by R. F. Long
“Did what?”
“Killed them. The ones remaining in the Holt. Rounded them up, into the main square—men, women, even the children. And then he unleashed…something. I don’t know what it was. Like a shadow, or a swarm of shadows. It tore through them. Not a single one remained. As if they had been chalk wiped off a slate. Only the members of my line outside the Holt, those posted elsewhere or able to flee in time remain. And he has ordered that we be hunted down like dogs.”
Her brother. The weight of shame sat like a rock in the pit of her stomach. Her brother had done this. The man she had stopped Shan killing, the man she had been too afraid to slay. “How many?” The words grated on her throat.
Torvin didn’t answer. His grief stole his voice, though he would not bend beneath that.
Vertigern replied, his own voice hoarse. “We can’t say for sure. Hundreds. All ages. Regardless of their circumstances. The first refugees reached us a week ago with the news. The official announcement is…as you see it. That came just before I set out here. Torvin asked to come as their representative.”
“Madness,” she whispered. “Sheer madness.”
Behind her, Indarin cleared his throat. The Fey’na wanted the Holters gone. Especially since Ariah was on the way. But what could she say to those who had come in search of her, who were even now asking for her help? She was a Scion of Jern, after all. She had not taken the vow to protect her people as Gilliad had—standing in the Great Hall of River Holt while the Alviron Falls thundered away beneath him, as countless others of their line had done—but she felt its bindings nonetheless. Her father had always maintained that honour could not be shirked, that duty was all. They were her people, the people she came from, those who had cared for her and her family, who supported them, fed them, clothed them, and the same people who in return it was her duty to serve. The Scions of Jern protected the people of River Holt with their actions, from the diplomatic to the martial. The simplest of exchanges really, with the trappings of nobility, pomp and ceremony stripped away. She owed them.
She believed that. Just as Shan did.
But leave now and she might never see Shan again.
And if she did leave, she would have to do the one thing she dreaded—stand against her brother. To stop him.
The only way to stop him was to kill him. And if she killed him she might as well accept that she would become him, because the same magic which had driven him beyond sanity would seize her and potentially make her even worse. It had happened before. So many of her ancestors had been deemed insane.
But the shadow, the thing Gilliad had unleashed…it sounded like one of the Fell. She turned her back on the Holters and gazed directly at her teacher. She could see the same knowledge in his eyes, the same grief and shame.
“We have to help,” she said and slowly, so slowly, Indarin nodded.
“It is a matter of duty, I agree. But Ariah will be with us in a matter of days. We cannot leave until then. And with her blessings we will be stronger.”
“You cannot speak for the people, Indarin,” one of the warriors interrupted.
“I can, in Ylandra’s absence, and I will. But Ariah will decide. If Gilliad is in alliance with the Fell’na—”
“We must discuss this.”
Glaring, Indarin nodded. “Then, if you will, Jeren, invite your guests to move their camp within our lands. They may come with us and rest near the Sh’istra’Phail encampment until Ariah arrives and the moot is called.”
Vertigern’s mouth opened a little wider than was politic—it showed his surprise. Not a politician, her former betrothed. But canny enough to realise what he was being afforded by Fey’na standards. And wise enough to accept.
“You do us great honour, Indarin,” he said with a deep bow.
Indarin just nodded and swept outside. Jeren followed, surprised to see him waiting for her. “You want them near?” she asked in a low voice.
“For all our sakes. We are juggling hot coals here, Jeren. The Holters do not love us, nor we them, and the prospect of war has not departed. If anything happens to them in our land, or if they commit any action deemed…inappropriate, that prospect will become a reality all too quickly.”
The Wolf's Mate: A Tale of the Holtlands, Book 2
Chapter Seven
Shan awoke to pain throughout his body, riddling him like woodworm in a tree. There were no wounds. Nothing to cause this, but nonetheless, he burned with pain.
He shuddered in the darkness and tried to pull himself up from the floor, only to find himself bound there. His heart sped as he tried to wriggle free but to no avail. Leather bonds bit into his wrists and ankles. He was trapped.
“Shan?” Ylandra’s voice sounded out of the darkness, very faint, and afraid, not too far to his right.
“Where are we?”
“Below. In the nest.” Yes, her voice definitely trembled. She was afraid. Terribly afraid. “They dragged us down here when they swarmed. Are you…are you hurt?”
Part of him wanted to ask why she cared. She had brought this upon them. She had led him here, through her own pride and arrogance, right into the Enchassa’s trap. “No, but I’m tied down. Can you free me?”
She shuffled out of the shadows, her face very pale beneath the smeared mud. But that wasn’t the shock. Her braids had been untied, every single one. Her silvery hair spilled about her face like the fibres of an exotic plant, iridescent in the near darkness. She must have seen his expression for she stopped and tried to push it back from her face, her fingers knotting in the unfamiliar strands.
Eyes wide with terror, her body trembled. Her clothes were shredded and scratches covered her body, some caked with dried blood.
“How long?” he asked. “How long have we been here?”
“I…I don’t know. It seems like days. Like forever. It was a trap.” Tears welled up in her red-rimmed eyes, glittering before they fell onto his face, little cold splashes on his cheek. “I think…it was all a trap, Shan…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.”
Sorry didn’t cover it, an inner voice growled. And what place did a Sh’istra’Phail have sobbing out apologies, let alone a Sect Mother? His anger flared, hot and bitter.
She’s nothing but a fool, a vindictive, selfish treacherous fool , the voice in his mind purred. He heard it clearly now. Not his voice, nor Ylandra’s. Someone…or something…else.
Shan closed his eyes, trying to still himself. “Untie me,” he told the Sect Mother in his most calm and confident voice. “I’ll get us out of here.”
“We can’t get out. We can’t leave. The children… They’ve still got the children.”
“Devyn? The others?”
She scowled and her voice turned vicious. “No. Our children. Fey’na children. Those Holt-whelps fled the moment the Fell’na appeared. They probably brought us to them, probably made a deal.”
No. They’d merely done what he’d asked them to. But there was no point in telling Ylandra that. Hatred consumed her. So much hatred. Had he sounded like this? And not so long ago, before he met Jeren, had he spoken of Holters the same way? Part of him feared he had. Knew he had. And he hated the thought and the sound of the venom in such words now.
“Listen to yourself, Ylandra.”
“They’re everywhere, all around us.” She leaned in close, her lips only a hair’s breadth away from his. “They’re watching us even now. And when we aren’t expecting it, they pounce. They take what they want, Shan, whatever they want. They…they fed on me…their lips, dry and rasping, their hands… They poured inside me, through me, and dragged out part of me…”
“Ylandra,” he repeated, keeping his voice low, “untie me. Let me go.”
She shook from head to toe, her battered body curling in on itself. But then, quick as a cat, she began to tug at the leather bands securing him to the floor. She’d already freed his hands and he’d started to rise to help with his legs when something black smashed her to one side, lifting her
bodily as it did so, and bore her into the darkness.
Ylandra screamed and the sound was suddenly muffled. It faded to whimpers. Then…nothing.
Shan snatched his sect knife from his side and sliced through the ropes at his feet. His body protested as he rolled upright and crouched there, waiting in the darkness.
“So pretty a show of defiance,” a familiar voice hissed at him. “And so pointless. I told you I would have you, Shan’ith Al-Fallion. And here you are. Ready to be mine.”
Light flowed up from the cave floor, the wavering, unnatural light of magic, and the Enchassa stepped from its midst, beautiful and terrible. Too late he recognised her, the same one from the mountains, the jagged line of the wound Jeren had given her marring the skin of her arm. He’d thought she had gone, fool that he was. He’d thought Jeren had driven her off.
Jeren…
At the thought of her, his heart beat a little more firmly. They had been after Jeren. He needed to escape this place and get to her side. No matter what else happened now, that was where he belonged. Especially now, knowing that this same Enchassa had not fled.
Shifting his stance, Shan faced her. She maintained her own face this time, the need for illusions past. Beautiful didn’t do her justice, though that beauty was a shadowy reflection of the high bones and tilted eyes of the Fey’na women.
And yet lacking. For him, at least.
“I will never be yours,” he snarled.
The Enchassa tipped her head to one side, her lips curving to a smile. “So determined. I warned you about blood, didn’t I? About the blood to come? You should have given in there and then. It all would have been so much easier.”
“Never.”
“And now you will be mine anyway, and so will she… Aye, and all the others.” Her voice was a song, lilting and sighing, captivating. “Don’t believe me?”
She snapped her fingers and three of the Fell’na dragged a struggling figure into the pool of wavering light surrounding them. A boy, a human boy, his face white with terror, his eyes huge, but he fought them every step of the way, his body beaten and bloody. Yet still he tried to tear himself free. And from the other side of the chamber, another pair pulled the narrow form of a Fey’na woman. She sobbed, her body limp between their grasping claw-like hands. She didn’t fight. She didn’t know how to fight.
“I will give you a choice, a favour, as it were. Because I can be a kindly mistress.”
“You are not my mistress!”
Shadows burst from the ground around him, coiling about his limbs like vines. They tore his feet from under him and slammed him to the ground. Breath burst from his chest and the knife skittered across the wet stones. Lost. Just as he was lost. Lost across the wet stones.
No, not just wet. Blood-slicked.
“Choose between them.”
“You cannot ask this. I will not…” He gazed from one to the other. How could he condemn one? How could he…
Another voice rang out. Terrible with determination. “I will choose!”
“Ylandra! No!”
But she didn’t listen. From the darkness, from the fatal embrace of the Fell, she scrambled free and pulled the Fey’na woman away from her captors.
“I choose her. I choose my people, even if he will not. I will always choose my own people!”
The woman fell to her knees, weeping silently, her shoulders shaking as she huddled on the floor at Ylandra’s feet.
“Always?” The Enchassa’s smile broadened even further, the danger lurking beneath it even more apparent. “Prove it to me, Sect Mother. I will give you them all, if you but prove it to me.”
“How?” Ylandra cradled the woman against her, stroking her silvery hair. “What would you have of me?”
“Give me Jeren, Scion of Jern. Bring her to us.”
“She won’t come with me.”
“But she will.” The Enchassa laughed and knelt at Shan’s side, running her icy fingertips up the side of his face. Reaching out, she flexed her fingers and the knife flew to her hand. His own knife. And the Enchassa offered it to Ylandra.
“Ylandra, don’t do this,” Shan begged, heedless of his pride or his dignity. “Ylandra, Sect Mother, don’t do this!”
Grabbing the blade, she tucked it into her belt, her hands so deft, so fast. Her silver hair tumbled over her face and when she pushed it back, she trailed smears of blood through it.
“I must, Shan. For our people. Please forgive me, but the Fey’na must always come first.” She moved like a shadow herself, swift and fluid, like one of the Fell’na. One brief glance back at him and she was gone on her mission of betrayal.
“Let her pass,” called the Enchassa. “Let her go. She is mine and will be for the rest of her days now. She is our way.”
The Fell’na holding their captive released her and the Fey’na woman rose to her feet, all tears gone now. To Shan’s horror, the illusion dissolved. The Fell’na had offered only others of their own kind.
And they laughed.
The Enchassa bent over him, studying him, the glint of amusement in her eyes mocking him. Her dark tresses trailed against his cheeks, the scent of death lingering after them. Everything reeked of death.
“Now where were we?” Her lips descended, brushing against him, light as butterfly’s wings, but demanding in their dark sensuality. “Submit to me, Shan. There’s nothing else to be done now. I will feed. And if you fight me, it will hurt.”
He couldn’t help himself. Shan fought.
***
“There, look. He moved.”
A man’s voice reached him. Shan groaned, his body and mind dull with agony. He’d passed out at some point amid the torture of the Enchassa’s kiss.
“Stay back from him,” said a second. “He’s one of them, pale as he is. You can see it. Just…don’t get too close.
Shan opened his eyes to darkness, and even that hurt. It felt like something vital had been wrenched out of him, torn by taloned hands and an enchantress’s lips.
“We should kill him. It’s some kind of trick.” A woman’s voice this time, quietly ferocious.
“No. Do you want to be as bad as them?”
“Nothing can be as bad as them.” Shan’s voice grated against his throat. He had screamed, hadn’t he? At some point. And he had kept on screaming.
Four faces stared at him, like ghosts in the shadows, human faces, thin with dread. Only humans.
“Just—just stay away from us,” another man stammered, though his eyes were hard. Stubborn, determined, Holters. River Holters. Just like Jeren.
Shan struggled up from the cell floor. His weapons were gone and he felt like some kind of ancient elder, frail and broken, dried up and devoid of energy. His head swam as he got to his feet and he braced himself, terrified he would fall. How would the Holters take that?
“I mean you no harm. I’m but a prisoner, like yourselves.” He groaned, trying to keep his dismay to himself. His head pounded as if something inside was trying to mine a way out. He looked from one terrified, hostile face to the other. “You are River Holters, are you not?”
The first man stiffened, pulling himself a little further erect, his head rising in pride, albeit a shaken pride. “We are. I am Leithen Roh, Body Servant of the Scions of Jern.”
The girl, however, snorted. “Who have turned on us and sent us to our deaths.”
“One has, Doria,” Leithen snapped. “Only one, only Gilliad. His father was the soul of honour and Jeren…”
“Jeren abandoned us to our fate,” Doria replied, her hands on her hips, her thin elbows thrusting out.
“Jeren had no choice,” Shan cut in, no longer surprised at the innate need he felt to defend her. “Gilliad’s plans for her were unspeakable.”
“You’re the one,” said one of the other men, his eyes rounding in shock. “You’re the one she left with.”
Shan sketched a bow, with only a trace of irony. “Shan’ith Al-Fallion, and yes. Jeren left with me.”
Leithen moved in a blur, his body transforming with anger, with rage. He charged, bull-like at Shan, but all the Sh’istra’Phail had to do was sidestep him, quick and deftly neat, avoiding him. Leithen swung back at him, ready to attack again, but Doria stepped between them, her hands raised.
“Get a hold of yourself, you fool,” she snapped. When Leithen stopped—his chest and shoulders heaving as he drew in angry breaths—Doria turned around to face Shan, her mouth a thin hard line. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”
Shan spread his hands out on either side. “Safe. She is with my people, training as Felan trained.”
“And why are you here instead of with her?”
Ah, that was the question, wasn’t it? His hesitation and embarrassment must have shown. He shifted and flushed as a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Women of River Holt were trouble. That was for sure.
“I had a duty to my people. I failed.” His head swam again and the image of the Enchassa rose in his minds eye. Her lips closed on his, devouring, her hands on him, her mind inside him tearing at his soul. He couldn’t suppress a shudder as he remembered his own screams, the pain, his helplessness. And even now, Ylandra was going back, ready to deceive and betray Jeren, to bring here to suffer a fate far worse than death. “We have to get out of here.”
“There’s no way,” Leithen replied, his voice somewhat quieter now. The others murmured in agreement.
“But the children managed it.”
“Children?” Doria gasped. “You’ve seen Devyn and the little ones? Are they safe? Are they whole?”
“I sent them to Jeren. It was all I could do.”
Doria shook where she stood. Then a sob rippled up through her body, breaking out at the same second as the tears burst from her eyes. She buried her face in her hands and wept. “My babies. Oh, sweet Bright Lord, my babies are alive.”
Leithen swept her into his strong arms, holding her close. “I told you. I told you, my love. They’re going to be fine. Devyn will take care of them, take them to Jeren. They’ll be safe.” He murmured to her, over and over, until she calmed once more.