Through the Veil

by Walker, Shiloh

  “He is no fool, brother.” It was said on a snarl, and there was so much helpless fury in that voice that Lee winced. “How many are aware of his most secret plans?”

  “I will do as I must. As will you.” Lee felt a ripple in the air, and the blue light of the Veil slowly started to fade. “Keep her safe,” the Sirvani whispered. And then he was gone.

  Lee froze, uncertain if she should run or risk discovery.

  A howl, almost inhuman, full of anguish and outrage, ripped through the silence of the forest, and Lee bolted. A glance over her shoulder confirmed that she wasn’t being followed, and she ran as quickly, as silently, as she could, retracing her steps until she reached the spot where the tree had damned near turned her into roadkill.

  She ran headlong into Dais, and his war-scarred hands caught her shoulders. He peered down into her face with concerned eyes. “Are you well? Something has frightened you.”

  Uncertain of what to say, she just shook her head and lied. “I got lost.”

  Dais watched her face with a scrutiny that was very unsettling. Lee fought the urge to squirm and pull away from him as he started to stroke his hands up and down her arms. “You are too new here, Lelia. Too new indeed. Wandering through the forest could bring you to a world of harm. Where is Morne? He was to keep you safe, not get it in his fey head to go off by himself.”

  Forcing herself to smile, she glanced at the tree limb just behind Dais and replied, “Even not wandering can bring me to a world of harm.”

  His voice—was it him she’d heard? And more . . . what exactly had she heard? She wasn’t sure of anything other than that a Sirvani had been speaking across the Veil to somebody in Ishtan. It didn’t bode well for them at all. Suddenly afraid, Lee looked around and realized they were alone. Completely alone. That knowledge filled her with terror. She wasn’t sure why. Dais hadn’t ever bothered her before, but right now he made her skin crawl.

  “Morne . . . where is . . .”

  “I am here.” She looked over and watched as Morne separated himself from the trees. “I wished only to give you some privacy.” His gaze lowered to where Dais held Lee’s arms. There was an odd sense of reaction from the older man. Lee felt it in the way his hands tightened oh so slightly. His body held an odd tension, and she realized that Dais was afraid of Morne.

  Terrified.

  “She was running through the forest, Morne. She’s pale as a ghost, you see. I was concerned.” Dais looked down at her, and a reassuring smile came and went. “Looking better now though.” His hands fell away.

  “What were you running from?”

  Lee looked at Morne and wished she could have five minutes, just five minutes, to try and clear her head. It was too busy in there, her mind working away at the puzzle of who the Sirvani had been speaking with and what they were speaking about. Dais—had it been him?

  No. It couldn’t be. Dais had been Kalen’s right-hand man ever since Kalen had stepped up to lead this small ragtag resistance. Before Kalen, Dais had worked with Kalen’s father. He was loyal to the resistance. He had to be. That certainty came swimming to the fore of the chaotic thoughts, and Lee stopped trying to imagine Dais speaking in the weird, harsh language of Anqar. It wasn’t him; it just didn’t make sense otherwise.

  How could he have gotten here before she did if she’d left him behind her when she fled? But he looked sort of tense. Disturbed about something. Then there was the weird way he was watching her.

  “Lelia?”

  Lee lifted her gaze and stared at Morne. His eyes, nearly black in his face, were emotionless, and she couldn’t sense anything coming off him now that Dais was no longer touching her.

  Keep her safe—keep who safe? Who in the hell had the Sirvani been talking about? Why didn’t you drop that piece of information into my head with all this other crap? she thought sourly. There wasn’t a response this time, but she hadn’t expected one, not now that she had stopped fighting the weird inner knowledge. It was like she had been split into a bunch of little pieces that operated independent of one another, but now she was intact and whole.

  Kalen—she needed to speak with Kalen. If nothing else, she needed to tell him about the Sirvani and whoever he’d been speaking with. Maybe Kalen would know what it meant.

  “I need to get back to the base camp.”

  Morne cocked a brow at her. “We have work yet to do out here. I cannot escort you back.”

  She gave him a hard smile and replied, “I didn’t ask for an escort. Kalen gave you a job to do. Go do it.”

  As she left, she could feel both of them watching her.

  Dais called out behind her, “You aren’t safe to wander through the forest, Lelia. You hardly know your way around the camp.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Wanna bet?”

  TEN

  Kalen scrubbed his hands over his face and wished he could have just ten minutes to put his head down and rest. He didn’t need to sleep, although he’d have given his eye-teeth for a decent nap. But he desperately needed a few minutes of peace and quiet.

  A faint buzz lit under his skin, and he glanced toward the door just as Lee stepped through. Focusing back on the two men in front of him, he finished explaining where he wanted them to place the ion cannon. They had three of them. If they had another ten or twenty, he would be a happy man. As it was, they’d have to deal with just the three.

  “Keep it under wraps until we need it. No use in letting the Sirvani know we have something a little more powerful on hand. If we keep the fires built up, it will keep all but the Raviners and the Jorniaks at bay. Perhaps even the Sirvani for a time. We’ve plenty of cold-beams for the firebreathers.” The Ikacado didn’t really breathe fire, but they might as well have. Fire wouldn’t keep them back, but the cold-beams would, and thank the Lord and saints, there was no shortage of the cold-beams.

  “Kalen.”

  Lee’s voice was soft, and he didn’t turn to look at her. He held out his hand, signaling that she wait as he continued giving orders to the men. He finished, and as they headed out, he looked at Lee. Then he narrowed his eyes and studied her a little closer. Her color was up, red flags riding high on her cheeks, her eyes all but glowing. She stood in front of him with an annoyed look on her face and her hands planted on her slender hips.

  “Why aren’t you with Morne and Dais?” he asked shortly.

  “Because I wanted to be here.” Her chin went up. “You know, considering that you freaked out just a few days ago when he touched me, I’m surprised you stuck me with him on this recon deal.”

  Kalen shrugged. “I trust Morne to keep you safe. Although I’m not too happy to see that you are here without either of them.” The last thing he needed was to worry about Lee wandering through the unsecured forest. He knew she’d needed a break away from the grisly jobs at the camp, and that was why he’d sent her with Morne and Dais. Those two would keep her safe, and far enough away from Kalen so he could concentrate.

  “I can keep myself safe, buddy.” She angled her chin toward the door and said, “We need to talk. Alone.” Without waiting for him to respond, she turned around and headed for the door.

  She strode outside. She had her curls pulled back with a thong and they bounced up and down with each step. Curious, Kalen followed her outside. There was a weird tension surrounding her. He reached out to touch her mind and ended up getting the deft touch thrown back at him by the thick, impenetrable walls. When she turned to look at him, she had a smirk on her pretty mouth.

  Eira hadn’t ever gotten around to teaching Lee how to bolster her psychic shields. She’d been too busy trying to get the basics of magick down to worry about Lee’s rather minor psy talents. But Lee had picked up that knowledge somewhere. There was more, too.

  Kalen couldn’t be sure, but the vibes coming off Lee were different now—or at least different from her current norm. It was almost like he was standing with the Lee he had known most of his life—his warrior. Amazed, Kalen murmured, “I’ll be
damned.”

  “Aren’t we all?” She pushed the curls back from her face and then jammed her hands in her pockets. “Somebody raised the Veil while I was in the forest.”

  Whatever he had been expecting Lee to say, it hadn’t been that. Many of his troops were sensitives—sensing the Veil wasn’t an uncommon ability. Raising it, though, was uncommon. It took more focus, more concentration and more talent than most of his men had. “Who?”

  She shook her head. Some of her curls had slipped free of the restraining leather, framing her face. She looked so soft with all those blond curls, that pretty mouth and her big blue eyes. Soft and touchable—fuckable. Bleeding saints—not now, he thought as blood drained out of his head, straight down to his cock.

  She said something, and it took a minute to focus on her words instead of the way her mouth looked as she shaped those words. He didn’t want to think about what she was saying, not one bit. What he wanted to do was see that pretty pink mouth wrapped around his cock, and then he wanted to tumble her onto her back and press his mouth against her, taste her and lick her until she came.

  But instead of that, he had to listen to whatever she was saying, and it was damned hard to think about anything with his dick hurting like a bad tooth. Finally, though, he managed to think past the desire fogging his brain. “You didn’t see anybody?”

  She shrugged, a graceful shift of smooth, rounded shoulders. “Not anybody on this side of the Veil. On the other side, it was a Sirvani—a high-ranking one.” She slid him a look from under her lashes and said, “Whoever it was on our side, they seemed to know each other. Very well.”

  “How do you know he was ranked?”

  Lee’s only answer was a mysterious little smile, but it was all the answer he needed. Somehow, Lee had pieced herself together: the woman she was in her world and the warrior she was in his. The knowledge was there in her eyes, in that cool, confident gaze and that arrogant little smirk.

  And it all added up to trouble, because if it bothered his warrior enough that she had to come looking for him, then they had a serious problem. One he couldn’t even begin to solve until he knew exactly what lay before him.

  Uneasy, Kalen turned away from her and stared into the woods. “Did you hear what they wanted?”

  “Hear, yeah. Understand? Not really. Something about keeping somebody safe. The man told the Sirvani he was playing a dangerous game. Asked him if it was worth it.”

  Puzzled, Kalen looked back at Lee. “Was what worth it?”

  “A promise.”

  “A promise?” he repeated.

  “Yeah. Should I say it again so you can repeat it again?” she asked. He glanced at her and she gave him a wide smile.

  “You’re awful damned cocky today,” Kalen murmured. He closed the distance between them, half-expecting her to back away some, but instead, she tilted her chin up, and if anything, her grin got a little wider. “Care to tell me why that is?”

  “You could say I had a near-death experience.”

  Kalen’s heart skipped a beat. She still had that playful, amused grin on her mouth, but her eyes were dead serious. “Maybe you should explain that a little more.”

  She pushed a hand through her hair, tugging out the cord that held her curls off her neck, a habitual gesture that had always driven him insane. This time was no different, and Kalen watched the silken blond curls drift back down around her shoulders. She frowned down at her hand, and Kalen saw she held a leaf there. She combed her hair out a little more and dislodged more debris, more leaves, and little bits of twigs and dirt. “I just missed a close encounter when a tree came crashing down.” She shrugged as though it was no big deal.

  Kalen paused and then asked slowly, “Just how big a tree?”

  She squinted her eyes and glanced up to the sky. Then she shrugged and said with a wry grin, “Pretty big.”

  “How close was the encounter?”

  She glanced down at her hands and spread them out about as far as they would go. A few stan lengths. Less than the length of her body. One of the reasons he’d sent a team into the forest was to make sure there weren’t any survivors—or corpses—that had been trapped by debris after the quakes. Huge trees fell; landslides from up in the mountains came crashing down and wiped out everything in their path.

  Enough time had passed that it should have been relatively safe in the forest, but— Kalen cut that thought off. Letting it finish meant thinking about something he wasn’t ready to think about. It would weaken him if he thought about how easily Lee could be taken from him. Slowly, he took a deep breath. “So nearly having a tree fall on you makes you cocky? It would make most people a little shaky.”

  “Oh, I was shaky, all right.” Lee laughed. She reached behind her and gathered her hair back into a tail, wrapping it and twisting it until it was bundled into a knot on top of her head. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a couple of skinny little sticks, which she jammed through the knot of hair.

  Kalen watched and wondered what she’d do if he reached over and pulled those skinny sticks out, just so he could watch the curls fall down around her face. Instead he told her, “You don’t look very shaky.”

  She flashed him that cheeky grin. “Well, I took a few minutes. Morne sent the others on ahead, and I was sitting there on the ground when I felt it. It was kind of like when Eira was . . .” Her voice trailed off and that impertinent grin faded. “It was the Veil. I heard it, felt it, like it was singing a song that only I could hear, calling to me.”

  Kalen hadn’t heard it explained like that before. He could sense when somebody lifted the Veil while he was close by, and when he lifted it himself, he felt the power that flowed between the two worlds. That power throbbed inside him, rippled inside his skin and warmed him from the inside out, even as it terrified him. “Let me guess—you went exploring.”

  She gave him a bland look. “What would you have done?” Then she rolled her shoulders, squirming around a little like she had an itch on her spine. “I heard them talking. It didn’t make sense.” As he watched, she flushed and looked away.

  “What?”

  Lee’s only response was a baleful glare.

  Narrowing his eyes, he reached out and cupped a hand over the back of her neck. He pulled her in close and lowered his face until they were nose to nose. “Lee . . . ,” he said warningly.

  “You’re going to think I’m nuts.”

  He laughed. “Lee, if you aren’t telling me whatever it is because you don’t want me to think you’re losing your mind, then don’t bother. I’m quite convinced you lost it ages ago.”

  She shoved against his chest until he let go, and he grinned as she walked away in a huff. She shot him a dark look. He grinned wider. “Oh, for crying out loud,” she snapped. “I could hear myself, okay?”

  “Ahhh . . . hear yourself?”

  “Yeah, as in there were two or three voices talking in my head, and all of them were me, but they didn’t feel like me. One of them tells me I just need to accept things and stop fighting it. The other one is telling me to run away from the music I heard coming from the Veil, and me, well, I’m just standing there trying to make sense of things—which I haven’t been able to do since I arrived here, by the way.”

  Wisely, Kalen kept his mouth shut as she continued to ramble. She started to pace, and he carefully eased his way back until she couldn’t see him unless she turned her head to look at him. Lee continued to speak, her voice rising and falling, and all the confusion and fear he knew she’d been hiding finally spilled out. It was there in her pale face, in the shaking of her voice and the jerky, tense movement of her body as she paced back and forth. “She was the loudest one, though. Cynical bitch.”

  Now Kalen was having a hard time keeping up. She was talking about herself—right? “Lee, who are we talking about there?”

  She spun around and glared at him, as though she couldn’t believe he couldn’t keep up with her very, very erratic train of thought. She jabbed a thumb t
oward her chest. “Me, Kalen. We’re talking about me.”

  He paused for a split second and then asked, “So you’re a loud cynical bitch?” He fought to keep from smiling, and other than the corners of his mouth twitching a few times, he thought he did an admirable job of it.

  Her body slumped and she covered her face with her hands. “Hell. I sound crazy.” For a minute, she stood there, head down. Her slender shoulders bowed, shuddered a little as she took a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m a loud cynical bitch. Look, I can’t explain this without sounding crazy. But it’s like I had three people talking inside my head. But they were all me. One of them kept saying, accept it, accept it, accept it . . . but it was more than just the words. It was like she was crowding into my head, pushing her way inside—told me to accept her, and I said—I think I even said it out loud—it’s not like you’re giving me a choice. Then all of a sudden, I could hear those two men talking again, but this time they made sense. They were speaking a language I’d never heard, but it made sense. I could feel the power of the Veil, and I could even understand why part of me wanted to run. It was a Sirvani, and the witch inside me didn’t want to be anywhere near him. His kind hunt mine, and it was like instinct or something. I wanted to run from him.”

  She sighed and leaned back. The building at her back was one of the stone creations they’d built over the hot springs. It had come through the quakes mostly intact. Unfortunately, none of them had time to indulge in the hot springs, although Lee looked like she needed it. She was so damn tense, it was a wonder she hadn’t shattered under the strain of it. “You’re right to fear the Sirvani, Lee.”

  Her eyes moved to his face and then she looked away again. With a restless shrug, she said, “Yeah, I know. Bad news and all that. Anyway, they finished talking—I understood it all. More . . . I remember.”

  She lifted her eyes to his face and said it again, “I remember, Kalen. All of it. They don’t really feel like my memories, but I can remember seeing you in some basement and giving you a sandwich when we were kids. Ham and cheese . . .” Her voice hitched a little and she took a deep breath. “I gave you a ham-and-cheese sandwich, and there were demons waiting to kill you.”