by Eva Chase
August points at the spoon-spike. “Talia knows the true word for bronze—she called on it, and it followed her will. That used to be a ladle.”
Whitt blinks, some of his usual nonchalance fading behind a flicker of shock. “What? You’re sure it was her and not—”
“We both watched her do it,” Sylas interrupts firmly. “I was certainly skeptical of the idea, but there was no mistaking what I saw. It was a struggle for her, though.”
“But she’ll improve with practice.” August looks as though he’s barely holding himself back from jumping with joy. “We can start trying to teach you more words—I guess we should start with the simplest ones—”
“Those that are relatively simple but also useful for self-defense,” Sylas says. “No more than one or two to begin with. We don’t want to strain her budding abilities.”
Will I have to take myself back to the awful moments from my past every time I want the magic to work? A shiver shoots through my gut, but there’s elation in it too.
I’ve proven it. There’s something magical in me. Whatever I have to do to use that power, it’ll be worth it to have a chance of standing up for myself against our enemies.
Whitt stares at me for a second longer before his face snaps back into a more typical unconcerned expression. He clears his throat. “We have another, more pressing matter to discuss. Aerik accepted your invitation, my lord. We can expect him and his cadre for dinner in three days’ time.”
Chapter Seven
Whitt
I never enjoy Ralyn’s visits from the Unseelie border. They’ve rarely brought any news worth celebrating—generally the opposite. But this report promises to be even more troubling, when rather than meeting me in my office via the concealed outer entrance, he instead sent a leaf gliding through a window to me on a conjured lick of breeze. Its message asked only that I meet him at the edge of the southwest woods.
Does he have some reason to fear being seen approaching the keep? He could have waited until nightfall when he’d have blended into the darkness. Instead the leaf’s urgent patter against my face got me out of bed much earlier than I’d have preferred, especially after spending most of yesterday prowling around Aerik’s domain. The mid-morning sunlight glares straight into my weary eyes.
As I reach the forest, my nostrils flare. Amid the pungent scents of pine and cedar, I pick up a trace of the man’s scent from just a little farther south—mingled with the metallic tang of fresh blood.
My pulse quickens, all my senses going on alert. I stalk into the cooler shadows between the trees, and Ralyn’s lean form rises from where he was crouched in the underbrush some twenty feet away.
Rises and then sways. I hurry forward and catch his elbow just before he collapses. When I squint, I make out a dark, damp patch that stands out against the deep green fabric of his tunic by his waist.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, checking him over for other wounds and taking in the scrapes on his wrists and knuckles, the splotch of a bruise at the corner of his jaw, the talon-shaped scratches across his temple that look inexpertly sealed. “You should be in one of the healers’ tents, not roaming around here. And you’d better not tell me the arch-lords have done away with healers along the front.”
Ralyn manages a hoarse chuckle at my disparaging tone. “Saw a healer. He didn’t do a good enough job, apparently. Rushing when there were so many— I tried to give it a chance to heal on its own, came when I thought I was good enough to travel, but the cut opened up again while I was heading here. I thought… it wouldn’t be good for morale if the pack saw me staggering up to the keep like this.”
He’s lucky I was there to receive his message. So wretchedly loyal he’d have rather bled out here in the woods than come straight for help. I inhale with an irritated hiss that’s mainly directed at whichever Unseelie bastards inflicted his wounds. “Better if we get August to look at it. Patching people up is much more his specialty than mine, especially if the battlefield healers weren’t quite up to the job.”
The last bits of color drain from Ralyn’s already sallow face. “I’m not sure I can even make the walk at this point.”
I wave off his concern before he can protest more. “If I can make the trip across the fields, my cadre-fellow can join us here too.” I pluck a leaf off an oak—possibly the same tree Ralyn made use of—and murmur my intention to it. It flits toward the keep, where no doubt the whelp is puttering around in the kitchen as he so enjoys.
“What are you doing back here at all?” I ask, guiding Ralyn down until he’s sitting. “A regular report could have waited until you’d given yourself more of a chance to recover. Has the tide turned? Do the others need more supplies?”
Ralyn grimaces. “The blasted ravens hit us twice as hard a few days ago—the morning after the full moon. We were still disorganized after the wildness. None of the squadrons were fully prepared. We—we lost Filip and Ashim. The pricks tore them to pieces. A couple of the others took bad blows, worse than mine.” His voice has become even more ragged. “Reinforcements from farther south came in time to push the feather-brains back, but I don’t think there are more than three or four of us from Oakmeet out there who can give our all going forward, and that’s hardly enough to hold our own. None of the other squadrons will have our backs.”
My jaw works. Of course not. They can’t forget about maintaining appearances in the hierarchy of the packs even when our mutual enemies are slaughtering us wholesale. Maggots eat all those mangy bastards.
“They attacked after, not during the full moon?” I have to clarify. If the stinking ravens have discovered that weakness—
But to my relief, Ralyn nods. “I’d hate to think what would have happened if they’d been bold enough to strike during the night and found us in the grips of the curse. The usual glamours and the rest must have convinced them we were standing strong then.” He pauses. “I thought you should know as soon as possible. The moment this wound is sealed again—"
I cut him off again. “You’re not going back until you can give it your all. Stay and rest at least a few more days once August has patched you up. And consider that an order.”
The man doesn’t look happy about it, but he holds his tongue on that subject. “I don’t know how we can gain an advantage if they keep at us that fiercely. There always seem to be more of the ravens, and they’re only ramping up their efforts. When we’re barely holding our own...”
“Don’t fret over it. That’s for me to think on.”
With a pounding of paws, August dashes over to us as a wolf. He straightens up into his regular form, his expression already worried. “What’s happened?”
I explain Ralyn’s situation in as few words as necessary. My younger half-brother is already kneeling next to him before I’ve gotten out the second sentence. He grunts disapprovingly at the sight of the re-opened wound.
“See that his innards will stay securely in his belly and that he makes it to his house for some much-needed recuperation,” I instruct August when I’m done, and glance at Ralyn. “I’ll come check on you tonight.”
As I cross the fields to return to the keep, my gaze slides over the cluster of houses our pack-kin call home, instinctively taking a tally of who remains and how fit they might be to join the battle against the Unseelie. My gut twists at how sparse the pickings are.
We have a few good fighters left and a handful of decent ones among those who keep up the sentry duty, but they’re barely a large enough force to hope to push back someone like Aerik if he decides to storm our domain. I’ve already allowed our resources to be stretched so much thinner than I’d like. If I send even more of them to the border, we’ll be nearly defenseless.
But without a cure for the curse to get us back in the arch-lords’ good graces, bringing about any kind of noticeable triumph on the battlefield is our best chance at re-earning their favor and leaving this fringe backwater behind. I might not have the same sense of ownership that Sylas does when i
t comes to Hearthshire, but I miss the stronger pulse of the Heart’s energies, the greater ease with which any act of magic came when we lived so much closer to its light.
And if we regain Hearthshire, perhaps we can find real peace there, at least for a time. After several decades, this constant holding pattern while living in disgrace starts to wear at the nerves.
I can’t offer Sylas that gift yet. I may never be able to offer it if we continue to falter in the conflict with the Unseelie. I’m the brains of his cadre, the schemer—I should be able to deliver this one thing to him.
And now we’re several steps farther from achieving that goal. Two pack members lost to dust, others badly injured—I can already picture how the news will pain him.
Before I deliver that dire admission, I want to conjure some inspiration that’ll give at least a little more cause for optimism to go alongside it. A revised strategy for our presence at the border. Some other approach to proving ourselves to the arch-lords. There could be scraps of information in all my notes and records that I haven’t quite connected before.
Inside the keep, I head to my office rather than seeking out Sylas. I’ll give myself an hour to unearth that inspiration, and then there’ll be nothing for it. If he realizes I’ve delayed reporting to him, he won’t be pleased.
I stride around the corner in the upstairs hall—and find our human interloper poised outside my office door. She’s a few feet away but eyeing it with obvious interest, her head cocked and a few waves of that absurdly pink hair drifting across her cheek.
At my arrival, Talia startles, drawing back a step with a guilty expression. A few weeks ago, I might have taken that to mean she’d been up to no good. Now, with everything I’ve seen of and heard from her… I have to admit the most likely reason for her anxiety is that she does still feel like an intruder despite the official welcome into the pack she’s gotten, as if she has no right to so much as look at the entrance to a room she hasn’t been granted access to.
I did come down on her harshly enough to give her a panic attack the last time I caught her out here, eavesdropping.
The pinch of guilt that comes with the memory dispels any rancor I’d feel now. How can I blame her for being curious? Most of the secrets we fae have kept from her have been to her detriment. If anything, I’ve got to admire her tenacity.
“Even Sylas couldn’t unlock a door simply by staring at it,” I say with a playful lilt. “Getting awfully ambitious with those unexpected powers of yours.”
The mite blushes, but she squares her shoulders at the same time, no longer half as intimidated by my light-hearted heckling as she used to be. Maybe she shouldn’t be, given that we’ve now discovered her specialness extends to supernatural talents I’d believed only fae could possess. That memory, of walking in on Sylas, August, and her in the midst of their little experiment last night, sends a renewed twinge of uneasiness through my chest, but I ignore the sensation.
Sylas has decided she’s staying with us, and while that’s the case, the more ways she can defend herself, the better off we’ll all be. Even if it’s yet another inexplicable variable surrounding her that I can’t account for in my plans.
“I wasn’t trying to break in,” she says. “I only stopped for a moment. I just… wondered what you do in there.”
She overheard me talking with Ralyn in the office before. I suppose Sylas hasn’t spelled out to her what my responsibilities to him and the pack are.
I tip my head toward the other end of the hall. “Our glorious leader has a workspace. Why shouldn’t I have one too?”
“August doesn’t have a study, or whatever.” She pauses. “At least, he’s never mentioned it.”
I can’t help smirking at that. “You could say August’s office is that gym downstairs where he’s been beating your fighting skills into shape. Preparing to lead the charge should we need to do battle doesn’t require much paperwork.”
“You were talking about some kind of war the other day with… one of the pack members?”
“My area is more logistics than dealing out the blows, although I’ll bring out the claws should I need to. Believe me, August would be more than pleased to be out there tackling the Unseelie if Sylas didn’t want him here in case the rest of the pack comes under threat.”
As I reach for the doorknob, the spell on it keyed to my touch, Talia adjusts her weight on her feet. “Why is anyone having to fight the Unseelie? What are they attacking you for… or are the Seelie attacking them?”
“So many questions,” I tease, but the truth is that her desire to understand everything she can about this place strikes a chord in me. She’s found herself here through no will of her own, been mistreated or outright savaged at nearly every turn, and nevertheless she’s determined to learn enough to hold her own. I’ve met plenty of fae with less drive than that.
I roll the question around in my mind before releasing it. “Do you want to come in?”
Her eyes widen slightly, but with an eager glint that lights up those grass-green irises to something as brilliant as polished jade. It’s enough to elevate her from fairly pleasing to dazzling, enough that a different sort of sensation reverberates through me: a twang of desire that settles low in my gut.
For a second, I regret my offer, but it’s already out there. I’ll have to make the best of it.
I push the door open wide and stalk inside, assuming Talia will follow without further invitation. She eases over the threshold. Her momentary return to timidity subsides as she takes in the desks and the bookshelf, the drawer units built into—or perhaps more accurately, grown from—the wooden walls, and the map of the Mists stretched out above them.
Not surprisingly, it’s the last of those that draws her first close inspection. She walks up to it, her hand rising as if to trace the lines of our world with its erratic borders.
She points to the mark like a sunburst in the center of the uneven circle. “That’s the Heart of the Mists. This is all Summer realm on the west side? And the Unseelie live on the east… Is it always winter there?”
“Milder or harsher depending on their proximity to the Heart, but yes. I’m told they like it that way. But given our present conflict, I may have been misled.”
She glances back at me. “They’re trying to steal parts of the Summer realm?”
I nod. “As far as we can tell. They haven’t made any actual demands. They simply began storming domains along the edges of the border and attempting to claim those lands for themselves. They took the first couple of domains they tried, but once our arch-lords caught wind of what was going on, they summoned enough of a force to push them back. But it’s been a constant clash since then, them vying for more ground and us aiming to hold ours.”
“How long has that been going on?”
My gaze drops to my desk, to the stack of leather-bound notebooks at one side, the sheaves of old reports at the other. I’ll have the exact date of the first incursion written down somewhere, but it’s not something I’ve spent much time mulling over recently.
“Not quite three decades,” I say. “Longer than you’ve been alive. There’ve been lulls now and then, but in the past few years they’ve started to press particularly viciously.”
“Has anyone tried asking them why?”
I give her a baleful look. “I’m sure our arch-lords have reached out to their Unseelie equivalents to some extent. The content and outcomes of those attempts wouldn’t be shared with a fringe-banished pack like us. But there’ve often been tensions between the two realms—it’s in our natures to clash—and I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t been inclined to share much. They’d rather simply take what they want than negotiate.”
“Even if it means thirty years of fighting?”
“Thirty years is barely a blink for fae, mite.”
Talia makes a face at the indirect reference to her human mortality and turns to face me where I’m standing behind my desk, my arms resting on the top of my chair. “And
there are people from this pack out there helping fight the Unseelie. I wouldn’t have thought Sylas would want to risk anyone when he’s said the pack is already a lot smaller than it was before… before you ended up here.”
“Ah, well, we’re hoping that with a little well-placed assistance, we might win over the arch-lords again and reverse that whole ‘ending up here’ situation. That’s where I come in.” I motion to the mess on the desk. “I work out how we can best contribute with the warriors we can spare—and how many of them we can reasonably spare, given the likelihood of other trouble coming our way. I have other contacts stationed in or making the rounds through various other domains, passing on information to help me judge those odds.”
I can’t deny that it’s a delight seeing comprehension dawn on her face as she puts more of the pieces together. “That’s how you found out how Aerik’s been talking about Oakmeet—those contacts.”
I offer a modest shrug. “Any lord worth his while wants to keep tabs on what his brethren are doing. Even among the Seelie, we squabble plenty over territory and whatever else we take a mind to wanting.”
Now that she’s been in the room for a short while without that bringing any catastrophe down on us, I feel comfortable enough to sink into my chair. Leaning back in it, I rest my hands on the arm rests and give her an appraising once-over. “Do you think you’re ready for Aerik’s visit? I know you must have… reservations about seeing him and his cadre again.”
I’m being polite with my phrasing. What I really mean is she’s undoubtedly terrified—a terror that stiffens her posture and tightens her lips the moment I say his name. Spirited as this woman is proving herself to be, I’ve seen her spiral into panic at even a reminder of her former captors. Confronting them in the flesh won’t be easier on her nerves.