“You are not your mother, and I am not your father.”
“That hasn’t stopped us from repeating their mistakes.”
Bits closed her eyes in a slow blink. When they reopened a bit of the light that had always been there was gone. “Mistakes. Yes, of course.” Her voice was carefully even and emotionless. “I do tend to be rather good at those.” She was shaking. He longed to pull her into his arms and tell her all would be well, but that wouldn’t be fair to either of them. This was how it had to be. She didn’t understand it now, but one day she would realize he was doing this for her. “If you’ll excuse me.” He stepped to the side and allowed her to pass, his heart breaking with every step she took further away from him.
Chapter 37
All balls end in tears. At least, that was Bits’s experience. The trick was to not let them fall until you were well out of sight of all the other attendees. She didn’t know where she was going, nor did she care. She simply needed some place to come undone.
People often spoke of love as if it was a thing to be desired. They spoke of joy and transcendence. She now knew they were liars. Love wasn’t some happy emotion that made the sun shine brighter and air smell sweeter. Love was pain. It turned the world inside out, leaving chaos and destruction in its wake.
Ezra desired her. He said she was beautiful, and for a moment, she’d believed him. But he didn’t want to desire her or see her as beautiful. He cared for her against his better judgment. He was her heart and soul, but to him, she was nothing more than a mistake.
“Lady Elizabeth, how lovely to see you.” Garroway stepped into her path so suddenly she nearly collided with him. His teeth were bared in what some might consider a smile, but she knew better. “My, you look a bit peaked. Here, have a drink. I fetched it for myself, but you are welcome to it. I do believe you need it more.”
Bits looked at the proffered glass and back up to Garroway’s face. For once, his outfit was neat and tidy. His cravat was tied in an elegant knot, and even his hair seemed more subdued than normal.
“Are we really to do this now?” she asked.
“Do what?” He feigned confusion. “Am I not to offer you a lemonade?”
“Not after you’ve offered more than one thinly veiled threat on my life. What is the special ingredient? Arsenic? Cyanide?”
Garroway laughed. “Actually, it’s simply lemonade.” He took a drink from the glass, watching her over the rim the entire time. “I have to say, however, I’m surprised. I misjudged you. You are not nearly as naïve as I believed you to be.”
“Yes, well, I’m not a great many things people believe me to be.”
“And you are a great many things no one would ever imagine.” He drained the last of his drink and passed his glass to a servant who was walking by. “Take a turn about the room with me, Lady Elizabeth.”
“I would rather not.”
“You would also rather not draw even more attention to yourself. Come now,” he said, grabbing onto the strip of flesh left bare between the end of her sleeve and beginning of her glove. “Let’s not make a scene.” Her jerked her along, and she could do nothing but follow. There was a coldness where his hand touched her skin, and she tried to jerk it away, but he tightened his hold to where she would certainly have bruises tomorrow.
“You cannot truly expect to get away with doing something to me here, in front of all these people.”
“There is where you have misjudged me.” He steered them around a rather portly fellow whose acknowledgement Garroway returned with a nod of his head. “You see, I was taught from a very early age how to take care of problems without being seen. I once executed a prince within view of the entire court and no one was the wiser. Your predecessor taught me that. His problem was, he truly was very naïve. He never believed I would turn the skills he taught me on him. Of all the deaths I’ve dealt in my life, his was the only one that brought me happiness.”
Something was wrong. Garroway’s words sounded as if they were coming from far away. They passed several people, but she could not pick out any one individual face.
“I must admit, I feel some deep regret in having to dispose of you. You had great potential. Having a Velchan on our side could have given our cause quite the advantage, yet I’m afraid you pose too much of a risk. I don’t like risks.”
“I am unwell.” Her head ached and her stomach knotted.
“Don’t worry. It will be over soon.”
Over. Over would be nice. Perhaps if she could just sleep for a while…
“Bits!” Alice’s face swam in front of her. Something was pulling her body forward. Dimly she registered Alice’s warm fingers wrapped around her wrist and Garroway’s hand falling from her arm. The moment her contact with Garroway ended, her head cleared some. She still felt as if she was experiencing the world from a distance, and she wasn’t entirely certain she wasn’t going to be sick all over Alice and her lovely new dress, but at least she was aware of her surroundings once again.
“You need to come with me,” Alice was saying. “Jack is furious.”
Jack. Did she know a Jack?
Alice glanced over her shoulder as she tugged Bits down an empty hall. “My brother Jack. The Duke of Sidhe?”
“Are you reading my mind?”
Alice stopped just outside a large, imposing door where muffled voices carried through from the other side. “Are you well?”
“No. Garroway—”
“She’s had too much to drink,” Garroway said, stepping around her to tap lightly on the door before grabbing the handle. “The lady is not equipped to handle port.” Before she could argue, he swung open the door and marched into the room. “What is all this about, Sidhe? There is rumor of trespassers.”
For a long moment Bits could see nothing but Garroway’s back, but then he moved, revealing the rest of the room. Sidhe stood in front of a giant mahogany desk. He’d thrown off his jacket, leaving only his shirtsleeves and waistcoat. His arms were roughly the size of tree trunks crossed over his chest. His hair was pulled back into a queue, which made his face even harsher. In front of him stood two of his guards — the one with a scarred face they called Bricky and Demir, a man so large he made Jack seem average-sized. Between Bricky and Demir stood Henrick and Nellie.
“Lady Elizabeth,” Sidhe said, his words a garbled mess to Bits’s ears. “Do you care to tell me what in the bloody hell is going on here?”
Bits looked at her brother and best friend, unsure of what she was seeing. Before she could make sense of the situation and form a reply, darkness began to eat away the edges of the world.
Chapter 38
With some sort of spell preventing him from moving and Bricky Barnes, one of England’s most infamous pugilists standing guard, Henrick Warner, the Earl of Braxton, could do nothing as he watched his sister crumble to the ground.
“What have you done to her?” he demanded.
The man who had entered the room with Bits shrugged his shoulders. “Lady Elizabeth cannot hold her drink.”
“Bits doesn’t drink,” Nellie said beside him.
“Then that would be why she has done such a poor job of keeping her wits about her while imbibing tonight.”
The pretty blonde who had been sent to retrieve Bits knelt down beside her, stripping off her gloves so she could feel Bits’s cheeks with the back of her hand. From this angle, he couldn’t tell if she was breathing at all.
She is in danger.
They had been warned, yet it had still taken them two weeks to get here. First, Nellie had insisted they wait until the exact day the Duchess had instructed them to leave, and then their journey had been a series of setbacks. Lame horses, broken carriage wheels, and blocked roads delayed them at every turn. And then there was the matter of getting into Corrigan. They could not simply waltz through the gate and demand his sister be returned, so they’d circled around to the south, coming up through the hard-to-navigate countryside, using the darkness of night as their cover. It
had been a slow and tedious journey, and it had taken too long. They were too late.
“She’s as cold as ice,” the blonde said. “Her breathing is shallow, and her pulse feels weak.”
“All signs of too much drink,” the weasel in human clothes said.
Beside him, Nellie jerked forward, but the man with a scar over his eye and an Eastern accent grabbed her arm before she could make a full step. She turned to him, teeth bared.
“Easy, little one,” he said. “If you bite me again, I will bite back.”
“And if you do not let me go to her I will grind your bones to make my bread.”
“Nellie, now is not the time for your theatrics.” Really, did the woman have no sense at all? “Sidhe, my sister is not well. Please, send for a doctor.” She couldn’t die in front of him after he just got her back. The world couldn’t be that unfair.
“I’m a mage,” the Weasel Man said, “and I’m telling you, she’s had too much to drink. Nothing more.”
The blonde continued to kneel on the floor at Bits’s side, her forehead scrunched in concern. “Maybe we should send for Nash.”
“Yes, please,” Braxton begged. “Send for Nash.” Whoever that was. “Anything.” He met Sidhe’s eyes. “She’s my sister. Please.”
Before tonight, Braxton had only seen Sidhe across a crowded room once or twice. Up close, the man was more than a little intimidating. Braxton liked to think of himself as fit. He fenced at the club several times a week and enjoyed a good, hard ride on a fast horse whenever the opportunity arose. Yet next to Sidhe, he looked like a weak-wristed dandy.
Standing well over six feet, Sidhe was built like someone who spent his days chopping down forests and carrying felled trees with his bare hands. Even dressed in evening finery he appeared too feral to be a Duke. Braxton was not too proud to admit he was quite frankly terrified by the man, but if Sidhe let Bits die, Braxton would personally see he spent the remainder of his days paying for the sin.
Sidhe leaned back against his desk and crossed one foot over the other. “You tell me where your third man is, and I will.”
“There is an empty cottage just south of the city wall,” he said without hesitation. “He’s wearing a charm so you won’t be able to locate him with your magic, but he will be waiting there with our horses.” He felt a small twinge of guilt for selling Driscoll out, but it faded quickly enough. Driscoll was a nice enough fellow, but when given the choice, he would chose his sister every single time.
Well, every time except for the one where he put her on a train bound for Scotland against her wishes.
True to his word, Sidhe barked out a set of orders, sending Bricky to retrieve Driscoll and having the blonde fetch Nash. Weasel Man complained about how unnecessary the entire ordeal was, but soon another man came bursting through the door. He was tall and thin, and the moment he saw Bits, he was on his knees beside her, cradling her head in one hand as he felt for a pulse with the other.
“What happened?” he asked the room at large.
“She was acting odd,” the blonde said. “And then she just collapsed.” Her eyes flicked to the weasel man. “I sense the aether working inside her.”
Nash laid his head on Bits’s chest, listening for a heartbeat. Whatever he heard clouded his eyes with concern. Lifting his head, he stroked Bits’s cheek in a way that seemed entirely inappropriate. “Oh, Bits,” he whispered before turning to the blonde. “Alice, I need bay leaves, holly, a tiger’s eye stone, and two white candles.”
“It’s no use. You’ll be wasting your magic. She’s simply had too much to drink,” Weasel Man repeated yet again. Braxton had a strong urge to pour wine down the man’s throat until he drowned on it.
“Impossible,” Nash said. “She’s been with me this evening, and hasn’t had anything at all to drink. Not even water.”
“By ‘with you,’ you mean in the company of a chaperone,” Braxton said. It wasn’t a question.
Question or not, Nash ignored him in favor of pulling a chain out from beneath his collar. A cluster of trinkets hung there — stones with holes in the center, gems, crystals, and a piece of metal that looked a bit like a fish. Nash yanked a stone that sparkled like diamonds off the chain and laid it in the middle of Bits’s forehead. From his pocket he pulled out a small glass vial, which he opened and placed a drop of the liquid in Bits’s mouth.
“Come on, love,” he murmured. “Wake up for me now. Don’t leave me. Not again. I couldn’t bear it, so open those lovely eyes for me now. I’ll be anyone or anything you wish, just wake up.” Then he pressed his lips to hers.
As soon as this was over, Braxton was going to ask the man to name his seconds.
“I think I’m beginning to understand why Bits remained here instead of coming home,” Nellie said. She was smiling as if it was perfectly wonderful some rough Touched mage was mauling his unconscious sister in a room full of people.
Nash ended the kiss, and the moment he did, Bits’s eyelashes fluttered open. “Ezra?” Her voice was weak, but she was awake and speaking. Perhaps Braxton would let the man live after all.
“What happened, love?” Nash asked, still cradling her head with one hand. With the other he brushed the hair back from her face. “Tell me what is wrong so I can fix it.”
“Everything is so far away…” Her eyes began to close. Nash jarred her head, causing them to fly back open. “Garroway. He put something cold on my arm.” She lifted one arm, the act seeming to take all her strength. Even from the other side of the room Braxton could see the black mark against her white skin.
Nash was up and across the room in the blink of eye. He hauled Weasel Man up by his jacket and walked him backwards until his back slammed against the wall. “Reverse it,” Nash growled, his face inches from the other man. “Reverse it, or I swear to the gods, I will make you suffer.”
“If you weren’t so blinded by your infatuation with the lady, you would see I’ve done us all a favor. Do you think she truly cares about you? She is Untouched. They would see us all as their slaves. Look at what they did to your sisters.”
Braxton didn’t care about Nash’s sisters. He only cared about his own. He made a move towards Garroway and Nash, fully prepared to use his own persuasive techniques, but the spell held fast, not allowing him to take a full step.
He may not have been the enemy of the Touched Garroway believed all Untouched to be, but if they didn’t stop making him feel like so much less of a man, he could easily get to that point.
“That isn’t who Bits is,” Nash said. “She helped saved Rose, or have you already forgotten?”
Garroway’s lip curled. It didn’t matter that he stood several inches shorter than the other mage or that he was still being held against the wall, he seemed to loom larger than life. Braxton didn’t understand a great deal about the Touched, but he knew Garroway had power, and lots of it. Maybe even more than the duke. “She is one of them,” Garroway said.
“No, she’s not. She is good and pure, and you will fix her. Now.”
Garroway lifted his chin. “No.”
Nash’s eyes went silver in an instant. A low murmur started, a tuneless song that brought to mind full moons, evening mists, and the wings of dragons. It drew Braxton in. He wanted to do something. He didn’t know what, but Nash would tell him. Yes. Nash would give him purpose. Nash knew what was to be done.
“Reverse it,” Nash commanded, and Braxton ached with the need to do just that.
Garroway shuddered, his face red with exertion. As if fighting against some incredible pull, he lifted one hand. “I. Will. Not.” With a burst of strength, he wrapped his hand around Nash’s neck and pivoted, pushing Nash against the wall and raising him up until his feet dangled off the floor.
“It’s a pity,” Garroway said as Nash’s thrashed against his hold. “I’ve always respected you. We may not have always seen eye-to-eye, but you were a good man and a decent mage. But you’ve chosen your side. Sadly, it’s not the side of the victorious.�
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“Good God, let him go,” Braxton said. “You’re going to kill him.”
Nellie, who was being held in check by their giant of a guard, shot him a look. “I rather think that’s the point.”
Proving they weren’t the only ones unprepared to watch another man die, the blonde threw herself at Garroway’s back just as Sidhe barked out a command for the man to stop. He ignored Sidhe and disposed of the blonde with an elbow to her stomach. Sidhe was bounding across the room and the blonde was pulling herself up for more when Garroway’s fingers began to unbend, one by one. Everyone in the room froze. Everyone except Bits. She was sitting up, her face paler than Braxton had ever seen it, and her eyes glowing bronze.
“Let him go,” she commanded, and Garroway’s hand sprang open, releasing Nash, who fell onto the floor. The blonde scrambled over to him, shoving some of the supplies she’d been sent to fetch into his hands.
With the hand that wasn’t suspended in front of him, Garroway yanked a stone from the band around his neck. The air shifted, all the moisture leeching out from it. Breathing became difficult.
“Stad!” Sidhe tossed a vial of sweet-smelling liquid on Garroway and Braxton was finally able to take a full breath.
“You will want to tread carefully,” Sidhe warned. “Treason is a crime punishable by death.”
“Siding with the Untouched is the same as suicide,” Garroway countered. His eyes had gone silver, and his hair stood on end. He looked a bit like a madman. Braxton suspected he might be more than a bit of one when all was said and done.
“Lady Elizabeth is not exactly Untouched, as you have been reminded,” Sidhe said. “She is also an ally of the Duke of Sidhe. You will heal her, and you will do it now.”
Garroway looked over the room, clearly calculating his odds of getting away.
A Dance Like Flame (Of Magic & Machine Book 1) Page 24
