Trial by Thrall (Trial #2)

by Lizzy Ford

  With some disappointment, I see Tristan disappear into a door beside the nursery.

  He’s not sneaking out a shipment of drugs. He’s checking on his baby-mama or something. Creeping to the door, I pause to listen.

  Several voices are present inside the door labeled, Office 2A. If I were a wolf again, I could hear them. But I’m not, so their discussion is worthless to me. I peek around the corner and witness Tristan talking to a matronly nurse, an older man in a business suit with dark circles beneath his eyes, and a man and woman who appear to have been roused from bed, same as Tristan.

  My attention floats down the hallway, towards room twenty four. After his explanation about the empathic nature of fae, I’m curious about Bella and Sean, the two fae-bies whose emotions I picked up yesterday.

  I dart past the open doorway of the office, past the nursery filled with sleeping babies and then pause at the intersection leading to the hallway with the nurse who reported me. She’s nowhere in sight, so I rush down the hall to room twenty four.

  Adrenaline is racing in my blood before I crack open the door and step inside silently.

  The two babies in incubators on the right are present, but the incubators on the left side are gone. A vase of flowers is above one of them, and my breath sticks in my throat.

  Approaching them, I double check the name tags.

  “Bella and Sean.”

  The tags remain, but there’s no other sign of them.

  I gaze at the two incubators, trying not to assume the worst. But what if, by opening them, I exposed the fae-bies to some kind of germ that’s harmless to me but lethal to them? I barely touched them, and the doors were open for all of five seconds each. That can’t possibly have been enough time to pollute their environments, can it?

  I lean in to smell the flowers and look for a card.

  Condolences

  I release it and back away. I’m starting to panic. Is this the real reason the nurses reported me? Because I fucked up the lives of two defenseless babies?

  The other two babies are watching me. One raises a fist, but I head towards the door.

  “No,” I whisper. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  An avalanche of horrible emotions makes my eyes well with tears. I can’t possibly have hurt two babies. I didn’t mean to. They seemed so sad, and I didn’t want them to be lonely in their little incubators.

  After the incredible night with Tristan, I can’t imagine he knew and still slept with me.

  I’ve fucked up his clan the same way I did Ben’s.

  Some of my emotions are watered down, and some appear so much stronger after the night with Tristan. I’m having trouble making sense of which part of what I feel is really me and what is our bond.

  I leave, freaking out, and am past the office where Tristan is before I recall I don’t have the key code to his apartment or building. Whirling, I race as fast as I can through the hallways to the elevator bank I used yesterday morning, fast enough the nurses don’t have time to stop me, and punch the button five times before the door opens.

  “Floor eight!” I hiss at the elevator and wave my badge.

  When I reach my office, I slam the door behind me and sit down heavily on the couch.

  I can’t get the faces of the fae-bies out of my head. If they were moved, wouldn’t someone have taken their name tags? And why would there be flowers with a condolences note if they hadn’t died?

  Leaping to my feet, I’m imagining every horrific outcome of me touching them in excruciating detail when my gaze rests on the plant on the desk. The water did it good, I realize and hurry to the drawer where my backpack is hidden. My hands tremble as I yank open the zipper and reach for the book on Tristan. But the moment I see the Book of Secrets, I grab it instead, my urgency from yesterday at the mysterious one liner doubled by the anxiety of believing I might have inadvertently hurt the fae-bies.

  The Final Trials chapter has more writing today. Barely able to read through my emotions, I force myself to sit down and concentrate.

  “At an unknown time in the future, the Community will have a chance to break the Kingmaker curse through the final trials. This period will differ from the others in several ways:

  a. every clan will be represented in some regard, for the first time ever

  b. no candidate shall be exiled; instead

  c. one clan will be exiled

  The clan must be chosen from amongst those participating in the trials. It is the solemn responsibility of the Kingmaker to choose what clan will be sacrificed to end the curse. One clan will perish and in turn, the Community will be freed from the curse.”

  Kingmaker curse? An entire clan exiled? What the fuck is this?

  I read this part a million times, convinced I’m not understanding it, when it’s the most clearly written portion of the fucking book. I glance at my arm, recalling what the three candidates have already shared about the importance of all the clans being represented during my trials. They also claimed something bad is going to happen. They can’t know it’s a fucking catastrophe.

  Why does exile sound a lot like murder? In the original rites, does exile mean one of the candidates is killed and not sent away?

  Whatever this is, I’m missing the real explanation of what’s going on. I move on and pray to read a clarification of some kind.

  “To whit, the Kingmaker must select the clan whose disappearance will least likely impact the Community. The populations for each clan are listed below (and required to be updated as needed.)”

  The population data starts in 1600 for the ten clans and is documented every century up until my father’s census in 2000. Aside from the horrifying reason the Kingmakers recorded the supernaturals numbers, I quickly see another trend. Every clan of the supernaturals has been suffering severe population decline like Ben’s. Nowhere in the rest of this chapter is it documented why, and there’s no other explanation readable for what exiling, or destroying, a clan is required to break a curse I’ve never even heard of.

  More importantly, does it really mean exile or perish? Why do those words seem to be used interchangeably?

  Like my initial shock about the nature of the trials, none of this is sinking in, and I continue scanning the numbers for each clan listed.

  The lowest reported numbers are for the pixie clan, at ten thousand. But there are no pixies in the trial, which leaves the vampires, whose reported numbers in 2000 were around twelve thousand.

  Does the Book of Secrets seriously expect me to exile, or destroy, twelve thousand people?

  If Bella and Sean died because of me, I’ll never forgive myself. I’m still upset about Ben deciding the fates of thirty of his wolves, because I revealed the illegal activity going on in his company. Their deaths are my responsibility, and he’s made it clear it’s not my business to know what he decides to do with those who were guilty of betraying him.

  But an entire clan?

  Exile or perish? Of the two, I’d rather send a clan across the world to live in isolation, but is it a choice? Or will I discover in a future chapter that the Kingmaker has a responsibility for killing the threat to the Community that the Book of Secrets claims exists in the form of one of the three candidates?

  My day has gotten bad fast. I sit in frozen surprise and then launch to my feet. Shoving the book in my pack, I leave the building in a flurry of emotion and denial.

  I have to have read it wrong. Even if not, no Book of Secrets is going to convince me I need to commit genocide, or mass exile, of an entire race of supernaturals! What kind of madness is this?

  They’d have to fire me from being a Kingmaker. I could never live with doing something so horrible. No curse can be so bad that it would require something this drastic.

  I rush home, barely registering my surroundings until I’m in the quiet hallway of my father’s house. Only when I can think without the distraction of the bus and the world outside my home does another thought hit me.

  A worse one by far.


  With shaking hands, I text my drug dealer and tell him to bring whatever he’s got on hand, as much as he can spare, and I’ll pay him back in a week. The last part is a lie. I’m broke. Today is not one of those days I can handle on my own. I’d rather take my chances with a bag of drugs and wake up in three weeks.

  The pain inside me, present since my father’s death, is boiling over. Ben took the edge off, allowed me to understand my world once more, but the thought pummeling my brain now, second only in importance to the revelation of my fate, is one Tristan’s magic is helpless to stem in my current state.

  My father knew. He could read the book, and he chose the three candidates. He understood what it meant that my trials would be the first ever with all the clans in the Community represented.

  How could he not warn me?

  I step into his study. Usually, I feel sad here but today, a different emotion stirs. This one is much deeper and sets me on fire.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demand of the study. My eyes float over the heavy, worn, wooden desk and the bookcases that are overflowing with ancient tomes and records.

  If the candidates knew, I’d be dead. There’s no way anyone but the Kingmakers know this horrific secret. What the hell is the Kingmaker curse, and why would it require an entire clan being sacrificed to stop it?

  The answers are here – but I can’t read them.

  Fury blinds me and I begin yanking books off the shelves. The first few I try to read but find them to be boring history books and end up throwing them. I need the history of my own family, not the clans. The idea my own background is hidden from me – perhaps because it’s bad? – is infuriating. The Community knows something I don’t about the Kingmakers, of the curse. There’s no other explanation for why they hate me.

  How am I supposed to make any sort of decision when I’m wandering blindly through the trials and my life in general? When I don’t know who I really am?

  Ben once implied my father was a villain. Even now, I don’t want to believe him.

  But why didn’t my father warn me?

  This question keeps circling in my brain. The Book of Secrets states clearly that my father chose the three candidates participating in the trials.

  What kind of person would do that to his own daughter? Put her in the position where she had to destroy thousands of lives – and purposely keep the truth from her?

  Is it because there’s something wrong with me? I was too flawed for him to entrust with the truth?

  Tears blur my vision, and I sling books across the study, not caring where they land. I can’t read any of them anyway, but maybe, just maybe there’s something more here. Something I’m missing, hidden in the shelves my father so dutifully cared for. Another letter, a fucking magic wand to make this all go away. I have no idea what I’m looking for but I’m searching desperately to find it.

  I throw books around the study until I’m breathless, and my nose is running from the dust, and then I sink down on the floor. It’s not helping. I have no drugs, no alcohol, and no idea what’s going on and why.

  Maybe destroying Ben’s life was just the beginning. Maybe the Kingmaker curse is to bring chaos and destruction to everyone around me.

  Maybe the fae-bies knew and zapped me to keep me away.

  A resurgence of anger gives me strength, and I wipe my eyes before I tackle another bookcase. This time, I check the title of each one to see if I can read it. The fae books – disguised as histories about the British Isles – I toss in one pile. Books about werewolves, I throw in their own pile and the rest of the books, I just throw.

  When I’m too tired to continue, I stop again and rest my head against a shelf. I’m stuck mentally, unable to get past my father’s betrayal, unable to process the idea of hurting anyone, accidental or not, and in no way able to understand what the fuck is really going on.

  The gentle swaying of fae magic within me is like the ebb and flow of a tide. In the silence of the study, it’s soothing, trying to tug me away from the dark pit of emotion whose edge I’ve come dangerously close to crossing several times since my father’s death. Maybe I should just jump. Maybe everyone else will be better off. I mean, I forced three clan leaders to give up their fates just by being born.

  I want to step closer to the edge, to break the plane and leap into the depths of whatever awaits me. Something is pulling me back insistently, and it’s nothing I control.

  It’s while I’m fighting the pull that I understand what’s stopping me. Rather, who.

  I turn and face Tristan. Swiping my eyes self-consciously, I resist the tug that’s drawing me to him. He’s in a business suit once more, the jacket open to reveal the white shirt clinging to his torso. I have no idea how long he’s been here. His presence and magic are so subtle, I never would’ve registered either of them in my emotional frenzy.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I snap and turn away. I start yanking books off the shelf again.

  “Actually, I’m late. I’ve felt your pain all day and haven’t been able to break away.”

  He felt me across town?

  I say nothing and toss another book into the werewolf pile.

  “If you want me to leave, I will, Leslie,” he says softly. “But I don’t think I should.”

  He tosses something that lands at my feet.

  I glance down and see the drugs my dealer slipped through the mailbox slot in the front door sometime while I was destroying my father’s study.

  “You can’t possibly be about to lecture me about drugs!” I exclaim and swipe them off the ground. Whirling to face him, I hold them up. “You create these!”

  “I do,” he agrees.

  Astounded by the easy admittance, I stare at him, speechless.

  Tristan is amused. “The fae as a people tend to live in the present. We had a drug problem, one I couldn’t fix through traditional means like rehab. I blamed the drugs and figured, if I created a line of drugs meant to run the cocaine, heroine and marijuana dealers out of business on this side of the country, I’d protect my people,” he explains.

  “By giving them new drugs?” I demand, baffled.

  “N-Thrall, N-Chant and B-Witch are non-addictive. They’re also lethal to the fae due to the addition of a healthy dose of iron. Harmless to humans, deadly to fae.”

  My eyes widen. “Were you trying to kill your own people?”

  “You see that? You understand something I didn’t despite being several centuries older than you,” he says, troubled. “My goal was to break the addiction of my people, and I thought this would do it, because I thought, wrongly, that drugs were the problem. I thought warning them about the iron would prevent them from taking them. It didn’t.”

  Why am I listening to him? When he gazes at me with those mesmerizing eyes, it’s hard for me to reject whatever he’s saying. It’s got to be his fae magic holding me captive, or perhaps the low, soft voice that’s as soothing as the internal rocking. He just admitted to being the biggest drug dealer on the West Coast and I catch myself nodding as I listen.

  “I succeeded in supplanting the local drug distribution networks, which in turn, caused some very unexpected issues,” he continues. “What I discovered after a few years was that I could break the addiction but not the underlying cause. For most people, it wasn’t about the drugs. Drugs were a coping mechanism, one that was cheap and accessible enough that seven hundred fae died before the clan learned its lesson.”

  “Seven hundred,” I whisper.

  “Seven hundred.” Sadness floats across our bond, though his features are stoic. “Before you judge me, I sat by the bedside of most of them when they died, so I could fully experience how badly I’d fucked up. I’m working on eliminating the network I built.”

  It’s his pain I feel this time, strong enough that I take a step back. When I first learned the fae dealt drugs, I swore there was no explanation on the planet that could convince me Tristan wasn’t a monster.

  Like with Ben, when I l
earn the truth behind what’s going on, I doubt everything I’ve ever known and everything I’m supposed to believe. I’m starting to cry again, and it’s not because of my issues this time. It’s because I’m trying really hard not to imagine what someone as sensitive as Tristan went through watching his people die around him when his decision backfired. As harsh as it sounds, I don’t want to feel compassion for the admitted single largest dealer of illegal substances in the country.

  I toss the drugs onto the desk, and my eyes fall to my backpack.

  Seven hundred is a small sum compared to twelve thousand. Frustration rages inside me.

  “Whatever you’re going through, I can feel its intensity. I know you’re hurting, Leslie,” Tristan says.

  How can he be so concerned about me after what he revealed?

  “You can’t hide that side of you from me. I don’t expect you to discuss what may be considered family secrets, but I don’t expect you to hide the fact you could use a friend right now,” he says.

  “How can you say that?” I demand.

  His brow furrows.

  “How can you care about me? About what I’m going through? I know your duty is to lie to me and even if it wasn’t, holy shit, Tristan! You’ve got some serious shit going on!”

  “So do you,” he replies simply. “No leader knows what they’re doing out the gate. It’s not the first time I’ve made a bad decision, and it won’t be the last. But I learned how to make a better choice next time, one that doesn’t cost me the lives of my people.” He peels off his jacket and drapes it across the back of a chair. “You don’t have six hundred years of experience as a Kingmaker. Yes, I’m bound by rules given to me as a candidate, and yes, I can still care about you, the same way I do the other thirty two thousand, four hundred and sixty seven fae I’m responsible for.”

  His calm is contagious, and whatever damper he’s placing on my emotions is working too well. I don’t want it to, though. I want to shred every last fucking book in my father’s library until one of them coughs up the information I need.