Dark Embers

by R. L. Giddings

  Two figures approached Silesia from the west. They were too far away to properly identify but I knew from their gait that one of them was my mother.

  I was keen to get to Silesia before they did but was constantly having to wait for Macrory who was struggling to keep up.

  “I told you we should have gone with her,” I said.

  “What? And gotten ourselves killed? I don’t think so.”

  I had to admit that he had a point. From the moment we had stepped through the gateway we had been aware of multiple contacts. But Silesia had dealt with those. The question now was: how had my mother known that this was where the Arcadians would choose to make their first incursion into our world? According to Macrory there were literally dozens of possible locations offering ingress.

  I was surprised to see how many of the Advocates appeared to be still alive. I’d feared that Silesia would have been far more ruthless when dealing with a perceived threat. Many of the Advocates were attempting to climb unsteadily to their feet.

  “If that had been Aleena they’d all be dead,” I observed. “She wouldn’t have suffered such temerity.”

  My mother and her companion stopped well short of the queen which, considering what had just occurred, seemed only sensible. They waited for Macrory and I to draw level before making their final approach.

  My mother watched me with a rueful smile.

  “What’s this then, Bronte?” she indicated the queen. “The enemy of my enemy, and all that?”

  We all stood around, acutely aware of the Harvesters pulsing on all sides.

  “Well, this is awkward,” I said.

  “So!” my mother was all business. “What happens now?”

  But I wasn’t listening. I’d only just recognised the man standing next to her, his features largely obscured beneath his cap and scarf.

  “Marcus?”

  “Hello Bronte.”

  *

  The peace negotiations lasted a little over ten minutes. While they were being conducted a number of ambulances was arriving to collect the injured.

  I say ‘peace negotiations’ when really we were just listening to Silesia’s demands. Her display of absolute power had taken the fight out of everyone. As Macrory later pointed out, while Aleena had all but sacrificed her powers by the end, Silesia’s powers had slowly been accruing throughout the whole time of her exile. The game had changed. This wasn’t a battle my mother could reasonably hope to win, and she knew it.

  The queen stated her terms: the War Council’s army would stand down with immediate effect. Those members of the Sidhe who had turned against the queen were to be handed over immediately along with any Sidhe Ordnance. All plans and privileged information that had been gathered including maps and transcripts, were to be handed over and destroyed. My mother would agree to pay an undisclosed sum to Arcadia by way of reparations.

  “Well,” my mother said. “I can agree to most of what you ask though, obviously, the issue of reparations will still need to be …”

  “No,” Silesia said. “These are my terms. They are non-negotiable.”

  My mother shared a look with Marcus.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the Harvester machines swaying backwards and forwards, as if readying itself to attack.

  “But I can’t agree to payments when I don’t know what they are.”

  I couldn’t swear that any of the machines moved then, but I experienced a growing sense of discomfort.

  “Alright,” my mother said finally. “Where do I sign?”

  “Your word will suffice.”

  “Then you have it.”

  The queen’s face didn’t register any change of expression but the implication was clear. The meeting was over.

  Without another word, Silesia turned and started walking away. I wanted to ask her about the arrangements for Silas but when I looked, I saw that two sedan chairs were being carried onto the battlefield. Millie stood beside the one on the left which would mean that Edwin was in that one. Logic suggested that Silas was occupying the one to the right.

  I took a long breath. The desire to go to him then was strong but I still had questions I needed answers to and this might be my only opportunity.

  I said to Marcus, “How long did all this take to set up.”

  “About a week, although I couldn’t be here all the while.”

  “Smuggling Florian back into the Kingdom?” Macrory said. “There was no way he could get back so quickly without help.”

  “What happened with Florian?” Marcus wanted to know.

  “Silas ripped his throat out,” I said flatly.

  Marcus seemed unconcerned. “Had to happen at some point, I suppose.”

  I said, “When I saw you in the hospital, I thought you genuinely cared about Kinsella. You had me fooled. What’s going to happen to him now?”

  My mother said, “That’s not been decided. He may yet have to stand trial.”

  I felt my anger begin to bubble over and had to work to control it.

  “Well, if that were to happen, I’d welcome the opportunity to take to the stand. There’s lots about this which should reach a wider audience.”

  Neither of them responded.

  I said, “So, that mill collapsing - all of that was just…”

  “Window-dressing. It suited our needs at the time. The whole Dark Team were answering to Svetlana by the end. We needed a way for them to disappear without raising suspicions. My coma story was just a convenient way of keeping me in the loop without having to answer any difficult questions.”

  Svetlana?

  The only person who’d ever called her that was my father.

  I looked him in the eye. “How long have you two been working together?”

  My mother stepped over to him, her hand stroking his back. “From the start. Marcus has always been my man on the inside. How do you think I orchestrated that bird strike on the Bear Garden? When I wanted to send Melissa Stahl a warning, Marcus was there to co-ordinate it all. He was never ‘your’ Marcus, Bronte. He was always ‘mine’.”

  They eyed one another eagerly while I let the implications of that slowly sink in.

  “It’s surprising what people let slip in the bedroom,” Marcus said. “Your friend Millie, for instance…”

  “I don’t want to hear, thanks.”

  He had such a smug look on his face that I just wanted to punch him.

  I forced myself to continue.

  “So, I take it that you were Florian’s Mr Christmas. Setting him up to wipe-out the Bear Garden?”

  My mother didn’t let him answer. “We needed a crisis big enough to justify the Inner Council going to war. Kinsella wasn’t supposed to survive but that can soon be settled.”

  “But what about all the other people who died? What about them?”

  Marcus took his cue from her, “Everything’s changing now, Bronte. Everything. We’re not going to be happy hiding in the shadows any longer. The power base is shifting and it’s shifting in our favour.”

  That was my mother talking, not Marcus. She had her claws into him now, he’d be lucky ever to break free from her.

  “And the price for Florian’s help? I suppose you promised him Sigurdsil?”

  “Initially, yes,” Marcus said. “We knew you were the only one capable of handling it without incurring the curse, so you were the obvious choice to steal it. But when you looked like you were going to disappear off with it, we had to portray Florian as the innocent party. It might not have worked out exactly as we’d planned but we got there in the end.”

  “Only now you have to deal with Silesia, and she’s no push-over.”

  “We never intended taking the war to Arcadia. That would have been a huge waste of resources. We just needed to defeat the Arcadian threat.”

  “Except you didn’t,” I indicated the troops being loaded onto stretchers. “All this preparation over-turned, by one woman.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” my mother bridled. �
�We might have lost the battle today but that’s irrelevant. It will only convince people that we face threats on all sides. It will pull everyone together. We shall prevail in the end. That’s our destiny. You of all people should know that.”

  I found something deeply discomforting about the way she was talking. As though it was pre-ordained that I would one day join her. As if it was I who was somehow delaying the inevitable.

  “Come on, Bronte,” Macrory said breaking my train of thought. “You’re wasting your time with these two.”

  I took his hand then and the pair of us headed back in the direction of our friends.

  EPILOGUE

  I hadn’t had a cigarette for over two weeks.

  I wanted to say that I was proud of myself but that would have been under the assumption that my abstemious behaviour had come about as a result of a conscious decision, and that hadn’t been the case. I’d had a packet of cigarettes on me when I’d gone out onto the Serpentine but they had vanished by the time I arrived on the other side.

  Normally, I’d be scratching my own skin off, going so long without a smoke but that didn’t appear to be happening now. Seemed like I might have given up by default.

  We’d only been back at the Laing Estate a couple of hours when Dougie rang. He wondered if he might come round for a chat. He didn’t say anything about his earlier ultimatum though it was clear that he was completely in the dark about Silas’ recent return. We were all very interested in what he would say once he discovered the truth.

  Carlotta had invited him to come over that afternoon and - despite her protestations to the contrary - seemed inordinately thrilled at the prospect of seeing him again. The impending visit now necessitated a trip into the village for fresh supplies. Carlotta desperately wanted me to go with her but I pretended that I was too tired from traveling. The truth was that with Carlotta gone, I hoped to have a few precious hours alone with Silas.

  Which was why I was standing outside his room – after a quick shower and a change of clothes – trying to gauge how hard, or gently, I should be knocking on his door.

  Too hard and I would come off as seeming overly demanding. Too soft and he wouldn’t hear me at all.

  I settled on a medium loud knock.

  Nothing.

  Perhaps he was asleep. He’d slept solidly since we’d returned.

  I tried again with the same result.

  Finally, I knocked as loudly as I could and then just pushed the door open.

  He looked to be asleep. Just seeing him like that made me think about everything that I loved about him. And then, I felt conflicted for having doubted him in the first place. I’d been convinced upon seeing him in his animal form that he had been smitten by Aleena but now that his senses had returned he’d hardly mentioned her at all. Now he might just have been trying to spare my feelings, but I liked to think that his memories of her would fade entirely given time.

  He rolled away from me, giving me a view of his broad back.

  “Bronte.”

  He was talking in his sleep. Something shifted inside me then, any thought of Aleena suddenly gone.

  I moved quickly across the room to stand by his bed, resolving to let him sleep on. I’d just stay and watch him, listen to the gentle rhythm of his breathing and then I’d go.

  But then, he lay back on the bed. His eyes came open and he looked up at me.

  “You’re safe,” he said, reaching out to stroke my arm. “I’d started to think I’d lost you again.”

  Emotion swelled in my throat so that all I could manage to say was, “I’m here now.”

  He seemed to come fully awake then, throwing back his arms and surveying the room.

  “Finally back in my old room,” he eyed me cautiously. “Seems like I haven’t slept here for a very long while.”

  “That’s right. We couldn’t let you in the house the state you were in. It wasn’t safe. You weren’t safe.”

  “No. That’s right, I haven’t myself. Not for a long time.”

  We still hadn’t spoken openly about everything that had gone on in the last few weeks. It was going to take him a long while to readjust to his new situation. I’d decided to only mention things if he asked directly. That way, he could filter the information for himself. He wasn’t stupid, he’d done this kind of thing before.

  He reached over and took my hand, squeezed it.

  “So, when I was in full-on wolf mode, before the queen’s lot grabbed me, where did you keep me?”

  “We kept you in the squash court.”

  That amused him so much that he pummelled the mattress with his fists.

  “The squash court? Dad’s old squash court?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now I remember: all that strip lighting. And there was something odd about the floor.”

  “We put straw down, to make you more comfortable. That was your sister’s idea.”

  I didn’t mention the hours I’d spent with him there, watching him slowly wasting away. Just the thought of it now was enough to make me shudder, though we had developed an odd kind of intimacy in those moments.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Strange,” he studied his fingers. “This body still doesn’t feel like my own. Feels weak. In the night, I tried to get a drink.”

  There was a pool of water on his bedside table. The glass lay on the floor.

  “It all feels very peculiar: having things around.”

  “Peculiar!” I laughed. “What sort of word is that?”

  “Actually, it was my grandfather’s favourite word. As in: “I’ve come over all peculiar!” It helps if you say it with a slight Scottish accent.”

  I bent down and kissed his forehead, just the smell of him was intoxicating. But I was still wary of giving into my feelings while he was recovering.

  When I pulled away, he just watched me, amused by my inability to mask my emotions.

  The blood rushed to my face and stayed there.

  “Okay. But, other than your inability to use a glass and your tendency to talk like a pensioner, how are you feeling in yourself? How’s the leg.”

  This seemed to strike him as a new and worrying concern.

  “Yes, the leg,” he said numbly. “I’d forgotten all about that.”

  Having been shot with a silver bullet, Silas had struggled to shake off the after effects. At one point, he had even been confined to a wheelchair.

  “Let me look,” I said, perching on the side of the bed and easing back the duvet.

  I ran my hand over his lower leg, trying to locate the scar I knew to be there. But I could find no sign of it. I pushed his foot to one side, in order to examine the inside of his knee. I seemed to remember that the bullet had entered just around there.

  Sure enough, there was an area of pinkish skin which still appeared to be healing but it lacked the associated muscle damage one normally attributed to a gun-shot wound. I explored the area with my fingers, trying to find some divot, some indentation in the flesh but there was nothing there. If this was the actual site of the injury then it had healed remarkably well.

  The discovery should have delighted me but, for some reason, I felt vaguely discomfited.

  “Could it be the other leg?” I said. “Perhaps I’m getting confused.”

  As I went to reach across, Silas grabbed my wrist.

  “It’s not my leg I’m worried about.”

  He pulled me across the bed until I was lying against his chest. Then he kissed me, his mouth strong and agile.

  It had been a long time since I’d been kissed like that. A very long time.

  We didn’t rush, we took our time, enjoying the moment.

  I had one hand braced against his shoulder, ready to push away. I didn’t want him over-exerting himself. And yet…

  And yet…

  When we finally came up for air, he pulled the covers over me. My breathing came thickly. The brush of my clothes against his nakedness was so teasing that I found that
I couldn’t bear to meet his eye. I had to turn my head and look at the ceiling to give my palpitations time to subside. It was worse than if we’d both been naked under there. Much worse. The temptation just to slip out of my clothes was maddening.

  Anticipation can be the greatest aphrodisiac.

  We stayed like that for a long while, the pair of us examining the plaster mouldings on the ceiling. It had taken an unbelievable effort of will from both of us just to get to this point but, now that we were here, it all seemed worthwhile.

  He kissed me gently on the neck while he picked at the buttons on my blouse. His hands were big enough to encircle my waist and my buttons were tiny. This was going to take a while.

  “What are you thinking about?” he said.

  “Macrory?”

  He lifted himself up off the bed and gave me a stern look.

  “Is there something I ought to know?”

  “About me and Macrory? No. I’m just concerned, that’s all. He’s got nothing to come back to. And we owe him so much. I was just thinking …”

  “He’s a little too old to be adopted.”

  I punched him in the chest. “I’m not talking about that. I was just thinking that you might be able to fix him up with a flat or something. Just ‘til he gets himself sorted out.”

  “Okay,” he ruminated on that for a while. “I think there might just be a vacancy in our squash court.”

  “That’s mean.”

  I sat up in bed and made as if as to leave, but Silas caught me and wrestled me back under the covers.

  Then he kissed me and this time I didn’t resist.

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