by Eva Chase
Steeling myself, I grasp the sculpted bird and run my thumb over its belly. Sylas’s instructions run through my mind. Trace the deepest groove here, press the bump there, swipe back and forth over the shallower line in between—
The sculpture’s wooden wings flutter against my hands. I pull back my fingers, and the enchanted bird flits away, veering out the nearest window.
Sylas said its magic should send it straight to him. The moment he sees it, he’ll know there’s trouble here, that he needs to come back. Now I just have to hope he’s close enough to make it back before Cole carries out whatever damage he’s attempting to cause.
Listening carefully, I dart back to the living room. The hushed voices outside are intoning words I don’t recognize. True names? Some other sort of magic? My skin crawls all over again.
I reach to the pouch of salt and loosen the opening, just in case. With careful steps, I slip up the stairs to the second floor and go to my bedroom window. I can peek outside from there without worrying that Cole will spot me right away.
I can’t see him from this angle anyway, but the woman from before wanders into view, her eyes fixed on the house and her hands weaving through the air in time with her indecipherable mumbling. When her gaze flicks upward, I jerk to the side with a lurch of my pulse. She doesn’t give any indication that she saw me.
Maybe they wouldn’t care even if they knew I was inside. Cole must have been monitoring Sylas and his cadre and maybe the rest of the warriors, so he’d have to at least suspect August’s human companion is still in the building. Given the way he treated me even when he thought I was valuable and his amusement at the thought of Ambrose’s squadron leader “removing” me, I don’t think he’s sparing much thought to how his plans will affect me. In his mind, hurting me—possibly killing me—might even be a bonus.
I still have no idea what exactly the three of them are up to. I lurk upstairs for a few minutes longer, watching in quick peeks and straining my ears, but the tight space of the small room starts to niggle at me. At least downstairs I have more room to maneuver if they decide to break in.
I hurry down the narrow hall. Just as I’m reaching the top of the stairs, a shudder runs through the floor beneath my feet.
“Almost,” Cole says in a tone so triumphant it chills me straight through. “Let’s get those final protections down…”
A quavering rush of magical energy flows around me in a wave. My nerves scatter. As I clutch the banister, the entire house shudders again.
Fighting the impression that I’m about to be tossed from the stairs, I scramble down them before the house shakes so hard that I actually will be. The tremors rippling through it grow with every lurching step. I stumble at the bottom, one of the slats of my foot brace catching on a rough spot in the floor and throwing me forward. As I hit the floor with a painful smack of my palms and knees, the walls fracture around me.
I spin around so I’m sitting with my hands steadying me from behind. In every direction, the wooden growths Sylas and his cadre summoned into the house are cracking and crumbling. I jerk my arms up over my head an instant before the floor above crashes on me in a shower of splinters. As the bits rain down, both those shards and the floor beneath me disintegrate into dusty mulch.
When I dare to lower my hands, crumbs of destroyed wood tumble off my arms and trickle through my hair. I’m crouched in the midst of a total ruin. Nothing remains of the house except scattered heaps of that pale mulch, sprinkled with scraps of leaves, wisps of seed fluff that must have filled the pillows and mattresses, and lumps of metal and stone.
My stomach heaves in horror. After all the magic my men put into constructing this house and its contents, Cole and his lackeys smashed it to pieces in a matter of minutes. I’m lucky they didn’t smash through me too.
Of course, I’m not safe from that yet. Cole steps forward from where he was standing at the edge of the destruction, the sunlight glancing off his blue-white hair and his teeth bared in a vicious grin. “Look what we have here. Just think of all the fun we can have with you now.”
The sight of his cruel face and the familiar menacing pose right in front of me are enough to make my chest clench up. My ribs seem to close around my lungs, squeezing away my breath while my heart hammers against them in vain. As I gasp for air, my head spins.
No. No. I can’t let the panic take over, can’t let myself become helpless the way I was before. I’m not in a cage. I have ways of fighting back.
How dare he think he’s going to torment another girl the way he did with me.
The flare of anger steadies me. I draw in enough oxygen to clear my head, one hand dropping back to the ground for balance and the other leaping to my pouch of salt.
My pulse is pounding so hard my body shakes with it, but I’ve practiced with August enough to move into a low fighting stance without needing to think. My fingers close around a handful of salt crystals. I shift my weight forward.
All I have to do is fend him off for long enough for Sylas to get here. I can’t focus on anything but making it to that moment.
Cole strolls closer, his lackeys hanging back to watch. His fitted boots crunch through the dry shreds of wood. His gaze skims over me. “Look at you. Just what do you think you’re going to—”
He comes to a halt with a jerk, staring at the ground. No, staring at my feet—at the foot I’ve just slid forward in my defensive pose.
The foot he broke nearly nine years ago, now encased in Sylas’s brace.
Oh, God. He can see it. He can see me.
Panic hits me in a frigid blast. Whatever spells Cole and his pack-kin cast to crumble the magic that built this house, they crumbled the glamours on me too.
Cole’s attention snaps back to my face. To my eyes, which must now be the same color they always were, my features more fleshed out but otherwise a match for his former prisoner. What little color was left in his face drains away. Then his eyes spark with a light that’s twice as brutal as before.
“Oh,” he growls, “Lord Sylas is in so much more trouble than I even thought.”
The last word has barely left his mouth when he springs at me. A yelp breaks from my throat, but my horror hasn’t knocked those weeks of training from my mind. My hand yanks back automatically and flings toward Cole, hurling all the salt I could hold straight into his face.
As they strike his skin, the crystals burst apart. With a pained snarl, Cole reels backward, swiping at his eyes, his mouth.
My flicker of triumph snuffs out as quickly as it appeared. His lackeys who were standing by bewildered a moment ago leap to their boss’s aid.
“I’m fine,” Cole barks, jabbing a finger toward me. “Get the wretched girl.”
I shove my hand into the pouch, every muscle tensing. Panicked dizziness sweeps through me again. The crystals pinch my skin. I can only throw at one of my attackers at once. Who do I have a better chance against: the man or the woman? They both look ready to tear my throat out.
I ready myself, fighting the trembling of my body, and a roar echoes across the fields. Three massive wolves race into view—wolves I know so well a sob of relief jolts out of me.
The one in the lead with the white scarred eye slams into the fae man who’s just about to lunge at me. From right behind him, the ruddy-furred one springs at the woman, knocking the sword she’s drawn from her hand and sinking his fangs into her forearm. And the sandy-colored one whose ocean-blue gaze stands out starkly in his wolfish face charges straight at Cole.
The lackeys are no match for a lord and his cadre. The man starts to shift, and Sylas clamps his jaws around his neck, halting him. The woman doesn’t even try, glowering up at August with lips pressed tight against the pain of her gouged arm.
Cole might be stronger, but he’s still distracted by my salt attack. Before he can do much more than swing a couple of fists at Whitt, the wolf has him pinned, claws poised against the underside of his chin.
“I yield,” the male lackey cries
out.
Sylas shifts into his usual form, gripping the man’s throat with his hand instead. “You will leave here and do us and the human woman no more harm.”
“Agreed!”
As Sylas frees him, the woman makes a similar promise to August. The two lackeys scramble to the sidelines, the woman clutching her arm to her side. Whitt stays in wolf form, glaring down at Cole, who has recovered from the salt enough to glower back at him.
Sylas strides over to them. “Are you going to yield, Aerik’s cadre-chosen, or shall I bury you in the ruin you made of my camp?”
Somehow, even on the brink of death, Cole finds it in him to sneer at the fae lord. “I invoke the right to seek justice served.”
Sylas hesitates. Even Whitt’s muscles tense up where he’s restraining Cole against the ground. The fae lord’s head jerks around, his mismatched gaze finding me—hunched, shivering, and glamourless.
August growls out a curse.
“You’ve stolen my lord’s property, Lord Sylas,” Cole says with a vicious grin, looking far too satisfied for a man with a wolf’s claws only a smidge from dealing a fatal wound. “Such a crime cannot go unaddressed.”
Sylas’s lips curl back from his teeth, his fangs out, but he slices his hand through the air in a gesture to Whitt. The wolf recoils, launching himself off Cole but staying in animal form, his snarl daring Cole to give him an excuse to lash out again.
The gangly fae picks himself off the ground and makes a show of brushing off his tunic and slacks. He backs up a few steps to where his lackeys are standing, but his head stays high.
“Lord Sylas of Oakmeet, you have twenty-four hours to make right how you’ve wronged Lord Aerik of Copperweld,” he announces with a ring of power in the words. Then he lowers his voice. “I’ll tell my lord he can expect his property returned to him by this time tomorrow, or the whole Seelie realm will know that you’re just as much a criminal as your departed mate.”
The threat wrenches at me. I wish desperately for Sylas to tell him off, to tear him down after all, but I can already tell my saviors are bound by some tenet of fae law.
My fingers dig into the crumbling wood. Everything they’d spent so long working for could be ruined. Their chances of ever returning to Hearthshire, their standing with the other lords—shattered as completely as this wrecked house. All because of me.
“Let us not see you or your pack-kin before then,” Sylas says. As Cole motions to his lackeys to shift and they lope off toward the river, all he and his cadre can do is stand there.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sylas
The carriage hitches with a gust of the breeze, swaying beneath our feet. Normally I’d have constructed a steadier vehicle, but in my haste and fury, I may not have given this conjuring the focus it deserved.
It doesn’t help that I’ve urged it to the fastest pace I feel is safe. The landscape of clustered trees and rough knobs of beige stone seems to whip past us beneath the glare of the mid-day sun. At least moving this swiftly, we should make it back to Oakmeet within a few hours.
I’d hoped to spend most of those hours determining our plan of action, but I think we all needed time to settle ourselves in the aftermath of Cole’s threat and our leaving. My memory of the events after he dashed off blur together—checking over Talia for injuries, fragmented discussions with my cadre about what to do, my hurried cajoling of the juniper tree into our enchanted ride while Whitt sped off to inform our squadron of our unexpected departure.
My older brother has stationed himself at the prow where it juts out from beneath the arched beams shading most of the carriage. The jostling of the ride must be getting to him, because in the full sunlight his face looks slightly green, his knuckles pale where he’s gripping the low wall beside him. He peers out at the passing landscape intently, as if searching for an antidote to a churning stomach.
I can’t help noting that he picked that position after Talia tucked herself into the small, padded seat at the stern, where a few sunbeams streak across her vibrant hair. As far away from her as he can get. He didn’t hesitate to spring to her defense when it mattered, so I can’t chide him for failing her. All my observation leaves me with is a dull ache in my own stomach at the sense that I’ve stepped wrong with him in a way I don’t fully comprehend.
He cares for the woman—I know him well enough to pick out the indications, the remarks and gestures that wouldn’t mean a great deal from someone as open as August but from my spymaster are tantamount to doting. His desire for her was clear on his face when he watched her in August’s arms. He’s never been particularly finicky about monogamy in the past—certainly he’s never offered it of himself to any woman I’m aware of, let alone required it from his lovers—but it isn’t as if I’ve demanded a full accounting of his personal affairs.
I’ve missed something, something that seems to have outright wounded him. It might simply be a misunderstanding, phrasing I used that gave the wrong impression of my meaning, but I can’t clarify that without broaching the subject again, and I can tell he wouldn’t let me get very far if I tried.
I may be his lord, but I’m not going to command him to share his personal concerns with me. There will be a time; I will make it right.
But first I have to rearrange this much more urgent catastrophe into a shape that’s at least vaguely acceptable.
The carriage shudders again, and I decide I’m best off sitting rather than standing. I sink onto the bench along the left side, across from the matching seat August took after Talia asked for space while she gathered herself. My younger brother is leaning forward with his elbows braced on his thighs and his hands fisted together in front of his chin, his golden eyes darkened to a muddy hue. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him so troubled, even when he challenged me on Talia’s behalf weeks ago.
I tip my head to him. “I don’t suppose all that deep thinking has produced any brilliant stratagems?”
August shakes himself and straightens up with a grimace. “I’ve been wracking my brain for a way I could have prevented us from getting into this situation at all—but that’s a waste of time when there’s no way to undo it now.”
Talia eases her legs down from her huddled pose and glances from me to August and back. Her shoulders remain rigid, as if braced for the worst. “What will happen if you don’t give me back to Aerik in twenty-four hours?”
I drag the crisply warm air into my lungs. “Cole couldn’t speak for his lord with full authority, but his terms were standard for a claim for justice. I’d expect if we resist they’ll either attack our pack at Oakmeet or turn the matter over to the arch-lords.” Neither of which would have an outcome in our favor.
“Whichever Aerik thinks will undermine his position the least,” Whitt says from the front of the carriage, still staring out over the passing landscape. “Cole could have said they’d be taking the matter to the arch-lords immediately. That would have been the simplest solution with their cadre-chosen already stationed right there. But I don’t think Aerik and his cadre want to bring the arch-lords into it if they can help it.”
Watching him, Talia hesitates for a second before venturing, “Why wouldn’t they? The arch-lords could force Sylas to hand me over, couldn’t they?”
Whitt shrugs. “Aerik knows that as soon as it becomes clear that the source of his cure is so easily moved around, the arch-lords are likely to insist on taking over the process of making it. He’d lose his bargaining chip and the glory that came with it.” He allows himself to glance toward Talia for the first time since we climbed onto the carriage. “But he’d rather the arch-lords end up with you than see us keep you—you can be sure of that.”
I wish I could argue against any point he’s made, but I agree with his assessment entirely. “It does buy us a short amount of time to come up with a solution.”
Whitt’s gaze returns to me, alert despite his apparent queasiness. “Do you think the arch-lords’ cadre-chosen will be suspicious of our abrupt depart
ure so soon after you spoke to them?”
I grimace. “More likely they’ll see it as running off with our tails between our legs, considering they tossed my proposal aside so easily.”
Not that I could blame them for their reasoning, which was sound enough. I offered to send a small foray of two or three warriors into the Unseelie realm to pounce on however many ravens it took to uncover more information about their plans. They rightly pointed out that if they approved such a foray and the Unseelie discovered it, the ravens would use that violation to justify further attacks. The arch-lords prefer to keep the high ground of merely defending what’s already ours.
But they dismissed the offer so brusquely—showed so little appreciation for the fact that I’d made it—it rankles me that I lowered myself to appealing to them when at least two of them extended no respect at all to me in turn.
“I don’t think it should affect how we approach the situation with Aerik,” I add.
Talia looks down at her hands, clasped on her lap. “What can you do? They know who I am now and that I’m with you. They’re going to keep trying one thing or another until they’ve gotten me back or at least ripped me away from you, aren’t they?”
My hands ball at the hopelessness in her voice. If I could wallop Aerik out of existence and all our problems with him, I’d do it in an instant, just to bring the light back into her.
“The only way we could get them to back down is if we forced a yield,” August says into our momentary, dire silence. “From everything we know, it doesn’t seem Aerik has told anyone other than his cadre about Talia. Too much chance of word getting back to the arch-lords, probably. So if we could get the three of them in a position where their lives hang on the balance and insist they swear to leave her alone…”