Maestra

by Elle Cross

  The room was dead still. Not even the sentinels stirred. Behind the silence, though, was a rising pressure. As if a dam strained to hold back a surging tide ready to break forth at her command.

  In the face of that, Bianco proved that he was more than a pampered head of house. That he was once a battle-hardened warrior as well. “I am a man who had been made to look like a fool, a center of a conspiracy. And I am beseeching a woman of honor to help me clear my name.”

  Immortelle ground her teeth together to keep from spewing insults that wouldn’t be helpful in these chambers. “Why would I possibly want to help you? What evidence is there of a conspiracy? Vendetta has been an ages-old dance throughout the known territories of the Cabal. Gods, I myself have been a weapon used to carry out Vendetta. You may see a conspiracy. I see a man who was so concerned about his standing and his appearance that he would rather break Armistice and collude with his son against me, rather than do the right thing. Wouldn’t that be a more accurate appraisal, Lord Bianco?”

  The council members at the High Table shifted in their seats. Chancellor Thorne nodded his approval at her words.

  Bianco took Immortelle’s accusations in stride. “Yes, what you say is true. I am proud. And that blinded me from taking the time I needed to dig deeper. You see, I thought as you. I thought that my son, my great disappointment, was besmirching my name once more. But there are certain things he wouldn’t do or could not do. Betraying me openly was one of those things.”

  Immortelle’s eyes narrowed at the elder Vampire who was speaking these things. “So not only are you holding that you were tricked, but also your son? So no one is accountable for his own actions?”

  Bianco’s face hardened with disapproval. “The way you say it, no. I do not mean to make it sound like—”

  “Like you have the moral compass of a school child?” Immortelle interjected. “Because that’s exactly what you sound like.”

  Bianco stood there, hands clenched into fists at his side, fighting for control. The sentinels stirred, hackles raised in warning. Immortelle almost wanted him to lose control. Almost. Bianco’s eyes were full blown red with barely any black, but he reined in his temper. “You have seen my soul, Lady. I, too, gloried in battle. I have killed. I have tortured. I do not need to lie about my actions. I do not deny that I sought to kill you, and I’d been bested. But as I sat in contemplation, I asked myself, ‘why?’ Why me? Why my family? Why you?”

  Bianco emphasized that last part by finally meeting Immortelle’s gaze. The red haze of anger had left his eyes, but the intensity remained. Immortelle had already visited his soulscape, and had steeled herself against him, otherwise she would have been lost in his memories again.

  Bianco’s brow furrowed.

  Had that been his ploy all along? Had he wanted to share something with her through his soulscape? Unfortunately, it wasn’t anything she could control. It was more a reflex, something that was related to the Sight she had inherited from her mother.

  It made sense to her that Bianco hadn’t cared about any witnesses. If this had been his plan, the witnesses gathered wouldn’t have been able to hear the true heart of the matter.

  Of course, that was a big if.

  For all she knew, maybe Bianco lost his train of thought in whatever scheme he’d scripted.

  What Bianco was offering as a theory made Immortelle review some of the things that she’d seen Vincente do.

  Everything Vincente did in the past year of scheming, he’d done for the purposes of taking down his father?

  Vincente had wanted to be on the Council, had he not?

  Then again maybe it was just something he let himself believe. Maybe he might have been happy with any extra sip of power. Perhaps all the things she’d seen in Vincente’s soulscape was exactly what she’d expect to see from a selfish prick.

  She had to admit that nothing she’d tasted had the overt flavor of conspiracy.

  Worse. If anything, Vincente seemed like he had been a pawn. A pawn who knew what he’d been about, trickery or no, but a pawn. A willing little foot soldier.

  It all circled back to Lady Maeve, and whatever she planned on doing. The Fae ambassador had been overt to Vincente that she had wanted to be on the council, and her Queen Mab to lead the Cabal. If Lady Maeve had made it through the Ephemera Gates toward Underhill what would have happened?

  The Fae. Underhill. Lady Maeve. And the mysterious Queen Mab.

  All of Immortelle’s theories and leads dried up right here every single time.

  Immortelle realized quiet had reigned once more in the chambers. Except this time, all eyes were on her, Bianco’s especially.

  He stared at her, his eyes swirling as if in calculation. “I see you believe me now.”

  Death had warned her that he would get into her head. They all warned her. And still, a tiny trickle of belief wormed its way to her.

  Immortelle took a moment to respond. “I believed you before. I just don’t discount possibilities. Doing so is usually what blinds people in the heat of battle.” She meant to be flippant; she didn’t intend on proving Bianco’s point.

  But the older man, who had been a politician longer than she’d been alive, took her words in stride. “Exactly! You do not discount possibilities as I had. It is this type of thinking I need. I was too blind, and my house paid the price.” He was smiling.

  For someone who had prided himself on his house’s honor, it seemed odd that he would be smiling. Immortelle had that unsteady feeling that she missed something. “What’s so funny, Bianco?”

  “Not funny. Relieved. Because even as I stand here facing my execution, knowing I will surely die, I know my will is going to be carried out regardless. You will follow the loose ends in my stead. You.”

  Bianco pointed his fingers at her in emphasis. His wrists were detained, and so it took away from the overall effect. But the glimmer of his power still shone through. “I didn’t appreciate your relentless drive as much before, since you were moving against my house. But I know your reputation. Your curiosity will not allow you to stop. And that is exactly what I need.”

  The slow smile on his face was the look of a religious zealot. His eyes burned with the conviction that Immortelle would carry out his wishes regardless, hinting that they sought the same goal.

  Immortelle, on the other hand, wanted to resist his words from burrowing into her ears. They were there, though. They had already gained a foothold and bloomed possibilities in her mind.

  Even if the thought of working anywhere aligned with Bianco or Della Serra House was anathema to her, the fact remained that their goals were aligned. She did intend on checking out the Fae wing. She would take advantage of the Arapax Hotel’s hospitality and find a way into Underhill.

  Bianco had told her that she needed to “follow the money.” But she had another mortal saying in mind.

  An enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  There was an enemy, an unseen force and it was not this man in front of her.

  Lady Maeve didn’t act alone. She moved under the direction of her queen. Mab.

  Unbidden, the murals of the Omnia compound came to mind. How they undulated and flowed. The battles that eventually brought disparate immortal clans together to form an alliance and create the Cabal. They who had once been an inner rebellion that disrupted the status quo were the old guard of an ages-old institution.

  Could there be another threat that could disrupt their reign?

  Bianco smiled the smile of the righteous.

  Immortelle wanted to wipe it off his face. Her motivations were her own, and she didn’t need to feel like she was being manipulated by this vain fool. “I didn’t take you for a man with gallows humor.”

  “When you’ve lived as long as I, you know that sometimes, there are more things to fear than death.”

  For some reason, she understood the shade of his word choice of death. That it was as much the concept of dying as the name of the man that carried it and who sat by
her side.

  “And what is that?”

  “My wife chose to leave. My son is gone. I am the last of the Della Serra House. Can you not guess, Lady?”

  The words he spoke painted a bleak future in her mind.

  Loneliness.

  Loveless.

  Immortelle shifted uncomfortably. Was this man so eager to die after fighting for so long because he was lonely? “I know you face a death sentence and will be executed soon. But aside from that little fact—” which she was determined to see through “—there’s an ebb and flow to life. You are older, but you still had more than a mortal’s share of life ahead of you, if you had wished it? Even love, you could have found that again. People do all the time.”

  Bianco smiled so suddenly, that it gave Immortelle the feeling that she had just tripped into another one of his snares. “Can I? Do you, Immortelle, truly believe that?”

  She shifted in her seat. Immortelle had found love over ten years ago. But she secretly believed that she would never find a love like that again. She tucked that secret away and buried it inside of her soul, a secret that Bianco had seen.

  Immortelle didn’t answer; they both knew what it was. And she hated him for it.

  She hated that she had underestimated this man’s power over words. She hated that he made her doubt her motives. She hated that his words had found a kink in her shields and would burrow themselves into her brain.

  And worst of all, she hated knowing that she would prove him right.

  * * *

  The branches of the great tree were gray and dry in the Fae wing. So contrary since the Fae liked to pretend they were all spring and summer, downplaying the frost and chill of their wintry nature. Leaves dwindled and lay in chaotic abandon to be crunched underfoot.

  As the wing progressed, it cycled from winter to spring and then a hint of summer. They stayed in springtime, where thin green leaves so transparent cast a stained glass impression on the ground.

  Immortelle never had a reason to see the Fae wing of the Omnia Compound, and had never been sent to Underhill. Even without anything to compare it to, she knew that this wasn’t normal.

  “Where’s summer?” she asked Il Torero, who chaperoned her trip to the Fae wing.

  “Chancellor Thorne seems to think that summer’s absence is due to the imbalance and that eventually, the Fae will send an emissary soon, once they sort through their own squabbles.” Il Torero gestured with his hand as if that would be enough to straighten out the haphazard decay that the Fae left behind with their absence.

  Immortelle lifted her eyebrows in answer, but said nothing. The Cabal seemed to be under the impression that the Fae had internal issues and send another emissary in due time. Looking around, it didn’t seem as if they were interested in having one present. “Has any of the Fae delegation reached out to you to keep you updated of any progress?”

  Il Torero didn’t seem bothered by the decay, thought really he was rarely bothered by anything. “No. There is no word yet from Underhill, and the Ephemera gates have remained closed. But, surely any day now, they will get their act together. I would not concern myself overly much on it if I were you.”

  Immortelle wanted to ask him so many questions. Questions like, What would the rest of the Council do in the meantime? But the Cabal, especially the Council’s politics, were no longer a concern for her.

  A phone rang, so different from the bucolic scene. Il Torero excused himself from Immortelle’s presence to answer it.

  In the silence of his departure, she sighed, and as if that broke the spell, the background noise of a forest filled this space. Babbling brook, a chorus of insects, the singing of tree frogs.

  Birds sang a mournful winter tune that they carried throughout this twilight forest out of sync with the brightly lit daylight world of the rest of Omnia.

  Death had stayed to speak with the Chancellor after the meeting with Bianco while Mischief and Strife poked at a few of the remaining trees. War remained just at her back.

  “I’m just gonna look around for a bit. You guys don’t have to hang around.”

  Mischief shrugged as he hopped on a gnarled tree root. “Where else we gonna go?”

  She shook her head, and drifted away from them.

  There were still trees that remained despite the forest’s dying off. The spring time portion of the forest was still untouched.

  Butterflies bobbed and weaved lazily in the shafts of light. Some landed on the gnarled tree roots, wings open and closing like penitent hands folding in prayer. They landed atop the drizzling sweetness that bled from the tree.

  The sap welled up red, as if the tree bled. Immortelle knew that if she dipped her fingers in it, they would come away sticky. Even though she knew it wasn’t blood, it still looked disturbing.

  Or maybe it was just this place. Everything seemed wrong, felt wrong. And it wasn’t just the Fae wing.

  It was her. She knew it. The unsettling feeling that weighed in her gut, stayed there all day. That thought of her being a mother.

  And the secret that she kept locked down. Deep, deep down.

  She couldn’t be a mother. It was impossible.

  Aren’t mothers supposed to know? Shouldn’t she have known that she was a mother? Is it evil that I don’t have this maternal drive? That curiosity would be the thing that drives me?

  She just needed to know. Whispers and rumors only confused her further.

  She wasn’t thinking like a mother. She was thinking like a hunter.

  Why couldn’t both of those things be the same?

  She shook her head of the grave thoughts that plagued her and double backed up the path. She found War balanced on a massive, gnarled root, hands on his hips, looking like he was surveying his kingdom. War had been watching the birds fly along and smiled at a small, furry creature at it darted over branches looking for nuts.

  She giggled at the contrary sight of the warrior delighting in the tiny animals. War normally displayed a forbidding persona with his finely wrought, chiseled features. Black skin gleamed like marble against his white shirt. The black suit he wore fit like second skin. He bound his ash and red streaked black hair in thick locs and tied them back loosely at the nape of his neck with a leather cord.

  The overflow of his power--his wings--settled around his body like a long leather duster rippling in the breeze.

  War turned his indulgent gaze down on her. “What’s so funny?” His wings pulsed in a warm and inviting rhythm. The downdraft drifted warm air down to kiss her skin.

  A War that wasn’t angry with firestorms and heat pulsing around him? It seemed like everyone wanted to change.

  “Nothing funny. Just an observation.”

  “An observation, huh? About?” Though his tone was defensive, there was teasing to it.

  Immortelle looked up at him. “You. You’re usually…angry.”

  “Angry?” He tilted his head, as if trying to see if that was true. “How so?”

  “You know…” she was trying to find words that didn’t make him seem like a reckless fool.

  Her bumbling attempts at not insulting him made him laugh. “Oh, so I’m usually what? Blustery? Impulsive? Thoughtless?”

  She blew out her breath in mock compliance as she shrugged. “I mean, if you want to use those words, we certainly can. Seriously though, you seem...lighter. That’s nice.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “Don’t worry, I’m still angry.” The red haze that swirled in his eyes complemented the black marble of his skin.

  He jumped down from the gnarled root he’d climbed. “The bottomless pit of anger is still there. Don’t mean I need to act the fool about it.” He tugged at his neck, like stretching out a muscle. “You’ve changed, and it’s not a little thing. You’re still you, but not. I don’t know. I’m not as good with the words as Death.”

  Immortelle barked a surprised laugh at that that scared some birds away. The butterflies still feasted on their blood red sap. “
Death doesn’t say much.”

  “Ah, well that’s the difference then.”

  At her curious expression, he explained. “He shuts the hell up. And I’m doing the same.”

  War didn’t so much as crowd her space, but he did lean into her. His wings were a current of heat springing forth from his back, an impression of black gauzy cloth, wispy veils wrapping them in a cocoon. It was warm inside of here, and she remembered a time when they had shared warmth regularly during brutal campaigns.

  The memories made her heartbeat quicken.

  It was one thing to pass the time in each other’s arms here and there. But she’d already spent time with Death, surely War couldn’t expect her to pick up where they had left off, too?

  Casual sex wasn’t something she was interested in.

  Wait, did that mean that her time with Death wasn’t intended to be casual? Dammit.

  He clamped a hand down on either side of her, boxing her in just a little. Pressing into her space.

  She drew in a shaky breath. “What’s this now? You guys playing for keeps?” she asked, her voice remarkably steady.

  “Nope. This time, we ain’t playing. And I don’t think you are either.”

  Hitting a punching bag wasn’t the same as hitting a person. Immortelle trained on one anyway. At least a bag wouldn’t complain.

  War tapped on it to gain her attention. He wore focus mitts. “Want help?”

  She started to say no, but the focus mitts would be better for her. He nodded, and he let her train, focusing solely on her jab-jab-cross combination. She played with the rhythm to keep herself agile. She was in the zone and barely heard the encouragement that War gave her.

  She was so in the zone, that when she added a roundhouse kick into the tail end of the combination, War stumbled back a few feet. He still kept his footing.

  He timed out. “Whoa there, killer!” His words lacked heat.

  “Sorry,” she started to apologize.

  War waved her words away. “Nah, don’t apologize. That was a good set.” He adjusted the mitts, and clapped them together. “Another set?”