by Natalie Grey
Whatever had passed between us inside, it was gone now. Right now, he was a solid, comforting presence at my shoulder.
Right now, it felt like we were a team.
I turned my head slightly to let him know I was listening.
“She is the newest member of the Coimeail,” he explained. “One hundred years old, perhaps, but no more than that. From Mongolia. You would be unwise to underestimate her.”
I had no intention of doing so, especially not if she had already become one of the five most powerful people in the Separatist movement this young—but his words were still appreciated. I nodded a silent thank you.
And then I went on the offensive.
Because like hell was I letting them run this thing.
“You said you would tell me what Terric was doing.” I swept my eyes over the group. “So?”
The members of the Coimeail did not even look at one another. For all of Maggie’s uneasiness, this question had been anticipated.
“There are two possibilities,” Therese said. The wind off the sea blew her robes against her slim form. “The first is that Terric is alone, seeking to finish the task he failed to complete many years ago.”
“Killing me,” I said quietly. I wished she would speak plainly.
“Yes and no.” Akihito took up the explanation. “Terric had long believed that magic such as yours should be eradicated from the world—a measure Fordwin had long suggested.”
“Fordwin would never—” Daiman began hotly.
“He did.” I looked over at him sadly. “I found some of his writings in the library at the Acadamh, remember? He said the only way to suppress dark magic was to kill the one who wielded it.”
That stopped him dead. He looked between me and the Coimeail, his lips parted.
It was not that he had nothing to say, I could see. He had too much to say. There were too many questions.
And he didn’t want any of them answered.
For a moment, I wanted nothing more than to take him away from this place. Daiman had believed in the Acadamh without reserve … until my presence revealed its darkest secrets. I had seen his world unravel that day, and even though he was hanging on, how many more revelations could he take?
Because there were more. I was sure of it. No organization existed for 600 years without racking up some dirty secrets, and now that the first one had been revealed, the rest were all going to spill out.
But Daiman only looked down, away from me, and I knew he wasn’t going to leave.
I nodded at the Coimeail to continue. What we needed was the whole truth.
Maggie took up the explanation. “Because Fordwin had supported him in this—and had already known you still lived—we thought perhaps Terric had taken shelter with him.” She shook her head, her flaming red hair barely shining gold in the moonlight. “But even he does not know where Terric might be.”
I exchanged a look with Daiman. Fordwin Delaney, once the leader of the Separatist movement, had trained Terric to kill me, and had once been an outspoken advocate of quelling dark magic.
If that was Terric’s purpose now, would Fordwin be honest with the Coimeail … or would he hide Terric’s location?
“We are not fools,” Therese said quietly. Her tone admonished us. She met Daiman’s eyes. “We have reason to believe Fordwin is telling us the truth.”
There was an awkward silence.
“The other possibility is that Terric might take shelter with Julius,” Akihito said simply. He shook his head. “Or … Philip, as the case may be. Though we believe Terric had been unaware of his true identity, we thought it possible that he would form an alliance with Philip.”
I gave a snort.
“It is not so unlikely.” Maggie’s voice was neither icy nor smug, only quiet. “You have been Terric’s enemy for many years—and if our Hunter’s reports can be trusted….” She let the question hang in the air for a moment, her eyes on Daiman, her words reminding him where his first loyalty should lie. “If his account of your fight in Venice is true, then you have made an enemy of Philip,” she finished. “Alliances have been formed on more slender threads than that before.”
I chewed my lip, trying not to focus on the fact that Daiman had apparently been sending reports back to the Coimeail.
I needed to focus on more important things, after all; like an alliance between my two greatest enemies.
I didn’t want to admit it, but Maggie had a point. The moment I rejected Philip, I’d made him and Terric into allies.
…Fuck.
“But you don’t know where he is.”
My head jerked around in surprise at the sound of Daiman’s voice. He was staring evenly at them.
“Or what he’s doing,” he added. “You aren’t sure.”
He might have kept his face calm, but his words, and the aching disappointment in them, brought me back to our conversation only a few minutes before. I’d asked him why.
And he’d told me that they would have a good reason. He’d been sure of it.
I looked back at the Coimeail in time to see the traces of discomfort vanish from their faces.
Fleeting, it might have been, but the woman I had once been had learned to watch for things like that.
A strange hunger awoke in me. There were secrets here.
And secrets were power.
“Daiman.” I let my voice hold just a note of reproach. I looked over to meet his wide-eyed, surprised look without a flicker. He would understand where I was going with this in a moment. “They’re just doing what they need to. They can’t allow this to spin out of control.”
To my very great pleasure, it was Maggie who stepped into the trap.
“She’s right.” She stared Daiman down, almost desperately. “Think for a moment, Bradach. How much damage has already been done to the Acadamh now that Terric’s lie is exposed. They will think we were complicit in his deception. They will think….”
And then she saw the trap I’d laid. I’d give her that, she did see it.
She just saw it a bit too late.
And Daiman saw it, too.
“They’ll think what?” he asked dangerously. When no one answered, his eyes swept the group. “They’ll think what?” he repeated.
At last, Nergui spoke. “We cannot let the Acadamh fall with Terric.”
I tilted my head. Her voice called to mind long grass rustling in the wind—and snow-capped mountains, the screams of circling hawks, the thunder of hooves. She had a natural presence about her, and there was no shame in those black eyes.
Daiman stared at her, his brow furrowed.
“The world knows he lied now,” Nergui told him. “If the rest comes out, and we have not condemned him, taken steps to punish him … the Acadamh will fall.”
“The rest.” Daiman’s voice was thick. “You mean the part where you killed children?”
The others flinched, but Nergui did not. She nodded, once. “You know why,” was all she said
“And it was not a good enough reason,” he spat back.
The other three opened their mouths to butt in, and I slid myself smoothly into the conversation.
“So you have a problem and an opportunity.” I leaned against the nearest tree, staring off into nothingness, the very image of a pensive genius. Despite the fact that I was nothing of the sort, I knew how to set the stage, and I could feel them all watching me curiously. “On the one hand, some very dirty laundry is about to be aired. On the other hand … you’ve just acquired a scapegoat. If you can throw him under the bus quickly enough, you figure you can all keep your jobs.”
There was a silence, and it occurred to me to wonder if they knew what a bus was.
They understood my meaning well enough, either way.
“And—and—” I kept my voice light, though genuine humor was beginning to well up in it “—you decided that the person you should come to, in order to save your precious Acadamh, was the woman who started the Monarchist movement.”<
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There was an icy silence.
“I assumed Daiman would not follow you if you were still devoted to that cause.” Maggie’s voice was like acid. “Was I wrong?”
I pretended to ignore the jab at Daiman, but I felt as much as saw him wince.
Oh, it was on.
“What do you think the Monarchist movement is?” I made my tone as biting as hers. If she wanted to play this way, then that’s how I would play.
And I would win. I always won this game.
“Did you think the whole idea was the plague?” I asked them. “Can you possibly be that stupid?”
Daiman made a small noise, but said nothing. Otherwise, there was silence. I had them on the defensive now, and none of them knew what to say. Neither, from a quick flick of my eyes, did Daiman.
Interesting.
“It’s freedom,” I said bluntly. “That’s why there’s still a Monarchist movement. It’s not any of that crap I was going on about back in the day, that Philip was trying to restart. No, the real Monarchist movement, the heart of it, what it is now … it’s freedom. From you.”
Therese’s lips parted uncertainly. She looked at Akihito, who seemed equally confused. Maggie’s eyes were narrowed, she was prepared not to believe anything I said.
And Nergui was watching me curiously, her head tilted to the side.
“You made this movement,” I explained. I wanted to be cutting, but the words were just pouring out of me now. “You want to control everything. That’s why there’s still a resistance. The people who sheltered me didn’t want humans to be wiped out, they didn’t think they had any divine right to rule, they knew that was bullshit—they just wanted to be free.”
“What were we supposed to do?” Akihito asked. His voice shook slightly. “Leave sorcerers to find their way to us? Leave 5-year-olds to fend for themselves? Has Daiman not told you where those children end up now?”
I flinched, and hated myself for that.
“Well, you could have not killed them, for one thing.” Not my best comeback. I was losing control of this, but I was truly angry now.
Daiman looked away. Every muscle in him was taut. I could practically feel the pain coming off him in waves.
I had to finish this and get him out of here.
“Face it,” I told them. “You came here not because there was any real need, but because you wanted this swept under the rug.”
“No!” Maggie’s voice was raw.
That surprised me. My head jerked around and I met a pair of desperate, pale blue eyes.
“No,” she said again. Her head was shaking involuntarily. “We came here because he is up to something. He is going to hurt people. Don’t you understand? Maybe you think we’re monsters—though you’re the last person who should be judging us for what we did—but now we’re actually trying to stop him from doing worse. We came to you because you’re one of the few people in the world who’s a powerful enough sorceress to help—because you’re one of the only ones who doesn’t owe Terric everything!”
She was telling the truth. Some distant part of me knew that, but I was too angry to care.
“You came to me because if people got angry at you for this, you could disavow all knowledge of it.” I spat the words at her. “You could pretend it was all my idea to kill Terric, that I came back from the dead and wanted to finish the feud. Isn’t that right?”
From Daiman’s horrified expression, it was clear he had not thought of this.
He really was not cut out for politics.
“No.” Therese shook her head. “We came to you because if Fordwin didn’t know where he was … you might.”
I gave a harsh laugh, looking away and rubbing at my forehead. “That doesn’t make any goddamned sense. Why the hell would I know where he is?”
“Because maybe he let something slip back in the day,” Therese said desperately.
“When?”
They looked at one another. There was some confusion there, the genuine sense of people who don’t know how to play the hand they’ve been dealt.
“Come on.” Daiman took my hand. “Let’s go. They don’t have anything.”
I shook my head silently. There was a pattern here, something larger than I could see, something I couldn’t quite remember….
“When would Terric have let something slip?” I asked again.
Maggie’s lips formed a few words, silently, like she was rehearsing. She looked at the others, but no one seemed willing to take the job of explaining this. “When he infiltrated the Monarchists,” she said finally. There was something like pity in her eyes. “Everyone thought he was really one of you and he’d just turned on you … until it came out that Fordwin had sent him.”
There was a pause.
“Did you not remember that?” Her voice was tentative.
She was genuinely sorry for me. For the first time, I had the sense that she believed my story, believed what had happened to me. I had the thought that this was a moment any normal person would have built on, to make a connection between us.
I’d never been exactly normal, though.
I looked away. “No.” I practically spat the word.
I wasn’t even sure what I was saying no to: to the memory, to whether I’d known it, to whether I believed it.
“We wondered….” Maggie swallowed. “We heard Philip tell Terric that the way he was now, he was practically a Monarchist. We wondered if it was true. We wondered….”
“If he had absorbed some of what you believed,” Akihito finished quietly. “If you might be able to tell us where he would go to ground.”
I could barely hear them. All I could hear was my own voice, the one word repeating over and over in my memory as I stared up at Terric:
“Why?”
“Go.” Daiman’s voice was harsh. “Get. Out.” I could feel his arms around me. “You don’t know a thing about her, and you don’t actually have any idea where Terric is.”
Voice rose, every one of them trying to speak over one another to convince him.
“Stop it,” I managed.
They didn’t hear me.
“I said stop it!”
There was a silence.
I could hardly feel Daiman’s body against mine, but I could feel the cobblestones under me. I could feel Terric’s fire magic. I was lost in the memory and I was standing right here, struggling to stay upright.
Why?
I knew why I’d asked that now. I knew why I’d felt so betrayed.
Terric had pretended to be my friend, my confidant. And then he’d turned around and stabbed me in the back.
I pushed myself away from Daimain and looked around at the Coimeail.
“I’ll take the job,” I said grimly.
Chapter 3
It was sometime later that Daiman came to join me in the tiny bedroom. He closed the door behind himself as quietly as possible, and I could feel him watching me.
I was at the little desk, an unbound folder of paper nearby and a new sheet half-covered in the written account of my latest memory. I took the time to finish my sentence before I put my pen down and turned to stare at him.
“Well, they’re gone,” he said quietly.
“Did they have any other advice?”
He didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. He made his way to the bed and started to take off his boots, and after a moment, I returned to my work.
I had begun writing the memories down after the battle in Venice. They were coming too quickly for me to make sense of them otherwise, and my mind seemed to let go of them more easily if I wrote them down.
So far, I had 347 entries, arranged—as far as I could determine—by date. They spanned tiny, insignificant moments like chopping vegetables, to my imprisonment and the first meetings of the Monarchists.
All of them still seemed like they had happened to someone else.
I also had quite a few notes on my new magical experiments. I slipped those further under the stack
of memories and hoped he wouldn’t notice.
I wasn’t keen to find out what he was going to think when I told him I was doing blood magic again.
I kept writing, taking my time over the memory, but Daiman still had not spoken when I finished. I put the pen away, placed the memory in order, and swiveled in the chair to look at him.
“What is it?” I asked. It sounded harsh.
I didn’t like this. I wanted what we’d had three days ago: sunlight and the sound of waves, a quiet place out of the way of things.
Or … what I thought we’d had.
“Why’d you take the job?” He looked over at me.
I raised my eyebrows.
“You were right.” He sounded frustrated. “You’ll be their scapegoat.”
“Their credibility is damaged.” I lifted one shoulder negligently. “I think I can ride out the storm.”
His eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“That’s not why you did it.” When I saw nothing, he went to slam his hand down on the bed and stopped himself at the last minute, unfolding the fingers carefully and placing his palm down on the rumpled sheets with forced gentleness. “Why, Nicky? You’re right, the whole thing stinks. They didn’t know he’d lied about you, and they’d just afraid he’ll tell the truth about the part they did know.”
It was true. I forced myself to acknowledge that.
My eyes strayed back to the sheaf of paper, an unconscious betrayal of my thoughts. The words were still drying on the paper:
I look up. I ask him, “Why?” I am surprised. I did not expect this of him.
My fingers clenched and I drew in a deep breath.
“Nicky—”
“How did Terric not recognize Philip?” I asked. I didn’t look back at him. “If he infiltrated the Monarchists?”
There was a creak from the bed, and I looked back in time to see Daiman sink his elbows onto his knees. He was frowning, staring into the middle distance.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. He looked at me, and his frown had the worried edge to it I’d seen a lot lately. “What if….”
I let the silence hang for a few moments before asking, “What if what?”
“What if did recognize him?” Daiman forced the words out. “If he thought he could turn him, or use him … or if they really were allies.”
