by Eva Chase
“You left behind those journals,” he said.
Journals. My father’s journals. The ones where he’d written out all his observations and fears about Arthur and his family. A chill raced down my back. It hadn’t occurred to me that the people I’d left them with might read them. It hadn’t occurred to me that they could.
“How much did you even understand what’s written in those?” I said. “It’s Old English—it makes my head hurt going through it.” And I’d grown up on the language, as distant as that first growing up now was.
“There are skills it’s useful to know if you want to be effective in our line of work,” Eric said. “I’ve got a passable grasp, and my mom’s nearly fluent. When I got the gist, I brought them to her to confirm.”
I thought of Mavis with her kind smile. My gut knotted. “Did she know you came out here to kill Darton?”
For the first time since I’d appeared in the room, a hint of uncertainty crossed Eric’s face. He scowled. “No,” he admitted. “She has no idea. She thought it was for you to figure out. But you obviously aren’t willing to do what’s necessary. You care more about him and the time bomb lodged inside him than whether the rest of us have a chance.”
My father’s journals had been all about Arthur and his family. But he’d made notes in the last one about the cycle of rebirth I’d gotten me and my king wrapped up in. Notes to me, warning me that he believed the darkness would have clung on to Arthur’s soul no matter how many reincarnations it went through. After everything Eric had seen me do, the way he’d heard us talk to each other, he must have put those pieces together too.
“Em,” Darton said behind me. “What does he mean?”
Sodding hell. This was not how I’d wanted to have this conversation. “I don’t think I want to discuss it with him still here,” I said, matching Eric’s glower. “You can count yourself no longer welcome on our property. You have no idea what you’re messing with, and I do. You could have asked a few questions before you came charging in.”
“And maybe I’d have tipped you off. I didn’t even manage to get the job done as it was.” Eric’s head sagged.
Jagger scowled at him and then glanced back at me. “I’m sorry I brought this delinquent into your home, Emma,” he said. “Let me do the honors of taking out the trash. I’ll give you a shout when he’s well away from here.”
Keeping a tight grip on Eric’s arm, he walked the younger man out of the room. My shoulders didn’t sink back down until the front door thudded shut behind them. Then the breath rushed out of me. I sagged onto the bed.
Darton rubbed his mouth. “A time bomb?” he said, his voice hesitant.
The knot in my gut came back, twice as large.
“Sit down. This is going to take a while.”
Darton eased himself down on the bed, wincing as his wounded arm bumped it. My hasty healing spell hadn’t fixed him completely. He tipped onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. His jaw had tightened.
“Okay,” he said. “Hit me with it. The whole story this time, if you don’t mind.”
I bit my lip and looked away. “This isn’t something new I’ve been keeping from you. I mean, I didn’t tell you about it, but... I’ve always not told you about it.”
I thought he’d already been lying still, but his body went even more motionless at that. “Since how long ago?”
My chest clenched. “Since always,” I admitted. “Since...” My head bowed. “Art, I never told you the whole reason why I came looking to serve you in the first place.”
“Oh.” He paused. “But you didn’t do anything wrong while you were with me. You always did serve me. How bad can it be?”
“Well, I... I had a lot of arguments with my father about my methods. Working with you changed my mind about what was really important. I hadn’t had a chance to form my own opinions before. All I’d had was what he said and the knowledge of the enclave to go by. I was always honest with you about how I saw things. Just not about how my father wanted me to.”
“Your father who was a light fae.”
“Yeah.” I pressed my hand to my forehead. “You know I was always worried about the dark fae hanging around. That they would try to talk to you, or just watch... You aren’t the first in your family that they’ve taken an interest in. My father had observed their interactions with your ancestors going back several generations.”
Darton frowned. “He thought we were colluding with them?”
I laughed shortly. “Oh, no. That wouldn’t even have occurred to him. A dark fae would never lower themselves to align with human beings. But he was sure they were planning to use one or more of you for some purpose. He noted signs of magical ceremonies being carried out. Saw them lurking around the castle. Noticed a faint energy that seemed to grow across each generation...”
“What kind of ‘energy’?”
“I—I don’t have all the details. He wasn’t even sure exactly what they were doing, and I didn’t have time to read through all of his notes after I got his journals. But he believed the dark fae had placed some sort of dark enchantment on your family line. Something that was passed on with each generation and that grew in strength as it did. And the signs he saw made him believe that you were the culmination of whatever they were planning.”
Darton was silent for a long moment. “That’s why she came for me. The Darkest One. The dark fae hadn’t ever attacked the kingdom like that before, had they?”
I shook my head. “A direct assault isn’t their usual strategy. But I think she had something larger planned. Something she wanted to... release from your soul.”
He set his hand on his chest. “That dark enchantment your father thinks they were casting. It was inside me—it’s still inside me?”
“I’ve caught glimpses of it when I’ve worked other magic on you,” I admitted. “Not enough that I thought I needed to worry. I mean, as far as I knew, whatever it was, she’s the only one who could activate it. So as long as she was bound, it didn’t affect us anyway.”
“But that’s why your enclave was so nervous around me. Obviously. That’s why they made you swear that oath.” His gaze slid back to me. “That’s why even part of you wants to kill me. Before the Darkest One can get to me and set off... whatever this ‘bomb’ inside me is.”
“No part of me wants to,” I said firmly. “We’ve managed to stay ahead of her for fifteen hundred years and we’ll—we’ll find some way of fighting back now. I’m not giving up. I’m not giving up on you.”
Another silence settled over us. Darton’s brow furrowed. “Some of the things I’ve remembered from back then make a little more sense now. There’ve been a couple of people I had the feeling must have been dark fae—the way they looked at me, talked to me... Like there was something in me that they wanted.”
I couldn’t help perking up. “Did they say anything about what they expected from you?”
“No, nothing like that. If I’d known I should wonder, maybe I could have prodded. If you’d told me there was something to prod about.”
A lump rose in my throat. “I thought you’d cast me out if you knew why I’d come. I was meant to be, well, a spy more than anything else, for my father’s research. And a plant within your castle to try to prevent the Darkest One’s plan from coming to fruition, of course. It seemed more important that I was there with you than that I was completely honest.” My voice dropped. “That’s the only thing I ever kept from you. Well, that and... the exact nature of all my feelings for you.”
“All right. And what do we do about it now?”
“I don’t know.”
He stirred, swiping his arm across his forehead. “I need to think a little. On my own.”
I probably didn’t deserve even that polite a dismissal after what I’d just admitted. I bobbed my head and slipped out of the room. In my own bedroom, I leaned back against the wall. A burn filled my eyes. I dragged in a breath and swallowed the beginnings of a sob.
Of course
he was upset. That was why I hadn’t told him about the dark fae’s doings over all this time. I had to allow him those feelings. If my omissions ruined things between us, well... our friendship had always been living on borrowed time, hadn’t it?
The sense of loss rolled over me, bringing an ache between my ribs, but one clear thought came with it. I hadn’t been completely truthful even just now. I did know what I had to do.
I’d been going about this all wrong, trying to combat the oath instead of the reason for it. I’d never wanted to look at the darkness inside my king too closely. It was the work of the Darkest One and her underlings, built up over hundreds of years. There might be no hope at all of me even pricking at it.
But I had to try. If I could untangle her fingerprints from his soul and wrench her enchantment out of him, the oath wouldn’t matter. Her power wouldn’t matter. We could take her on directly, magic and sword, without needing to fear what she might do with my king.
Between me and her and Eric and everyone else who might come calling... Tackling that dark curse was the only way Darton was going to make it through this catastrophe alive.
Chapter Ten
I put the kid on a plane back to France, Jagger told me by text. That seemed like the safest option for all involved. Have you and Darton sorted things out between you?
He didn’t ask any questions about who we were, or how we’d come to be this way, or anything like that. Had Eric told him what he’d figured out about our past lives? I guessed if he had, Jagger had decided it wasn’t really his business. Or at very least, that he trusted me to work my way out of this mess more than he trusted Eric’s preferred strategy.
For the most part, I typed back. No permanent harm done. Physically, anyway.
A knock sounded on my bedroom door. I pushed myself upright. “Come in.”
Darton eased the door open. He stepped over the threshold and stopped there. His striking blue eyes were shadowed.
“There’s nothing else you haven’t told me?” he said.
Guilt jabbed me in the gut again. “Nothing,” I said. “I swear it. May the light strike me down if I lie.”
He caught the gist of the old language enough to glance at the ceiling as if to check for a lightning bolt about to take me up on the request. When none appeared, he sank into the chair at my desk and swiveled it to face me.
“So this dark fae magic,” he said. “It’s been in me all this time?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “So sorry. I gave you a bunch of excuses earlier, but none of them are enough. I should have tried to deal with it sooner. I wanted to think it wouldn’t matter... but obviously I should have known it would.”
I hadn’t wanted to deal with the possibility that once I looked at my king’s soul that closely, I’d realize I couldn’t do anything to fix it. I was still scared of that.
“Can you get it out of me?” Darton asked, getting right to that point.
I gave him a pained smile. “I can’t answer that without knowing exactly what it is. The magic is buried deep. The Darkest One and her underlings didn’t want anyone seeing it, let alone poking at it. But I’ll do my best. Come here?”
For a second, my breath caught with the fear that he was too upset with me to want to even sit next to me. But he got up and settled on the edge of the bed. I turned, taking his hand in mine.
“We don’t need some big magical ceremony for this?” Darton said without looking at me.
“Not for an initial look around. My soul knows yours pretty well by now.” All of it except the part the Darkest One had touched, anyway.
I palmed a few twigs in my other hand and closed my eyes, focusing my awareness on the skin-to-skin contact of his hand in mine. The pulse of life flowing through his body. The warm earthy smell of him that filled my nose, tugging at me to lean closer. I ignored that impulse and the rising itch running through my fingers.
His pulse turned into a glow. A glow with a tremor of darkness running through it. I reached my mind toward that shadow. “Delve deep, delve clear,” I murmured.
The hint of it flickered away from me. I stretched my awareness farther into the glow. Glimpses of Darton’s memories and Arthur’s shimmered past me. For several minutes, I waited. Finally, the shadow surfaced again. It seemed to catch sight of me and flinch away, flitting as fast as a minnow in a stream.
“Come forth to be seen,” I crooned to it. It only slipped away faster. In a second I couldn’t see it at all. I hesitated, watching, as Darton’s heart beat on. The tremor of darkness stayed hidden this time.
I drew myself out of my meditative state with a sharp inhale. Darton was looking at me now, studying my expression. “Did you see it? What is it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I couldn’t get close enough to—”
My hands jerked. I shoved them back into my lap, ramming my thumb against the palm I’d stabbed yesterday. A bolt of pain shot up my arm, and the oath’s urge faded. Darton looked down at my hands warily, but to give him proper credit for bravery, he stayed where he was.
“It wasn’t good, though, obviously,” he said.
“I think we could have been sure of that already.” I took another steadying breath and folded my arms over my chest to better restrain the itch. “My magic hardly touched it. Actually, it seemed to repel it, if anything... Whatever they’ve conjured, it knows that it should only show itself to dark sorts. My own nature is probably repelling it. Which means my usual tricks aren’t going to work.”
“So you can’t do anything?”
“No.” I paused. My own nature. So how could I overcome that? What else? “Maybe I can make it believe I’m a dark fae.” I glanced around the room. “But for that, I’m going to need a different sort of supplies than I’ve usually collected...”
The crisp autumn leaves crunched under our feet as Izzy and I strode along the narrow forest path. The branches were all but bare now, just a few browning strays clinging on. Though the breeze that brushed over us was dry, a damp tang of rot was starting to creep into it already. Soon all those leaves would be mulch for next year’s growing.
“I swear there are a bunch of willows out here somewhere,” Izzy said, shoving her pale auburn hair behind her ears. “It was last year the hiking club came out here, so I don’t remember exactly how far along they are...”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m just glad I already knew someone who had the scoop on the nearby forests.”
She tucked her gloved hands into her pockets. “I’d have thought with all your magical senses, you could have tracked a tree by its vibes or something.”
The corner of my lips quirked up. “Oh, I can. But only if it’s alive.” I’d already used that method to find a nice clump of the other plant I needed to add to my stockpile, aconite, in all its highly poisonous glory. “For my current purposes, I need to scrape bark from a willow that’s dead—and has been dead for at least a few months.”
“That sounds... ominous.”
“Usually the best way of dealing with dark magic is to overwhelm it with light,” I said. “But sometimes you need to be a little sneaky. Lull it into complacency with something familiar.” Izzy’s eyes widened, and I gave her a tense grin. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning anything horrifying.”
I was still keeping the darkness in my king’s soul a secret from everyone except Darton. After he’d told me about Izzy’s hiking club inclinations, he’d paused and asked if I could avoid telling her exactly why I needed these new materials. I know it’s not my fault the dark fae did this to me, he said. But the thought of my friends knowing... I wish you’d told me sooner, but I guess I can see why it wasn’t a subject you wanted to discuss.
He’d still been a little awkward with me before I’d left. An ache spread through my chest at the memory. We’d come so far, learning to trust each other. I hoped I hadn’t broken that trust too much.
Izzy pushed aside the branch of a sapling that had sprouted across the path. “Honestly, I don’t k
now if I even mind horrifying if it means you can take care of this ‘Darkest One.’ The way she’s practically tearing apart all of England... It’s awful. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire?”
“Something like that,” I said.
We hopped stones over a shallow creek. “This looks familiar,” Izzy said. “I’m pretty sure the big stretch of willows wasn’t too far from here. There were enough of them that I think there’s got to be at least one fallen.”
“One is all I need.”
A gloom drifted by, following the shadows along the edge of the stream. Izzy tensed an instant after I saw it. She’d always been the most sensitive of Darton’s crowd, but for her to notice it that quickly, it was obviously a lot more potent than usual. The Darkest One’s influence was spreading far and fast.
I snapped a twig off a nearby shrub. “Darkness begone.” The gloom wisped away, and Izzy exhaled.
“There’ve been more of them again,” she said. “Floating around campus. They’re even more visible than they were the first time, when you said that mercenary was giving them extra energy. I’ve seen people getting freaked out by them. Not that they have any idea what they’re seeing, but moving shadows is going to creep anyone out.”
“Maybe I’ll have to go do another cleanup of the grounds,” I said, but I didn’t really believe I’d have time for that. The glooms weren’t likely to hurt any regular human beings. Unless the Darkest One started commanding them to. Now that was a horrifying thought.
Izzy fell silent for a moment, studying the forest and the path ahead. When she sucked in her breath, I could tell from the sound she was nervous about the question she was about to ask.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, in an even softer voice than usual, “about the Darkest One, and everything you’ve told us about her... You knew she was a threat all the way back in your first life, right? You knew she wanted Darton—Arthur... You know what I mean.”