Though the entire tribe had wanted to attend the proceedings, only so many would fit, so the Assembly had held a lottery. Feeling immensely pleased with themselves for both the turnout and the demonstration of faux democracy that so gratified the crowd, the group of fifteen men now sat pompous and preening on an elevated dais at the front of the room behind a long oak table draped in somber gray linen, nodding to the crowd and murmuring smug congratulations to one another.
Erected in the center of the crowded, cavernous room was a tall, evil-looking device atop a scaffold. A clever assembly of blood-darkened wood and shining metal and sharp, angled blades, the machine had been rolled in on a wheeled platform from its storage place in a well-avoided shed near the back of the property, once the gamekeeper’s storage shack. Now it housed a collection of macabre items such as this, racks and crushers and saws and garrotes, used not infrequently. Beside the machine stood a hooded executioner, hulking and silent.
Though well entrenched in the twenty-first century, the soul of the tribe had not changed in millennia. Neither had its Law, nor the punishment for those who broke it.
And colluding with the enemy exacted the direst punishment of all.
Beside the dais on their own platform were two elaborately carved mahogany chairs, cushioned and large. In one sat a man, handsome and leonine, wolf-eyed and silent, black-haired like the rest of his kin. His posture was relaxed except for the tanned forefinger of his right hand, which kept a steady beat against the polished arm of his throne, belying his inner turmoil. The throne beside him, toward which he sent a swift, occasional glance, sat empty.
His wife had refused to attend.
They’d been close, everyone knew, the new Queen and the traitor the excited crowd awaited. And the Queen had taken the betrayal particularly hard.
It was common knowledge also that the Queen had thus far refused to intervene or even offer an opinion on what was to be done in the name of justice. This was taken as a clear sign of her approval of the Assembly’s resolution, though it was well within her rights and authority to do exactly as she wished, even as far as granting a full pardon. She alone stood outside the Law that so tightly bound the rest of her kind; she alone was sovereign, even above her husband, the Alpha, strongest male of all the colony. Unlike the rest, if she wished it she could leave, or stay, or dance a naked jig atop the lighted ball that dropped on New Year’s Eve in Times Square, so many thousands of miles away. She’d come from the outside world and was free to rejoin it yet had elected to stay with her clan of secretive, Gifted people and her handsome, distracted husband, who now waited to watch an execution he approved of but did not wish to witness.
Because she’d chosen to stay, her people adored her. And because she had chosen not to intervene in their business, the Assembly had—grudgingly—begun to offer her their respect.
With a slow, majestic pageantry that swiftly silenced the gathered crowd, the ivory-and-gold-leaf double doors at the far end of the Great Hall swept open, and everyone turned, breathless, to look.
Until she actually saw what awaited her, Morgan had thought herself prepared for this moment. She had stupidly hoped it would be swift and relatively painless: the guillotine, beheading by sword, a firing squad perhaps. Something she could endure with dignity that would cause more pain to her psyche than to her body. Something poetic or tragic or morbidly elegant.
How mistaken she had been. How naive.
This would not be over quickly. They were out for more than just her blood—they wanted to humiliate her, make her an example. They wanted spectacle. They wanted theatre.
The horrible machine, the rabid, hissing crowd, her heart clenched to a fist in her chest. The air so choked with malice and bloodlust she could barely breathe without feeling suffocated. A shouted accusation from the back of the room: “Traitor!” and the crowd began to jeer, taking it up in chorus, stamping their feet.
She prayed she wouldn’t break too soon and give them the satisfaction of hearing her beg for mercy. She hadn’t been broken yet, in all the weeks of isolation and deprivation and brutality suffered in the holding cell.
But this, oh, this...
She swallowed, hands trembling, fought the clawing animal fear rising to a scream in her throat, and silently repeated four words that encompassed everything she believed in, everything she had so desperately wanted, her lifelong dream turned to prophecy and curse.
Live free or die.
One or the other. She had chosen long ago.
She wasn’t born to hide. She wasn’t born to live like a domesticated animal, tame and docile, chained to a stake in the yard. She had never really fit in. Even as a child all she’d wanted was more, though she didn’t know exactly more of what.
Live free or die. So be it.
With Nathaniel trailing a few hesitant feet behind her, still clutching his cattle prod, she advanced through the parting crowd with her head held high, her shaking hands hidden in the folds of her dress, her gaze fixed forward on the dais and its group of watchful, waiting men.
“Incredible,” Leander heard one of the Assembly members spit under his breath. He didn’t turn to look who it was; his gaze was trained too keenly on Morgan.
She was thinner, he thought; definitely thinner and paler, though it hadn’t reduced her beauty or her sensual, magnetic appeal. He watched heads swivel and mouths drop in her wake, men, women, and children alike. Though all his kind were beautiful to the point of being meaningless, she outshone them all.
Somehow—as always—she’d found something glamorous and dramatic to wear, though she’d been sent to her cell almost four weeks ago in nothing more than bloodied rags. Now she wore simple, serious funeral black but made it look like the most elaborate couture: a long, sleeveless silk gown, one-shouldered, drifting over her lithe curves like enchanted gossamer; silver high-heeled sandals; thick mahogany hair swept back from her face in a stylish, casual chignon. Even unadorned, with no paint or ornament, even outcast and reviled and walking toward her imminent, grisly death, she was truly magnificent.
In spite of himself, he smiled. In this moment, she reminded him of his wife.
Proud. Regal. A born fighter.
He’d never really looked at her before, not like this, like a stranger seen for the very first time. They’d grown up together, after all, and he’d had nothing but admiration for her fire and intelligence, for her drive to succeed where no tribeswoman before her had. She was the first woman to serve on any Assembly in any of the Colonies, the first to jump into any fray, the first to seriously rebel against her role as a wife and, in time, valued breeder. She might have even intimidated him if he hadn’t been the Alpha and therefore immune to that sort of thing.
But you are Alpha, the animal inside him hissed, angry, rising up to sting his skin. And she almost killed your sister. She almost killed your wife. She betrayed you all.
His smile faded. He relaxed back into the plush comfort of his enormous carved chair, inhaled a deep breath, and waited for it to begin.
“Morgan Marlena Montgomery,” Viscount Weymouth intoned over the cacophony, staring down his aquiline nose through his spectacles. He took particular pleasure in his role in the proceedings because it was he whom she’d plotted to kill, after all, regardless of her failure to do so. “Daughter of Malcolm and Elizabeth, former sworn member of this Assembly, do you understand the charges brought against you?”
Morgan stood demurely before the dais, hands folded at her waist, head bowed. The jeering crowd fell suddenly into tense silence, and even the breeze creeping through the open windows seemed to still. Slowly, she raised her head and leveled the viscount with her gaze, calm and direct. Slanted sunbeams caught in her hair and haloed her head in glimmering auburn and bronze, a faerie crown of light, and she looked for a moment like a Michelangelo Madonna, pure and sweet, and nothing at all like the treacherous viper he knew her to be.
“I do,” she answered, her voice soft but clear. “And I accept the will of
the Assembly.”
The viscount sniffed, displeased. She did not seem appropriately afraid. Well, no matter. She’d be afraid very soon, he assured himself. Very soon. He’d have her stripped and shorn and trussed like a turkey; he’d give her to the crowd to soften her up before fixing her to the Furiant, his personal favorite of the tribe’s torture devices, so named in honor of the bohemian dance of spinning and flailing bodies and limbs.
Soon, he promised himself again, nearly salivating with anticipation. I’ll see you naked and begging soon, my duplicitous dove. He snapped the thick sheaf of papers in his hands and moistened his lips, lowering his gaze once more.
“Then by unanimous resolution of this Body,” he read, his sonorous voice carrying to the far reaches of the silent room, “we do hereby sentence you to—”
“Wait.”
The voice came from behind him, clear and commanding, the American accent evident even with that single word. He turned, startled, and the room turned with him, all gazes now focused on the woman who’d appeared so suddenly beside the empty throne. She was lovely and pale, the palest creature in the room, golden-haired and delicate in a gown of ivory satin that nearly matched her skin. She stood there like a shimmering opal among a sea of black pearls.
He glimpsed her solemn face, registered the stubborn lift of her chin, and his heart sank.
“Majesty,” he murmured, executing a low, practiced bow. The men on either side of him rose and bowed in turn, and so did everyone in the crowd, in utter silence. Like static electricity sparking in invisible bursts over all their heads, the sense of anticipation in the air ratcheted higher.
Her husband rose and took her hand, and with a quizzical arch of one dark brow he bent and pressed his lips to her fingers. When he straightened, she sent him a penetrating, sidelong look and let her hand rest in his as she turned to face the room.
“I have an idea,” the Queen declared.
Beneath the starched white collar of his shirt, Viscount Weymouth began to sweat.
Morgan was having trouble remembering how to breathe.
“And that way,” the Queen continued, calmly addressing the stupefied Assembly, “we can kill two birds with one stone. So to speak.”
In the wake of this statement—utter silence.
They’d reconvened in the East Library, a smaller yet no less grand room than the formal hall they’d just left. It was peppered with priceless antiques and ticking clocks and plush Turkish rugs and a huge crystal chandelier that threw fractured prisms of light over the polished mahogany table and the silent, stiff group of nineteen seated around it.
Sixteen Assembly members, one Alpha, one Queen, and her.
The traitor.
To whom the Queen had just offered a lifeline, slim though it was.
Morgan kept herself calm as best she could by focusing on the view of the hills through the windows, rolling drifts of loamy earth carpeted in emerald fields and nodding wild-flowers and miles of forest so dense only a faint memory of sun reached the silent forest floor from the canopy far above. Pale green rays filtered through but never fully penetrated the cool gloom.
The river Avon cut through the dark center of it, miles of snaking turns and crystal clear water that was bejeweled above by darting turquoise dragonflies and perfumed pine needles and gossamer tufts of drifting goldenrod, below by the mirror flash of rainbow trout. On a clear day like this she knew she’d be able to see straight down to the sandy bottom, to the waving tendrils of moss anchored to beds of smooth, dark stones, to the tiny, darting hatchlings and froglets. She’d spent hours exploring the New Forest as a child, many hours and days and months of her life. The memory dissolved like a bitter pill on her tongue; in all likelihood, she would never explore it again.
“With all due respect, my lady,” said the viscount to the Queen past stiff lips, “I fail to see how your plan can be realistically executed.”
From the corner of her eye, Morgan saw Leander’s head turn in the viscount’s direction. She didn’t have to see his face to feel the particular heat of his answering stare: warning and blatantly hostile. Envying the lone hawk that circled far above in the stark cerulean sky beyond the windows, she fisted her trembling hands in her lap and practiced breathing.
In. Out. In...out.
The viscount began again in a more conciliatory tone.
“There’s absolutely nothing to guarantee this female,” he gestured toward Morgan with a curl of his lip, “who’s proven herself a danger to the tribe by the worst possible act of treason, will do as you say. She’ll simply vanish, never to be seen again. Or worse, she will find them. And reveal everything.”
Morgan chanced a glance at him from beneath her lashes.
From his position seated straight-backed and dour near the head of the table, he shook his head. Two bright blotches of red stained his cheeks, a fine sheen of perspiration covered his brow, his hands curled around the arms of his chair so hard his fingers had turned white. She almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“No, she won’t.” Jenna turned her head and gazed across the room at her with luminous eyes of yellow-green, cool and assessing. “Will you, Morgan?”
Wordless, trying not to shake or blink or otherwise reveal the snarling terror monster in her gut, Morgan shook her head no.
Jenna turned back to the viscount and granted him a satisfied smile.
No one said anything for one long, frozen moment. Then a voice chimed up from the middle of the table, stronger than she would have given him credit for.
“I think it’s a good plan.”
Nathaniel, newly christened member of the Assembly, looked nervously around with a flop of dark hair falling over one eye. Morgan leaned against the overstuffed back of her rose chintz chair and exhaled a long, silent breath through her nose. Quiet, she willed, staring hard at him. Please be quiet, or it’s off with your head, you fool!
He was sweet and young, and she didn’t want to see him do anything stupid and get hurt, especially on her account. For not the first time, she wished her Gift of Suggestion could be used across empty space and was not limited to touch.
“Agreed,” said Leander, to the obvious shock of everyone at the table except the Queen, who sat beside him, relaxed and elegant with one finely arched brow slightly raised, as if to say to the rest of them, Go ahead, I dare you.
“But, but—” the viscount sputtered, livid. He jerked out of his chair. “It’s impossible! There is no guarantee—”
Another man stood, Grayson Sutherland, stocky and well-regarded. “The risk is too great, lord. Even you must see—”
“Yes, yes,” someone else was saying loudly, “the risks far outweigh any advantage we could hope to obtain—”
“—she wouldn’t just return—”
“—it’s outrageous to think—”
“—she cannot be trusted!—”
“—the danger to us—”
“—think of the consequences—”
They were all on their feet now, arguing and shouting over one another, all except the Queen and her Alpha, who remained apart and silent, and Morgan, alone at the end of the table, shivering in her chair. Though it was warm enough in the room, she was cold, ice-cold, a freeze that went bone-deep. Grave-deep. She wondered if she’d ever feel warm again.
Leander stood abruptly from his chair, a lithe unfolding of limbs that was at once elegant and unquestionably menacing. “Silence,” he commanded through clenched teeth, and, just as abruptly, there was.
White-lipped and petrified, Morgan smiled. If she had ever questioned the Earl of Sommerley’s authority or his complete control and power over the tribe, his ability to send a group of sixteen savage, bloodthirsty males sinking back into their seats in silent, pale-knuckled fury with just a single word proved it beyond doubt. He was Alpha for good reason.
He stared around the table, and one by one every man in the Assembly glanced away.
“I will speak with my wife,” he w
ent on in that low, steely tone, “alone.”
The men shared sour glances; grumbles of assent were heard. They climbed one by one to their feet, and chairs were scraped back over the marble floor with grating screeches that set Morgan’s pulse skittering and her teeth on edge. Someone came up beside her, gently touched her bare arm. She glanced up to find Nathaniel gazing down at her, smiling hesitantly, that lock of hair falling over one eye, stubbornly refusing to stay in place.
“Miss Morgan, I’ll just take you back down to your—”
“No touching!” hissed Viscount Weymouth, coming up behind him. He wrenched Nathaniel’s hand free of her arm, and Nathaniel blanched and stepped back, wide-eyed. “Do you want her to strike you senseless, boy? Make you her puppet with no more than this?”
He held up one finger as if it were a loaded gun.
Nathaniel took another quick step back. Morgan knew it was useless to argue, to tell him that of course she wasn’t going to do any such thing, so she kept her mouth shut and rose from the chair unsteadily, still not understanding what had brought this all on.
Her confusion was overwhelming and well-founded. Jenna had almost died because of her. Why would she try and save Morgan’s life?
But she wouldn’t soon find out, because the snarling viscount had gone back to the table and snatched up the cattle prod Nathaniel had left behind. He stalked back across the room toward her, holding it straight out and threatening the way a lion tamer wields a whip.
She knew he’d turned it on even before he jammed it against her shoulder, but the jolt of electricity that stabbed through her like a molten spear and sent the room exploding into pops of red and white and then sliding, slipping black was more than confirmation.
At least she had time to grab his wrist before she blacked out.
It was going to rain.
Jenna felt it in her bones, though the sky through the tall windows of the East Library was still that perfect, unclouded blue. There was a dull ache in her chest that foretold the coming storm, just as in the past a fluttering ping in her stomach had indicated an imminent earthquake, a bitter taste on the back of her tongue had predicted snow, and that rare pain behind her right eye—experienced only once, when as a child she’d lived on one of the smaller Hawaiian islands—foreshadowed a volcanic eruption. Hurricanes brought on migraines, pounding and howling like the storm itself.
Edge of Oblivion: A Night Prowler Novel, Book 2 Page 2