it coming. As soon as I could move, I dragged a hand through the thick black mess that covered my face and was stealing my air and sight. It stank of tar and tree sap; it clung too tightly, yanking my lashes and skin. Gasping and gulping at air that seared my lungs, I scrabbled to right myself. I could feel Chevelle through my magic, knew he was close enough to anchor and fight whatever was out there, but I didn’t want to reveal my hand too soon. I couldn’t know what was coming next.
“Grey,” I called out.
“Here.” The answer came from behind me, and from the sound of it he’d not been hit as badly. My ears still rang from the impact, the side of my head throbbing from collision with the ground. But I knew at least I was on the ground. I could feel the broken rock beneath me.
The Frey Saga Book IV Page 4
