by Inez Kelley
A sad note broke in her belly, filling her with a weeping song. If she could not change what Taric was, even when it would ease his life, how could he change what she was? Could she embrace humanity, be his wife and give him a child when each day would leave him without her guardianship? Even if this bloodthirsty war ended this minute, the crown was always at risk from those who thought themselves better suited. Ivor’s arrow had been unintentional yet just as deadly as if shot from an enemy’s string. Bryton was an excellent protector but he too was human.
Myla froze in realization. She couldn’t have him. Couldn’t hold him. Couldn’t keep him. Selfishly basking in Taric’s love, she’d made a grave tactical error. She’d forgotten to weigh the cost against the expense. No one benefited from her love except her. Thousands suffered. Would suffer. Her love did not bring joy but pain.
In a frantic and desperate rush, Myla’s mind scoured for answers, for solutions. Each trail led to the same end. She was his guardian. To keep Taric safe…she had to give him up. She could never become his princess. His wife.
“Yes,” Taric answered and she scrambled to remember the question. “You were recognized by the Council when you stepped on the dais with me.”
“Who may I speak with? Am I allowed to direct questions to Elora…or to Marchen?”
His jaw shifted and his brows tightened. “Why, Myla? What do you know?”
I know I love you as I never knew a soul could love. I know I shall never taste a berry as sweet as your kiss. I know that to protect you forever, I will hurt you forever.
“I know nothing. I know only as I need to know. It will be enough.”
The enigmatic statement lingered until he nodded. “I’ve always trusted you with my life. I’ll not start doubting you now. You can speak to or ask anything of anyone, even the Elders if you need. The only one off limits is the king because he’s removed himself. If the Inquisitor thinks you’re crossing some line of propriety, he’ll call you down.”
Her head tilted to the right and more enchantment whispered to her. Myla walked slowly to the monarch. She unnerved him, she knew, and was not surprised when his chest stilled and he held his breath. “When the verdict is read, right your goblet, King Balic. Your judgment will be needed this day but not against your son.”
“There is no other matter before the Council.”
“Not yet,” she replied.
His down-turned lips stole her breath. So alike, his honey brows dipped as his son’s had, and Myla pressed her tongue against her teeth. Tears blurred his image and her nose began to run. Balic had survived the loss of a heartmate, found some level of happiness, and Taric would, too. She had to believe that. She clung to it, a lifeline in an ocean of loneliness that would be her resting place…forever.
ab
“How do you answer the accusations of Lady Elora Marchen?”
“I deny them, each and every one.” Taric’s falsehood rope blared to bright white.
Hands in the air, the Inquisitor turned to his fellow Elders. “I profess I’m at a loss, gentlemen. In accordance with the laws, we can find neither fault nor innocence in this case. I open the trial to you. Perhaps you can find answers that I cannot.”
“Someone is lying.” A thin voice from a far table spoke and then masculine comments flew from every table. Myla’s eyes darted to and fro, trying to follow.
“Her tale is one heard all over from farm girls to merchants’ daughters. A proposal is an easy way to get under her skirts and then the man disappears.”
“No, his rank taught him the danger of such words. I don’t believe that.”
“If she were my daughter, we’d not be here. He’d be at the end of church hall with my blade at his back.”
“She sounds like my own young daughters when they’re tattling on the other. I’ve learned to believe only half of what is said.”
“It’s not a claim a maiden makes lightly before her father and a group of men unless there’s some truth to it.”
“What well-born maiden travels to a faraway inn with no escort? It makes no sense and there are no bluebonnets that far south.”
“Who cares what flower bloomed?”
“His mother was a sorceress. Maybe magic begets magic and impedes the rope.”
“Perhaps you simply do not ask the correct questions, Inquisitor.” Myla raised her voice above the plethora of arguing men and every lip fell silent. Sizzling beneath the emerald silk, her skin sang with charmed vibrations.
A spark leapt to his flesh and Taric jerked his fingers from her hand. He arched his brow at her in question.
The Inquisitor turned slowly to face her, his gaze pitying and condescending. Lines from weather and age deepened and he sent her a patronizing smile. “Princess Presumptive, I understand you must find this…information troublesome and—”
“I find it a mockery of your intelligence, sir. The truth has but one bottom and if you cannot find it through one approach, you opt for another.”
Pity raised his voice to a tenor but irritation made it sharp. “Which approach would you prefer I take, Lady Felinic?”
“The one that stays out of my way, Inquisitor.” Bryton scoffed behind her but Myla ignored him, angling her head toward Elora. Since her collapse, Elora had returned to a shell of a woman, a dark wraith beside a demon of malice.
“Lady Marchen, if you tell the truth and have loved with my betrothed, where on his body is the burn scar he has carried since infancy?”
Marchen’s jaw clenched. He’d had no idea Taric had an identifiable scar. His covert intelligence had missed that vital information.
Elora’s pale ale-colored eyes swirled in confusion and timidity. “I—it was dark…I—I—?”
“Dark? How can a warm sun that eases you to sleep be dark?”
Her head shaking like an ash leaf in a windstorm, Elora’s face flushed. “His thigh!” Her rope did not change. She guessed.
“No. His mark is not on his thigh but beneath his ribs, on the left.” Myla’s looped rope shone white and Emerto Marchen’s lips pressed thin in anger. “Could you tell the Council which room at the Chisumfield Inn you accepted his proposal in? Was it room eight or nine?”
“I—I think it was nine.” With no change to the rope, Myla smiled, her feline toying with a mouse and a rat.
“There are only three rooms in the inn.” Truth. “One last question, Lady Marchen. You claim to have been with Prince Taric in Follyswit in April. If this is so, how did you also serve as your father’s Mistress of Ceremonies for the Alderfest Ship Races in Sotherby? Does that festival not last the entire month?”
Tears openly streaming down her face, Elora stammered, “I—I don’t know.”
Murmurs humming like angry bees grew from the tables. Taric’s hand stole to the small of her back, love warming his touch. Frazzled torment shook the young woman across the way. Her father ignored her, rage boiling from his spirit with an intensity that threatened to ignite.
Myla added fuel and shift to the wind. “Lord Marchen, you knew the late Queen Tarsha in childhood, correct?”
“I did.” The white light highlighted a clenched fist.
“You were students together…of the magical arts, weren’t you?”
Cold fire brewed in his glare. Myla revealed a secret he’d kept from all around him. Spitted through grit teeth, his “yes” elevated the Elders’ buzz to a ceaseless drone. Light flashed bold and bright, as frosty as his eyes, but didn’t stop Myla’s questions.
“She was quite the pupil, isn’t that so?”
“She was. Tarsha had a remarkable flair.”
“Much more powerful than you ever were.”
“Yes, my gifts were minor in comparison. I never finished the training.” Truth.
“Not all magic has the same root. Queen Tarsha excelled in potions, foreshadowing and spellsongs. Could you tell the Council…what was your gift?”
A cornered animal is the most deadly and unpredictable. Like a wolverine’s in a sna
re, Marchen’s lips curled back into a feral grimace. Hostility etched his face with no disguise. Bryton unsheathed his sword with a rasped slide and held it at his side. Taric stepped closer to her. Every lord in the realm was poised at the end of their bench, straining to hear Marchen’s reply.
Myla dipped her chin and leered at him with predatory hunger. She had her prey on the run and a growl rumbled in her throat. Tasting his fury, her tongue slicked along her upper lip. “You do not answer, Lord Marchen. Very well. Is it true your gift was for channeling?”
Katina and her classmate gaped at the right dais.
“What is channeling?” the Inquisitor barked but Myla did not drop her hunter’s gaze. Striding to the gawking young Truthbearers, the Inquisitor gripped Katina’s elbow and whirled her toward him.
Bryton was beside him in an instant, sword point escorting the Elder back toward his table with a grim look. It was forbidden to touch a Truthbearer during a proceeding but Bryton’s face registered far more than ceremonial duty.
“Channeling is very rare and very difficult to master,” Katina explained, directing her words up to the high table and Balic’s scowl. “There have been no masters of channeling recorded for over three hundred summers. The immense strain it places on the mind can drive one insane.”
“But what is it?” the Inquisitor barked, his trembling face fixed on Bryton’s sword tip at his heart.
“Channeling is…control. It gives the user the ability to concentrate all his or her magic into a single focused beam. The old accounts tell of channelers who could burn buildings with a thought, pulverize stone in a blink, things of violence.” Katina’s voice tremored with awe and fright. Her throat bobbed in fear and she twisted her fingers together in front of her. “Some say if a channeler allows his or her magic emotional rein… It’s considered the most evil of magic deeds and…was punishable by death in our ancient laws.”
“Why? What is so wrong with the practice?” Myrtlewood’s lord asked.
“The channeler’s power, if fueled through intense emotion such as hate or love or fear, can be projected into the mind of another to change behavior, induce nightmares, bend their will or even…implant memories of things that never occurred. Memories the victim thinks…believes are truthful. It always leads to madness in the victim. Many take their own lives.”
Pandemonium blasted the hall in ear-screeching levels but Myla heard Taric exhale behind her. His sense of relief flooded her soul followed quickly by his horror of what Marchen had done to his child. Myla refused to drop her gaze from the silver-eyed snake across from her.
“Enough!” he bellowed, rage raking his frame as if lung fever gripped him. Dripping from the ceiling timbers, the word oozed wrath. If possible, Elora shrank further into herself, wilting and cringing at her father’s voice. “I demand judgment. Whatever power it’s claimed I might or might not have is irrelevant. I will not stand here and allow my daughter’s rightful claim of abandonment and lechery to be hushed by a twittering student and a brazen whore in a tiara.”
Taric leapt over the baluster with a curse and was halfway to Marchen before Bryton slammed into him. Bryton grunted and strained but managed to force Taric backward while the pounding of eleven gold goblets on wood called for silence.
Bryton hissed in his ear. “Calm your ass down. Let the Elders do their job. Show them a prince, not a love-struck hothead.”
Taric snapped his bright blue tunic down smartly, reclaimed his regal posture and walked directly to Myla on the raised platform. His trembling hand engulfed hers but she was too focused on Marchen to grip back. The metallic taste of angry blood called to her tongue and she salivated. There was no kill so glorious as one made to protect your own and Taric was hers. He always had been and always would be.
“Lord Marchen,” the Inquisitor began with a gruff cough, “in light of these discoveries and allowing that the Elders’ Council is well aware of the…conflict between your two houses, I ask you…did you magically enhance or alter any memory of your daughter?”
A smirk lifted Marchen’s lips. “I did not use any means to invade my daughter’s mind.” His falsehood rope blazed white. Truth. Murmurs rose once more.
“But then, she’s not your daughter, is she? You have no blood children.” Taric’s quiet words ran through the room like a chilled blade. Emeric’s bark-brown eyes whipped to the dais and his fleshy mouth gaped in surprise. Elora moved not at all.
The Inquisitor’s eyes bulged and he turned back to the right-hand platform, frustration-beaded sweat along his temples. Myla watched the droplets slither down his face and felt her muscles cramp with the need to pounce. Elora, who gazed absently outward, stood lost in her own shattered world.
The Inquisitor pointed toward her and bellowed. “The Council of Elders has had enough of games, word play and hidden agendas. Lord Emerto Marchen, did you use magic to influence this woman’s mind, yes or no?”
Myla heard the beat of Taric’s heart, the room was so silent waiting for an answer. Inside, her tail twitched, waiting to balance in a leap.
Marchen braced his hands on the baluster and his cheek peaked, his tongue rolling inside. His hate-filled gaze was riveted to Balic.
“No.” Blood red light burst from his arm with a loud hum. Lie.
The goblets began banging again, each lord calling for a vote. Marchen’s eyes closed but his posture did not change, still gripping the baluster with fiercely white knuckles. Katina’s classmate dimmed the lighted rope with a touch.
Myla turned to Taric with a triumphant wink. He smiled back before tightening his lips and lifting his chin, facing straight ahead. She returned her eyes to the brewing explosion to her right, prepared in an instant to bleed her protection over Taric’s form should Marchen leap in body or enchantment.
Each lord wrote briefly on a small slip and dropped the vote into the empty goblets. Katina and her classmate gathered each goblet and brought them to the Inquisitor’s table. He read each vote aloud—ten not guilty and one guilty. Nimon Luta had followed the sway of the majority. Marchen’s backers had fled, cowed to the evidence mounted. Emeric alone had voted against Taric despite the proof.
Taric exhaled and Elora loosed a bloodcurdling scream wrenched from the pit of madness. Gooseflesh rose as Myla heard the call, the animalistic cry of one no longer fully alive and thinking. Marchen spat a curse and backhanded her, knocking her off the dais where she lay in a crying mass. Three lords leapt to their feet and angry shouts filled the room.
“Silence!” Balic’s majestic tone quelled the crowd with one word. His searing look fell to Myla for an instant before he righted his overturned cup. His gaze shifted to the men below him.
“Charmists, redistribute the judgment chalices. Elders of Eldwyn, I wish you to address a matter based largely on the events of this day. You are all aware of Emerto Marchen’s…insubordination toward the monarchy. To date, it has been dealt with through blood and steel. That is not an issue for this court. Today, I bring before you a separate matter. Over a hundred twenty summers ago, my family bequeathed the land of Sotherby into Marchen hands for safekeeping, as all your lands were placed with your ancestors. The present Crown no longer agrees with that stewardship grant.”
“You arrogant bastard! You can’t strip me of my land or my title!” Marchen screeched. Veins bulged along his neck and brow, his pulse visibly erratic.
“Oh, but I can.” Balic grinned like a wolf closing in on a rabbit. “Not for your personal hatred, but for your criminal use of magical influence over an innocent and using that impropriety to lodge false charges against another. You dare strike a woman in the presence of this Council and you reap the reward. Be that woman feeble-minded from your mistreatment and your reward is swift and harsh.”
Balic stood, erect and proud, every inch a king and spoke clearly. “I call for a vote. Yay or nay in forever removing the name Marchen from the Council of Elders, the land of Sotherby and the lexicon of nobility of all Eldwyn. Vote now.”
The vote was eleven to Emeric’s one for removal. The head Royal Guard lowered the emblem of Sotherby in Marchen colors from the rafter. The banner dropped to the stone and a torch ignited it.
Malice was a heartbeat in the room, pumping hatred and power. Breath rasping in barely controlled malevolence, Marchen did not flinch. No one spoke until the fabric smoldered to ash.
The Inquisitor kicked at the last bit of glowing ember. “It is done. Leave this hall and this land, Emerto Tangot Marchen, and never let it be darkened by you or your kin again. Your family is forever banished from Eldwyn by order of her Elders and by consent of her king.”
Marchen chuckled coldly. A reptilian menace creased his lips and angled his brows. “Oh, I’ll leave, but hear me, bastard king. You and your spawn will both feel my revenge. For this and for what was stolen from me long ago. I’ve just started tormenting you. Watch your back, Balic, yours and those you hold dear. You never know where I’ll be but I’ll never be far. Now I have no fear of letting my magic loose on you.”
“Nor do I,” Myla murmured with narrowed eyes.
Marchen gripped his wailing daughter by the arm and half-dragged her from the room. His pasty son followed with downcast eyes. The room breathed with relief. The pageantry to close out the proceedings was no less flamboyant or ritualistic but Myla viewed it through a removed lens, her essence trailing the Marchens down the hall. This threat was too unpredictable to leave unattended.
She stayed with their churning bitterness until Taric’s kiss ripped her from her watch. The abrupt jolt from burning-cold hatred to blistering-hot love thrust her thoughts into a spin and she reached out blindly. Her palms met hard muscle. Taric. Melting against him, she absorbed every drop of his love, his happiness, his gratitude.