“I thought they must have been mistaken, that my Alpha could never order such an action, so I demanded Clan right of truth of him,” Holly told the assembled Alphas. “He told me to keep my mouth shut or I would be silenced.”
“This is ridic—” Darius began, but the massed glares of the other Alphas silenced him in mid-sentence before Enli gestured for Holly to continue.
With a deep breath, and a swallow I could hear from where I stood half a dozen feet behind, she did. “I intended to take my fears to the Clan Council of Fontaine, and I mentioned this to another Clan member,” she said softly.
“That evening, I was attacked in my home by several warriors of my Clan,” Holly continued, her voice very small, yet carrying to every corner of the tent. “They told me Darius had sent them to silence me—told me they were going to rape me and murder me to carry out his orders.
“A friend from Clan Tenerim and another from the fae Court saved me,” she told Enli, gaining some strength as she continued bravely. “They sheltered me where no Fontaine could find me, so I could speak here today.
“I accuse Darius Fontaine,” she finished, her voice harsh, “of the murder of shifters in time of peace between Clans. Of the firebombing of a Den. Of ordering the murder of his own Clansmen. I name him oath-breaker and call upon Clan Fontaine to strip him of rank and authority.”
“This is ridiculous; why would you believe this claptrap?” Darius demanded, rising to his feet. “This woman is clearly insane,” he told the crowd. “Please, Grandfather, let me have my people take her home to rest.”
Wordlessly, to forestall any further action on anyone’s part, I stepped forward to stand by Holly’s side. I didn’t draw a weapon, but I didn’t have to.
“She is speaking the truth,” Enli said flatly. “But all she has heard is second-hand—the words of other men to your actions, Darius Fontaine.”
“I am innocent of this slander!” the Alpha growled.
“If you are innocent,” Michael Tenerim said sweetly, “then you will lower your defenses and allow the Alphas to See the truth of your side of this story. This sort of accusation cannot be left unanswered when the Speaker is elected.”
“This is preposterous,” Darius told Michael. “Clearly, my Clanswoman has been deceived by those who wish to steal this election. What possible reason would I have for this kind of violence?”
“Why don’t we ask someone who was working with you on it?” A quiet voice cut through the tent as a chill wind blasted through the suddenly open tent flap.
I turned, and everyone else turned with me, to face the tent entrance. Talus, noble of the Joint Court of the fae, stood in the chill wind, the handcuffed Laurie held easily in front of him with a single hand.
“This woman, high in our trust,” Talus continued as he walked through the crowd, all eyes on him and his prisoner, “betrayed us to work with part of a conspiracy to undermine the peace of this city. I think if we ask her about Alpha Fontaine’s actions, she will be most illuminating.”
I glanced back at Darius as Talus spoke, and the Alpha’s face was terrifying. Before anyone could respond to the noble’s words, the Alpha jerked his hand at Talus, and suddenly everything went to hell.
Someone in the crowd near Talus pulled a gun and opened fire on him. Someone else—either Celine or Tamara I suspected—opened fire on them. The crowd went crazy, some people diving for cover, other shifters trying to either put down the original gunman or protect him and create more chaos.
I dove forward, grabbing Holly by the shoulder and pulling her backward. Mary was beside me in a moment, grabbing Holly’s other shoulder as we tried to protect the deer shifter from the chaos in the crowd.
We were watching for the wrong threat. I don’t know what warned me, but the hairs on my neck all stood up and I looked up as an animal roar tore through the tent. Unthinkingly, I stepped between the sound and Mary and Holly, shielding the two women with my body.
The world seemed to slow around me as I looked up and realized that my body was about all the protection I could give them. Darius Fontaine had shifted, and a huge, magnificent polar bear, larger than even Tarvers in his other form, charged at me. I hadn’t drawn a weapon, and my faerie flame would be nothing against the sheer brute power of an enraged shifter Alpha. In that moment, I knew that Fontaine was going to kill me.
Then, as his claws were slashing toward my face, there was a burst of light, and the claws were gone. The polar bear flew back a good ten feet, shattering the table, and Lord Oberis was suddenly in front of me. His hand was still extended in the open-palm strike that had thrown the shifter back, and the strange dark light of the Between scattered from him as he strode forward.
Darius tried to charge him again, and Oberis caught him with a cross-strike that blurred faster than even fae eyes could see. The bear Alpha lurched sideways, and the entire tent stopped as the Fontaine followers brave, stupid or loyal enough to try and fight, and everyone else, at this point realized what was happening.
Sluggish, lurching from the blow, the massive polar bear tried to circle around to go for Holly again. I don’t know what was running through his head at that point—maybe he thought if he destroyed the evidence by killing her, he would somehow at least be able to walk free.
It didn’t work. Oberis blocked him again, and this time, one of the polar bear’s massive legs broke, the crash of shattering bone as the fae lord smashed Darius’s foreleg aside clearly audible through the tent.
“Yield,” the Lord of the Court ordered. “I do not wish to kill you.”
Darius roared in response and charged, his broken leg already healed. The ground shook under the impact and force of the bear’s charge. Somewhere in the middle of it, Oberis struck.
The sword suddenly in the fae lord’s hand was a thing of glamor and Power, not steel or silver—but it may as well have been of the shifter’s ancient bane. With a single slash of the shimmering blade he conjured from nowhere, Oberis cleaved through Darius Fontaine. The big shifter’s charge ended with him returning to human form—in pieces that crashed into the ground with tremendous force.
33
Calm and silence descended on the tent as the remaining Fontaine loyalists surrendered their arms after their Alpha’s death. Seven or eight bodies were slowly removed from the chaos as the crowd of shifters slowly moved away from the area around Talus.
The fae noble looked uninjured, as did Laurie. After a moment, I realized that the slight shimmering around him was a telekinetic barrier—serving the double purpose of containing Laurie and protecting them from bullets.
Talus let the barrier fall and strode forward again, half-pushing, half-leading Laurie with him until he stopped before his uncle.
Oberis had let the glamor-forged sword pass back into nothingness and stepped aside from the fallen body of the Fontaine Alpha, allowing two of the shifters to remove the body to where they were improvising a cover for the bodies from a tablecloth. Despite the lack of sword, he still stood ramrod straight, and every eye in the room could see the power crackle off of him.
“I am afraid,” he said softly, projecting his voice to every corner of the room as he bowed to the Alphas, “that I have stolen justice from you, my lords.”
There was a series of wordless glances and small nods amongst the Alphas, and then Enli spoke for them all.
“You did what was necessary,” he said simply. “You defended one of our daughters from a traitor amongst those who should have defended her. We thank you.”
Oberis bowed, ever so slightly, and started to move toward where Talus was bringing Laurie forward.
“If we may beg a boon, Lord Oberis,” Enli said quietly, “I would ask that we all hear what this woman has to say.”
I held my breath for a moment. If we were right, Laurie’s testimony would break open the whole situation, expose everything and allow us to find the root of the problem. If Oberis insisted on interrogating her in private, we’d get our information, but I wasn’t sure if it wo
uld have the same impact.
Oberis was a fae lord, however, and I probably shouldn’t have worried. Melodrama is bred into our species’ bones, after all, and he nodded agreement almost before I’d finished worrying, gesturing Talus to bring his prisoner forward.
“Laurie of the Unseelie,” he said formally, in that same quiet, projected, terrible voice. “You stand accused of treason against the Court and are so stripped of the defenses I gave you against truth Sight.”
I felt the quiet Power that moved with his words. It was a subtle thing, a thing of thought and word, but it tore through barriers I hadn’t even sensed like they were paper, somehow baring Laurie’s soul to the eyes of her erstwhile master.
“What do you have to say?” he asked.
“I see it in your eyes,” she told him hoarsely. “You have condemned me already. What purpose is there for me to speak? I know what the law lays out for my crimes.”
“There are ways to die and ways to die,” Oberis told her gently. “The law prescribes the Cold Death—no warmth, no life, no breath, left Between to die.”
His words hit the air like falling tombstones, and I shivered at my memory of the chill cold when I stood Between with the Queen. To be left there? Without the Gift to walk that path yourself, it was, as Oberis named it, a death sentence. A horrible one.
“Your service has earned you mercy, if not clemency,” Oberis told Laurie, his voice still so terrifyingly soft. “Do me one more service and tell me what was planned here, and I will grant you a gentle death. It is all I can offer.”
“Service,” Laurie spat. “That’s all I ever was to you—a servant, the dirty Unseelie you used when it suited you. Years together, and never a friend, never more.”
“I was always your friend,” Oberis told her, and I was close enough to him to hear the choke in his voice. I don’t think anyone else except maybe Holly and Mary were. “And if I never saw you as a woman, I’m sorry,” he continued, “but I never saw any woman that way. If you never knew that, you were as blind as I was for thirty years to miss how you felt, and I am sorry.”
“And it changes nothing,” she whispered, and the lord shook his head.
“You are responsible for the deaths of two fae I know of,” he said gently but coldly. “I don’t know how many humans or others the vampires killed that can be directly or indirectly laid at your feet. You have betrayed Court and race and Covenant, and I have offered all the mercy I can.
“Tell me everything,” he ordered. Tearfully, kneeling at his feet, Laurie nodded.
“Winters came to me a year ago,” she told Oberis, oblivious to the rest of us now. “He must have been watching for a while, learning who was...discontent. He offered me a place in a plan that would make me Lady in Calgary, and an increase in our heartstone supply to allow me to buy the support of other Courts.
“My initial role was just to keep him in the loop of all of our plans,” she continued. “I helped him bring Madrigal and her vampires into the city—I found Professor Sigridsen and learned of her proclivities as a hunter and her disease. I confirmed that conversion to a vampire would cure her.” Even while describing her crimes, there was pride in her voice at what she’d done.
“After that, my job—and Darius’s,” she added, glancing up at the Alphas, acknowledging someone other Oberis for the first time, “was to allow the vampires to wreak havoc. We were to deflect investigations, warn of raids, and help ratchet up the tensions. We were to point to the Enforcers, whose job it was to stop the vampires.
“It was our job to start the war,” she said simply.
“Tarvers’s death was planned for from the beginning, to allow Darius to seize control of the Clans,” she told Oberis. “We needed that control for when the real plan took place.”
“What real plan?” Oberis demanded.
“By now, MacDonald is restrained,” she explained. “He doesn’t have the power to do anything to Winters anymore—he’s made his Chief Enforcer immune to his own Power. He is bound in silver and iron, unable to wield magic.
“When the war reached an appropriate peak, MacDonald would be murdered,” Laurie said finally. “Winters would have to do the task himself, but he has a gnome-forged warblade to do it with—to lay the blame at the foot of the Court. Darius would then distance himself from the Court, claiming lack of knowledge when the Order sent their Wizards to avenge him.
“With the Court blamed and no way to prove the guilt of a specific member or innocence of us all, the Wizards would be prepared to destroy the entire Court, as is their way,” she said softly. “You would then sacrifice yourself, taking responsibility and allowing the Wizards to destroy you to protect your Court.
“The Wizards would enforce peace but would not stay. Winters would control the Enforcers, now a power in the city in their own right, and establish a new Covenant—including Madrigal and her vampires, under the usual rules for a Covenant-bound cabal. Darius would control the Clans. I would take control of the Court, leaving Talus in Fort McMurray.”
Her spiel finished, Laurie fell silent. Every gaze was on her, all of us shocked. I’d put together most of it myself, but it was still a bit disturbing to hear it all laid out in step-by-step detail.
“Do you know why Winters started this?” Oberis asked, finally. “If he had that kind of lust for power, MacDonald would never have raised him as high as he did. What’s in it for him?”
“He never said,” Laurie admitted. “I have told you all I know.”
Oberis knelt by her and placed his hands on her shoulders.
“So you have,” he accepted. “I owe you one last service, then. Rest, Laurie,” he told her, gently laying her unresisting form down on the floor. “Sleep, and may your dreams be merciful on you.”
Slowly, the hag’s eyes fluttering shut under his soothing words, his hands on her shoulders. She passed into sleep under the eyes of us all, her breathing shallow. And then, peacefully, without so much as a spasm, her breathing stopped.
Somehow, that quiet, utterly cold-blooded execution hit me harder than the violent deaths I’d seen and inflicted over the last few weeks. It put those deaths in perspective, and I barely heard Michael Tenerim speaking, addressing Enli.
I squeezed Mary’s hand and released it, making my way outside as quietly as I could as shivers of shock ran through me.
When I’d come to this city, I’d never killed anyone in my life. Now? I’d lost track. Like it wasn’t important. Like the vampires and shifters whose bodies I’d left behind me hadn’t mattered.
Laurie’s death suddenly put everything in perspective. The death of someone I knew reminded me that everyone I’d killed along the way had friends, even the vampires. The shifters I’d killed to save Holly had been vicious men, plotting rape and murder, but they’d had family. Loyalties. It was their loyalty to Darius Fontaine that had thrown them into conflict with me.
I threw up. I barely managed to make it out of the tent and out of the view of most before I did it, too. Collapsing to my knees in the snow, I emptied my stomach onto the ground. I’d come to this city weak, seeking a normal, mortal life. Where had everything gone so wrong?
Suddenly, I was a killer. The powers I’d wielded all my life had taken on new strengths, new intensities that terrified me. I’d become stronger than I’d ever dreamed and had seen more violence than I’d ever feared, and it had snuck up on me somehow.
“Are you okay?” I heard Mary ask behind me, but another voice answered her before I could.
“No, he isn’t,” Eric told her quietly. “You may not want to be here, girl,” he continued. “This isn’t pretty.”
“I’m not leaving until I know he’s okay,” she answered fiercely, and I felt her step up behind me and place her hands on my shoulders.
“Just hit you, didn’t it?” Eric asked me gruffly. “The things you’ve done for fealty. She changed you, and you didn’t even realize until afterwards.”
“What have I become?” I asked, looking up at
the gnome as he passed Mary a warm wet cloth to clean my face with. “So much has happened here.”
“You have become a Vassal of the Queen,” Eric said simply. I felt Mary’s hands tremble as she gently cleaned my face. By now, I was sure she’d known I was more than I’d admitted to, but it was something entirely different, I knew, to hear it all confirmed.
“Your fealty shields you from the impact of much of what you do,” he told me. “Be grateful for it—it’s not like you can go visit a therapist for it.”
“Do I even get a fucking choice?” I demanded. I’d wanted a normal life—I still did. I wanted to drive a courier truck, be with Mary, and barely scrape by in the mortal lower class. Sad as it sounds, I wanted that mundanity so badly right then, I could taste it.
“No,” the Keeper said bluntly. “You were born to this, Jason Kilkenny. Fate and blood and race and fealty command it, you have no choice. But remember this,” he told me. “I did.”
I reached up to squeeze Mary’s hand as I looked up at the old gnome in question, and he nodded as I met his gaze.
“I was many things in my youth, much of which I regret,” he told me. “I saw...much that I would not see again. I chose to swear fealty to the Queen and take up a Keeper’s role. The Vassals of the Queen—and the rest of the High Court—keep the peace amongst our kind. They shield the mortals from the excesses of our race and the other inhuman races. There are darker sides,” he admitted, “and we are bound to Her will, but by and large, Her will is to keep our people safe.”
“I feel so much...less than I should be,” I confessed. “What I feel at Laurie’s death—shouldn’t I feel that for the others I saw die? What is so different about her?”
“You knew her,” Mary said simply from behind me, and Eric nodded. “While she wasn’t a friend, you knew her, and that always hits home harder. And every other death you’ve seen has been in battle—with them trying to kill you. Those shouldn’t impact you as much. Self-defense is a necessary evil.”
Changeling's Fealty (Changeling Blood Book 1) Page 28