by M. J. Scott
I was stuck here, with Lucius, for now, but perhaps I could do as I had promised Simon. Do some good. All I needed was to know what Lucius was up to and what was in that damn letter.
Everything seemed hushed as I walked back toward Lucius’ suite from the bathroom. The noises from the Assembly below seemed distant from the gray of the shadow.
But despite myself and the knowledge that no one could see me in the shadow, uneasy guilt dogged me. Never before had I tried to use my powers against Lucius. Planning to defy him and actually doing it—going against a lifetime of ingrained obedience—seemed to be two different things. Biting the hand that holds your chains is harder than it appears.
I gritted my teeth, standing outside the door. Was Lucius still inside? It must have been a good quarter of an hour since I’d left him and walked on shaky legs to one of the upper bathrooms. Had the Beasts joined him in the suite or were they elsewhere in one of the private dining rooms or other chambers? Lords of hell, let them be elsewhere. If anyone was in the room, I could enter undetected, but unless the letter was lying open on the desk, I wouldn’t be able to read it without leaving the shadow. If I had to wait for Lucius’ office to be empty, I might lose my nerve, or my opportunity if he summoned me.
Before I could decide what to do, the door swung open, wood passing through me to bang against the wall, and Lucius strode out, pushing the door shut behind him and locking it. I held my breath, tempted to squeeze my eyes shut. He was so close, my mind shrieked that he would sense me, even though I knew that was impossible.
But my fears were unwarranted. Lucius merely pocketed the key, then smoothed his long jacket before walking away.
My knees almost buckled in relief. No one else would be in the room at this hour. Lucius guarded his inner sanctum well. There would be a few Trusted who were allowed access but not during the height of the night while Lucius was conducting the business of his Court.
Seizing my chance, I stepped through the door and hurried over to the desk. The pile of correspondence still lay in the black lacquered tray, the top few envelopes slit open as I had seen him do earlier. At first glance I couldn’t see any that glowed green gold.
Hells.
I started to let go of the shadow, then paused. Were there wards around the room? Something to detect me? I scanned carefully but couldn’t sense or see anything to indicate worked magic. Still, I stayed shadowed as I scanned the desk again, searching for the letter as my heart raced. Minimizing any time I had to spend solid would be the safest course. As would getting what I had come to do done in the fastest possible time.
The desk held a bottle of ink and a pristine black quill, the pile of letters and a large red bound ledger. I studied the ledger, then frowned. It did not seem to lie entirely flat against the polished wood. Was there something beneath?
I would have to risk it. I let go of the shadow, senses straining for any hint of alarm, and lifted the ledger.
Success! I stifled my instinctive whoop of satisfaction. Beneath the book lay the warded letter. Even better, it too had been opened, its protective ward broken. I picked it up and turned it over.
There was no return address, nothing but a blob of dark green wax, with a curious impression of flowing lines that could almost be . . . I squinted, trying to decide . . . nothing like any seal I had ever seen. Nothing to tell me of the writer’s identity.
That would be too easy, I supposed. I turned my attention to the letter within the envelope, sliding the single page of thin paper free gingerly. I couldn’t risk a tear or fold that hadn’t been there before, something that might alert Lucius to the possibility of tampering.
The writing was the same feminine seeming script as the envelope. The letter was short and, to my dismay, unhelpful.
To my Lord Lucius,
Things remain unchanged.
The work progresses but does not bear fruit.
Recent developments have unsettled but not changed the course of his interest.
Though there may be a chance owing to current turmoils. He will be distracted. I will watch and wait, but stand ready if your desires have changed.
E’hai.
There was no signature. Just a scribbled image of what might be a leaf. The writer had to be Fae, though. The warded envelope and the Fae proclamation of loyalty near the leaf were evidence enough of that much. Not that I had any idea what the leaf might mean. Nor could I be sure what they were talking about. It could be Simon. The words could be interpreted that way, certainly. Or it could be any one of a myriad of people that Lucius was keeping an eye on.
I refolded the letter after committing the words, and that curious image, to memory. I rubbed my fingers across the seal one last time before repositioning the letter under the ledger.
It wasn’t much but it was a beginning. I smiled slightly, the expression feeling unfamiliar. I would have to hold to that. For now, all I could do was play my role, stay alive, and wait for another opportunity.
“Remember, Simon,” Father Cho said, in a low voice. “Be respectful.”
I shot him a sideways glance. “Yes, Father.” I bit back the “I’m not an idiot” hovering on my lips. My temper was running short, frustration and lack of sleep combining to do nothing to improve it. Perhaps his warning was not entirely unwarranted.
I returned my gaze to the empty table in front of us. Beside me, Bryony shifted on the velvet-padded stool, smoothing her skirts into a more precise arrangement of sweeping folds. I wasn’t the only one who was nervous, it seemed.
We had a right to our jitters. We had been waiting in this chamber for over half an hour, cooling our heels in the luxurious surroundings while we waited for our audience to begin. The delay had not improved my mood and I found it difficult to sit still and wait. But I did, trying not to think about everything that was riding on the meeting we were about to have.
Something about the room had rendered us all mostly silent. Father Cho’s intermittent snippets of advice were the only conversation we’d had.
After another five minutes or so, just as my temper began to rise again, setting my fingers to drumming against my thigh, the intricately carved wooden doors behind the table swung open and an immaculately white-robed Fae woman stepped through, bowed, and intoned, “The Speaker comes.”
We rose to our feet. The Fae woman stayed in her bow as another Fae walked past her into the room. He too wore white, flowing layers that made it seem as though he floated toward us.
His hair was black, or near enough, dark around a young, unlined face. I caught my start of surprise. There had only ever been one Speaker in the history of the City. Like the queen he served, he was hundreds of years old yet looked even younger than Bryony, who was nowhere near that age.
The Speaker’s eyes were a startling shade of gray. Like silvered glass or sun shining on water, infinite and unreadable. An unnatural shade that marked him as Fae clear as day. His gaze met mine and I suddenly felt the weight of his age as he studied me silently. A reminder that the Fae were very different from us. My mouth dried. Why would they ever choose to help us?
I set my teeth. I had to try.
Beside me, Bryony swept a curtsy and I bowed, belatedly, not looking at Father Cho, who, no doubt, was thinking I was doing a fair job of being as disrespectful as he had feared.
The Speaker settled himself behind the table and gestured for us to sit. The Fae woman rose and closed the doors, taking up a stance in front of them. Apparently we were not to be disturbed.
“I will hear you, Simon DuCaine,” the Speaker said into the silence.
I stood, taking a moment to gather my thoughts and push away any last doubts. “Speaker, I wish to bring before the Veil a petition.” Bryony had schooled me in the protocol well enough over the last day. Blunder in that and the Speaker might choose to take offense and dismiss us again without hearing what we had come to say.
“The Veil will hear.”
That was the first hurdle cleared. I relaxed slightly, the
n started to speak, setting out what we had come to tell. The attempt on my life. Lily’s involvement. And finally, the crux of the matter. “Speaker, I lay before you a treaty violation. Lord Lucius of the Blood has attacked a human not of the Night World. He has tried to kill me. I wish the Fae to use that which is their right and call him to account.”
The Speaker, who had stayed motionless through the few minutes of my speech, his mirrored eyes fixed on me, suddenly turned his gaze to Bryony. “Does this man speak truth?”
Bryony rose to stand besides me. “He speaks the truth as I understand it, as I have heard it from his lips and those of the . . . assassin,” she replied. There wasn’t more she could say.
A nod acknowledged her and she sank back down onto the stool. I couldn’t look at her; I had to keep watching the Speaker.
His gaze came back to me. “But you have no proof other than your word? The assassin is not to hand to recount whose words set her course?”
I shook my head, stomach churning. “No. She was going to speak, but she is no longer within our reach.” I tried to keep any emotion out of my voice.
The Speaker looked thoughtful and for a moment, hope surged, but then he straightened and set his hands flat on the table, the rings of his office, one on each hand that blazed all the colors of all the Families, clinking gently. His pose meant he was about to make his decision. I held my breath.
“The Veil has heard,” he said in a clear tone. “And we decline.”
My stomach dropped like a stone. No? Gods and fucking suns. I’d known this was likely, of course, but actually hearing it was like a kick from Guy’s warhorse. For a moment I felt winded, unable to respond. Say something. I needed a counterargument before we lost our chance. “But—”
He shook his head. “I have spoken. We do not act without proof. We cannot keep the treaty by favoring the word of one about the actions of another. Without the word of the assassin herself, we cannot involve ourselves.” He withdrew his hands from the table, folding them into his long sleeves.
Bryony’s lessons had stuck well. I knew the finality of that gesture. He had spoken. And I had lost.
By midafternoon a combination of restless anticipation and outright foreboding drove me out of my room and set me to prowling the warrens. They offered little in the way of diversion. I had no appetite for food and even less for trying to sit still and do something distracting like read. Eventually, I found myself moving upward, firstly out of the warrens and then up through the five stories of the mansion that sat atop them. I didn’t frequent these levels often. When I was younger, my lessons had been held on one of the higher floors, but since then I had lived most of my days in the warrens
But revisiting even slightly familiar haunts didn’t hold any temptation today. Instead, I kept climbing until finally I found myself in the attic that ran the entire length of the building on the topmost floor.
The vast room was hot and dusty and smelled of disintegrating clothes and old, old wood. These rooms were seldom aired or even used, judging by the layers of dust on the bare floorboards. So at least here I would be undisturbed and unobserved in my prowling. Alone with my thoughts.
Alone with the need and the dread.
The heat pressed around me, closing in as I stood stockstill in the middle of the room. Air. I needed air. I hurried to the nearest window, wrenched it open with a husking rasp of rusted metal, and climbed out onto the roof.
The pressure on my chest eased abruptly as a breeze caught me and I lowered myself to the tiles, dropping my head into my hands until I could catch my breath.
When I raised my head again, I saw that I had chosen a window on the eastern side of the building, so that the sun came from behind me, warm on my back. Before me, the City rolled out and my eyes came to rest, almost automatically, on the distant dome and spire of St. Giles and the cathedral.
Was Simon somewhere over there? Perhaps sitting in the same sun as me? Might he even be up on the roof of the Brother House looking out at the City too? Did he feel as horrible as I did?
I hoped not. I hoped he had written me off, cast me out of his thoughts as I deserved to be.
Yet I couldn’t help looking. Remembering.
My head dropped again and, to my horror, tears welled in my eyes, followed by a sob rising in my throat. I tried frantically to beat back the tears, but they refused to be stemmed and I finally let myself curl into a ball and sob.
I couldn’t say what I was crying for or even how long the tears lasted, but eventually they eased and I forced myself to sit again as I scrubbed at my face with my sleeve, desperate to wipe the evidence of my lapse of reason from my face.
Foolish to cry. Foolish and useless.
I hadn’t cried like that for a long time. Not since those earliest days when Lucius had beat my acceptance of the blood into me. Or perhaps since the night he’d first pointed out my mother to me in a crowd of Fae and I’d seen her carefully turn her head so there was no chance that she would look upon me. The first time I’d truly understood I was nothing to her.
That night I’d cried in my room until I thought I might die from it. But my tears hadn’t changed anything. I was still an abomination to my own mother and she still made sure she never saw me the few times she’d come to the Blood Court. Tears were useless. Then and now.
I had made my choice. Tonight I would go to Lucius and that would be that. Once again he would claim me as his shadow and I would allow him to bind me close with his blood. I had to. I couldn’t resist much longer. I was beginning to feel the first aches of need too long denied, gripping my stomach and needling my limbs like pinpricks. In a day or so, maybe less, the pains would start in earnest.
Though not this time. This time I was giving in.
And what exactly did that make me?
A clatter of hooves from below caught my attention. A hackney, plain and unadorned, rolled through the mansion gates, the horses wild-eyed and snorting so close to the scent of so many vampires.
Who was visiting here at this time of day? The Blood kept their own carriages, pulled by horses accustomed, or ensorcelled—I had never quite known which—to those they carried. The Trusted used those when they had need of transport. I clambered farther down the tiles, bracing a hand on a handy chimney pot as I peered down into the forecourt.
The hackney drew to a halt but nobody alighted. The back of my neck prickled. It didn’t take long for one of the Trusted to appear at the front door and hurry toward the mysterious vehicle. The man wore the stark black livery of Lucius’ private staff. Was the visitor expected, then?
I leaned out as far as I dared, not wanting to be seen but wanting a view of the hackney’s occupant if I could see. As the Trusted reached the coach, the blind across the window snapped open and a woman leaned her head through. She was veiled so I couldn’t see her face, though I thought the hair beneath the dark tulle was light. She extended a lacegloved hand toward the Trusted. In it, there was a letter. A letter that, to my eyes, gleamed gold and green, exactly like the one I’d read at Halcyon. And beneath the lace of her glove, something caught the light, flashing bright for a moment. A ring. A Fae Family ring perhaps? I squinted but couldn’t make out any identifying colors.
Hells.
The Trusted bowed and took the letter and headed back into the house. The woman’s head and arm withdrew back into the carriage and the horses set off with a leap.
I stood where I was, trying to follow their path, but too soon, they were lost to sight around a bend and then merged with the other passing traffic. I couldn’t tell one hackney from another from a distance.
But I watched anyway, heart beating fast, while my thoughts whirled.
I didn’t doubt this was Lucius’ mysterious correspondent or that she was Fae. The question was, which Fae? If I kept my eyes peeled, perhaps I could find out. It was a reason to go on at least.
I didn’t dare try to find out where the Trusted had taken the letter. Not in daylight anyway. Nor was tonight
the time for investigations. Tonight I had larger problems to face. I shivered then, despite the heat of the sun.
Tonight. Both too long to wait and too rapidly approaching. I needed to prepare myself for what was to come. The sun would be setting soon. Time to embrace the dark.
Chapter Nineteen
The nearer I got to the room where Lucius slept, the more the butterflies in my stomach bit and gnawed with tiny sharp teeth. The warrens were quiet as the grave, as though Lucius had passed word he was not to be disturbed. I saw none of the Blood, which pleased me. I didn’t want to see their expressions.
They would know why I was going to Lucius’ room. They would probably assume that we would do more than share Blood. Maybe we would. The need was a near conflagration, singing insistently in my veins, making it hard to remember what I was trying to do. My body wanted release. I didn’t know if I’d be able to resist if he demanded more than my blood.
Simon’s face flickered to mind, cutting through the fog of lust for a moment. He had taken me to bed, given me pleasure that wasn’t driven by blood and power. Part of me wanted to cling desperately to the memory and part of me wanted just as desperately to be rid of it. But it seemed he had lodged himself firmly under my skin. I didn’t know how to shake myself free of him, to forget him. Maybe I shouldn’t try.
No. I had to. Thinking of Simon while I let Lucius do what he would to me would be a betrayal.
I walked down another deserted corridor, steps slowing. It was very late. Lucius had waited a long time before sending for me. The summer nights are short in the City and I could feel the first warnings of dawn in my blood. But it was still a little way away. Not that it mattered here in the depths of the warrens. Lucius was old enough that he was not forced to sleep through the day. He could entertain himself with me as long as he wished.