The Danger of Destiny

by Leigh Evans

  A scant few seconds after the door was quietly reopened, the two uniformed Fae who’d been standing in the hallway died relatively quiet deaths. Yes, there was some foot writhing before their necks were snapped—oh Goddess—and one guard dropped his weapon in surprise (don’t let anyone hear it!), but over the babble of voices?

  No one noticed the passing of two souls.

  When they dragged the bodies in, the heavy crown the servant girl held slipped from her grasp. It fell, and Fae gold sang high during its brief flight of freedom until it landed with a metallic clatter on the flagstones.

  “Strip them,” Trowbridge told Danen and Lily. “We’ll need their uniforms.”

  I stared at the bodies, feeling oddly detached. Dead Fae look exactly like dead humans or Weres. Nothing magical about them. Ugly, though. Seeing death so close up. They were people, who’d done us no wrong. Except they were the wrong sort of people and their kind have done mine wrong.

  We’re at war.

  There will be deaths.

  “What about this one?” Brutus held the terrified girl pressed to the wall, her head sharply tipped back by his hard grip on her hair. His blade rested on the long column of her vulnerable throat, a dull metal against the milk white of her skin.

  “Don’t kill her! She can help us,” Mouse said, his words tumbling over one another in his haste. “She has access to things you’ll need. Clothing. Water. Cloaks like the one she wears. Don’t hurt her!”

  “Who is she?” Trowbridge asked softly.

  “Gwennie,” Mouse answered. “She’s a Kuskador—a personal servant for one of the king’s daughters. And a friend.”

  The girl was very slender, a year or two older than Mouse. Muted clothing, covered by a very thin gray cloak. Eyes a few shades lighter than the silk, alive with fright.

  “She can help us,” said Mouse again.

  Trowbridge shook his head very slightly. Brutus’s blade eased, but not before a thin trickle of red ran down the girl’s throat. When he stepped back, Gwennie very slowly straightened her head. She flattened herself against the wall. Her eyes darted to the door, to the dead guards, to Lexi and Trowbridge—her gaze lingered on the Son of Lukynae for a horrified tick—then the tunnel’s doorway. It was a rectangle of black, mysterious and frightening, for those mysterious lights had self-extinguished.

  “What have you done, Mouse?” she asked in a small whisper. “They’re turning the castle upside down looking for you and your mistress.”

  “It’s all right, Gwennie,” Mouse soothed. “You’ll see. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  I wasn’t sure about that. We were all becoming expendable, one way or the other.

  Lexi reached for the heavy crown. He tucked it under his arm and walked to an ornate display cabinet. Part of me was on Lexi alert—I wasn’t a hundred percent sure how much my brother was in control of himself. I dimly noticed that he was moving slowly and that, once he’d splayed open the cabinet doors, he stared at the interior with a peculiarly fixed expression, as if it and it alone were important: the girl who cringed from him didn’t matter; the dead bodies by the door were of no consequence. But I didn’t earmark his preoccupation as vastly important. It was, after all, a near-empty cabinet. Inside it were three shelves. The first two were bare, save for a naked jewelry stand, and the third was lightly burdened by three simple crowns.

  “The tunnel!” Brutus suddenly rasped.

  And again, everybody spun around, pretty much in perfect unison, to stare in varying degrees of dismay at the wall from which we’d just emerged. Sure enough, the doorway to the tunnel was shrinking, the crisp, dark edges of it melting into the walls.

  Typical.

  “It’s closing!” Lily, intent on stripping a corpse of its uniform, dropped the dead guard’s arm and surged to her feet. With an inarticulate cry, she shoved her way past Mouse and barreled past me, all in the faint hope of reaching the melting doorway before all trace of the exit disappeared. It sealed itself before she’d finished rounding the Fae gold’s glass container, leaving no visible trace of its existence. “No!” she hissed, pounding on the stone wall.

  “I have the coin,” I soothed. “I can open it again.”

  She spun around. She was visibly angry, needing to condemn someone for the claustrophobic fear spiking her scent.

  “It’s a trap,” she growled.

  “If so, we walked into it on our own,” Trowbridge said.

  “Mouse lied!” she accused. She pointed toward the girl cowering in the corner. “He said only the dead Fae was supposed to have a key to this room! And it’s supposed to be locked from the inside. So who is she? And how did she get into this locked room?”

  “The king’s dresser also has a key.” Lexi closed the cabinet door with a click. He stood, studying the crown, his hand flattened on the glass, and the twin-sensitive portion of me stirred again.

  Lexi’s expression is too blank. He’s thinking deeply or he’s listening to an internal dialogue only he can hear.

  My brother slowly turned to examine the girl. “But you are not the king’s dresser.”

  The girl’s response came fast, words compressed between rapid breaths. “He sent me here to fetch another crown. The one the king’s dresser chose for the princess hurts her scalp—that’s why she never wears it, not matter what the celebration. She’s vexed with him, so he pulled me aside and bade me to come here and get…” Her words failed. She swallowed hard then showed us the crown she held in her shaking hands. “She wanted this one. It’s plainer and lighter,” she said. “And—”

  “It doesn’t dig into her scalp.” Lexi’s hair swung forward, and he tossed it back over his shoulder, the motion reassuringly his and his alone. “But the king, and his consort, and the other princesses? Are they wearing their ceremonial crowns?”

  “Yes. If I don’t return, the king’s dresser’s going to send—”

  “Some more guards.” Lexi’s tone was decidedly bored, but his expression was as bleak as a Toronto winter sky. “The crowns she speaks of are worn only for momentous occasions—marriages, the celebration of spring, the end of a war. Whatever the Royal Court is planning to do to the Raha’ells is going to happen tonight. It will be massive and final.”

  Mouse asked the girl, “Is it so, Gwennie? Have they pushed the Spectacle forward to tonight?”

  The Kuskador servant gave an anxious nod. “When the first jinx came home empty-handed at noon, the crowds started forming. The roads are clogged with people coming to the island to witness the final purge of the Raha’ells. I heard my princess say to her sister that their father fears controlling the common folk. Have you not seen them outside?”

  “Aye, we’ve seen them.” Danen pulled a boot off the guard’s corpse. “Lily, come help strip the other body.”

  As Lily moved to obey, Mouse appealed to Gwennie. “We need your help. We need clothing, some shears to cut their hair, perhaps a cloak or two. We have to get the Son of Lukynae to the holding pens, and Hedi of Creemore and the Shadow to the Black Mage’s tower.”

  “You can’t,” Gwennie said, completely aghast. “You couldn’t even get as far as the courtyard—never mind the holding pens or the mage’s tower! The quartermaster’s got his people turning the castle upside down for you! He said you stole sun potion from his stores and that when he finds you you’ll be fed to the Spectacle.”

  “He won’t find me. I’m Mouse. I can slip along these halls as silently as—”

  “With them?” she scoffed, her gaze swinging to Trowbridge. “I know who he is—he’s the Son of Lukynae!”

  Mouse beamed proudly. “He’s come to lead us—”

  “He’s got the Shadow with him!” she cried. “Right now, there’s only two men more wanted than you and you brought them right to the castle! The guards are everywhere: at the head of every staircase, at the entrance to every door! You can’t move a foot without tripping over one of the brutes. You can’t involve me in this. I want no part of it. You have to go
back from where you came!”

  Lily huffed. “So that the terror in the sky can hunt us?”

  Lexi pinned Trowbridge with a simmering glare. “You should have gone through the Safe Passage when you could have. Turned around, taken my sister, and left.”

  “Your sister is a hard-ass. There’s no taking her anyplace she doesn’t want to go.”

  “The Kuskador girl is right—you’ll never walk out of this castle alive. Neither of you will.” My brother’s gaze slowly swung to mine. “There’s no winning today, Hell, only captivity or death.”

  Brutus said, “If that’s the case, I plan to kill twenty of them before I die.”

  “So few?” murmured Lily. “I’ll match that and add twenty more.”

  Lexi kept staring at Trowbridge. “You could have kept her safe.”

  “She wouldn’t have let me.”

  My nails bit into my palms. Plan A was in tatters. I’d known it upon my first glimpse of the castle. I’d seen the crowds and almost immediately my brain had started to go down the “uh-oh” path, but I’d stopped it. Because things were moving too fast and contemplation was only going to be frightening. I was running down a tunnel, leading people toward the culmination of a destiny I’d started when I’d bargained with a mage.

  I needed to come up with a Plan B.

  I’m responsible.

  Lexi moved to the display case of Fae gold. He drew a box with his finger across the glass, his mouth thinning as the Fae gold moved to follow the heat of his skin. “So, it’s check and mate,” he murmured, shaking his head. “The old man’s cleverer then you, and he’s wilier than me. He laid this out so well, I didn’t even see it until—” Lexi suddenly hissed. He rocked against the pain, his fingers pressing his temples.

  I wanted to touch him, for I knew the head-splitting agony one suffered when the Old Mage delivered an attitude adjustment incentive, but fear caught me and told me not touch my twin’s shoulder. I didn’t want to force him to lift his eyes for my scrutiny. For I didn’t know who’d be looking at me through them.

  Lexi breathed slowly through his mouth for what felt like forever before he straightened. Slowly, he lowered his shaking hand, bracing it against the edge of the display cabinet. “My mage is the only person who can get us out of this,” he said woodenly. “You need to make another deal with him, Hell.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “No fucking way,” said Trowbridge.

  Lexi’s eyes burned into mine, little spits of green fire seeming to make them snap. “My mage knew you’d turn down Merry’s freedom for his soul. Just as he knew you’d come back to him later when you realized the bigger implication—he told you that you’d be in need of him before the night was over.” Lexi clenched his teeth again, his face contorting with another spasm. “Hell—don’t trust him completely. Look for the holes in the deal. He plans to—”

  Lexi’s speech ended with a harsh groan of pain.

  I surged to catch him before he fell to his knees. Trowbridge intercepted me, swinging me around into his arms. He pressed my head against his shoulder and held it there. Into my ear, he said forcibly, “Tell me what’s happening to him.”

  I pushed at Trowbridge’s chest. “Let me go to him—”

  “Tell me what’s happening.” Trowbridge caught my face between his hands. “Don’t look at him. Look at me. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “He’s being punished, all right?” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my brother struggle to stand. “The old man didn’t want him to say whatever he was going to say. It feels like someone’s taking a knife to your skull. Stabbing you with its blade over and over. It burns so hot…”

  “You felt that?” Trowbridge whispered dangerously.

  I caught the edge of my lip between my teeth and nodded.

  “Son of a bitch.” Trowbridge’s scent wrapped around me, another layer of a protection against magic that knew no boundaries. His thumb moved over my lower lip. “Sweetheart, remember? New rules of engagement? You don’t hold back from me; I don’t hold back from you. What’s the deal he’s talking about? When did the wizard make contact with you? I had Mouse watching; I was watching. The only time I left you alone was—”

  “At the creek,” I finished. “When you had to go scouting.”

  Trowbridge shot a glare at my twin. Under the heat of that condemnation, Lexi slowly lifted his head. A trickle of blood leaked from his nostril. He knuckled it away.

  It smelt of sweet peas.

  My mate’s attention returned to me. “What’s this shit about Merry’s freedom?”

  “It was a bargain—he said if I forgot about destroying his cyreath, he’d free Merry from the curse holding her imprisoned.”

  “But you didn’t take it.”

  My cheeks heated. “No.”

  “That’s it?” Trowbridge probed. “Our amulets’ freedom for his?”

  Ralph flashed a sulky blip of muted light.

  “Not amulets, plural,” I corrected. “Amulet. Ralph’s freedom wasn’t on the table.” I stared at Ralph, and as I did the comprehension that had evaded me started to prickle. I was on the cusp of something important, if I could only untangle it. “The old buzzard said that he’d only release Merry from her curse, and not the Royal Amulet, because—”

  I stopped right there with a sharp, quick inhale, for my brain had been darting back and forth, from creek conversation to Spectacle, from Merry to Ralph, from flares to prophecies.

  And I finally saw it; I was Einstein squinting at a blackboard. “We’re going to live, Trowbridge,” I whispered.

  “I’m not following any of this,” Brutus said.

  “Of course, we’ll live,” said Lexi in a low voice. “Our mage requires it.”

  My fingers bit into my mate’s biceps.

  Home, home, home …

  “Hedi,” said Trowbridge sharply.

  I replayed the scene in my head. What had the old man said? “The wizard said the curse on Ralph was a lot more solid than Merry’s and that breaking it would result in an explosion of light that could be seen for miles. That’s why he wouldn’t release Ralph from his curse—not because the conjure holding Ralph was beyond his capability to remove but because destroying the curse would bring unwanted attention to us at the creek.” I gazed at my lover’s beautiful face and saw a future that didn’t end with him blown apart. “Goddess, you won’t have to go kaboom.”

  “Good to know,” he said slowly.

  I wanted to laugh, to twirl about and shout in glee. “You’re not following any of this either, are you?”

  “Break it down for me.”

  “The Raha’ells believe that your flare is supposed to lead them to the promised land. That’s the prophecy, right? According to it, your light is supposed to become as bright as a blue flame, and a hot as the sun, and then, presumably, you’re going to explode, and somehow that will lead them to the promised land. But they have it all wrong, don’t you see?”

  “Keep talking.”

  “It’s not the Son of Lukynae who has to explode to fulfill their prophecy—it’s the enchantment holding Ralph prisoner.” I jerked my chin at the amulet shining on Trowbridge’s chest. “That’s the light that will lead the Raha’ells to their freedom.” My gaze jerked to Lexi’s. His head was bent, providing me with a three-quarter profile. “How bright will the explosion be when Ralph’s spell is broken?”

  A muscle moved in my brother’s jaw, and there was a significant pause before he answered. “Those who do not bury their heads in their hands will be temporarily blinded and incapable of following evidence of your trail for an hour, perhaps more.”

  Trowbridge’s face went very still. “Blinded?”

  Lexi raised his chin to give Trowbridge a slow nod.

  “Trowbridge,” I said excitedly. “We won’t need the Gatekeeper’s secret tunnel to escape the castle. We can walk right out of the Spectacle and then right through the castle’s gates. The prophecy will be fulfilled—you will
lead the Raha’ells straight to the Safe Passage. But you won’t have to explode doing it. We could be home in hours!”

  “I like it,” Brutus said, one large hand rubbing his chest. “I don’t understand it, but I like it.”

  “Aye, but it will be a cursedly slow exodus,” grumbled Danen. “Our people are in the prisoners’ pens. After the amulet explodes, they’ll be as blind as newborn pups.”

  Trowbridge kneaded the back of his neck. “Not if they’re warned.” He stared blankly at some spot over my head; then in a low voice he asked, “Mouse, can you get Danen, Lily, and Brutus inside the Spectacle grounds? Close enough for them to get to the pens?”

  Mouse considered it for a second. “I think I could get them past the castle gates, into the enclosure, with Gwennie’s help, but getting them close enough to the pens—”

  “I’m not helping you!” the servant girl squeaked.

  “But Alpha”—Mouse lifted his shoulders apologetically—“your face is too well-known. If you come with us, I couldn’t get farther than the pig’s trough…”

  The skin around Trowbridge’s eyes tightened. “I’m not coming with you.”

  “Eh?” said Brutus.

  Trowbridge gave us a smile that wasn’t. “I’ll create a distraction—during which the three of you will give our pack their warning—then I’m going to let them take me.”

  No.

  Danen rose, the dead guard’s clothing in his hands. “You’ll let yourself be captured?” Disbelief rolled in his words. “The Son of Lukynae?”

  Trowbridge nodded, his gaze shuttered. “And when they bring me to the Spectacle grounds before the king, I’ll be wearing the Royal Amulet.”

  No and no. “But Ralph’s going to explode! You’ll lose your head!”

  The amulet on Trowbridge’s chest let out a series of white flashes.

  “I’ll survive,” he replied. “I’m a Were.”

  “No! That’s a stupid plan.” My blood rushed to my head. “Why can’t we just sneak Ralph into the grounds, and hide him somewhere he’ll do the most damage?”

  Trowbridge’s expression turned hard and stubborn. “I have to be wearing him when I’m brought into the pens.”