by M. J. Scott
Father straightened suddenly, looking weary. “Yes, they did.” Something in his tone made my heart sink.
“And?”
“I’m sorry, daughter,” he said. “But they decided against you.”
Chapter Eleven
BRYONY
Decided against you. My father’s words were still ringing in my ears when our carriage halted in front of the Brother House. The journey home had been even more silent than our outward one. The dull, heavy silence of failure.
The Fae had said no.
They would not help.
They would leave the City to her fate.
Which left the question of what exactly we were going to do next. Take the fight to Ignatius or continue to play our waiting game?
I had a feeling that the Templars wouldn’t want to wait. Which meant war. With all the death, injury, and destruction that would accompany it. Buildings would be ruined, families torn apart, and lives lost.
All in the name of peace.
It was a strange concept. Without the Fae, I wasn’t even sure that there could be a lasting peace between the humans and the Blood. Adeline was more reasonable than Ignatius, and perhaps she could hold the peace awhile if we succeeded, but there would always be another Ignatius waiting in the wings.
What we really needed was the cure that Simon was working on. A cure for blood-locking. Because if blood-locked humans could be rescued, the humans would be far more ready to take the fight to the Blood. And the Blood would be more reliant on human goodwill for their food supply.
The trouble was that, so far, the cure was imperfect. Simon had roused some who’d been locked from their stupor, but none of them had returned to what you would consider normality. They were still damaged, still reliant on at least a small supply of vampire blood to function and the care of others to make sure they ate and bathed.
It was a start, but it wasn’t the breakthrough we required.
I would have to press him—and Atherton—into working harder. See if they could find the missing piece of the puzzle.
Ash handed me down from the carriage after the others had descended. Guy, Liam, and Robert Abernathy were going to carry the unwelcome news to the Templars and the human council. Master Columbine would inform the mages.
Which left me to tell the Fae in the hospital.
I’d agreed not to take it further than them just now. Not that that was difficult. There were very few Fae left in the City who didn’t work at St. Giles. Most of those were long reconciled to being away from Summerdale, choosing to remain here for their own reasons and generally keeping themselves to themselves. If they hadn’t fled by now, they were apparently going to stay no matter what the situation might be.
The humans needed time to form a strategy before the news got out. Handled wrongly, it would just cause fear and panic. It could even trigger the conflict before we were ready. I could bind the Fae to silence if I had to, but I trusted my people. They would give me their word to maintain secrecy and they would keep it.
I watched the others head into the building, Asharic standing beside me. “Aren’t you going with them?”
Ash shook his head. “No. I’ll tell my men once we have a plan, same as the Templars will. Guy and Father Cho will need some time to consider their strategy.”
“You think they’ll fight?”
“It’s what I would do in their place. Ignatius isn’t going to give up, and once he hears the Fae are out of the equation, then, if what I’ve heard of him is true, he won’t waste time trying to press his advantage.”
“War,” I said softly. I hadn’t been born when the last war with the Blood took place, but I’d heard the tales and those were bad enough.
“Yes.” He looked down at my arm. “You need to rest. Let me take you home.”
“I can make it back to the hospital on my own.”
“I know you can. But I’d like to see you safe. Indulge me.”
Bad idea. But I was tired and heartsick at the thought of what was to come and I couldn’t find the strength to keep up my protest and send him away. “All right.”
The sun was nearly down, and the gardens around St. Giles were full of the sounds of birds finding their nighttime roosts and the wind speaking through the leaves. I was glad of the green darkness around me, the feel of the earth around my feet, strengthening me.
Leaving Summerdale was always odd, to feel the contraction of my powers as the miles between the Veiled World and the City shortened and the iron started to close in around me. I could feel it settling over me now, like a familiar cloak. One that I barely noticed, except at times like these when I’d been able to shed its weight for a time.
I stretched my arms to ease the ache in my back from too long in the carriage. First above my head and then out toward the setting sun. Westward. Toward Summerdale.
“Do you miss it?” Ash asked as I sighed and lowered my arms, pleased to note that the one that had been broken didn’t hurt.
“Miss what?”
He gestured westward. “The Veiled World. The court.”
“Do you?”
“I asked first.”
I walked on and he kept pace with me.
“Well?” he persisted.
I didn’t have an easy answer to the question. Missing Summerdale was the same as the weight of iron surrounding me. A familiar constant that I didn’t think about often. “I miss the land sometimes. My home. But not the court.”
“You don’t hunger for power? Your father must be disappointed.”
“He is,” I said tartly. “But I stopped worrying about what my father wants me to do a long time ago. What about you?”
“I won’t say that it didn’t feel good to be back there. To be . . . unconstrained. I’d forgotten what it was like.”
“There is that,” I admitted. “But this place has its good points too.” We passed a bank of Lily’s flowers, scenting the twilight with a faint sweet perfume.
“Still, there’s too much iron here,” he said.
“You should be used to it. You ride with an army.”
“It’s different. Armies don’t have buildings.”
“You must have been in other cities.”
“Yes. But they’re not like this one.” He frowned. Turned back toward the Brother House. “It must be the Templars,” he said. “The iron feels even stronger here than elsewhere in the City.”
I thought of the hidden ward below the hospital and made an agreeing noise. Damn. Could Ash sense the iron doors that guarded the ward despite all the layers of magic that Simon and I had laid over it? None of the other Fae in the hospital had ever mentioned it to me.
“Is it the Templars?” Ash asked.
I kept walking. “It’s almost dark. We should hurry.”
He stopped. “That wasn’t an answer.”
“Well, it’s all the answer you’re going to get for now.”
“A mystery.” He smiled, his teeth a white gleam in the shadowed face. “I like mysteries.”
“Don’t you have enough to do without going looking for trouble?”
“I especially like mysteries that involve trouble.”
“Veil’s eyes, Father is right. You are impossible.”
“Yes, but you like me anyway.” He stepped closer. Too close. Too near in the falling dark and the soft air, with the first hints of starlight above us. This night was the stuff of lovers’ trysts. Nothing that I wanted any part of when it came to Ash. Even if his nearness made the hairs on my arms lift and set butterflies floating idly through my stomach.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Deny it,” he challenged.
I stared up at him for a moment, then turned and headed for the hospital once more. There was safety there. Other people. Bright lights.
Ash caught up to me in a few steps, his expression shuttered, but he didn’t press the topic.
Wise man. We reached the door of the wing that held my quarters and I set my hand to the warded lo
ck.
The door yielded obediently and I pulled it open. Ash caught it and held it for me, making it clear that he wasn’t going to stop at the doorway.
I blinked as I stepped into the hospital. The gaslights were burning and it was, after the garden, surprisingly bright. I hesitated, knowing that I really should head for my office, to receive the reports of what had happened during the day and what needed my attention in the morning.
And yet . . . nobody knew I was back. No one was at my heels demanding my attention. It was a rarity in my life and I was suddenly exhausted, having pushed myself past the tolerance for no sleep in the last few days.
Surely they wouldn’t miss me for a few more hours if I just went upstairs and slept? Simon was here and the hospital seemed quiet enough. Just the usual gentle hum of activity echoed through the halls, not the sharper, more urgent sounds that would mean there had been another disaster or attack to deal with.
“You need to rest,” Ash said, as though he could read my thoughts.
I hoped devoutly that he couldn’t. “This is my hospital. It’s my responsibility.”
“And it won’t fall down around your ears if you take a little time for yourself,” he said. “You sa’Eleniels are too damned stubborn for your own good. You were hurt today and I know that Saffron healed you, but you still need to rest. Isn’t that what you’d tell one of your patients?”
I glared. “Yes.”
“Then why don’t you take your own advice? Or do I have to carry you up to your rooms?”
“You don’t know where my rooms are.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“No,” I said hastily. Suspicion bloomed. Had he been asking about me? “Do you know where my rooms are?”
“I could take a pretty good guess.”
“How?”
“Do you think I don’t know the feel of your magic?” He pointed upward and to the right, pretty much directly at my chambers.
“This whole place has my magic running through it,” I objected.
“Maybe. But that’s where it feels strongest.”
I studied him, perturbed by this revelation. Just how strong had he become? The land had reacted to him as it would to one of the strongest Fae. My father had said that his return would bring trouble. I was beginning to believe it. If Ash was as powerful as I suspected, then the other Fae who sought the throne wouldn’t leave him alone.
And the likely outcome of that was him leaving again. I couldn’t see him wanting to be king, any more than I wanted to be a queen. If he stayed, he might just be too much of a threat to be left alive.
My heart squeezed. He would leave. When he’d just come back. I bit my lip, telling myself that I didn’t care. But once again I couldn’t believe the lie.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing that time won’t fix,” I said. Which wasn’t a lie. If he left again, then I would survive. Mostly. “You’re right. I’m tired. I’m going to go to bed.”
“And I said I’d see you to your door,” he said. He offered me an arm. “So let me do my gentlemanly duty.”
“And then you’ll leave?” I said hopefully.
He didn’t answer and the butterflies quivered again. Stupid, foolish body. Why couldn’t it see sense and realize that Ash was nothing but heartbreak waiting to happen all over again?
I sighed and tucked my hand through his arm. He wasn’t going to leave until he’d seen me to my chambers, so I might as well just climb the stairs and then make a second attempt at getting rid of him when I reached the safety of my room. My wards were strong, and power or no power, I knew Ash wouldn’t actually force his way through them if I turned him away. Not if he knew what was good for him.
The only question was, did I know what was good for me and could I actually close the door in his face?
• • •
The answer, it seemed, was no. We climbed the stairs and I unlocked my rooms and then Ash leaned against the doorframe, saying nothing but speaking volumes with his failure to leave.
“Tea?” I asked eventually. Tea was safe. I could still throw him out after tea. Feign—or rather not feign—fatigue and he would leave me alone. He was concerned with what had happened today. If I said I needed to rest, he would acquiesce and leave me.
And then I’d be alone.
The tea didn’t take long. I didn’t have the patience for a drawn-out ceremony, so I merely poured the water over the herbs with a basic blessing and left it to steep while I fussed with selecting cups. China, I decided, not silver. Make him think I had picked up bad human habits.
On the other hand, he might be perfectly at home with china. He’d traveled with humans for years, after all. I doubted many mercenaries carted silver tea services around to battles.
Maybe he would think I was trying to make him feel comfortable.
Veil’s eyes. I gave myself a mental slap and reached out for the first two cups that came to hand. Which were, in the end, a pair that Saskia had given me. Pretty silver and bronze holders with glass bodies. She had made them in her first year at the Guild of Metalmages. And the life in the odd angles and twists of their shape spoke clearly of her.
I poured the tea and then carried the cups across to Ash. He was standing near one of my bookshelves studying the rows of books. Mostly treatises on healing, though there was the odd story amongst them. Some of my favorites from the Veiled World and some of the silly entertaining tales the humans wrote. He ran his finger along the spine of one of them.
“You like mysteries too, it seems,” he said.
“In books, they’re easily solved. And everything works out well in the end.”
“Some things work out well in life too.”
“Perhaps. But some things don’t.” I sipped my tea and sighed with pleasure as the chamomile and mint soothed my nerves.
I settled into one of the big chairs by the fireplace and drank some more, leaving Ash to wander around the room and do what he would.
“If you’re going to roam about like that, make yourself useful and bring the pot over here,” I said when I had finished the first cup.
“Nice rooms,” Ash said, obeying. He leaned in, refilled my tea, and then nodded toward the silk hangings in the doorway to the next room. “Is that your bedroom?”
“That isn’t information you need to know,” I said with a shake of my head. “Sit and drink your tea. You should be worn out after today as well.”
“No.” But he sat and drank a little before he leaned over, put the cup down, and stood again.
I frowned up at him. “You should be. Why aren’t you?”
He shrugged and crossed to the mantel, where candlesticks and pictures and a few other trinkets lined the surface in a messy jumble. “Maybe being back in the Veiled World after so long.”
“Fen calls it power-drunk,” I said. “When Fae get a boost from being back in Summerdale. It wears off quickly enough.”
At least I hoped it would in his case. Ash was reckless enough without the added boost of excess magic running through his veins and making him think he was invincible. Or irresistible.
“Maybe,” he said with a grin. “Maybe I need to work it off.” He quirked an eyebrow, a challenge in his eyes.
“The Templars have a training ground,” I said reprovingly. “You could go whack something with your sword.”
“I do not ‘whack things’ with my sword,” he said. “Whacking at things with your sword is a good way to end up dead. Sword fighting takes skill.”
“You can go and skillfully wield a sword to your heart’s content, then.”
“Ah, but that’s not the type of exercise that appeals to me right this minute.”
I ignored the curl of excitement in my stomach. He was flirting. I would be immune. Stone. Not flesh and blood. Not—
“Cat got your tongue?” he said softly.
“If you want a cat, go see Simon and Lily. She has a kitten.”
“I’m not interested in sun
mages or wraiths right now either,” Ash said. “Though one day you’ll have to explain the wraith to me.”
“Her name is Lily.”
“Lily,” he amended. “But you’re trying to change the subject again.”
“That’s because the topic you wanted to discuss is of little interest to me.”
“Really?” He came over to my chair, plucked the teacup from my hand, and then, in one swift movement, grasped my wrists and tugged. I came to my feet without meaning to.
Close to him.
Too close.
I could smell him. Still slightly smoky from the explosion, but mostly he smelled like man. Of leather and horses and fresh air and the subtle elusive scent of Ash himself. A Fae scent but something all his own.
A scent that seemed to bypass every last ounce of common sense I possessed and appeal to the primitive part of me that was hungry and demanding and starved for the things he was offering.
The fire that lay beyond the flirting and the charm.
The raw power of him and the pleasure I knew his hands and body could coax from me as easily as lighting a match.
He wasn’t the only man I’d taken to my bed and he definitely wasn’t the most recent, but he was the one I remembered. The one who floated through the dreams that left me wet and gasping when I awoke, teasing me with wicked kisses and clever fingers before he melted away.
He would melt away again now if I pressed him to go. I knew that. But right here and right now, there was a chance to finally have more than the memory.
To perhaps even drive away forever the ability of that memory to haunt me, with one last taste of the man.
A chance to finish things.
With clear sight and a wiser heart.
Or a chance to make it all worse.
I stared up at him, seeking something in his face that would let me choose one way or the other.
“Whatever you want,” he said, “you can have.”
The simple honesty in those words caught my heart. “And if I want you to leave?”
“I’ll go. Or I’ll stay. You decide.”
“You and I—”
“Yes?”