“Georgina?” Lily gasped. She couldn’t…didn’t want to believe it. Only a few days ago, Greyston and Georgina had been so happy. Georgina? She seemed so lovely, a fresh burst of sunshine in Greyston’s dark life, and now this…? “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Without a doubt.” His gaze swept the room. “Where is Kelan?”
“Florence.”
Lily sighed heavily. Each day appeared to turn up a new nightmare with no reprieve in sight. She quickly filled Greyston in on the death of Kelan’s father and the unscheduled trip to the Continent.
She didn’t need to make any effort to keep her tone factual and devoid of any feeling at all. She understood Kelan’s grief, his guilt, his worry. She realised he had more important issues to deal with than his wife’s feelings. But he’d outright rejected any comfort, any sympathy she’d offered. Time and time again, he’d rejected her.
He’d closed her out completely, and she’d finally admitted to herself that she’d never been inside at all. She’d never been his wife in truth, not in Kelan’s eyes.
He cared for her, he was invested in her, he was even in all likelihood attracted to her, but that was it. Lily had imagined she was falling in love with her husband, but that could never be. She was too pragmatic to pine after a man who couldn’t love her. She couldn’t hate him either. He’d never pretended, he’d never lied, he’d never promised her anything.
She wasn’t sure how long it would last, but she’d found some neutral balance, not feeling anything in particular when she thought of him, which she tried to do as little as possible.
“Kelan didn’t expect to be gone longer than a week,” she told Greyston. “I can contact him through an Aether Signaller in Hampstead Heath.” She turned reluctantly toward the inner chamber that housed their own Signaller. No matter how cold and dark Kelan’s heart was on any normal day, he deserved a couple of days to grieve his father in peace. “He left me the frequency in case of any emergency.”
“Let the man be,” Greyston said gruffly. “It’s not as if Harchings can build and fit the power system overnight.”
Lily turned back to him, the weight lifting from her chest. “If you think it can wait…”
“I think…” Greyston ran a hand through his hair again. “I think this is a damned mess whichever way you look at it and it will still be a damned mess at the end of the week. A few days won’t make any difference. If I’m not back before Kelan—”
“Back?” Lily spurted. “Where are you going?”
“Surrey.”
“You’re going to try and convince Devon—”
“I’d sooner strangle the Duke than talk to him,” he said bluntly. “I’m going to hunt down Georgina. Her uncle’s farm is a short distance from Harchings Castle. That seems like a good place to start.”
The way he said it, the barren voice and contrasting storm in his eyes, sent a shiver down Lily’s spine.
“You’re furious,” she said softly, moving forward to place a hand on his arm. “Of course you are.” He didn’t flinch from her touch, but the look in his eyes didn’t soften either. “But Greyston, don’t do anything stupid.”
“Too late for that.”
Lily drew back, watching him, searching for the words to reach him. When she’d first met Greyston, she’d bristled at his roguish charm and flippant remarks. What she wouldn’t give to have just a tiny glimpse of that Greyston again. It wasn’t all Georgina’s fault, though. In fact, Georgina had resurrected that part of him, and now it was buried again, deeper, perhaps forever.
“I’m coming with you,” she decided.
“I don’t need a chaperone, Lily.”
“I’ve been cooped up in this castle of men for too long.” She fixed him with a stubborn glare. “Since you’re going that way, I may as well take the opportunity to visit with Evelyn.”
Greyston cocked his head, his gaze narrowing on her. “You should wait here for Kelan.”
“We’ll take the Hampstead Heath frequency code with us and contact Kelan as need be,” Lily told him as she marched out the library to pre-empt further argument. “Besides,” she threw over her shoulder, “with Evelyn’s help, we may learn more of Devon’s plans with the Gossamer. Give me half an hour, I’ll pack light.”
Lily still wore her leather breeches and knee-high boots from her training session this morning. She didn’t bother changing. She double-checked that her extendable Cairngorm sword was still sheathed inside her boot and pulled a full length riding coat on over it all. While Ana packed a carpetbag with a change of outfits for them both, Lily grabbed a pair of gloves and wrapped a scarf around her neck.
Less than an hour later, Lily boarded the Red Hawk with Ana, Greyston and Neco. She was surprised to discover they made up the ship’s entire party.
“How on earth did you manage without a crew?”
“Everything I own is designed to be handled with a crew of one,” Greyston muttered. “Ferdie equipped the Red Hawk with an automated trolley to feed coal and wood to the boiler.”
Lily’s heart went out to him. Except for Neco, Greyston had been alone in this world since the age of fifteen. No wonder he made sure he never had to rely on another soul, especially when it came to sailing the Red Hawk.
“Take a seat and hold on,” he told her as Neco secured the hull door. “The Aether’s rough today.”
Lily did exactly that, choosing a spot at the end of the bunk that lined one wall of the boarding cabin. With the way her life was going of late, they were probably about to sail into one of the winter squalls that had been battering the coastline. Thank goodness they were only going as far as Edinburgh. Private dirigible travel was forbidden in British Aether, requiring them to complete their journey by train.
“You should sit, too,” Neco told Ana.
“I won’t break,” she informed him.
“There’s a fifty percent probability you will.”
“Your predictability scores are inflated with an unreliably small data set,” Ana countered.
A smile tugged at Lily’s mouth as she observed the couple, wondering if they were quarrelling or flirting. The basis of Neco’s data set sank in and her humour faded. Ana had only sailed on the Red Hawk twice and she’d been injured once. Lady Ostrich, whom they’d later learnt was the demon Flavith, had crippled the Red Hawk, causing Ana serious damage and killing Jean.
The floor beneath her feet vibrated as the ship’s engines fired up. A soft hum stroked the air. Somewhere above, the sound of booted footfalls pounded the grated walkway, then fell away. Lily’s fingers curled around the edge of the bunk and gripped so tight, pain sliced through her knuckles. She didn’t let go. The pain grounded her, not from her old fears of heights and Aether sailing and silly risky endeavours, but from the new terrors that were now her daily reality.
Her mind reeled in reverse, starting with Kelan hunched over his father’s body, his face ravaged in anguish. The smoking carriage, the broken bodies of General Chen Xiucheng’s men littered along the roadside, the wounded horses and the two gunshots to end the poor animals’ suffering. The haunting chill, the frozen bodies, the tragedy she’d stepped into when she’d chased down the Winterberry demon, Agares.
Lily’s stomach lurched as the Red Hawk lifted in a vertical line. She gripped the bunk harder and closed her eyes. If the Gossamer ever did take to the skies, then she was the best chance they had to ensure that Agares, nor any other demon, ever came close to using the ship to execute any grand scheme.
Again and again, Lily delved deep inside herself, reaching for the demon glass. She punched at the grainy canvas that refused to dissolve into a gateway tunnel. She kicked, pummelled, cursed the canvas barrier that locked her out, and she waited. Every now and then she withdrew, opened her eyes to find Ana watching her. Neco had left a while back. She hadn’t asked where he’d gone.
“I’m perfectly fine,” she said when Ana asked, and closed her eyes again.
The next time she surfaced, the hummi
ng vibrations had quietened and the hull door had been lowered into a ramp. “We’ve berthed?”
“Neco has already taken our bags and Grey’s arranging transport,” Ana said with a nod. “You’ll make yourself sick if you keep that up.”
“I only sicken once I’ve crossed into a demon presence,” Lily reassured her. “I should be searching all day and all night until I find something, anything!”
“You need to eat and sleep,” Ana pointed out.
A raw laugh scraped Lily’s throat. Ana could always be counted on to take everything one hundred percent literally. A pity her demon glass wasn’t nearly as predictable.
Still, Ana wasn’t altogether wrong. It wasn’t practical to shut down, spend every second knocking at the demon glass.
Lily crossed the cabin to peer outside, surprised to see they wouldn’t need to hire a private carriage from the yard’s stable. The berthing yard belonged to The Baston & Graille Dirigible Company and one of their ships must be imminently due. A line of Hackney Cabs stood at the ready, waiting to carry the disembarking passengers into the city.
Knowing she needed to pace herself, Lily carefully checked the demon glass on the top and bottom of every hour as they made their way to the Central Terminus and settled at the station’s tearooms to await the 19:30 train. The Northern Line would take them direct to Euston Square Station on a dedicated high-speed track with no stops along the way.
At such short notice, they’d been fortunate to secure two cabins for the overnight journey and it was with some relief that Lily retired from Greyston’s presence when they finally boarded. He’d been in such a foul mood the entire day and, while she didn’t exactly blame him for it, the tension literally rolled off his shoulders to choke the air around them. What with trying to coax him out his black stupor and worrying about what he’d do when they found Georgina, and then her own stress that built between her half-hourly check of the demon glass, she was exhausted.
The train had barely pulled out of the terminal when her perseverance paid off. The grainy canvas blocking her demon glass shimmered, then dissolved into the spiralling tunnel of wind, sweeping her into a scene that was eerily familiar.
Three demons instead of two, and instead of rain sheeting down, moonlight cracked through breaks in the overcast sky to provide pale shades of visibility. The sheer, craggy wall of the mountainside, the uneven ledge the demons walked their horses along…
Lily stayed, following the demons’ slow progress until her stomach cramped and bile rose up her throat. She tried not to whimper, to still the dry gasps spitting from her mouth, knowing Ana likely watched and worried. But it all came out anyway as she took too many extra minutes to memorise the features of each demon and observe their interactions.
She kept hoping she’d build up a resistance, but the opposite appeared to be true. The more often she searched in the demon glass, the quicker she succumbed. Kelan had once suggested the demon glass was poison to her body, and that residual traces remained and accumulated. If that was true…well, if it was, there was nothing she could do about it!
When she finally pulled out, she was panting, too weak to open her eyes for a long moment, and then only because Greyston’s voice penetrated her near-delirium.
“Ana fetched me.” His gaze bore into her, softened with concern. “You promised you wouldn’t do that.”
She had. They’d all agreed she should always pull out at the first sign of symptoms so as not to make herself sick. But this time, she’d needed more. She’d needed to confirm her suspicions.
She gave him a small, apologetic smile, accepting the glass of water he pressed into her hands. The urgency of their situation pressed against her skull, her head threatening to burst, but the dry heaving had parched her throat. She couldn’t say a thing until she’d drained the water and even then her voice croaked.
“We need to stop the train! We need to turn back.”
“We’ve already engaged the high-speed track,” Ana said. “I heard the shunting gears.”
Lily shot her a look. “Are you sure?”
“Why would I say so unless I was?”
“Even if we could persuade the driver, which I doubt, there’s no way to turn around,” Greyston said, his brow furrowing as he sat back and folded his arms, his gaze holding hers. “What did you see?”
“Three demons.” Restless energy swirled Lily’s blood but when she tried to stand, her rubbery legs defied her will. She fell back on the cabin’s bench with a groan. “They’re travelling through the same mountains as the Seven Dial demons.”
Understanding lit Greyston’s eyes. “They’re in Scotland.”
“Kelan thinks it might be somewhere in the Cairngorm mountains,” she confirmed. “He recognised the trail leading out into the valley.”
Even if it weren’t the Cairngorm Range, it was definitely Scotland. After clearing the mountains, the Seven Dial demons had headed to Edinburgh and caught a train to London.
Lily swallowed hard before giving him the worst news. “I suspect one of them is Agares.”
She related everything as quickly as she could, explaining her reasoning along the way. Two of the demons had taken on male human forms. The third one was female and her demeanour indicated she was in charge.
She.
Kelan had taught them to always objectify demons by referring to them as ‘it’, but now that Lily believed they actually had a gender, she disagreed. Demon or human, females acted differently to men, they had different agendas and different methods of execution. For instance, although demons could take on either male or female form when passing through the tear, Agares revelled in her feminine wiles and used her beauty to wrap men around her little finger. Lily was convinced she wouldn’t take on a male form if she could help it.
“Agares also likes to surround herself with male demons,” Lily went on in the face of Greyston’s scepticism. “So far, none of her followers have been female.”
“I hope to God you’re wrong.” Greyston grimaced. “For all his faults, Kelan’s our best chance against a King demon and—”
“—he’s in Florence,” Lily gasped, her eyes widening. “She’s waited, bided her time until Kelan left the country before she creeps out of whatever hole she’s managed to hide herself from me.”
Greyston thought that through, then cursed beneath his breath. “You said Saloese killed Kelan’s father.”
It wasn’t a question, but Lily nodded anyway.
“And Saloese is Agares’ follower. The timing is too perfect to be a coincidence.” He scrubbed his jaw, tilting his head as his gaze went to the darkness rushing past the window outside. “Work on the Gossamer is about to be resumed and Agares will want to oversee the details. This was planned. Much safer to surface while Kelan is distracted.”
“Agares had no way of arranging for Kelan’s father to be in Scotland,” Ana chimed in, ever the voice of logic.
Greyston brought his attention to Lily. “Saloese was somehow attached to Kelan’s heart?”
“That’s what he said.”
At the confirmation, Greyston explained, “Saloese had a free ride inside the walls of Cragloden to stir up mischief when the order came. It didn’t have to be Kelan’s father, that was just the damn devil’s luck. Not only is Kelan distracted, he’s at least two days travel away on another continent.”
Lily’s stomach lurched. “Agares is about to execute the final stage of her grand scheme and what…?” Her voice pitched. “After all our precautions and planning, we’ve been caught unawares. Kelan’s away and we’re stuck on a train to London with no means of letting anyone know.”
“Or this might be the break we’ve been waiting for.” Greyston leaned over, taking Lily’s hand in his. “Don’t forget, it will be weeks, maybe even months, before the Gossamer will be completed. Meanwhile, where is Agares headed?” The hint of a grin broke the tension at his jaw. “We’ve been searching for the Gossamer with no success, and now Agares will lead us straight ther
e.”
While Lily thought he may be right, she didn’t quite see this as a fortuitous break. Three demons, one of them Agares, were on the loose.
“I’ll track Agares,” she vowed. “But what do we do in the meantime?”
“We go to the dining car to eat supper and then we try to get some sleep,” Greyston said.
“How in blazes do you expect me to sleep?”
His grin widened. “I did say try.”
She jerked her hand away and blinked furiously, wondering if Greyston had lost his mind. “We need to send word to Kelan.”
“We will,” Greyston said calmly. “Once we reach London, we’ll go straight to Harchings House and use their Aether Signaller.”
“And then we’ll take the next train back to Scotland,” Lily decided.
“To do what? Get yourself killed by a King Demon?” A weary grimace flattened Greyston’s grin. “No matter how hard you’ve trained, Lily, you’re not ready. Not for Agares.”
“You won’t simply be killed,” Ana added. “You’ll be obliterated.”
The hairs on Lily’s neck bristled. “I never said I wanted to hunt down Agares,” she retorted. “But where do you think Kelan will go first when he hears our news? His army is at Cragloden.”
“Or we could wait,” Greyston suggested, “and see how he responds to our message. There’s no reason to rush about the countryside until we know exactly what we’re doing.”
“There’s every reason,” Lily stated, pursing her lips to indicate this was her last word on the matter.
Greyston was a free agent, he could do as he pleased. And, only with the smallest twinge of guilt, did she acknowledge he would follow to protect her, even if she led him into direct peril. Especially then. But the demons weren’t the only thing pushing her back to Scotland. So far as she was concerned, the more days Greyston had to cool off before he eventually went after Georgina, the better!
TEN
The Dark Matters Quartet Page 75