“Dismissed,” the Crown shouts.
As the Elorsin brothers turn and stride out of the room, the Crown’s angry tone twists into one of dark delight.
I’m one step out the door with the four guys right behind me when the thing slams shut and blood-curdling screams shatter out in every direction.
I turn toward the servant’s pantry, my tray clutched in front of me and seconds from being used as a deadly weapon. A servant in his undershirt and with a streak of grey across his middle dashes out, sprinting for the stairs.
Chuck no. I give chase, pelting him over the back of the head with the serving tray. He stumbles, then trips and crashes down a dozen steps. I have my tray lifted for strike number two when Killian’s arm wraps around my waist, hoisting me off the ground. He keeps walking like a person would if they were stealing an apple off a cart.
Roarke pulls the tray from my fingers and tosses it behind him. The thing hits the wall with a clang that echoes around us. He’s not smiling, neither is Seth, but they both offer me a measured glance that says ‘we’ve got this covered.’
Which is a completely stupid thing to assume. Killian hoists me a little higher, running a hand over my head, like that will pacify me, as we reach the bottom of the stairs.
He sets me on my feet in front of him without even breaking his stride, and I hurry to match his pace.
“He’s taunting us,” Seth snaps. “Did he hurt her?”
“She’s fine,” Killian says.
“Not for long,” Pax growls.
Killian pushes me to the right. Moving me out of Pax’s reach and putting me beside Roarke. I shuffle, trying not to trip over my own feet. Roarke takes over, drawing on the back of my shirt until I’m nestled with Roarke on my left and Seth on my right.
“In case we need to run,” Seth says under his breath, his fingers lacing through mine.
We move like a wall of muscle trying not to look like we just left a murder scene. People empty out whole hallways when they see us coming. No, not us – them.
When they see the Elorsins.
I try to force that distinction into my mind even as I lean in closer to Seth’s side.
The Seed of Chaos should not feel comforting, I tell myself. But he really, really does.
Normal me wouldn’t need to have this conversation.
Not everyone makes themselves scarce. Some Sabers stare, looking amused – like they know what just happened and they’re entertained by it.
“Seth,” Pax says, and my moving body armor chuckles and clears his throat.
Then the six Sabers that we’re about to pass all lose their clothes.
Poof.
Gone.
Chuckin’ naked.
“You ordered a distraction?” Seth asks.
“Perfect,” Pax says, and we keep walking.
Killian and Roarke enter the suite first, vanishing into their separate rooms before I’m even through the door.
“Seth,” Pax says, closing the door with a measure of restraint.
Seth lets go of my hand and leaves me standing in the narrow entrance hall to their rooms with Pax just behind me.
The man is so close that I can feel the air ripple with his every breath. Somewhere out of sight, another door shuts. They’re all shut. It’s just Pax and me.
I turn around very slowly. Trying to pull in some of that perfect servant steel from just moments ago.
I can’t. The screams are still ringing in my ears.
Pax covers the distance between us with quicker than human speed. I’d step back, but there’s nowhere to go, just a wall behind me and a wall behind him. The stupid narrow little entrance that someone decided to build into the design of their suite.
He stands over me at full height with just enough space left that our clothing doesn’t touch – but only just. I consider lifting a hand to push him back or at least give him the impression that I have boundaries. But at this point, any movement at all might make him bite.
Leaning forward, his light stubble grazes along my cheek. Then he sniffs right about where my shirt collar is.
His hand presses into my stomach, flattens against my shirt, then collects a fist full of the fabric.
“If I say ‘stay’, you stay,” he growls.
His lips are right beside my ear, but this is more than that. This is a cage falling in on my mind and branding that rule, his rule, into my brain. Into my very existence.
I nod.
He pulls me out from the wall and forces me to walk backward into the room. At his full height, he’s staring down at me, his chin almost touching my forehead. The distance between us stays exactly the same, and even if I could comprehend any other option I still wouldn’t fight this.
Everything in me right now is screaming that Pax is existence. Pax is law. Pax is Alpha.
So, I don’t get time to think as I’m marched backward into his room, or as he shoves me onto the edge of his bed. I barely get a chance to inhale when he steps away from me to scoop up an already packed bag off the floor, followed by a shirt that he throws hard at my chest.
“Get that shirt off. You smell like a traitor,” he says, angry growled tones laced through every word.
He leaves me, shutting the door behind him, and I slouch forward like a puppet whose strings were just cut. Then the shaking starts.
I try to distract myself by ripping the servant’s shirt off my back. Then by punching a wall. Pax has no windows, and the only light filtering in is around the closed door, which probably doesn’t matter because punching things hurts no matter what you’ve punched.
I shove my arms into Pax’s shirt and pull the thing down over my head, enveloping me in what I thought was luxury before; now I realize it’s calm. Pax’s very scent calms me. Like a cub laying to rest on a bed of moss.
Opening the door, I step out into the lounge room, hugging myself and holding the collar of Pax’s shirt up over my mouth and nose. Each of my breaths are tainted with a hint of his calm.
All of them look up, followed quickly by Pax snapping a blade that he was inspecting back into its scabbard and tossing the thing across to Killian. Those two lose interest in me and focus on the array of weapons, but Seth and Roarke do not.
“She’s fine,” Killian says, tossing a still-sheathed dagger across the room and smacking Seth in the side of the head with it. “No thanks to you.”
The guy doesn’t flinch, only breaking his gaze from mine to snap the last clasp shut on his bag.
“I deserve that,” he says.
“We’re lucky Logan wasn’t in there. Clearly he hasn’t told his uncle about her yet, or she wouldn’t have been overlooked as a servant. He’s up to something,” Roarke says, adjusting his bag.
Bags. They all have bags. The table and couches are covered in weapons that are quickly being checked and stowed away.
“Not discussing it,” Killian grunts as he pulls his cloak on.
He looks exactly like the first time I saw him.
“Will someone tell me what just happened?” I ask, trying to sound determined and strong but not really achieving it.
All I get is an angry glare.
“He killed those people. That man on the throne killed those people,” I whisper, like hearing myself say it will honor their spirits.
“Not a throne,” Roarke says, his voice disarmingly soft as he tosses his cloak over his shoulder. “That should be where the dignitary’s table sits.”
“You’re going somewhere?” I ask, my voice box failing me on most of the syllables.
“We are all going somewhere,” Pax growls.
At the same time Roarke says, “Crown’s orders.”
“But he only said Seth had to work in the stables…” I trail off.
It doesn’t matter where they’re going, I just have to know because I need to go with them.
Need to.
The kind of need to that can crush your insides, break your bones, and probably throw you off a cliff too.
<
br /> There’s a rhythm of buckles slipping into place as all of them complete their packing.
“Elorsins are a tetrad,” Pax says, hoisting the weight of his bag over one shoulder and gripping his sword, sheathed but not attached to his belt, in his other.
Pax files out of the room first, then Seth, then Roarke. I’m watching, waiting for Killian to leave, and equally waiting for my knees to buckle and my heart to stop beating.
Killian does go next, but my knees don’t buckle. So, knowing that an invisible wall will be sliding through here as soon as these guys get down the hall, I fall into last place.
“Good little shadow,” Killian says.
Anywhere near these four is like midday in the middle of an open field, the complete opposite of being in the shadows or the shade – as I walk at a good-little-servant’s distance behind them.
“Commander Pax,” someone says, bowing to Pax right here in the middle of the hall and waiting for permission to speak.
The guy’s in regular clothing, a brown shirt with leather at the cuffs and a pair of loose cotton pants – so, not a servant. But he waits like he’s ready to serve.
“Make it quick,” Pax grumbles.
“Tanilya just lost its third. The triune has been disbanded.”
“How?”
“Their assignment was along the border. I don’t know anything else.”
Pax pats him on the shoulder, partly in a thank-you gesture, and partly to move him out of the way.
“Spread the news,” Pax says.
The guy runs off, and we keep moving. Nothing else is said, and I really don’t think this is a good time for questions.
We arrive at the stables, which are on the other side of the castle, at sunset. There’s no one else around, but the boys seem to know what they’re doing, and where to go.
They ignore the gentle sounds that the horses make as we enter the building. I ignore them too, a weariness taking hold of me with claws that curl and pierce deep into my core. I just keep following them. Turning corners, going in circles, I don’t even know. But the boys do. They walk purposefully until we reach a dead end. There’s still some light streaming in through high windows made from twisted branches, arranged to form rough squares and rectangles. With glass that has been molded into the natural bumps and curves of the timbers. The stalls have been built using highly polished branches that are angled and fitted to divide the horses and look beautiful at the same time.
The stalls end, the space opening up into an expanse of slate floor, swept clean of even a single piece of straw. A whole wall of branches, woven so thick that not even a sliver of light escapes, blocks our path. Pax lightly touches the wall, and the branches retreat, untangling to let him pass. They all follow him through, with only a pause as the opening grows to accommodate Killian’s extra height.
I glimpse inside. More stalls.
Four of them arranged around the outside wall of a pentagonal room. Four horses that I roughly recognize as the ones the boys were riding when I first saw them.
No other exit.
“Get inside,” Pax says over his shoulder.
A ten-year-old rushes out from somewhere and bows to Pax.
“Shall I saddle the horses?”
“No,” Killian replies. “Leave.”
“Yes, Sir. I’ll inform the Stable Master,” the boy says, dashing out the door and straight past me without a second glance.
Seth vanishes out of sight and big rectangular hay bales start flying into the middle of the room.
“Get inside,” Pax repeats, stopping with his back still to me.
The branches begin to stretch themselves into place – closing.
Branches don’t do that where I’m from.
“I’ll sleep out here,” I say, motioning to the floor, or a corner, I really don’t care.
No one’s looking at me, so I’m not sure why I bothered.
Pax slips through the door just before it closes. His movement didn’t slow the branches down, either. None of his brothers follow. Just him and me, and he looks pissed.
“Sorry,” I say, the word escaping before I’ve had a chance to put myself in check.
Sorry for not listening? For not obeying? For not hiding in the servant’s pantry? For pouring the bottle of blue liquid over Logan’s books? For drawing attention to myself on Lord Martin’s pole?
I step toward the wall on my left, but he doesn’t let me pass.
“You need to listen,” he says, no arm movements to elaborate, just words.
Deep sending-tingles-down-my-spine words.
“Sorry,” I say again, and I press my eyes shut against the horrible way that word makes me feel.
I pull in a few shuddering breaths before opening my eyes again. He hasn’t moved and was probably watching me the whole time I fought back tears. Every detail.
I open my mouth, the word ‘sorry’ on my tongue, again, but he shakes his head, and I let the word evaporate.
“You need sleep,” he says it as a stern observation. “Get inside.”
He brushes his fingers over the wood and stands back.
I walk into the room, not trying to argue a second time. He’s right about the sleep, and he’s not going to let me defy him on this a second time. I move into the corner of the room where a single sitting chair has been pushed back and out of the way. Curling up into a ball with my shoulder buried against the wooden back and the wide arms of the thing cocooning around me.
Not comfortable. But make a person tired enough, and comfort is no longer important.
What’s left of my brain switches off, and I fall into a dark, shallow, sleep.
Bits of conversation drift into my dreams, mixing with memories. The image of the redhead suffocating. The vibration of her screams through my bones. I’m not sure which of it is real and which of it is my fried brain trying to make sense of my scrambled life.
“Where is it?” Pax asks, his voice dancing with the confusion of my dream.
“Where you told me to put it,” Seth says.
“No, it’s not,” Pax counters. “But that’s why I trusted a trickster to hide the most valuable thing in our possession.”
Killian growls, and it’s enough to draw me out of the dark depths of my dream.
I’m frozen, my heart beating a thousand miles a minute. Still in a chair, I note. A horse shuffles softly nearby, confirming we’re still in the stables too. I don’t move, don’t even open my eyes.
“She did it,” Killian says.
“What?” all three brothers ask, not fazed by his sudden bad mood.
“Made twenty-three words – a clear cut instruction – into a riddle.”
“The instruction was clear – collect the remnant from the farm on the border. Speak with a man named Lord Martin, but believe the word of a bird,” Seth says. “We’ve got a statue of a three-thousand-year-old knightsing. Those things are extinct – that makes it a remnant.”
“And there’s only one Lord Martin, and he has the only farm on that side of the border, and he was the kind of worm that made me want to slit his throat rather than hear him speak,” Roarke adds.
“Pheasant,” Killian says.
One word that makes the whole room silence.
Nobody else speaks.
I unwillingly fall back to sleep.
“… has to be rules,” Pax is saying, his light voice comes out of nowhere – none of his powerful-commander attitude hanging off the syllables.
He’s just talking like their brother, like an equal.
As I listen, birds flutter about from tree to tree like the voices are an overtone to a dream, or in the dream, or I’m in a dream and imagining them.
“Roarke is never to be left alone with her,” Seth says, none of his air of light-hearted-trickster present.
And those two missing constants make me listen harder, the dream birds dissolving. If they’re sobering enough to pull themselves onto an even playing field, what they’re saying must be importa
nt.
“No one touches her,” Pax says.
“What if she wants us to?” Roarke asks, and he’s not even being a smart ass about it.
“Don’t,” Killian says.
“What if we need to, if she happens to fall over? Or if we decide she looks uncomfortable in that stupid chair?” Seth asks. “Except for Roarke,” he adds.
Pax lets out a noise that makes me think he’s rolling his eyes.
“If it’s needed, then I’ll cage my Allure. I can do that for short periods of time,” Roarke says, not even sounding hurt. “But we can’t let her out of our sight.”
“We can’t do that anyway,” Pax points out.
“You’re welcome,” Seth says.
I lose my battle to listen, falling back into dreamless nothingness.
Falling into a familiar rose garden. Behind my small five-year-old body, a hay cart is rolling toward the decrepit shed in the distance. He’ll drive back this way in a few hours and let my mother and I climb aboard. It’s been our good fortune that the monthly delivery for the prized bulls ambled past our isolated cottage on the night my brother fell ill with the Taridan flu. Mother shuffles me to the Lord’s door and rings out two loud knocks. It’s the middle of the day and the garden is alive with the buzz of bees and the sweet tickle of roses against the nose.
A short, round, woman answers the door, the thing groaning loudly as she opens it just enough to let us enter.
“Oh, Kadence,” the woman says, a knowing tone underlying the words.
My mother juts her chin in the air, her grip firming around my hand, and she marches straight past the woman. Down the dark entrance hall. Into a dark sitting room, the kind clearly made for entertaining important guests, up a set of stairs on the left wall and into a private dining space. The round woman follows right behind, making small huff and grunt sounds that hint at a bad taste in the back of her throat.
But she doesn’t say a thing. Just pats at her apron, sending a few puffs of flour into the air.
The man at the head of the nine seater table drops his fork with a loud metallic clang and stands, clasping his hands behind his back. The movement thrusts his chest out further as he paces onto the big round rug between the dead hearth and us.
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 12