Scratch that. He’d been wherever Orla was, which was usually in the kitchen. Surely the two of them weren’t…
He shook his head to clear the odd image and strode in the room.
Graylin perched on the edge of a barstool, one of three they’d acquired from White’s gentlemen’s club just after a renovation in the late 1800’s. Always a supporter of the old-school Myren ways, he sported loose silk pants and tank with a long over robe, and his hair was pulled back in a queue in deference to his late wife.
Eryx bent over the red felt billiard table and lined up a shot. “Wondered when you were gonna finally show, brother. Tell me you got something I can use. I’m not sure waiting for Serena or Angus to trip up again is smart for any of us.” He took the shot. The cue ball snapped against the red-stripped eleven and sent it sailing into the far right corner pocket. “Well?”
Ramsay looked up from the table to find all eyes on him. “Shit. Thought you were talking to Ludan.” He ambled to the antique bar loaded with pretty much every enviable liquor over a two-hundred dollar price point and went straight for the Scotch. Maybe that would take the edge off. “Nothing worth jumping on right away, but a lead. I take it your trip turned a goose egg?”
“Nothin’.” Ludan’s gaze was locked on the pool table, cue stick planted butt end in the black rug between his braced feet and both hands fisted on the shaft.
Eryx chalked his cue and circled the table, sizing up his next shot. For all his focus on the table, his thoughts seemed directed somewhere else. “What’s the lead?”
The Balvenie laid a warm satisfying path down his throat, but clashed a little too heavy in his stomach. “Two, really. First, Angus has got some mighty detailed records showing every appointment he’s had since The Great One knows when. One of ’em was a visit to Serena the day before he visited Maron.”
Eryx stopped in his tracks and turned to Ramsay. “You scan his memories?”
“Claimed protected constituent conversation. Said he’d have to be instructed by the council to divulge his memories, and that would take formal charges.”
Graylin reclined in his barstool and set his drink on the bar beside him. “A shrewd move on his part.”
“He tell you why he was there?” Eryx said.
“Said it was a visit to show his support and to thank her for doing what we failed to do.” Ramsay circled the Scotch in the tumbler. “Was thinking we might be wise to see if Serena will offer up her memories instead. You got her to do it once. Might be able to charm her a second time.”
Eryx grunted and leaned over the table for another shot. “Doubtful. I let Ludan do it last time.”
“I wasn’t nice about it,” Ludan added.
The cue ball cracked against its target.
“What’s the other lead?” Eryx said.
“Angus says he was never out of Maron’s sight the whole time he was there,” Ramsay said. “Did Maron share his memories with you?”
Eryx stood, eyes distant. “He did. And now that I think on it, he’s right. He was with Maron in every image.”
“What about his page?” Ramsay said.
Gaze aimed at the floor, Eryx loosely gripped the cue stick. “They left Maron’s study,” he said, almost to himself. “The page stayed behind.”
His head snapped up and he locked eyes with Ramsay. “Round up the page. See if you can get a read from Serena. Neither of them are protected by ellan laws. They’ll either clear Angus or give us the proof we need.”
Fuck. Orders didn’t get more direct than that. He could try to play the new mate card and send Wes or Troy in his place, but that didn’t feel right. Not with such an important issue. Surely Trinity would understand given the situation.
He reached for her through their link and a crackling, almost painful, reverberation echoed back at him. His stomach lurched, and the Scotch swished in a way that promised it was almost headed topside. The sensation he’d been stifling for the last few hours billowed up, blockading his throat. Shit. Her emotions. Something was wrong. Very wrong. And he hadn’t been paying attention. “Have you seen Trinity?”
Eryx put up the pool cue. “When we got back from Evad, she was huddled up with Lexi, Brenna, and Orla in the kitchen.”
Ramsay took off toward the hallway. “Check in with Lexi. See if she’s there.”
“Check in…Ramsay!” Eryx shouted. “What the fuck is wrong?”
Ramsay stopped at the door. “I can’t reach Trinity. Where’s Lexi?”
Eryx’s face blanked. “Kitchen.”
Ramsay bolted toward the stairs, heavy steps pounding behind him. He skipped the spiral staircase and leapt over the balcony railing, levitating down the open center in a swoosh. He landed on the thick rugs.
A castle maid cleaning the long foyer side table shrieked.
He stormed down the main hallway, past the receiving room. Past the library and the dining room. How long had it been since the unease had started? An hour? Two?
Closer to two. Just after he’d arrived at Angus’ house and settled in to wait.
He stalked into the kitchen. Lexi and Brenna sat with Orla at the kitchen counter, each cradling a cup of coffee with the sun streaming over them through the bay window. “Where’s Trinity?”
All three women faced him at once.
Lexi smiled and opened her mouth as if to greet him, but stopped and scowled. “She went to take a nap. Something wrong?”
Brenna ducked her head and looked away.
He tried the link again. Still broken. There, but hard to hold onto without getting a nauseous punch to the gut. And distant. Too damned far away.
“Ramsay, what’s wrong?” Lexi said.
Eryx, Ludan, and Graylin came up behind him.
Ramsay headed up the back staircase and glanced at the three men. “Check the grounds. Lock everything down.”
Voices and the scrape of chair legs on stone sounded behind him. Sharp commands. Eryx at the back of the house, Ludan and Graylin further away.
Ramsay pounded down the hallway toward his suite and pushed open the door. Black bedspread stretched taut across the perfectly made wide bed. Windows open to the breeze and the nearing sunset. Not one thing out of place and no sign of Trinity.
Lexi came in behind him and shot to the bathroom. “Trinity!”
Ramsay couldn’t move. His legs seemed locked in place, and the queasy mess in his gut solidified to lead. She wouldn’t be there. Wouldn’t be at the castle or anywhere outside. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew it.
He stared at the bed. Their bed.
Lexi paced from the bathroom and made a circuit through the suite. “I swear to God, Ramsay. She said she was going up to take a nap. She was fine.”
No, she wasn’t fine. His senses had been telling him otherwise, but he hadn’t listened.
“Shit.” Lexi strode to the dresser behind him and picked up the Black King’s black lacquer box. “The jewel is gone.” Lexi stared at the empty black velvet interior, a gaping hole where the gem had nestled. Her pendant sat beside it, neatly arranged and untouched.
He’d never asked Trinity about the gift. Figured she’d tell him when she was ready, or when he wasn’t buried so deep in her he could manage normal conversation. “What’s that mean?”
Eryx marched into the room, Brenna and Ludan tight behind him. “Everyone’s combing the estate,” Eryx said. “No one in and no one out.”
Lexi turned the box and showed Eryx. “I don’t think you’ll find her. I think she went to Winrun.”
Eryx darted looks between Lexi and Ramsay. “Winrun?”
“The Spiritu realm,” Lexi said. “The Black King said she could use the stone to take her there if she chose to accept her gifts.”
Ramsay shook his head and tried to piece together the information with the sticky unease he’d been fighting all day. “Why would she do that? I mean, if she wants her gifts, fine, but right now?”
“She wants to help you.” Brenna’s sweet, soft
voice slashed through the room’s intensity.
Every head whipped her way.
She ducked her head, but only for a second. She met Ramsay’s stare. “I felt her concern. Her worry.”
“You felt it?” Lexi said. “Like me?”
“Yes and no. Yes, the same way you feel emotions, but not on my own.” She focused on Eryx. “I didn’t want to say anything. Not until I was sure, but I think you healing Ian and I made it so we could echo other people’s gifts. At least when we’re close to them. It’s why Ian can hear things when you talk to each other.”
“Can you do the same?” Lexi asked.
Brenna nodded and clenched her hands at her waist. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Anything else?” Eryx asked sharply.
Brenna flinched. Her gaze slid down and to the side. “I made a flower bloom in the garden yesterday when I was working with Orla, and I fixed a torn cuticle the other day when Galena was here.”
“But nothing when you’re alone?” Lexi said.
Brenna shook her head. “Just the normal me.”
It didn’t make sense. Why in histus would Trinity need her gifts to help him? The emotions he felt weren’t anywhere near what a woman gaining more power should feel. They were thick. Filled with dread. He looked to Lexi. “Did you pick up anything?”
Lexi glanced at Eryx and Ludan. “I keep it turned off unless I need it. Too hard on my insides.”
He stepped closer to Brenna, careful not to scare her. “Did you pick up anything else?”
Ludan edged in behind her, though if Ramsay read it right, he was ready to step in and kick Ramsay’s ass more than keep Brenna from bolting.
Brenna swallowed and lifted her head. “She’s really scared,” she whispered. “She may be going to accept her gifts like Lexi said, but I’m not so sure it’s a good thing.”
Scared. Scared of what? The king and queen appeared to love her. And her dad wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He’d die first.
“Shit,” Lexi said. “She went for answers.” She scanned everyone in the room. In her hand she gripped Trinity’s pendant. “They see the future right?”
“Until we change it,” Erxy said. “Remember, it’s only valid at any given point in time. One shift of free will and the whole thing alters.”
Lexi pegged Brenna with a knowing look. “All those questions she was asking us. The prophecy,” she clarified, looking at Eryx. “She knows this is a big deal and she went for answers.”
Her path is her own. Decisions will be placed before her whether you’re together or apart, Kazan had said. If it means happiness for her as she faces the choices destiny gives her, then she should have it.
“They’re not supposed to divulge destiny,” Lexi said. “We were talking about how we might be related. How her dad ended up with her mother after she was abandoned by another man. We’re guessing my father. She told me her dad nearly forfeit his existence for being with her. Can you imagine the penalty for up-ending a whole prophecy?”
Answers. Everything he’d wanted in the beginning, but not if it cost him his mate. He stormed toward the door.
Eryx caught him with a merciless grip at his bicep. “Where the hell are you headed?”
Ramsay jerked his arm free and stormed out the door. “The lodge. Winrun. Wherever the fuck I need to go to find and stop my mate.”
Chapter 33
Serena peeked around one of the tall twin pillars marking the front castle garden entrance, her mask fortified by Uther behind her.
“Popular place,” he whispered in her ear.
“Too popular.” Something was up. She’d anticipated increased guards after Lexi’s capture months before, but warriors prowling the perimeter with shrewd, calculating eyes screamed red alert. Far more security than what was needed to keep those inside protected. “I’m not sure even Eryx or Ramsay could navigate masked through that many men.”
“Hunger and desperation make pretty effective teachers. I don’t give a shit how powerful they are. I doubt any Shantos ever had that kind of motivation.”
A petty thief. She’d heard of such stories, young Myrens in need of food honing their skills on simple street vendors. Something she’d need to think on. Maybe try to hone her own gifts. Assuming she got past today. “You really think you can get us inside?”
“On my own, easy. Carting you along for the ride? It’s a crapshoot. Better if you just tell me where you think the translations are and let me go in.”
“I don’t know exactly.” Not a complete lie. “I might have had full run of the castle once, but I rarely went beyond the public rooms or Eryx’s suite.”
“Then tell me what you know and I’ll explore the rest.”
No way. The key was in there. It had to be. “I’m going with you. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
Keeping one hand at her shoulder, he covered her hand where it rested against the gray stone pillar. “Give me your link.”
She started to turn.
Uther clamped her shoulder and held her in place. “Don’t move.” He waited long enough to ensure she’d comply then relaxed his fingers. “I don’t like the idea of being tied to you any more than you like it, but whispering’s not going to cut it once we’re in the thick of it.”
Histus, no, she didn’t like it. Links meant vulnerability. The Great One only knew what other special gifts Uther had yet to reveal.
The castle doors burst open and one of the Shantos brothers stormed onto the wide veranda. No braids, so it had to be Ramsay. Eryx never went anywhere without those barbaric commitment braids. Odd, though. Ramsay’s hair was bound as well.
Two warriors rushed from the gardens to meet him, both elites, given the white gold torques and wrist cuffs.
“Can you get us closer?” Serena whispered to Uther.
Uther hesitated. “Halfway. No further. And if you deviate from any direction I give, I’ll leave you to fend for yourself. Understand?”
“Agreed.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and levitated them both. “Regulate your breathing. Stay calm and do not move.”
They floated forward on an odd pattern. Slow. Swift. Then nothing at all. A kind of ebb and flow, like the lap of small waves at the shore’s edge. Wind. He was working with the breeze. Blending into it.
Damn, but she should have formed the link. How was she going to convey direction to Uther without it?
“…the gardens twice and the perimeter nonstop,” the dark-headed warrior said to Ramsay as Serena and Uther drifted into hearing range. “If she’s outside, she’s well beyond the castle by now.”
“The castle’s clean,” the blond said. “Any place else you want us to cover?”
Ramsay spun, looked back at the castle, and fisted his hair at the top of his head, pulling a good chunk of what he’d bound free. Something glittered on his forearm.
Serena shifted for a better angle.
Uther’s hands tightened in warning.
A mark. The son of a bitch was mated. And not to just anyone apparently, but someone related to Lexi, the same damned ivy-twined sword stretching the length of his arm. Slightly different though. Black like most marks, but with gold and silver highlights in it.
He faced his men. “No. I think I know where she is.” He focused on the dark-headed one. “Take half the men. Round up Angus Rallion’s page and Serena Steysis. Bring them to the training center.”
Serena flinched inside Uther’s nearly crushing grip.
“Any charges?” the warrior asked.
“Voluntary.” Ramsay stared toward the ocean. “Hold them there until Eryx arrives. He’ll know what to do.” He pinned the blond warrior with a cold glare. “Keep the rest of the men here on high alert. No one gets in or out you don’t know.”
The men dipped their heads once and took off in separate directions. Ramsay scanned the perimeter, hands fisted at his side, then shot to the skies.
“You wanna make it back before they do, we have to go
now,” Uther said quietly.
As the blond warrior marched down the veranda barking orders, the men combing the grounds paired off. Fewer warriors meant more access. If she could find that key, she’d never answer to another man. Ever.
Who knew what Eryx wanted her for. If she played it safe and went home, she might never get this chance again. “I’m staying.”
“There’s no going back from this. Fugitives rarely know where their next meal is coming from, let alone live with a staff that sees to their needs. You sure you’re ready for that?”
Fugitive. No safety net. Her neck burned with tension, and her heart pulsed so heavily it hurt. She covered his hand at her waist with her own and pushed her energy through and up his forearm. “Give me your link. We’re going in.”
Chapter 34
Trinity stood beside the ceremonial slab and ran her fingers along the cold, black and white swirled marble. Everything in Winrun was one or the other, stark black or purest white. Everything, that was, save the varied hair colors and skin tones of the people who lived there. Even the sky was white, every surface beneath her feet a never ending ebony that left her feeling like she’d fall at any given moment.
“You don’t have to do this.” Kazan’s voice was thick with emotion. Garbled almost. “Think before you act.”
She let her hand fall to her side and glanced at the Black King and White Queen at either end of the waist-high slab. “Ramsay needs me. My new family needs me.”
“Not like this, they don’t. You know the penalty for interfering.”
Trinity whirled and faced him. “Was being with my mother worth the cost?”
Kazan jerked back. “That’s different.”
“How? You loved her. I love Ramsay. This will help him.”
“It’s different because the destiny I messed with dealt with two people, not two races. This is a big deal, kiddo. Not the kind of thing that comes with a tiny ten-year, but painful slap on the wrist.”
Waking Eden (The Eden Series Book 3) Page 28