Jess grinned. Seeing that he’d finished his, she swallowed the last mouthful of her own wine. She stood, grabbed his hand and hauled him toward the dance floor, winding through the tables, pushing aside patrons who laughed as the pair made their way past.
Damien laughed along with her and gathered her in his arms to dance. Jess decided there were worse ways to spend her night.
Jess groaned, pulling a pillow over her head, trying to drown out the insistent pounding at the door. Growling inarticulately, she pulled the pillow off her head, knowing they wouldn’t go away. She also knew that if she didn’t answer shortly they would come in, regardless. She looked at Damien, who suddenly woke up due to the pounding on the door, and sat bolt upright. Before she could stop him, he’d rolled out of the bed stark naked, grabbing his long hunting knife and turning toward the door as it opened.
“No, Damien don’t …”
Jess groaned, sinking back onto the bed, one hand over her eyes as the guards entered the room. Damien was disarmed and taken to the ground as even more guards entered, cluttering the small room.
“My Lady? Is everything alright?”
“Yes, Megan, I’m fine, or I was until you all barged in here. Please let Damien up, he’s not a threat. Damien calm down, I’m sorry, they won’t hurt you.”
Jess hauled herself out of the bed dragging the sheet with her since she didn’t have any more clothes on than Damien did—not that it bothered her much, having grown up living in the palace, surrounded by and tended to by servants. She guessed from experience that Damien, like any other man, would be more likely to calm down if she wasn’t standing there naked in front of men he perceived as a threat.
“Damien, calm down and they will let you up.”
Her face impassive, Megan picked up Jess’s shirt and handed it to her, then moved to shield her from the view of the male guards, although they were all studiously not looking at her. Jess smiled and thanked the guard despite herself. Pulling the shirt on, she then reached for her pants, passing the sheet to Damien, who was finally standing, under the watchful eye of the guards.
Jess looked at Megan and frowned. “I suppose it is useless asking you guys to wait outside?”
“Sorry, My Lady, he had a weapon.”
Jess noticed that Megan didn’t look at all sorry. Still, she couldn’t be angry; the guard was only doing her job and if anything happened to her while the guards had their backs turned it would likely cost them their job.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, so do I.” Jess shook her head, knowing the futility of arguing with any of them.
She ran her hand though her hair, which wasn’t tied up in its habitual braid or a sophisticated pile on her head held in place with an assortment of pins and combs. Left to its own devices, her hair was thick and fell halfway down her back. She pushed it back in annoyance as she crossed the short distance between her and Damien.
Jess paused, her eyes narrowing as the guards tried to put themselves between her and Damien. “Move. Now. If Damien intended any harm, then he’s had plenty of opportunity to do it.” Jess tried to suppress her irritation and flicked her gaze across to Megan, knowing she was the senior ranking guard among them.
“Megan, you can stay in the room, but don’t test my patience.”
Megan looked at the other guards and jerked her head toward the door. One of them opened his mouth, intending to protest, but closed it again without a word, filing out the door as Megan’s gaze turned deadly. The guard then moved her position—not so incidentally—giving her a straight line to Damien if she needed it. Jess noticed that the positioning wasn’t lost on Damien, who seemed to be trying to regain some of his usual humour.
“Mad husband?” Damien smiled a little and shook his head.
Jess bit her lip and closed the distance between them. She raised one hand and ran her fingers down his cheek, pulling him down to kiss him on the lips.
“Not quite. I’m sorry, it’s a little complicated. They’ve come to drag my friends back, I’m nobody important; from the point of view of the guards, it’s a package deal.”
Hearing a snort of laughter that was quickly suppressed behind her, Jess turned to glance at Megan, her eyebrow raised.
“Sorry, My Lady.”
Unfortunately, the guard didn’t look all at that sorry.
Jess sighed and turned back to Damien. Pulling his head down, she kissed him. “Thank you for an enjoyable night, Damien, I’m sure we will run into each other again.”
Jess backed away, a little reluctant for the night to be over, then turned and walked out the door, sighing again as she walked into the hallway. She grinned, seeing both Alex and Kyle leaning against the wall at the end of the hallway near the stairs.
“Well, at least father can’t complain about the guard hauling us out of one of the pleasure houses this time.” Alex grinned at them all and trotted down the stairs, with Kyle and Jess following.
Kyle chuckled. “I’m not sure he’ll find the upper rooms here at The Tankard much better.”
Jess followed them across the deserted common room of the bar to the door being held open for them by a sleepy looking barkeep.
“Thanks.” Jess smiled as he nodded acknowledgement and let them out on the street.
It wasn’t the first time the guard had hauled the three of them out of the establishment in the early hours of the morning. Seeing their horses waiting for them in the cobbled street outside the bar, held by more guardsmen, she shared a grin with Alex and Kyle. At least the guards were useful for something. Mounting their horses, they walked them through the empty streets of the early dawn back toward the palace.
4
The Sundered, Kin and Elder
Alex’s last conscious thought as he merged between the waking world and blissful sleep was a jumble of confusion. He half hoped that he would sleep the night through this time, as he’d heard others did regularly. The other part of him hoped that he would return to his other self, the self that was competent and capable of being the hero he wished he would be. He slipped into a deep, restless sleep.
Alex groaned, trying to ignore the constant shaking and pretend he was still asleep. Unfortunately, the person doing the constant shaking had other ideas.
“Come on, boy. Get your lazy carcass out of bed.”
The voice was familiar. A curious mix of refinement that spoke volumes, as if the speaker was brought up in the King’s Court—yet there was an unusual roughness, as if the owner of the voice had known tough times. Alex groaned again. He was familiar with that voice.
“Great Uncle, please. I need to sleep just this once. Please?” Alex was astounded by the hint of pleading in his voice.
He cracked open one eye and looked up at his great uncle—not the old rotting corpse he knew his great uncle must be by now, but the dashing figure from the family portrait. The later one, after he’d made his name and saved the Kingdom. Not the earlier, callow youth he’d been before the war had struck. Alex had seen that portrait too, even though he was never meant to. It had been hidden away in the attic, but he’d found it anyway. That picture revealed way too much about what his great uncle’s peers had thought of him.
“I’m sorry, son. I wish I could let you sleep, but you don’t have time.” Great Uncle Edward Rathadon smiled slightly. “Get up. It’s time to train.”
Alex groaned again and hauled himself out of bed. His eyes swept across the empty bottle of wine on the floor, and he spared a moment to glare at his uncle. He wondered, not for the first time, why his great uncle was favouring him and not either of his brothers, who were much more capable for the task at hand, or his sister. When it came down to it, even Elizabeth was stronger. Then he snorted. He needed to wake up. His siblings didn’t possess as much of the Taint as he did.
“So you keep saying, Uncle. Yet the world I live in does not change. I am still the useless fourth child: I stagger from one drunken party to another and get dragged out of some of the most disreputable establi
shments. The other half of my time I spend waiting to see if I’m going to go mad and kill everyone.” Alex heard the bitterness in his own voice. The self-pity.
Alex hauled himself out of bed, noting that while he felt exhausted, he felt it draining away as he pulled in power, almost automatically, to wash away his fatigue. If he had to name one of the positives of being Tainted, one was certainly that he did not have to suffer through the hangover he knew he should have after the night’s depravity and excess.
“Ok, Uncle. I’m sorry. I’ll stop whining now. It’s been months since you’ve paid a visit.”
Alex caught a perplexed look flash across his uncle’s face and smiled. Not expecting an answer, he looked around and saw his boots, flung off to the side of the room, right where he knew Kyle had left them. From what he remembered of the night before, he was in no state to take off his boots when he collapsed into bed, let alone fling them across the room. While it was hard for the three of them to get drunk, dedicated practise had made it possible. They had learned it was a matter of volume. Picking up his boots, he pulled them on, then walked to his weapons rack, arming himself before turning back to Edward.
“So, Uncle, what do you have prepared for tonight?”
Alex smiled and followed his uncle, the cold assaulting him as he merged between this world and the next—that place that all Tainted who were strong enough could access. A part of the real world, yet not a part of it; and time, as far as he could work out, moved differently. His sessions under his uncle’s tender mercies seemed to go on for way longer than he was away from his bed.
Feeling the power vibrate and swirl around him, he knew another approached. Grinning, he turned and watched as Kyle appeared, walking toward them with Lady Leanna Katrina Shaddin, another figure from legend who, like his uncle, was reduced to so much dust in her tomb. He’d stopped asking exactly what they were now since they all routinely avoided answering.
My Lady, it’s nice to see you again. Alex nodded to her. While she was always polite to him, she had a fierce legend surrounding her exploits.
Ah, always polite, Alex, it’s refreshing. Kat grinned at him and nodded a greeting to his uncle.
They weren’t waiting too long before Jess joined them with the taciturn Lord Callum Barraclough—yet another figure of legend; although, unlike his uncle and Kat, Lord Barraclough had retreated back out to his remote country estate not long after the end of the war. It was said he became a hermit, withdrawing from the court and society, dying on his county estate. Still, given they could all travel around readily using the veiled paths, where they actually resided had less meaning than most people today figured.
Now that we’re all here, let’s go. Edward tilted his head to one side, as if listening to something. There is something you must all see and understand. You will not engage. That is not why I am taking you to see this. Edward turned his gaze to each of them in turn until they nodded compliance.
Alex, Jess and Kyle traded glances as they followed Edward down the veiled paths. Before too long, they stood looking out from the veil toward a small farm house. He felt the strong surge of the Taint and the madness of one overwhelmed by the power. Alex felt himself restrained by his uncle as he automatically lunged to help those in trouble.
No, Alex, it’s too late, just watch and learn. Alex glared at his uncle, but subsided and watched the scene unfold at the small remote farmhouse.
Smoke rose in plumbs from the farmhouse, a red glow coming from inside as it burned. Three bodies were still visible in the fading light, lying broken on the ground in the yard—telling all who might come by later on that whatever tragedy occurred was not an accident.
Devon Connor stood at the forest edge looking back at the farmhouse he had called home his entire life, at the dead bodies of his mother, father and sister. He was calm, dispassionate, despite the horror before him, that even a week ago would have horrified and sickened him. Then the dispassion faded. Confusion came; the overwhelming pain Devon realised he should feel, yet somehow multiplied, worse. Devon threw back his head and screamed his pain out into the void—that place with the whispering voices, the voices that made him think for the longest time he was going mad.
In a small part of his brain, right back in its depths, he realised he was mad from the Taint, even though he’d tried his best to hide and push down. The treatments he’d been given by the healer hadn’t worked. Overwhelmed by the emotions that ran through him, as if he could no longer tolerate them the way he used to, power surged through him which he didn’t understand how to control, causing more pain. Causing inexplicable things to occur that he had no explanation for—except that even if he didn’t understand how he’d done it, he knew that he had. The world around him would fade in and out; he would end up in places that he hadn’t even known existed, with no notion of how he’d got there. Then home again, just as inexplicably. He’d suffered from blackouts, with time gone. Blood on his hands with only flashes of memory, which suggested he’d killed people he didn’t recognise.
Confused, in pain, Devon retreated into the forest, leaving behind the only family he had ever known. The family he had once loved. He had killed his family in agony, in a rage-filled frenzy. He didn’t even comprehend why—just that, from the flashes of memory that came back to him and the evidence of blood on his hands, clothes and hunting knife, he had slaughtered them all.
Devon perceived the Taint surge through him. The fatigue disappeared, as it always did, and he picked up his pace, running through the forest. He didn’t know where he was running to, except that it was toward the place where the whispering voices seemed stronger, toward the throb of energy that seemed like his own; it called him, leading him, like a beacon, toward his goal. He paused briefly, turning, sensing another like him nearby, watching. Devon dismissed them. Whoever it was wasn’t a threat or of any interest to him right now. He turned and continued back on his path.
As he moved unerringly toward his goal, driven, he killed anyone he encountered. They were humans, so killing them appeased an ugly part of him. It fed the anger that bubbled inside and never truly went away.
Alex sensed the other’s power, his pain and rage. He knew that the newly Sundered one’s name was Devon, Devon Conner. He’d been the child of a farmer who bore the Taint as they all did, until today, when the Taint had consumed him.
Alex saw what was once a man cut down the three members of his own family before setting the farmhouse alight. He’d paused and looked in their direction. Alex realised that Devon sensed their presence, yet after what seemed only a moment, Devon dismissed them and continued on his way.
Uncle, I could have helped that family. They might still be alive if you’d let me intervene. Alex tried to push against his uncle’s restraint, to no avail.
While Edward might be a shade from the past, he was still stronger than Alex was right now, or perhaps just had more knowledge of the Taint and how to use it. As Alex’s anger drained, to be replaced by futility and loss, he felt the pressure which had kept him at bay release him.
Alex closed his eyes, the fragmented memory of the slaughter of his mother playing over in his mind. He took a shuddering breath and pushed the memory of that childhood trauma aside. Alex emerged from the Veiled World followed by Jess and Kyle, who looked just as shaken, and walked toward the bodies sprawled on the ground, cut to pieces moments before.
“No, Alex, you couldn’t have. He was killing them as we arrived, they were already dead.”
Kat’s voice was soft, and he felt her hand on his shoulder. His uncle and Cal stood not far away, looking over the destruction at the small remote farm with haunted looks in their eyes. Alex understood they all would have seen such things and worse during the Sundered War.
Kyle paused his pacing around the small farmyard, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “He knew we were here. He sensed us. Why didn’t he try to kill us?”
Cal’s mood was grim, assessing him before answering. “The Sundered are not tr
uly mad—well, some of them are; they die early on, killed off by their kind—but they sense others with the Taint, even from the first moment they are born into their new life.”
Jess contemplated what Cal told them and, as the implication sunk in, she looked, horrified, from Alex to Kyle, then back to the slaughtered family. She shook her head in disbelief and took an inadvertent step back. She looked around at the dead people and the burning house.
“Will we become like him? Will I do this, Uncle?” Jess heard the catch in her voice but, for once, didn’t care. She was genuinely horrified by what she’d seen.
“Not necessarily like him, Jess, but you are in transition; you grow stronger in your powers every day that goes by. You have nothing to fear—Edward, Kat and I all went through transition. I doubt that you will break entirely and become one of the Sundered.” Cal’s tone was calm and even.
Alex watched as Jess shook her head, not comprehending what she was being told—or rather, trying not to understand it.
“It is a carefully guarded and kept secret in this day and age. All of us had access to the power of the veiled world and, as with our people, we went through the transition, although not as that poor man did. And we were just as capable of killing everyone around us. We found another target, though. Some of our kin were trying to destroy the human world, or so we thought. While you’ve been told details of the Sundered War, there is much of it you do not understand.”
Jess turned and took a few steps away, her face in her hands as she fought off tears.
“I don’t understand, Uncle Cal. I don’t want to understand.” Even as she said the words, she realised it was a lie. Unfortunately, she knew and believed every word her uncle had uttered.
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