As Rook inspected the remaining captives, I fought against the animal cry welling up inside me. Dimly, I recalled the day the shadowy Familiars had discovered us on the hillside near Brimthorn, the same day Agrippa discovered my magical abilities. Rook had tried sheltering me from the attacking Familiars, but his eyes had gone pure black, and he’d screamed like a demon.
Briefly, he’d been their slave.
No. I would not give in to that mania. I would not go to him, worship him. Though I wanted to. Lord, how I wanted to.
“You’ve dealt with the others?” Rook asked the Familiar, kicking the three bodies now lying at his feet.
“Yes, lord. I’m about to see to these,” the Familiar replied, holding his bone sword before him in a sign of respect. Blood dripped from the edge of the blade. Rook dismissed the skinless creature.
“My own followers have been severely depleted, and I require new recruits. Leave these to me.” His voice was deeper than I’d ever known it in life. That voice was not Rook’s. It did not have his Yorkshire accent, and the words…they were not words he would use.
“Indeed, lord.” The servant bowed and left. Rook stood before the prisoners, flexing his clawed hands.
His hair was still flaxen, bright against the darkness. His eyes were pure black, and the bones of his face longer and sharper. Fangs hooked over his soft lower lip. His shirt was open at the front, revealing a chest still riddled with red and circular scars. His hands, now tipped with claws, cupped one woman’s chin. He brought his face close to hers as she regarded him with swollen eyes.
A bolt of fury tore through me. He shouldn’t touch her, and he shouldn’t touch anyone else, not anyone, not
MASTER
Biting my lip, I buried my face in my arm. Every breath was like fire. Control returned slowly. I wouldn’t watch Rook slice these people’s throats, or transform them. I couldn’t think of the boy I’d loved ruining the souls of innocent people.
“Look,” Maria whispered.
Growling, I glanced over to find Rook…slicing the people’s chains.
The women and four remaining men got to their feet. The woman who’d seen her husband transform began to sob anew. Rook stepped away from them and glanced over his shoulder. It was a nervous gesture.
A human gesture.
“Go now. When you reach the edge of the camp, run. Don’t look back.” He waited while the prisoners stared in astonishment. Flashing his fangs, he snarled, “Leave, or I’ll kill you all myself.” They needed no further encouragement and hurried away.
“He let them go,” Maria murmured.
Human. Rook looked human, or at least, more human than he had before. He acted human. Alone, he knelt on the ground. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to kneel at his feet, to wrap my arms around his legs. He was so beautiful, so perfect, so wonderful, so…
MASTER
There was nothing left for me, nothing but the darkness and the promise of a place by his side. I wanted to call out for him. Someone caught at me, perhaps Maria, probably Maria, and I struck her. I barely felt her face beneath my hand, it was so unimportant, and then I was crawling over the earth. My skirts, my corset got in my way, and I wished I could shed them. They were like a serpent’s dead skin that I could shuck off and crawl, glide, slither toward my master, my master.
The blinding pain in my shoulder became white-hot and then cool. It was as if my entire body had been dipped in a fresh spring.
He looked on me with astonishment as I clawed at his feet. Rook’s eyes held recognition.
He watched me with horror.
Inside my head, a small voice screamed to be let out, tiny fists beating against the walls of my skull. The voice wanted this to stop. But how could I stop it?
There were people all around me now, creatures of every shade and variety of Familiar. Surrounding me was a nightmarish assortment of fangs and slitted nostrils, of yellow eyes and melted flesh. They wanted to make me one of them.
No.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Feeling returned to me, a tingling that became a hot wave of pain as my shoulder ached. But I was myself, surrounded by monsters.
And then all the beasts broke apart as someone came stalking through the crowd. She was a woman, a very tall woman, with black skirts that swept briskly over the ground.
I would have known that way of walking anywhere.
“Korozoth. You’ve summoned my niece,” Aunt Agnes said, looking me over with an appraising eye. “Her father will be pleased.”
Her face was long, her skin as olive as my own. Her brown hair was parted severely down the middle, now threaded with gray that had not existed before. Severe lines framed her unsmiling mouth.
Aunt Agnes, the woman who had abandoned me at Brimthorn, who had called me a horrid child, now stood before me with the air of superiority. She wore a black gown, as always, but the fabric was fine. The lace at the sleeves and neckline was ornate and expensive. Being the sister of the bloody king had indeed done wonders for her.
Screaming, I tried to strike her, but my hands remained clumsy. She nodded to Rook.
“I’ll take her, Korozoth. I’m certain her father will desire a special audience.”
She looked at me with no pity. She would deliver me to R’hlem herself, on a platter. The darkness that had clouded my mind was dissipating, and horror—nay, terror—rushed to take its place. I wanted to cry out for Maria or Mickelmas but didn’t dare draw attention to them. Instead, I caught Rook’s eye. He placed a hand on my shoulder. His touch was gentle.
“She won’t harm you. Go,” he said, his voice thick. A twinge of delight went through me, to have been given an order by my master.
I shut the door on that thought and allowed my wretched aunt to lead me away.
I forced myself not to look behind for the others.
If I was to meet my father again, I didn’t want to worry about anything other than being in his presence.
* * *
—
MY AUNT LED ME ACROSS THE camp and into the hills themselves. A tunnel led into the earth, and we entered a snaking corridor lit on either side by torches. The air was close in here. How long had it taken to dig all of these tunnels?
Eventually we entered a high-ceilinged cavern, with a lantern over our heads and a table and chairs waiting in the center. Aunt Agnes deposited me in a chair without a word. What should I have done when she bade me sit? Should I have refused and shouted at her? No, because even after all of this time I was that five-year-old child, watching with wide eyes as her carriage rolled out of the Brimthorn gate and out of my life.
“Wait here.” She exited down an echoing corridor. I took the opportunity to study my new prison and noted that it was laid out to be rather fashionable. A rug decorated the ground, and the ceiling dripped onto the surface of a polished wood table. The drips made sense, considering we were in a cave. In point of fact, cave was a rather small word for where I was.
So R’hlem had formed his permanent base in the heart of a great set of rolling hills. No wonder finding him had been so difficult all these years.
This was a set of rather homey chambers, all things being equal. In one room, I glimpsed a brass four-poster bed, with lush pillows and a quilted blanket. Truly, this was made for comfort.
Well, apart from the dripping, and the earthen walls on every side of me.
How was I to escape? How was I to free Mickelmas and find Maria?
I put these thoughts aside as my aunt reentered, my father behind her.
I gripped the arms of my chair and glanced down at my hands. My engagement band shone in the dim light.
All these months later, and the shock of seeing R’hlem had not worn off. My father was tall enough that he had to bend slightly to make his way through the entrance. He strode to the table, placing his hands on the back of a vel
vet-lined chair.
He had fully recovered from the wound I’d given him months ago. He still dressed in fine clothes, tan breeches tailored to his legs. I wondered if he’d kidnapped some poor seamstress and forced her to do his bidding. Already, blotches of blood had sprouted all over his trousers, like garish dabs of paint. Pulling out a chair, he sat beside me.
“My prodigal daughter returns,” he said. My aunt remained standing. She kept her black-gloved hands folded before her.
“What are you doing back in Scotland? I’d have thought you’d remain at Sorrow-Fell now,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.
“Are you disappointed? Or is this artless fishing a ploy to discover whether your friends are still alive? Lord Blackwood in particular.” He spread a linen napkin over his lap. It seemed we were about to dine. My stomach rippled at the thought.
“My friends? Are they all right? What have you done to them?”
R’hlem grinned. “Your Lord Blackwood is notoriously difficult to keep in one’s grasp. Unlike his father, he turned tail and fled with his remaining sorcerers upon my arrival.” My father licked his fleshless lips, a distressing sight. “I’ll give Charles this: he was no coward. His son didn’t even inherit that admirable quality.”
“He’s wiser than his father,” I said, more hotly than I’d anticipated. R’hlem did not smile.
“You are engaged to him.” He didn’t make it a question.
“Why do you say that?” All the hair on my arms stood on end.
“The sorcerers I captured were happy to tell me anything I wished to know about you. Besides, there’s the ring you wear. I saw it on Charles’s wife, the few times we met.” He nodded at my hand, where the silver and pearl rested. My cheeks burning, I hid it beneath the table. “After everything you knew about our families, you still would have married that treacherous bastard. You have no shame.”
There was no love in his eye when he studied me. Well. I had been the one to stab him in the heart, after all.
“George is not his father. Am I such a stunning reflection of you?” I snapped. Aunt Agnes shifted slightly, lowering her head. She’d seated herself in a corner and was sewing dutifully, mending some garment.
“Sadly, no. You’re not even a shadow.” His eye trained upon my shoulder. Had that been a bad joke? “I’ve grown accustomed to your callousness toward me. But after what the Blackwood family did to your mother, your defection to them is a sin you’ll never wash away.” He spoke every word with such clear precision that it was obvious he was masking deep anger.
“My mother?” He had mentioned this once before, the last time we’d spoken on the astral plane. I’d assumed it was a dramatic flourish of his. “What happened to her?”
This appeared to mollify him. “You never told her, Agnes?” His voice was dangerously soft.
“I haven’t seen her since she was a child. Howard wouldn’t tell her anything like that.” Agnes never looked up from her needlework.
What the bloody hell was everyone talking about?
“You still believe your mother died in childbirth, don’t you?” R’hlem’s tone was no longer harsh.
Perhaps I truly didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“You told me it was a broken heart,” I said to my aunt.
“Oh, it was more than that. Much more.” R’hlem threw his napkin to the table. Fingerprints of blood stood out on the white linen. “Your mother was murdered by the sorcerers’ Order.”
Now this felt like madness. Above all else I was tired of being lied to, manipulated, given one piece of information only for it to be contradicted by another.
“Is this another trick?” My heart beat faster.
“Do you believe I would have spent a decade ripping this country apart for my own petty grievances?” He now sounded stunned, as though he finally realized exactly how little I thought of him. “I wouldn’t do it without the greatest possible reason.”
“What did they do to her?” I whispered.
He curled his fleshless lip. “No. No, I won’t give you what you want. Perhaps another day, when the idea has had enough time to fester.” He glanced at two fanatic serving girls as they entered with trays of dinner. Despite my fear and confusion, I was starving. They placed some mutton before me, and it took all my control not to tear into it. R’hlem didn’t touch his meal, and Aunt Agnes didn’t sit with us. In fact, she did not eat. I sat up straight and cut my meat. R’hlem laughed at that.
“Still trying to be a lady.” But he said it with seeming fondness. The girls left, and I used that small opening he’d provided.
“What are you planning to do with Sorrow-Fell?”
R’hlem chuckled. “You know perfectly well. Playing the idiot doesn’t suit you.” He took a slice of potato and popped it in his mouth. Watching his muscles strain as he chewed nearly made me lose my appetite. “The Kindly Emperor will come, and he will bring with him all the horror that this dying world can stomach. That, and more.”
“Please don’t do this.” It was all I could think to say. “Your hatred of the sorcerers is valid. The more I learn about them from you, the more I see that.” Perhaps if I flattered him, I could change his mind. “Your cause is…nobler than I’d thought. But if you open that portal, you’ll destroy everything you’ve worked to build. That’s not how a leader behaves.”
“A leader. Is that how you see me?” he asked. My stomach cramped to hear that pitying tone.
“They call you the bloody king.”
“Once, I had no mind to be a king. All I wanted was the overthrow of the Order. That was it. That was all of it.” He pulled apart a section of meat, scowling as he did so. “When the girl queen took her throne, I felt that I could mold her to my way of thinking. I might even have let her keep her kingdom. All she had to do was denounce the sorcerers and raise the interests of magicians.” He looked at me, his one eye filled with rage and regret. “Until I knew you lived. That changed everything. But through your mindless devotion to the sorcerers, you proved how deep and cancerous the Order’s hold has become. There is no extricating this country or its people from sorcery’s grip. The best way to save it now is to destroy it.”
“That’s my fault. Punish me, but leave England alone.” Once, my pleas and wide eyes might have excited his compassion. Once, before I stabbed him in the heart.
R’hlem threw down his napkin, got up, and beckoned me. Aunt Agnes continued to sew as I followed after him down an earthen corridor lit by torches in wall sconces. Soon we arrived at another chamber. Inside, I discovered what appeared to be a comfortable bedroom.
A large brass bed had been placed near the back of the room. “I would have stationed it in the center, but a ceiling drip warped the blanket,” R’hlem said conversationally.
Indeed, the bed had a down quilt of fresh pink. A vanity with a washbasin and a mirror sat to the other side of the cavern. Near the entrance, a dressmaker’s dummy sported a beautiful lavender gown, with pairs of dainty ribboned shoes lined around it. A doll’s house painted a fresh pink and white had been set on a table near the foot of the bed. I felt numb as I touched the toy windows, the miniature doorways.
“I’m too old for dolls.”
“Of course.” He moved across the room, regarding me from every angle. At my feet, I discovered a collection of six or seven parasols. Some were pale green or pink satin. Bemused, I selected one…and found my fingers sticky with blood. Gore had spattered these parasols. I dropped it quickly, biting back a scream and fast wiping the blood from my hand.
“I’ve heard that young ladies like parasols,” R’hlem said. “Once the Kindly Emperor comes, I will protect you from his wrath. Then, when this country is barren and free once more, we can rebuild it as we choose.” He smiled. “You could have the entire city of London as your own. Think of that. The new queen.”
R’hlem did not approach me further. “Rest. We’ll talk in the morning.”
He left, his footsteps quiet on the floor. I found myself alone, beneath a hollow hill teeming with monsters. Maria was somewhere outside, weak in Willoughby’s influence. I had to find her, leaving me with one great problem.
How was I to escape?
“Wake up,” a familiar voice said. I was still dressed, and lying on top of my bed. Blinking, I discovered Aunt Agnes standing over me, a tray in her hands. It was remarkable how her unsmiling expression hadn’t changed since my childhood. She placed the tray on my lap as I sat up. “You must eat.”
Was that all she’d say to me? Twelve years of silence, and now a simple “You must eat”? I forced a bite of toast. I wasn’t hungry, but I would do anything to get her to leave. Still she remained, glaring down at me.
After I’d learned that Aunt Agnes had taken me to Yorkshire at Mickelmas’s request, I’d changed my opinion of her somewhat. It had softened my memory of her saying that I was unlovable. She’d been trying to prevent any contact between us.
But then she’d gone to my father’s side. It made little sense.
“How did you come to be here?” I sipped the tea and hated that it was excellent.
“Upon his…arrival…your father allowed me to live in my cottage in Devon.” I remembered Devon and the cottage. The memory pained me now. “I stayed there until recently, when he requested that I join him here.”
“Why?” I asked.
She didn’t blink. “Because he discovered you were still alive.”
She said it with no anger or blame, but I flinched.
“At least he’s treated you well,” I muttered. She was wearing fine clothes and moving about my father’s camps with absolute freedom.
“In a fashion,” Agnes said, and removed her right glove.
She slid out a hand wrapped tightly in bleeding bandages. The tray slid off my lap and crashed to the floor, the porcelain shattering. I got up from the bed and backed away. She returned her glove with an ease that belied how terrible the agony must have been.
A Sorrow Fierce and Falling (Kingdom on Fire, Book Three) Page 15
