by M. J. Scott
All because of his fucking healer oaths. I tried to remember that those oaths were a good thing. And that to Simon they were as serious as the ones I’d sworn to the order. The ones everybody thought I’d forsaken to chase after Holly. Who had been lying to me all this time.
Don’t think about her. I couldn’t afford to think about her or the fact that she’d left my bed to spy on Simon. One betrayal at a time. “So this patient is who they’re after?”
Simon squared his shoulders. “No.”
Perfect. There was more. “Go on.”
“I knew that Atherton—that’s his name, Atherton Carstairs—would be safer if nobody knew he was in the hospital. So I brought him down here. These are the old quarantine wards that aren’t used anymore.”
“Without anyone knowing?”
“Initially. But as he recovered and we started talking, I had to tell Bryony.”
“Why?” What was there to discuss with a Blood? “Why didn’t you send him away from the City?”
“Because he’s on our side,” Simon said.
I almost choked. “Our side?”
“He told me that there were those among the Blood who didn’t agree with Lucius and the way he was running things. That they wanted change. Wanted a more peaceful relationship.”
A bark of laughter escaped me. “Peace? With the Blood? I doubt it. Unless they want us peacefully subdued. We’re food to them, Simon.”
“Not to all of them.”
“Don’t fool yourself. You have more reason than most to know what they do to humans.”
“Not all of us are that way.”
I whirled, my sword out of its sheath before I could stop myself. The vampire pushed himself away from the wall. How the hell had I not seen him? I raised the sword, prepared to lunge.
“Guy!” Lily caught my arm, her fingers iron against my skin. “Stop. Simon’s right. Atherton is on our side.”
“None of them are on our side.” I lowered my sword, knowing that Lily and Simon were both stupid enough to try and get in my way if I attacked the vampire.
The vampire came closer, hands raised in a gesture of goodwill. As the light moved across his face, I saw the scars that covered his skin, the empty places where his eyes should have been. Simon hadn’t been exaggerating the part about him being badly hurt.
“We do not all want to live in strife,” Atherton said. “Don’t forget we were human once too. We do not need to kill to feed.”
“Plenty of you do.”
“Many of us don’t.”
“No,” I said, hands curling tighter around the sword. “You just feed them your blood so they die anyway.”
Lily’s hand gripped my arm tighter. “Atherton is telling the truth, Guy. I know. I lived in the Blood Court, remember? Not all the Blood treat humans badly.”
I looked down, staring into her gray eyes. “How can you say that, after what Lucius did to you?”
“Some of them choose to be different. You once told me that it’s the choices we make that are important, isn’t that right? Not who or what we might be but how we behave?” Lily said softly.
I pressed my lips together. I had told her exactly that. But the Blood were not the same. They were killers. Preying on the stupidity of humans. I looked from Lily to Simon. My brother. Who had hidden a vampire down here all this time. One of the race that had killed our sister.
Simon seemed to know what I was thinking. He shook his head at me. “Atherton is different. And if he can be, then I have to believe that others can be too.”
Madness. “You always were an idealistic fool,” I ground out. But Simon hadn’t finished telling me the story. Lily and Bryony were watching him expectantly. I needed the rest of the story. Needed to know how deep a hole my fool brother had dug for us all. “What happened next?”
“Atherton healed. I told Bryony he was down here. He claimed haven, so Bryony let me reinforce the doors and the wards so no one else would find out.”
Haven laws. Sometimes I thought them one of the most ridiculous parts of the treaty. They meant that anyone could claim sanctuary, could escape the reach of the law or the retribution of those they’d sinned against if they were willing to stay within the walls of Haven indefinitely.
For some they were a true refuge, but there were those who didn’t deserve a bolt-hole. I didn’t know how Simon put up with it, sheltering some of those who must have claimed haven here. Of course, the cathedral and the Brother House were Havens too, but as far as I knew no Blood or Beast Kind had ever sought haven at either place. We only attracted humans.
“So you built a nice little Blood nest for your tame vampire,” I snarled. This story was not going to end anywhere good. I could tell that much from the bleak look in Simon’s eyes as he spoke to me. “Then what?”
“About six months later, we had a young man brought into the hospital by his family. They’d taken him out of the warrens. Bought him actually, from one of the Blood who was tired of him.”
“Blood-locked?” I asked, stomach twisting. The locked were beyond saving. The addiction was fatal. Nothing could change that. Those who made the choice—Edwina amongst them—to enter the Night World understood that risk. They chose to pay the price. The way it should be. God gave us free will. To be good, to live a right life was a choice. It was hard work. And sacrifice.
“Yes. Fairly far gone. Not eating. He would have died in days.”
“Would have?” I questioned. My guts twisted. I really didn’t like where this was going. “Simon, what in hell’s name did you do?”
“I thought there was a chance to heal him,” Simon said, eyes flashing at me. “To find a cure.”
“There is no cure for blood-locking,” I snarled.
“Not yet.” Simon gestured around the room. “But look around, Guy.”
I gazed around the room, at all the beds filled with sleeping patients. Who slept on, despite the argument raging around them. An unnatural sleep. “Simon, what did you do?” Please, God, let it not be what I was beginning to suspect. A cure for something that gave the Blood rights over the humans who fell under their sway. That could throw the whole balance of power in the City into mayhem. No wonder Lucius had wanted Simon dead.
Simon’s eyes blazed. “I helped them. All these people. They’re blood-locked. But we’ve kept them alive with Atherton’s blood. And when Lucius died, some of them woke up. We’re almost ready to send them back to their families. We’re on the right track.”
It was all I could do to stand still, not to go over and shake him as I longed to do. “But why?”
“What else am I supposed to do, Guy? I’m a healer. Blood-locking kills hundreds of humans. It’s one of the few things we can’t fix. Of course, I want to find a cure. I don’t want anyone else to suffer what we did.”
“You think a cure will stop the suffering?” I said incredulously.
“Of course.”
“You idiot.”
Simon took a step toward me, fists clenched. “For fuck’s sake, Guy, could you get off your high moral horse for once in your life? How on earth can a cure be anything but a good thing?”
“Because,” I ground out, “it makes it easier for people to choose the Night World. What will keep them away if they don’t have to fear blood-locking?”
“Common sense,” Simon shouted. “People aren’t crazy, Guy.”
“No? Then why do so many of them become addicted in the first place? I promise you, for each person who has actually done it, there are others who are curious. Who would try a little Night World dabbling if they didn’t think the cost was too high. And you want to make it so there’s no cost at all.” I almost spat the words at him. Hell’s fucking balls. I’d known we had different views on the Blood, but I’d never thought my own brother would be so stupid.
“But they’ll be able to come back,” Simon protested. “They won’t die. They won’t be lost.”
“And how do you think the Blood will react to that?” I roared. “Why
do you think they are trying to kill you? They’ll cause all sorts of havoc in the negotiations if this gets out. We’ll have to make all sorts of concessions to get them to agree to renegotiate any of the laws around the blood-locked. They’ll hold us for bloody ransom.”
And that wasn’t all they could do.
The pieces of it all suddenly came together in my head. Ignatius. Cormen—whoever the hell he was—and Ignatius. And the Beasts. Cormen was Fae. Why would a Fae be helping Ignatius, exactly?
It always came down to fucking power. “And they might do fucking worse than that.”
Lily spoke first. “What do you mean?”
I looked at Lady Bryony, as all the treaty law and Fae law I’d ever had drummed into me by the order swirled in my head. “Do any of the Fae apart from you know about Simon?”
“Not officially,” Bryony said. “Chrysanthe—well, she got herself killed but likely she was working for Lucius. We don’t know how he recruited her. We couldn’t find anyone else working for him. But there could be others who know. Here or in Summerdale.”
“But you don’t know for sure?” I asked. “No one from the court knows?”
“We spoke to the Speaker for the Veil about Lucius, after he tried to kill me,” Simon said. “But he doesn’t know about this.”
“As far as we know,” Bryony added softly. The chain around her neck was slowly turning gray. She was worried.
“But you’re High Family,” I said.
“Yes.” Bryony’s chain flickered as though a spark had run through it, whirling through multiple colors before returning to purple.
“Then it could be enough that you know. The queen is taken under your laws to know what her nobles know, isn’t that right?”
“Veil’s eyes,” Bryony breathed, eyes widening. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Hadn’t thought of what?” Simon said. “Someone care to explain for the rest of us?”
“Under Fae law,” Bryony said, “the queen is assumed to be responsible for the actions of the members of the Veiled Court—the High Families.”
“How does that work?” Simon asked. “I thought the queen administered justice in the Veiled World.”
“She does. If those crimes only impact the Veiled World, then those responsible are punished. But if there’s a treaty violation, it lies at her feet. She’s supposed to control the court, after all,” Bryony said.
“Holly”—I forced myself not to look over to where she lay”—and I were working together. I wanted to know who was ordering the Beast attacks on the order.” I flexed my hands, staring at the tattoos I’d defiled because I’d trusted Holly. “And she wanted to find her mother. Who’d been taken by a Fae.”
“The one who cast the geas?” Bryony asked.
“That seems a safe assumption.”
“Anyway, to cut a long story short, it all comes back to Ignatius Grey. Who is suddenly in funds. Funds enough to buy himself a pack of young Beasts to carry out ambushes perhaps.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Simon asked.
“I suspect the ambushes are a distraction, a way to scatter our attention,” I said. “They wanted the Templars to be drawn thin. And most likely, one of the reasons for that is to keep us away from St. Giles. So that they could get to you. To this—” I waved my hand at the room.
“I still don’t understand,” Simon said.
“We thought Lucius wanted you dead,” I said. “And maybe he did. Because if you were dead, this place would be far less protected. And if I were Lucius and I wanted to gain power, then I would want to destabilize the treaties. To do that, the best way would be to go after those who hold the balance of power.”
“The Fae,” Simon. “But what—”
“Oh, shit,” Lily said beside me. “They want to try and take out the queen.”
Everyone started talking at once, making it impossible to decipher any of it. “Shut up!” I said, trying to cut through the chaos.
It worked.
“Good.” I rubbed my head for a moment, where the ache seemed to start at the new scar on my forehead and carve a path like a blade through to the base of my skull. “Bryony, am I right?”
Bryony’s eyes were stormy, but she nodded, one hand toying with her chain. I’d never seen her look rattled before.
“Bryony?” I prompted.
“The Veiled Queen is the one who forged the treaties,” Bryony said. “She brokered the first deals with the humans and the Beasts and the Blood after the Templar Wars. She was the one who decided there should be peace in the first place. She dragged the Fae with her. Much like the Blood, we do not all agree. There are those in the court who might prefer a less constrained existence. But as long as the queen holds the throne, she will defend the treaty.”
“And how do you bring down the Fae queen?” I asked.
“If there was proof that she knew about a treaty violation—a serious one—and did nothing, then enough of the court might be swayed to act to remove her. If someone was already laying the groundwork—whispering in the ears of those who are unhappy with her rule—it might work.”
“And if Bryony knows. About Simon. About this. Even about me. Plus the Speaker for the Veil has reason to suspect. Either of those could be used to argue that the queen knew.”
“And that’s enough for the court to remove her?” Atherton asked.
Bryony shrugged. “Maybe not. It’s likely that most of the court would want proof of what Simon has been doing. We Fae can’t lie, but the rest of you can. There would have to be evidence when so many other races are involved. That’s why they need to get to Simon. If they had him—or Atherton—that may be enough to make someone bold enough to try and stage a coup perhaps. Who knows?”
“Someone might be bold if they had the backing of the Blood Lord,” Atherton said. “Didn’t I hear you mention Ignatius Grey? He has ambition, that one. And lack of sense enough to attempt something this reckless. He wants to be the next Lucius. An offer of assistance from some of the Fae would be very appealing if he thought that what they offered would increase his chances of becoming Lord. And he might be in the position to know some of what Lucius knew. Or suspect it, at least. Enough to be curious about Simon and find allies to help him turn the situation to his best advantage.”
An unholy alliance between the most ambitious of the Blood and those of the Fae who chafed under the treaty. Our worst nightmare.
“What we’re doing isn’t wrong,” Simon said. “There’s no treaty law against finding a cure for blood-locking.”
“Because nobody ever thought somebody would try it,” I said. “The law gives the Blood the right to feed amongst the Nightseekers and the right to do what they will with the locked. That’s not something they will want to give up. They will absolutely try and strike down a cure as a violation of their rights. If they don’t do something worse.”
“Such as?” Simon growled.
“If someone like Ignatius becomes Blood Lord, then this would give him the perfect way to break the treaty. Surely you can see that?” He must have thought about the implications of what he was doing? Or had he truly let his healer instincts blind him to the consequences?
“The question, then,” Lily said, “is how do we stop a plot against the queen and stop Ignatius gaining control over the Blood?”
“We can’t go after Ignatius directly,” I said. “Not so close to the treaties. Holly has evidence linking Henri Favreau to Ignatius, but we’d need more than that to prove he’s behind the ambushes. We have no real proof yet.”
“You need the one who set the geas,” Bryony said. “He has to be involved. Do you know who it is?”
“If it’s the one who has her mother and her sister, then his name is Cormen. That’s all I know.”
Bryony’s eyes narrowed. She turned and crossed to Holly. Bending to the bed, she jerked Holly’s pendant free from beneath her shirt. The light hit the gems, sparking black and blue. Bryony studied the jewels with the air o
f someone deciphering a code.
“Sa’Inviel,” she said. She looked down at Holly. “She must be Cormen sa’Inviel’astar’s get. These stones are sa’Inviel colors. Or closer to those than any other. And Cormen is not a common name among us.”
“You know him?” I asked.
Bryony nodded. “The sa’Inviel are a closemouthed clan. Traditional. I would not have picked them to be involved in this, but the ’astar line is a minor one, without real power. Cormen has always thought himself better than those around him.”
“We have to stop them,” Simon said.
I scowled at him. “We? You’ve done enough damage for now, Simon.”
He winced. “I’m not letting you charge off alone.”
“You don’t have any say in that,” I said.
“You’re not—”
“Guy’s right,” Bryony said. “Simon can’t leave St. Giles. Nor can Lily. It’s too dangerous. Plus they will only complicate things where you have to go.”
“And where’s that?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“You and Holly have to go to Summerdale. You have to find Cormen and bring him before the queen.”
Chapter Twenty-one
GUY
“No!” The denial rose in my throat automatically. “I am not going to take her. She can’t be trusted.”
Bryony shook her head. “You need her. She can lead you straight to Cormen.”
“How?”
An eloquent Fae shrug. “We wake her up. We tell her what we just told you. And her geas will lead you home.”
“Why, in the name of all that is holy, would you tell her what our enemies want to know?”
“There’s no choice, Guy.” Bryony’s chain flashed red. “I cannot go into Summerdale. If I am questioned, I can’t lie. If you go alone, you may not even be admitted. Even if you were, you have no chance of finding a Fae who doesn’t want to be found on your own.”
“She’s a spy, a Night World spy. She was willing to betray Simon.”
“She was acting under a geas,” Lily said.
“Is that an excuse?”
Lily’s expression turned steely. “I think I know rather more than you about being forced to act against your will. You said this man has her family. Are you going to blame her for doing exactly what you would do in her place? For trying to save the ones she loves?”