by M. J. Scott
For half an hour there was blessed silence and I managed to actually reduce some of the tottering piles of paperwork that had taken root on my desk to mere stacks. Even on the brink of war, there was no end to the myriad details that had to be dealt with to keep St. Giles operational.
The details that had been in danger of going untended and unresolved in the chaos of the last few days. Perhaps some would call me callous for shutting myself away to deal with things so seemingly trivial, but surely it was more callous to let the hospital grind to a halt by neglecting something so basic.
If there was one thing the City needed right now, it was hospitals that operated well. St. Giles was the biggest hospital we had and the one that absolutely could not fail, given what lay beneath it.
I had just finished writing a response to an aggrieved note from my paymaster when Lily stepped into my office.
Literally stepped in. She appeared out of nowhere, coalescing like smoke in a way that still made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end despite the fact that I’d seen her do so before. She was usually careful not to be too blatant with her abilities around the Fae—including me—out of respect for our beliefs or else out of something that only she could explain.
But this time she took no time for courtesies. And she held a baby in her arms.
I stared at her. At the baby. Then found my tongue.
“That’s a baby.” Not my most brilliant comment, but I truly couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Lily gave me a look that suggested her assessment of my remark coincided with my own and shifted her grip on the squirming bundle. The bundle squawked in protest.
I stood instinctively. “Where did you get a baby?”
She looked grim. “I found Violet and two other Fae women.”
“Violet? In the warrens?” I knew the answer to that already, but part of me had to hope that it wasn’t true, that Lily had found her elsewhere.
But Lily nodded and my heart clutched, new pain added to the ache already there. Alive. After all these months. Months at the mercy of Ignatius Grey. Not a fate I’d wish on anybody.
“But how? The warrens are vast.”
She nodded. “Yes. And I’ve been searching for weeks. I thought I knew them well, but there are sections that I’d never seen before. They go on for miles and miles. I’ve been trying to make a map. I thought it would be useful when we have to go into the warrens for real.”
Lily the pragmatist. Apparently, unlike some of us, she didn’t expect this to end in any way other than direct conflict with the Blood. I had to face the fact that I agreed with her assessment. I didn’t think Ignatius would back down and come crawling back to Ash’s negotiation table. “And yet you found Violet?”
“Holly made a charm to find Fae blood. Saskia helped her,” Lily said. She stared down at the baby. “And Captain Pell—I mean—the king, he did something to give it more power. It helped. They were very deep.”
Locked beneath the earth. No sun. No air. No living things around them. Practically buried alive. I shivered and tried not to let the horrifying image in my head linger. “Go on.”
“The charm took me deep. To a part of the warrens that I didn’t know. At first I thought that the charm had gone wrong and that it was abandoned. Or empty at least. But I was shadowed and I could hear a baby crying.”
“But you can hear things in the shadow usually, can’t you?”
She nodded. “Yes. But this was different. It sounded like the baby was right beside me. But distant at the same time. I can’t explain it exactly. I followed the sound and found a suite of locked rooms. Violet was there and two other Fae women. And the baby. She was crying.”
Her voice sounded odd and she glanced down at the child again.
“Is she hurt?” I asked. I extended my healing sense toward the baby and then froze when I couldn’t feel her.
“Lily,” I said slowly as I finally realized what it was I had missed about Lily’s story and the implications of the baby being here in her arms. “I didn’t think you could bring other people through the shadow.”
Her head came up slowly. Her gray eyes glowed with emotion. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or wonder or a mixture of both.
“I can’t,” she said. “She’s a wraith.”
The room spun around me for a moment. Another wraith. Ignatius was breeding wraiths. Just as we had feared. “I think we need Simon and Guy,” I said faintly.
• • •
Simon arrived before Guy did. He took one look at Lily holding the baby and shot a confused look at me before he went to Lily and repeated the same query that I had made about the baby’s health.
“She’s all right,” Lily said quietly. She gazed down at the baby, looking equal parts fascinated and apprehensive.
Simon extended his hand toward the baby, holding it there for a moment, but apparently he was satisfied with whatever he sensed. He turned back to me, eyes questioning.
“She found Violet,” I said in response to the unspoken query. “And the . . . child.” I tried to quell the instinctive antipathy I felt at the thought of a wraith child. Lily had taught me that wraiths could show loyalty and love, but the prejudices I’d been raised with ran deep despite my best efforts to ignore them. “In the warrens. With two other Fae women.”
“Their names were Alder and Heather,” Lily said absently. Her attention was on the baby. Watching her with a degree of wariness. As though she might explode.
Maybe she would. A wraith child was an explosive discovery. “Did they give you Family names?” I didn’t recall an Alder amongst the Fae living in the City. There was a Heather, from one of the sa’Keriel lines, though, on the short list of names of the missing Fae women we’d managed to compile.
Lily shook her head. “One of them was sleeping. The other one, Alder, didn’t talk. Violet said that Alder was the baby’s mother. She asked me to take the baby.” She looked up at me. “Violet didn’t look well. None of them did.”
I shuddered and Simon’s head whipped back to Lily. “Wait. Are you saying this baby was born in the warrens?” He looked down at the child again. “Lily, is this baby a wraith?”
Lily nodded. “Yes.”
Simon said something low and foul below his breath. “Ignatius is trying to breed wraiths.”
“It seems he has succeeded,” I pointed out.
“Or Lucius did and he’s just carrying on what was started,” Lily said.
“I still don’t understand why,” I sighed. “I understand the appeal of a pet wraith as a weapon, but it was a major breach to take Fae women. Enough to bring the queen down on their heads if she’d had proof.” And enough to send Ash into a fury too, I thought. But that could be dealt with. It might not even be a bad thing at this point.
Lily and Simon exchanged another long look. “She doesn’t know?” Lily asked. “You never told her?”
Simon shook his head. “There was never any need.”
“Need for what?” I asked just as Guy knocked on the door and opened it. He halted at the sight of the baby in Lily’s arms.
“I get the feeling I missed something,” he said.
“Lily brought the child out of the warrens,” I said.
“She’s a wraith too,” Lily added, cutting off the need for further explanations. She rocked the child a little, her movements uncertain. I doubted Lily had spent much time around babies. They weren’t commonplace in the Blood Court or the warrens. Trusted didn’t have children.
I watched the child for a moment, wondering if I should take her. Or Simon. I could heal a wraith—I had healed Lily before—and if the baby’s mother was unwell, the baby was likely to be malnourished.
But she looked peaceful enough in Lily’s arms and I didn’t know what I would do if the baby shadowed. I didn’t even know if wraith babies could shadow so young. Lily had brought her out of the warrens, but had the baby shadowed or was it the fact that she was a wraith that allowed Lily to move her through the shadow
? I wished I knew more about how it worked. The Fae cast wraiths out as soon as their abilities were detected and they were generally discovered soon after birth. By their absence from the earthsong, not by shadowing. Looking at the baby’s face, rounded and soft like any child’s, I wondered why we did so. How a mother could give up her child. Then remembered what we’d been discussing before Guy arrived.
“There was something you were going to tell me,” I said to Lily and Simon.
“It’s Lily’s to tell,” Simon said. “If she wishes.”
Lily was silent as she looked at him a long moment. Then she shrugged. “If I tell you this, you need to keep it secret . . .” She hesitated. “Unless it becomes necessary to tell. But it will be safer for everyone if it doesn’t. Safer for us, at least.”
Something about the way she spoke made me think “us” in this context meant her and the baby, not her and Simon as it usually did. “All right,” I agreed. “I won’t tell if I don’t need to. Guy?”
Guy nodded slowly. “Yes. I will keep your secret. Unless it needs to be known.”
Lily sighed. “All right. There’s something I learned about wraiths from Lucius. When I went back to him after you and Simon took me, he drank my blood. And when he did, he was able to shadow.”
I gaped at her. I had never heard of such a thing. Never even thought it might be possible.
“Hell’s balls,” Guy said. “That’s—”
“Deadly knowledge,” Simon interrupted him. “If it became known, then Lily would be in terrible danger.”
“And the baby,” Lily said. “Any of my kind. If there are others.”
There had been other wraiths, in the past. I didn’t know if there were any now. If there were, they had the sense to live far from the City and the Fae.
Something I was suddenly wishing I had the sense to do as well. Because there was someone else who needed to know this secret. “It is dangerous,” I agreed. “But we need to tell the king.”
“Why?” Simon said.
“Because Ignatius may know this as well. And if he does, then he doesn’t need a grown wraith as a weapon—he just needs children to feed from. He just needs their blood. An army of vampires who can walk through the shadow? That would be the end of the City. So the king needs to know. He intends to make peace with Ignatius if he can. I think we need to change his mind. If there’s any chance that Ignatius knows about this, then we cannot let him become Lord of the Blood. He needs to die.”
ASH
The baby in my arms felt solid enough. She was warm and wriggly and surprisingly heavy, just like every other baby I’d ever held. Not that there had been that many. But unlike every other baby I’d held, this one, if I closed my eyes and looked for her with my magic, was invisible. Didn’t seem to exist.
A wraith.
Ignatius had bred a wraith. Could have bred more. And if what Lily and Simon had just finished telling me was true, that was a whole new pile of trouble landing on my head.
The source of the trouble blinked up with me with her blurry baby gaze and hiccupped.
I handed her back to Lily, anger beginning to burn through me. Ignatius had stolen Fae women. Had presumably caused them to be raped. To breed wraiths to be his slaves and make him near invincible. That was what lust for power did to people. Made them close enough to insane. “So Ignatius wants to be able to walk through walls.”
“Maybe. We’re not sure that he knows about this. He may just want a wraith because Lucius had one,” Simon said. “But still, if he does know . . . he can’t be let go.”
My stomach was cold despite the fury heating my veins. But I knew what I had to say. I knew what I wanted to do too and it was something completely different. But I was king now and I had to do what was best for the City. “I offered a peace. I can’t turn around and withdraw that offer with no more proof than this baby.”
“He’s kidnapped Fae women,” Bryony said sharply. “Your subjects.”
“He’s done worse than that over the last few months, I’m sure,” I said, hating myself as I said the words. “But a peace will stop any more deaths. Will restore order. And give me laws to work with if he oversteps the bounds.”
“A peace with Ignatius Grey will not last,” Lily snapped.
“I’m sure they said that about the peace the queen forged,” I said. I was trying to be rational. Sensible. Kingly. My head ached as though I wore an iron crown.
“You can’t mean to let this go unpunished?” Bryony looked appalled. But then she’d been avoiding me since I returned to the City, and the fact that she disliked my plan couldn’t sway me. She didn’t want to stand at my side, so her words could carry no more weight with me than anybody else’s.
“It will be a matter discussed during the negotiations.” If the negotiations took place. “If Ignatius does not choose to make peace, then I will deal with him differently.”
None of the group before me looked happy with my decision. Lily, least of all.
“I’m going back to the warrens,” she said. “I can’t just leave those women there. Once Ignatius discovers the baby is gone, he’ll move them. Or worse.”
“You can’t bring them out through the shadow like you did the baby,” I said.
“No. But I can hide them, maybe. I can take charms and weapons and maybe even an unlit sunlamp through the shadow with me.” She looked at Simon, a question in her eyes. “Maybe Holly can figure a charm to make the sunlamp work after I leave it with them. Ignatius will have plenty to occupy his mind tonight. If I can move them, stay with them, they have a chance.”
Simon’s face turned grim. “Lily, it’s too dangerous.”
She shook her head. “No.” The word was blunt.
I hadn’t often seen her disagree with Simon, and her expression was a little pleading. But her shoulders were square and her chin raised. I didn’t think any of us would be able to change her mind.
“I grew up without a mother. This baby needs a chance to know hers.”
“Alder may not want her,” Bryony said gently.
“Maybe.” Lily’s expression was set. “But I’ll give them a chance. If Alder doesn’t want her, then I’ll take her.”
Simon’s face turned startled, but then he smiled and nodded at Lily, blue eyes accepting that much, at least.
It wasn’t easy to see the two of them. United. The love they shared was stronger than their differences. Happy together. Everything I wanted. Everything I was denied by the crown I had been forced to claim.
“What you choose to do is not my affair,” I said. “I can’t help you directly—that would be breaking the terms of the peace offer—but I won’t stop you. Just don’t tell me when you go.”
Lily nodded. “If you’ll excuse me, then, Your Majesty. I have things to do.”
“Go,” I said.
Simon followed her out. Which left me with Bryony and Guy. Bryony was glaring at me. Guy looked from her to me, rolled his eyes, and then followed his brother. He’d known Bryony a long time. Apparently he knew better than to chance her temper. I didn’t think I was going to have that luxury.
“If you’re going to yell at me, can you do it quickly?” I said, gesturing to the desk in front of me that was stacked high with papers and maps and dusty many-inch-thick law books. The Templars had given me a room to use as an office here in the City. The Fae wanted me to use one of the chambers in the building that had been used by the queen’s Speaker for the Veil, her liaison with the humans, but the Speaker was dead, another victim of Ignatius’ plotting. I didn’t have time to appoint a new Speaker or to establish a new bureaucracy. I hadn’t even worked out whether I wanted a Speaker. So working here was easier for now. Besides which, it meant no splitting of our forces to set up a separate guard for me there. “I have work to do.”
“You need to stop Ignatius. You could stop Ignatius. Right now,” Bryony said. She wore purple today, a dark shade that made her look even more like a thunderstorm, the color of the darkest hearts of the sa
pphires in her Family ring. Her hair was bound up with silver that matched the chain at her neck. A storm she might be, but just like a storm, she was glorious.
And I was a fool to think so.
I got up from my chair and moved around the table to join her. “You think I should just set the whole City on fire to get to Ignatius?”
“You have power. You should use it.”
I sighed. “Bryony. I can’t.”
“Why not? What’s the point of being king if you can’t do that much? Why are you wasting your time here, filling in paperwork?” She swept a hand toward the desk and the papers, sounding furious.
My own temper snapped a little in response. “This was exactly why I didn’t want to be king. It isn’t about doing what you like. What did the Veiled Queen spend most of her time doing?”
Bryony shrugged at me, looking irritated.
“Nothing,” I said. “Not acting. She ruled. She enforced the laws but she also kept to them herself. She didn’t look for trouble or start fights if she didn’t have to. She was a good queen. And I mean to be a good king if I have to be one at all. Trust me, I’ve fought enough battles and wars to know that it’s easy to be a bad ruler. To let greed and power warp you and to act out of self-interest or fear rather than have the guts to do what has to be done. I’m not going to do that. I want peace. I don’t want more death. And I don’t want to turn into someone like Ignatius Grey.”
“You would have peace if you made Lady Adeline the ruler of the Blood Court.”
“The Blood have to work that part out for themselves. Lady Adeline seems reasonable and trustworthy for one of her kind, but I’m not going to interfere with that process unless I have to. If Ignatius will negotiate, then I have to give him a chance to.”
“Ignatius killed the last person who wanted to negotiate with him.”
“Well, if he kills me, that will make this whole mess someone else’s problem,” I quipped. She didn’t smile. “You wanted me to do this. You told me to be king. And I am. But that means that you have to abide by my decisions, just like everybody else.” I stared at her. “Unless you’ve had a change of heart?”