War Witch

by Layla Nash

  “Because someone did it to me,” I said. Everyone went still. I stared at the leg of Soren’s desk, seeing only Sam’s face as he pleaded for understanding. For forgiveness. “And he wasn’t very good at it, so I know what it is to have fog in my memory. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

  Even Anne Marie.

  “Who did it?” Leif’s tone was casual. Too casual. I didn’t dare look at him.

  I wished I could have played with the jade ring. “He’s dead. Died in the war.”

  Died in the war because I killed him.

  Soren leaned his fists on the desk, frowning at me. “Is there a way to reconstitute the memories?”

  The bunching muscles in his forearms distracted me from thoughts of Sam. “It depends on how they took the memory. Occasionally it is possible to identify a scrap or two.”

  “Okay,” Soren said, and shoved upright, all controlled violence as he strode to the door.

  I glanced back at him, raising an eyebrow. “Okay?”

  The Peacemaker gestured for me to get up and precede him into the hallway. Moriah looked nervous. “We’ll find some scraps and figure out who wants you dead.”

  Except I already knew who wanted me dead. “But—”

  “You don’t seem too concerned that someone wants to kill you.”

  I sighed and rested my head against the chair, closing my eyes. This night just kept getting worse. I gathered my strength and slowly forced myself to stand. “Guess I’m used to it.”

  He snorted and started walking, leaving Moriah and Leif and me to catch up.

  Chapter 30

  We walked in silence through the halls and down several sets of mysterious stairs in Soren’s mansion, the route so twisted I could barely tell which way was up. My magic faded and I felt older with each step, gravity weighing me down until I slowed enough that Soren practically disappeared ahead of us. Moriah linked her arm with mine and half-carried me, and Leif brought up the rear, muttering into a radio.

  My tension grew as the number of armed men in the halls increased, and a suspicion that maybe this was just a ruse to get me trapped in the bowels of the Peacemaker’s home surfaced. I wouldn’t put it past him to have secret jails below his house, incarcerating those who crossed him or might have presented a political challenge. I put my faith in Moriah, that she at least would have warned me or stood up to Soren to save me.

  And then the Peacemaker stopped in front of a reinforced steel door, guarded by four armed men and two wolves. When he nodded two of the guards inserted keys into hidden spots on the door, and the whole contraption creaked as they dragged it open, muscles standing out in their shoulders and arms. So chances were I wouldn’t even be able to budge the damn thing.

  I stood back as Soren walked into the room without hesitation, questioning my decision to help them, but Moriah nudged me forward with a whispered, “Don’t be a coward, witch.”

  “Caution is not cowardice,” I said. “Crazy-ass wolf.”

  She winked and dragged me into the tiny room, though I stopped short just inside the door. A metal table took up the center of the claustrophobic room, and the walls were reinforced and padded to prevent the occupants from hurting themselves or creating weapons. A man sat behind the table, and an empty chair faced him. The only light came from a few bulbs recessed in the ceiling and covered with cages, casting eerie uneven light as the door swung shut behind us. Nothing else cluttered the grim room—no evidence of an interrogation, no chains, no water or food or any hint of comfort for the man at the table.

  Brandr waited, blank-faced, as I lingered near the door. Leif leaned back against the heavy steel, and the tiny space became even more an airless coffin. I gazed at the orb of Soren’s pack magic keeping Brandr motionless in his chair, and cleared my throat. “Maybe we should try this on a younger one first. They recover better after these sorts of hexes.”

  They were also a hell of a lot less intimidating.

  Soren took up a broad stance behind Brandr. “He’s the leader and the one whose memory was least affected. Start with him.”

  The Old World alpha exuded tightly-coiled danger, as if he only waited for an opportune moment of his choosing to break free. And the smirk on his face convinced me he knew perfectly well why I wanted to start with someone else.

  I eased into the empty chair and studied his hardened, weather-beaten face. It was lined with work and worry, the miles of his life’s journey. He was ageless but still old, especially with ten years of war factored in. Cold River had been the vanguard at nearly all major battles during the war, and Brandr led every charge. I would get nowhere with threats or bluster. He wouldn’t believe me, to start, and more importantly, he did not fear death. He’d already faced it and survived. He was proud, like all Old World wolves, and already the Peacemaker brought him low.

  So I would ask permission where normally I demanded obedience.

  I bowed from my chair, hands palm-up in front of me, and used the Old World greeting I remembered from the war. “Brandr, son of Skoll, son of Fenrir. May the night be long and the hunt plentiful.”

  He blinked. For a heart-stopping moment, I wondered if his family descended from Hati, not Skoll, and I’d insulted him by mistake. Then Brandr fought Soren’s iron control to incline his head. “Lilith witch, daughter of witches, descended from the saints. May the saints guide your cast.”

  The weight of Soren’s gaze dried my throat and chilled my blood. Maybe he hadn’t realized I knew those particular greetings or spent any time around the Old World packs. I’d avoided them as much as possible, but they’d saved my life at least once.

  I cleared my throat and focused on Brandr. It was foolishness and arrogance to take my attention off him, when he was the most dangerous thing in the room and I sat within his reach.

  “I knew of your heroism, the blood-letting you did for our people,” I said, burying my unease in formality. For someone to have given Brandr the name Lilith could not have been an accident. “It would have been an honor to die at your hands.”

  The ghost of a smile crossed his face. “And yet you couldn’t go quietly.”

  “I never do,” I said. Leif paced to stand near the long end of the table, his expression grim, and I took a deep breath. “I do not know what they told you, Brandr son of Skoll, to convince you I deserved death, but—”

  “Not death.” Brandr inclined his head to me, a perfect gentleman despite the circumstances and having tried to kill me only a few hours before. “I would have given you the change, taken you into my pack.” The chivalry burned up in a long appraisal, his eyes sparking with gold. “As my mate.”

  “And I would have been honored to be found worthy,” I said, raising my voice over Leif’s growling. But still dead, since the bite would have killed me eventually.

  Leif staggered back with marionette-doll awkwardness to brace against the wall, followed by Soren’s hard stare, as pack magic forced the Warder away. I marveled at the control the Peacemaker wielded over his magic, the influence he exercised on subordinates. It put my little spell to shame.

  A smile crept over Brandr’s face as he watched someone else on the receiving end of Soren’s irritation. “The Warder guards you well, Lilith witch.”

  I flattened my hands on the table and tried not to think about why Leif got so protective. “Brandr son of Skoll, for the witch who hired you, the change would have been a death for me.”

  “It is a gift,” he said, implacable. Stubborn wolves. “Trade herbs and chanting for the freedom of a new form, howling at the moon in new snow.” He paused to study me, then shook his head. “It’s too bad. You would have made a beautiful wolf.”

  Leif snarled, lurching forward, though he silenced with a grunt as Soren’s expression darkened. “If you cannot control yourself, Second, find something else to do.”

  I resisted the urge to agitate them all a little further, just to buy myself time, but the longer we screwed around in the interrogation room, the longer it was before I cou
ld get some sleep. “As I said, I would have been honored. But whatever crimes the witch listed to convince you, those crimes were not mine.”

  “She said—” His face compressed, the lines deepening as he struggled against the darkness in his memory. “You brought the seven plagues to the humans in the seventh year of war because... the saints appreciate symmetry.”

  I took a deep breath; he must have had as much mental fortitude as Soren to exert such mastery over his own mind even after a hex. And what he said was technically true, as much as I hated to hear the plagues discussed in the light of day, but there had been better reasons for doing it than symmetry. “Well, it sounds worse than—”

  “She said you killed your mate.”

  My breath caught. Sam. His smiling face replaced Brandr’s in front of me, and I clenched my hand around where I’d worn his ring. Sam hadn’t been my mate, not as the shifters used the term, but there was no real word for what he’d been.

  Tears burned my throat, closer to the surface than I’d expected. I couldn’t look at Leif or even Soren, though I tried a joke when I dared glance at Brandr. “Now I know you’re crazy. Even thinking I killed my mate, you would have made me yours?”

  “I like dangerous women,” he said, with not a hint of jest.

  I waited for Leif to fly across the room to rip out his throat, but nothing happened. I refused to look at anyone but Brandr. Killing a mate was one of the unforgivable crimes with the shifters. I stored that grief away for later, frowning at my hands. I’d had beautiful, graceful hands before the war. A cellist’s hands, Mom used to say. Now they were scarred and stained and crooked, a testament to hard work and deep hurts. It was okay for a man to show the world his history through his hands, but I wanted pretty fingers, graceful wrists, delicate nails. My vanity seldom surfaced, but I wanted a lady’s hands.

  I rubbed a ridge of scar tissue along the back of my wrist. “Despite that, I—”

  “You hurt for him,” the wolf interrupted. “This mate you killed.”

  “We are not here to talk about me.”

  “Are we not?” Brandr smiled, deceptively congenial, the ruthless killer buried deeply. I had no doubt he would still bite me, if Soren’s control faltered. They didn’t believe in abandoning a mission, in Brandr’s pack. They always finished the job. “This is about you at least as much as it is me.”

  I managed a tight smile. He was right, after all. “Yes, I regret how things ended.”

  “Did he deserve to die?”

  The pain built in my chest as memories flooded back. Sam, begging for mercy, desperate to explain. Tracy, standing between us, screaming that it took two war witches to condemn him. Black holes in my memory, making me crazy and convincing me I’d done things I would never remember. I shook myself and straightened in the uncomfortable chair. Had he deserved it? Should I have waited, like Tracy begged? “I don’t know. I thought so. But it haunts me. All those I killed haunt me. I’m sure you know what that’s like.”

  He shrugged. “If I killed them, they deserved to die.”

  His expression tensed as he leaned forward, one hand rising an inch at a time to settle his battered fingers over mine, fighting Soren’s control the whole way. His gruff words were meant to reassure, no doubt, even as it sent chills down my spine. “If you killed him, Lilith daughter of the saints, he deserved to die.”

  I blinked several times as his face swam in front of me. The cold calculation of the Old World packs had once been a comfort—we could sleep, knowing they guarded the borders and passes and would die before falling back, knowing they would do the grim work with no hesitation and no regret. But on a clear night five years after the Truce, his calm assessment of the value of life, and the ease with which he dismissed Sam’s, chilled me to my core.

  I pulled my hand away. “The witch who hired you did you a grave disservice. She used your pack to further her own ends.”

  “I know what I did, witch,” he said. “She did not trick me. It was a calculated risk and it did not go our way. We will pay the price.” He clenched his fist until his knuckles cracked. “You are not the only one who did not go willingly into captivity.”

  An ache built in my temples, and even massaging them didn’t help much. He had to know something, the stubborn ass. “She changed your memory, Brandr Two-natured. You may have said or done or sworn a dozen things you can’t recall.”

  His expression darkened. “She said she would only take her name and face.”

  I held my breath, the air growing tense as he pondered. It would work so much better if he volunteered...

  Sweat broke out on his forehead as Brandr raised his other hand to the table despite Soren amplifying the pack magic. Brandr gritted his teeth, eyes already gold. “Find out, witch. Find out what she took.”

  I slid my hands over his and Brandr turned his palms up, fingertips resting against the pulse points in my wrists. I did my best to ignore Leif’s prowling behind me. After a moment, I shook my head and looked at the Peacemaker. “You’ll have to get rid of the pack magic, Soren. It’s hiding everything I need to see.”

  His attention landed on Brandr like a ton of bricks. “If I release you, I want your oath you will protect Lilith as if she were your mate. And because I know how much you value your oaths to me, swear on your life, your pack, and Lord Fenrir Himself.”

  The sarcasm didn’t seem to affect Brandr as he tilted his head, studying me. His thumb stroked across the back of my hand, and his words sealed a quiet contract with me, as if there were no one else in the world but us. “By my honor, by my pack, and by our Lord Fenrir of the Northern Reaches, I swear: my blood before yours, my life before yours.”

  I shivered, unable to look away, as Moriah made a disbelieving noise behind me. The calm delivery of such a binding oath made my stomach clench, particularly as pack magic rippled around him in a violet and magenta fog. Rage cracked the air from Leif’s corner, and the Peacemaker watched him more than the Old World alpha in front of me.

  Soren released the pack magic and Brandr exhaled in a rush, rotating his head until vertebrae crunched. He stretched massive shoulders before returning his elbows to the table and reaching for my hands. “Let’s get this over with, witch.”

  I pressed my palms to his, creating a circuit as I drew power from my limited store. My view of him illuminated into sparks of red and tangled webs of magic. There was indeed a hex on him, suppressing parts of his memory. I shifted in my chair as I squinted at the mess, frowning. “That’s different.”

  Brandr arched an eyebrow. “Good or bad?”

  “No spell is good or bad,” I said, intensely aware that the Chief Investigator listened to every word. “How you choose to use something is good or bad. This hex is just different. I can’t tell if it was placed with ill intent.”

  I brushed my left hand against the hex’s stands, fingers working into the mess to try and pry it apart for a better look. “Spells are tools, son of Skoll, just like knives or hammers. It is the wielder who determines the intent.”

  The hex snarled around his thoughts, crude in its design. Maybe not Anne Marie’s work after all. She hadn’t improved a lot since the war, I was sure, but I doubted she would have gotten so much worse. The hex hid a few places where his memory was burned away, small dark pits underneath the web of colorful magic. I sighed. “Some of it is gone forever, son of Skoll, I—”

  “You may call me Brandr.”

  The strange timbre of his voice yanked me out of the magical reverie. “What?”

  “You may use my name,” he repeated. “Since you’re playing with my hair.”

  My fingers indeed twined in the soft hair at the back of his neck, and I flushed. I snapped my hands away, expected a smart remark, but he only sat there, hands loose and easy on the table. Waiting.

  I pushed my chair back from the table as the air disappeared from the room. The men breathed it all in, took up all the space. The pressure of their watchfulness, the weight of their judgment, made my s
tomach rebel and bile creep up my throat, until I feared I would be sick all over the table. I’d definitely lost my touch.

  Chapter 31

  When my breath hitched and I scrambled to get out of the chair, Moriah caught my arm to help me and gestured for Leif to open the door. He started to protest, but took one look at me and did as she asked, standing back as I staggered for the relative freedom of the narrow hall.

  Mo helped me walk, murmuring, “Keep it together,” as we maneuvered around the guards and wolves, and she didn’t let me go until we were in a broom closet of a bathroom away from the interrogation cells.

  She ran the water in the tap and handed me a dampened hand towel. “You okay? You turned white as a sheet.”

  I scrubbed the dried blood from my face and examined the damage to my throat from that awful collar. It looked like it had started healing under the scabs and blood, so maybe Kyle’s magic did more than I anticipated. “I don’t know.”

  As the towel turned rust-red, she folded her arms over her chest. “Are you afraid of finding out the Morrigan did it, or that she didn’t?”

  I met her gaze in the mirror, and imagined all the things lurking on the other side of the glass. “I don’t know.”

  She opened the door once I’d splashed more water on my face and dried my neck, trying to arrange my tattered clothes to keep myself decent. She even patted my back as we walked toward Brandr’s cell. “Fifty bucks says it was the Morrigan.”

  I smiled half-heartedly as we edged through the massive door once more and it clanged shut behind us, though I hesitated as soon as we were inside. The tension had noticeably increased. Neither Brandr nor Leif looked happy. Soren remained expressionless as Brandr placed his hands on the table once more. “Whenever you’re ready, krigen-heks.”

  My eyebrows arched at the jump in formality. Soren’s doing, most likely. I stood next to Brandr and rubbed my hands together, building power through my fatigue. I’d used too much defending myself in the alley; burnout was a real possibility at this rate. I needed a good long sleep and a few slow weeks to recover—which seemed about as likely as winning the lottery and finding Tracy at the same time. As static gathered around me, snapping and popping in the dry air, I squinted at Brandr’s aura and reached into the hex. “This might hurt a little.”