‘Oh.’ Ayla was silent a moment, considering this. ‘Caraway seemed to think you’d hired Sorrow to kill my father and implicate me in the crime.’
Bloody Tomas Caraway! Travers narrowed his eyes. He still couldn’t believe Ayla had gone to Caraway for help, after everything that lay in their shared past. Then he realised the truth: she was trying to change the focus of his attention, and she’d almost succeeded.
‘No doubt Caraway thinks many things,’ he said lightly. ‘Who knows what goes on in the mind of a disgraced alcoholic? He probably sees conspiracy in every corner.’
‘He will come after me, you know.’ Even Ayla seemed to recognise how remote a possibility that was; her voice quivered as she said it. Travers shrugged.
‘I hope he does. I look forward to hearing of his defeat at the hands of the Helm – that is, assuming he gets that far. He’s got the whole of the fifth ring to claw his way through first.’ He gave her a pitying smile. ‘You know, my dear, if you wanted someone to watch your back, almost any beggar off the street would have done better than Tomas Caraway. At least the average beggar wouldn’t have offended the entire fighting population of Arkannen by the simple fact of being an incompetent fool.’
‘He didn’t strike me as incompetent.’ Ayla had recovered her composure; the look she gave him held a hint of mockery. ‘At least, not when he defeated four of your men in the first ring.’
‘Competence and luck are not the same thing,’ Travers snapped, then heard the edge in his own voice and softened it. ‘He wasn’t a total disaster on the duelling ground. I daresay he’s retained some of the skills that every Helmsman has. But he’ll need more than that to get past all the people who despise him for his failure.’
Ayla’s eyebrows arched. ‘Why do you hate him so much?’
Because you used to watch his every move like a lovesick puppy. Travers shook his head. ‘I don’t hate him. He doesn’t mean enough to me for that.’
At her disbelieving stare, he felt anger touch the back of his throat again. Ayla must have read the emotion in his face; she lowered her gaze, studying her clasped hands.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly. ‘I didn’t mean to question you.’
She was learning. Or was it another tactic? Travers concealed a smirk. He wasn’t so blind to reason that he had forgotten how she’d behaved towards him only a few moments ago. She was like a warrior on the training field, trying one weapon and then another to see which cut the keenest. It seemed almost a shame she’d have to find out that ultimately, all her blades were useless.
‘But if you dislike Caraway because I turned to him for help,’ Ayla went on, oblivious to his cynicism, ‘then you should know it was only because there was no-one else.’ She looked up, wide eyes searching his face. ‘I would have come to you, if I’d thought you would have believed me.’
Despite himself, Travers responded to the note of appeal in her voice. ‘You would?’
‘Of course. You’re the Captain of the Helm. The one person who my family can always rely on.’ She reached out a pleading hand. ‘Owen, isn’t it possible that we’ve both got it wrong? That I’ve been suspecting you and you’ve been suspecting me, while all this time the real killer is free in Arkannen?’
She was so intent on trying to convince him, she actually leaned forward – and she’d called him by his first name. Travers frowned at her, hearing the ring of truth in her words. Was it possible that she was innocent? Was it possible that she didn’t deserve to be locked up? She was looking at him now as if he were her one remaining chance of salvation. It was all he’d ever wanted, for her to look at him as though she really saw him. He could justify that look. He could open the door, and stand aside, and let her go free.
‘Owen?’ Ayla whispered again, her breath warm against his skin, and his body stirred in response. Yes. He’d do it – he’d let her go. Just as soon as he’d kissed her goodbye.
Closing the remaining gap between them, he pressed his lips hard against hers. Immediately she flinched back, the fear returning to her eyes. Travers stared at her, and felt the anger rising swift and hot in him once more. She’d nearly done it. She’d nearly fooled him. He’d nearly forgotten why she deserved to be here.
‘Enough games,’ he snarled, grabbing her upper arms.
‘I’m telling you, you’ve got it wrong!’ Ayla pounded at his shoulders with both fists as he pushed her inexorably backwards until she was horizontal on the bed. She strained against the weight of his body, trying with all her strength to push him off, but it only excited him further. The truth was, he didn’t care if she was innocent or guilty – not any more. His brief moment of doubt had passed, leaving his mind smooth and clear, like a blade cleaned of all blood.
‘Travers, get off me!’ Her voice rose to a shriek. He stopped it by covering her mouth with his own, forcing his tongue between her reluctant lips. She bit and scratched at him, all teeth and claws like a trapped wild thing; he bit her back, hard enough to break through the soft skin of her lower lip. Her blood tasted richer and sweeter than his own, the power of it tingling through him. He had to have her. He had to have her now or he’d explode.
Catching one of her thrashing wrists, he forced it up and back until he found the open manacle at the corner of the bed. There had been a Nightshade or two in Darkhaven’s history who had been mad enough to need restraining, one or two more who’d needed it by the time they’d been locked in this room for months or even years; what he was doing now was just the latest in a long line of violent deeds housed by these four walls. As he clicked the manacle into place around Ayla’s wrist, she gave a low moan as though she knew exactly what it meant. Her eyes were dark holes, the pupils blurring into the shadowy blue of the irises so that he was no longer sure whether she saw him or something completely different.
‘I’ll keep fighting you,’ she whispered. ‘I won’t stop until I’m dead.’
Baring his teeth in a savage grin, Travers slammed her other wrist into place. Her resulting whimper pleased him: after all, wasn’t she being punished? And if it didn’t hurt then it could hardly be called a punishment.
‘How long do you think you can fight for, Ayla?’ he asked. ‘Because unless you can will yourself into death, you’ve got most of your life ahead of you.’
She shook her head, wordlessly denying it. Travers smoothed the rumpled hair back from her forehead and tucked it tenderly behind her ears.
‘Be patient, my love,’ he murmured. ‘And who knows? Maybe one day our children will rule Darkhaven.’
Ignoring the curses she hurled at him, he turned to her ankles, making sure both were fixed as securely as her wrists. By the time he had finished, Ayla lay quiescent as though she had lost both the ability and the will to defy him; there were tearstains on her cheeks. As Travers looked at her, he knew in a flash of pure clarity that whatever happened afterwards, this was the one perfect moment of his life.
‘Scream as loud as you like, sweet girl,’ he told her, leaning down to wipe the blood off her mouth with his thumb. ‘There’s no-one here to hear you.’
THIRTY-TWO
Myrren stared at Sorrow, slow fury uncoiling itself like a snake in his chest, taut and hissing. The headache he’d had when he woke up that morning began to creep back into place, as if something were gnawing gently and relentlessly at the backs of his eyes.
‘Travers knows where Ayla is,’ he repeated, his voice coming out flat.
‘I told you I saw Ayla yesterday.’ Sorrow sounded wary. ‘After that, I followed her and Caraway back to their lodgings. I made a deal with Travers that I’d tell him where Ayla was if he gave me the freedom of Darkhaven.’
‘For what?’ Myrren didn’t even try to restrain his frustration. ‘So you could get your bloody pistol back?’
‘My lord …’ Sorrow lifted her hands in a conciliatory gesture, but her jaw was set. ‘I’d heard nothing to convince me of Ayla’s innocence. I had no reason to protect her. It was my belief that if the Hel
m were so anxious to find her, they must have good cause.’
Myrren shook his head. ‘The truth is, you used the information to your own advantage, to get what you wanted from Travers. Just as you have sought this morning to get what you want from me.’ He took a deep breath, fighting the urge to shake her. ‘Well, enough. I’ve pardoned you for your previous actions, and that pardon still holds. But I don’t ever want to see your face again. You will leave Darkhaven today, and you won’t come back.’
‘But –’ Elisse began, then shrank back against her pillows as he turned on her.
‘But nothing! This woman isn’t fit company for you, Elisse, and she certainly isn’t fit company for my brother. She’s done her job. She’s protected you. Now let that be an end to it!’
There was silence. Myrren lifted a hand to massage between his eyes, wishing he could think more clearly through what was fast becoming a blinding pain. Travers would have wasted no time in taking Ayla into custody. And the lie he had told about Ayla leaving the city suggested he had no intention of informing Myrren about it. It was possible, therefore, that he had gone in search of Ayla first thing that morning. It was possible that she was already in Darkhaven …
The thought drove Myrren a few paces towards the door, before dizziness overtook him and left him reeling. He really should see the physician about these migraines. Tomorrow. Later. He had more important things to attend to first. He needed to find Serenna. He needed to find Travers. Most of all, he needed to find Ayla.
‘Lord Myrren?’ He dimly recognised Elisse’s voice. ‘Are ya all right?’
‘Fine,’ he mumbled. It would pass in a few moments; it always did. Yet he didn’t seem able to tame the snake of fury inside him. It spiralled up and up, into his throat, until he could hardly breathe. He felt as though he were trapped inside one of his own nightmares – as though his whole self were slowly dissolving into a dark cloud of lethal intent. He wanted to kill Travers, he realised. He wanted to rip him apart with his bare hands.
Stay calm, he told himself. Stay in control. Yet he couldn’t suppress the emotion that was rising, always rising. He took a few more stumbling steps in the direction of the door, then stopped again. Everything around him appeared slightly off-kilter, as if he had crossed into a different reality without realising it. He rubbed his face, but the sensation didn’t fade. Clumsy, he reached out one hand to grasp the door handle, the other fumbling at his pocket to make sure the loaded pistol was still there. He had to find Serenna. He had to find Travers and make him release Ayla.
The door swung open, revealing the corridor beyond. It seemed to be breaking up, swirling into dancing spots wherever Myrren looked. The pressure was building inside his head, crushing his thoughts. He couldn’t resist it any longer.
With a sigh, though whether of relief or regret he wasn’t sure, he succumbed to the darkness inside him.
Serenna burst into the library and ran straight to the desk, where the book called Changer Myths and Truths was lying as she had left it. Once there, she shoved the veil back from her face again and stared at it, her heart pounding so hard she thought she might faint. She didn’t want to open it. She didn’t want to find the confirmation she knew it contained. But she had to know the truth.
Feverishly, she leafed through the pages until she came to the one she was looking for, the account of the previous attacks that had taken place in Arkannen. And there it was. It had been there all along, only she hadn’t seen it. There were nine Changers in Darkhaven, as well as one who it was rumoured had been born without the gift … a spate of murders in the city … obvious a Changer was the perpetrator … the Nightshades closed ranks and denied responsibility. What if they had denied responsibility because they hadn’t realised one of their own was responsible? What if the girl who was kept hidden in the tower, unable to Change, had in fact possessed a much darker version of the Nightshade gift?
If a Changer could have the ability to Change into a second creature form without realising it, couldn’t he have that same condition with just a single form?
Wasn’t it possible that a man could be a Changer and not even know it?
Serenna buried her face in her hands as the truth swept over her in a shivery wave. She didn’t want to believe it, yet it all made a ghastly kind of sense. Lord Florentyn had threatened to incarcerate Ayla, and Myrren had acted to defend his sister. Serenna was sure it was that, and not his own disinheritance, which had been his motivation. He loved Ayla. And to make sure Florentyn couldn’t hurt her, he had killed him. He had killed his own father, and awoken the next morning without any more memory of doing so than a vague, uneasy nightmare.
Then Myrren had discovered the address in the Ametrine Quarter, and that very night Travers had been attacked there. Flaming ashes! Myrren had even questioned the coincidence himself, and she had dismissed it. And he knew the layout of Darkhaven intimately, well enough to locate both Florentyn’s window and the window to Ayla’s room: the room where he went looking for Elisse and was hurt by Sorrow’s pistol, enough to leave a bruise when he returned to human form. Serenna wasn’t sure why Myrren had attacked Elisse. Perhaps it was because her testimony implicated Ayla yet again. Perhaps it was because his creature-self was much more ruthless than he was, and knew quite well that Elisse’s unborn child was a threat to him – or, more likely, to Ayla. Yes. He had no care for himself; everything he had done had been to protect Ayla.
As for the attack on Serenna herself, the one that had started it all … who knew? She’d said to Myrren, the first time she met him, that she thought the creature had been lost. That it hadn’t meant to hurt her. It didn’t know its own strength. Maybe that had been true of all these attacks. Maybe the creature-Myrren had searched for people in order to frighten them, trying to make them see the truth he knew better than anyone: that Ayla wasn’t guilty. Or maybe after Florentyn’s death he’d gained a taste for blood. Whatever he had intended, he had left only destruction behind him.
Elements. She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. Her heartbeat was a throbbing ache inside her. What do I do now? How do I tell him the truth?
They’ll lock him up! a voice in her mind was screaming. They’ll lock him up and throw away the key!
She took a deep breath, trying to compose herself. But the ability she’d developed over many years serving the Altar of Flame, to detach herself from the fears and tribulations of the world, had vanished in the few short days she’d spent in Darkhaven. She was a woman burdened with a truth like a burning coal in her hand, and she was afraid for the man she loved. Faced with that, she was as shaken and panicky as she had been when her parents walked away from the temple and left her there for good. No, more so: because this time it was up to her to do the leaving. She couldn’t let any more people be injured or killed. And so she had to tell Myrren the truth about himself, before walking away and leaving him alone in the dark with only the four blank walls of the incarceration room for company.
It doesn’t have to be like that, she told herself. Maybe there’s some way you can help him. But before you do anything else, you have to go back. You have to go back and face him with it.
She left the library and set off as fast as she could, back the way she had come. She hadn’t replaced the veil over her face, but that was just tough; she needed to see the world, not be separated from it by a piece of cloth. Her throat was sore with the desire to shout or scream or do something – anything – to let out the turmoil of emotion that was building up inside her.
Keep going, Serenna, she ordered. He needs you to be practical, so that’s what you’ll be. Time enough for grieving later.
Her ankle was aching, and she couldn’t run as quickly as she would have liked; she wanted her cane, but she didn’t know where it was. She hadn’t taken it with her last night when she went to see Myrren – pure vanity, she admitted to herself now – which meant it was probably somewhere in Ayla’s room. Its absence left her limping along, cursing herself for stupidity and
feeling that every step was too slow.
She arrived at one end of the final corridor just as Myrren emerged from Ayla’s room halfway along, leaving the door swinging open behind him. Relief shuddered through her, and she forced herself to move faster. Yet even as she opened her mouth to call out to him, his body began to shimmer. It was as if she were seeing him through a heat haze, a quivering of the air between them. Then, before her eyes, he blurred into a cloud of what looked like black smoke or dust, a formless substance that swirled and changed from one shape to another, patterns forming and then dissolving again like a flock of birds in the evening sky. His clothes dropped to the floor to lie still and empty, a sloughed skin.
She was too late.
She stood perfectly still, barely remembering to breathe, as the cloud of smoke expanded and began to solidify again, taking on a shape that was much larger and stranger than the one before it. Gradually texture and colour coalesced out of darkness until there it was: the creature that had killed Florentyn and injured three others.
Myrren.
In animal form he matched, in every respect, the illustration of the Wyvern she had seen in the book. There were the long neck and powerful jaw, there the gleaming black scales. The wings were folded tightly across the back, rustling with every movement; the barbed tail and two clawed feet scraped across the smooth-worn stone. In an average room the creature’s head would have brushed the ceiling, even with neck bent, but Darkhaven was built on more generous lines. Even with her heart beating so hard that it threatened to break out of her chest, Serenna couldn’t help marvelling at how well Myrren-as-Wyvern fitted his surroundings. For the first time, the imposing blackstone walls of Darkhaven made sense to her as a setting for what they contained. Perhaps, once, the overlords of Mirrorvale had spent as much time in creature form as they had in human form …
Concentrate, she told herself. You have to bring him back. The trouble was, she had absolutely no idea how to do it. She didn’t know whether Myrren would even recognise her when he was in this form.
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