35. Tempest
35
TEMPEST
V exxion might be busy with the king, but he was savvy. Since I didn’t want him seeing what I was doing, I tightened the forest and walls around my mind. After changing into my leathers, the clothing I was most comfortable in, and forbidding Drask from coming with me, I flitted to a shadowy corner of the king’s living area. I peered around quickly to make sure I was alone. If someone was already here, I’d flit, hopefully before they noticed I’d arrived.
The room remained empty.
I strode past the fireplace, noting that the chairs remained in place, waiting for me to be forced to sit in one of them. I could almost see the vines erupting from the floor to hold me in place and Ivenrail slamming his thumb against my forehead to drain me. Drain Vexxion, actually. I couldn’t fathom how much power the king had taken from him over the years. Vexxion’s power must be enormous because he could still outmaneuver me most of the time. Yet he still didn’t have enough to kill the king.
My gaze was drawn to the Wraithweave board. It fascinated me for some reason, though I wasn’t a player. Who sat across from the king and assumed the role of the high lady and her fearless defenders?
My gasp was followed by a frown.
The high lady had moved farther down the board, close to where Vexxion and I had sheltered at his mother’s estate. She stood on the border between Weldsbane and Lydel Court, but that wasn’t what surprised me the most. A dragon piece had joined her, crafted in shining gold. I wanted to lift it and hold it to my chest because it reminded me of Seevar. It wasn’t him, of course, and I was no high lady.
Players could purchase a dragon, though they rarely did. The beasts could only offer a few moves in the game, so few bothered with the expense.
The high lady’s white defender remained near the start of the game while the other two stood near her side, as did her shield.
The opponent’s master had moved closer to the fortresses on the Nullen border with the wasteland. What was the strategy there?
My low growl slipped out, and I stepped away. I’d been here too long, pondering a game that had no bearing on real life. It was time to explore the king’s bedroom.
Although, I knew why I’d stalled and remained beside the gameboard. Vexxion had warned me more than once to stay away, and I was rightly cautious about entering the king’s private room. Scared, actually.
Be quick, I hissed to myself as I hurried across the living area, my footsteps light, my favorite blade in my hand. Look around and leave. A dagger was nearly useless within a castle full of fae lords and ladies who could do magic with a flick of their finger, but I was nearly as fast with a blade. It also felt good to have one in my hand.
As I moved across the room, a metallic tang burst across my tongue. Sweat beaded on my clammy skin, and my heart thundered much too fast. My heart was a frantic bird trapped in a bone cage. Each breath hitched, sharp and painful against the dread clogging the air.
I paused outside the door and pushed on it, almost expecting to meet resistance. Surely it was warded to keep anyone from entering. But it nudged open easily, almost in a welcoming way, as if it knew me. As if it wanted me to come inside to play.
Fear clawed its way up my throat.
I could flit from here, return to my suite. I could curl up on our bed among the soft flooferdar blankets Vexxion so lovingly provided for me. I could read a book and dream about an impossible future by his side. Lounge in relative safety.
Should I betray the promise I’d made to him and go through with this?
I was certain I’d find a clue to the collars inside this room and if I did, I could unravel this appalling situation. I could free my friends and every other Nullen unjustly bound by the fae. I wasn’t sure where we’d go or what might happen after that, but collaring us, claiming us, and then draining us was wrong.
Silence roared around me—deafening me. Each of my heartbeats echoed in an abyss where time seemed to cease. Anxiety pressed against my eardrums, creating a throbbing ache.
Enough, I snarled at myself. Ivenrail was in the dining room. Glaring at his guests. Wooing Brenna, who was making moon eyes at Zayde. The king wouldn’t know I was here.
Gulping down my fear, I slipped inside the dark room and gave my eyes a moment to adjust before stepping further into his lair.
A vast canopy bed dominated the room, its pillars carved with writhing vines. No surprise there. He adored the wretched things.
The ones in my collar sensed their brethren and perked up, twisting, tightening. I laid my fingertip on my skin, and drawing a touch of my power, sent it at them, scolding them. They surprisingly stilled. I’d explore this later. For now, I was grateful not to have them tightening their noose around my throat.
Heavy crimson drapes pooled from the canopy, the tails resting on the floor made up of polished black marble matching those I’d seen in the Claiming cave. Like then, the pattern sent a grim feeling through me I couldn’t define.
A chest made of dark wood stood along the right wall and matching nightstands held orb lamps casting eerie luminescent light across the room. Intricately carved silver candelabras had been placed like silent sentinels on top of a big bureau—the mirror above reflecting my wide-eyed stare back at me tenfold .
To the right of it, I took in a full-length painting with three twisting pixies dressed in the finest, pale yellow gossamer fabric, so thin I could see their impossibly bony frames beneath. They writhed like Iasar had in the door, like his mate still did, contorting their frames in a macabre dance for the king’s pleasure alone.
An equally stark forest stood tall behind them made up of bone white trees with steely leaves that chittered in a wind only they could feel. Snow dusted the ground lightly enough to expose dark gray soil and jagged rocks that must pierce their bare feet while they performed. I knew it did because their blood splattered the snow beneath them.
As if they sensed me standing nearby, their dance slowed, and their gazes locked on me.
I swallowed back my dismay. They were as helpless— hopeless —as me. No, they had less hope than I did. At least I was free to roam the castle. If I chose, I could give up my plan and leave this place. I could travel far from here. Run. Vexxion would still love me. He’d support me.
The pixies came to a full stop, still staring at me.
“Free us, my pretty,” the one in the middle said, her voice more of a tinkling whisper than spoken words. They danced into my ears, melodic yet not, grating across my bones before sliding into the floor at my feet.
“I can’t. The king will know I did it,” I said softly. Maybe not me specifically, but I was sure Ivenrail could narrow it down to a few suspects. He might pin it on Vexxion, and I couldn’t let that happen .
“But he won’t, pretty,” the middle one said softly, dreamily, her voice still twinkling like the brightest star in the sky.
Utterly mesmerizing.
Her sheer gown fluttered around her thin frame in wisps, and mist flickered across the moonlit meadow. And her eyes, so light blue, reminded me of the ice shards one might find at the top of the tallest mountain peak. The sun’s rays might reach, but they couldn’t penetrate deeply enough to melt the ice formed at the beginning of time.
Yes, yes, I knew what she was doing, what any of them would do if I allowed them this moment.
I dragged my gaze from hers. “I won’t let you lull me.”
“Look at us. Help us, pretty.” Her words held a frantic cry, the shriek of a rabbit with its throat locked in the mighty jaws of a beast.
“He’ll know, and he’ll kill me.” I moved away from them, though it wasn’t easy. I wanted to stand in front of them and stare. Whisper the words they longed to hear. Reach out and let them tug me up into the portrait to join them.
Then I could dance in a furious pace beside them forever.
As I stepped to the right to continue through the room, I kept peering back. The two at her sides started writhing again, lost in their motion while she remained still, watching me.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
“Won’t,” she said simply.
I didn’t dare was more like it.
When had I started to let fear take hold of my mind? Was it when Kinart’s death broke me? Or when I thought Vexxion had betrayed me? No, it could be when Seevar died. Or when Reyla and Brodine were stolen. So much loss, everything taken until there was nothing left to cling to but me.
I wasn’t strong enough to hold everything together.
Ignoring her whispered pleading, I walked around the room, taking in one object after another, each unique and more macabre than the next. I suspected they were personal relics that served as a warning to those who dared question his power, plus a reminder to himself that there was no limit to how far he’d go or how cruel a blow he was willing to deal to expand his rule on this world.
Because touching anything might draw his attention, I only looked. I sensed I’d know what was important to my quest and what wasn’t.
On a sideboard, I found a delicate crown sitting on a crystal platform. It was twisted, as if a beast had latched onto it and wrangled it in its paws, then delicately adorned it with thorns instead of jewels. Had it been taken from a once-powerful queen?
I leaned forward to study a preserved fairy with wings made up of every color imaginable. She was mounted on a broad slab of black wax, appearing delicate and beautiful. Her wings still twitched. Grimacing, I stepped past the morbid objects.
Fragments of a mirror lay on a round piece of clear glass on the next table. I swore the shards whispered, as if the image of the person who last used the mirror still remained. Something whispered in my mind that if I put the mirror back together again, whoever was trapped there would tell me what happened. Or trap me in their place.
Beyond the table hung a floor-to-ceiling tapestry, its surface appearing alive with an image of a king and queen woven in such startling detail, it chilled my bones.
Behind them, a dark blue arch stretched across the top of the tapestry with a slice of white below, almost as if someone had purposefully cut the fabric. That wasn’t true, though, because I could see the fine stitches that adorned the image with the mark, not cuts. But I sensed if someone stepped too close to the gap, it would suck them into . . . I couldn’t imagine where.
My eyes were drawn to the couple. As I leaned closer, horror latched onto me and shook me; their lifelike hair shimmered with too-real luster. Actual strands had been woven into the silk—a morbid trophy torn from the heads that had once worn the now dingy crowns hanging lopsided on their brows. Their crystal-studded eyes haunted me as I moved past them.
I reached the bedside table and carefully opened the drawer with my knife, finding nothing but dusty books with titles related to war tactics. I wanted to open each one to make sure the stilted titles didn’t hide different contents, but if I touched anything, I feared it might trigger a spell that would trap me here until the king could arrive.
Using my blade, I lifted his pillow. The scent of his cologne, cloying and sharp, drifted from the fabric, stinging my sinuses, and it was all I could do not to sneeze.
Nothing could induce me to shift his bedding or lift his mattress.
Moving around the bed, I used the tip of my blade to open the other bedside table drawer, but again, I only found old books I didn’t dare open. None of the titles suggested anything related to Claiming collars. I dropped to my knees and looked under the bed, finding nothing but dust. Whoever took care of his rooms didn’t clean often, but if this was my job, I’d avoid coming here as long as I could.
I needed to leave, but I felt like I’d discovered nothing, so I lingered, continuing around the room.
Globes the size of my fist hung on thin chains from the ceiling, five of them with gleaming red balls inside each. Darkness clouded the corner where they hung. I moved closer, trying to make out what the balls inside might be.
I reeled backward, nearly falling on top of the bed.
Beating hearts.
Who’d sleep with something that horrifying dangling nearby? There was no way to know who they belonged to, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
I cracked open his closet door and poked my head inside, finding clothing lined up neatly on the shelves. No drawers to open, no cabinets to riffle through.
Why didn’t Vexxion want me inside the king’s bedroom? The hearts certainly gave me a fright, but I’d seen a lot worse battling dregs on the border.
Backing into the room, I closed the door and continued exploring.
A row of tiny paintings hung on the final wall, ironically at eye level, because each was a portrait of a solitary eye. One was sapphire blue like Vexxion’s. Another was nearly black. A third was an unusual shade of light blue, and the fourth was a green much like my own. They followed me as I walked past them, but I wasn’t surprised about that. Would they tell him I’d been here?
“No,” the pixie said. She’d remained still while the other two danced; I’d felt the weight of her eyes on my back as I moved around the room.
What purpose did anything in his bedroom serve? Perhaps the king just collected ghoulish things. The hearts certainly fit in with a gory display.
I should leave. This was a waste of my time.
“Oh, but my pretty, it’s not,” the pixie said. “You came here for a reason.”
“I did.”
“You won’t find answers here, but you will find questions.”
Lovely, a riddling pixie.
“I didn’t come here to free you and your friends,” I said.
“Sisters. I’m Triisa, and my sisters are Pelid and Sowen.”
I wished she hadn’t told me their names. It would be easier to leave them to their endless fate if I could pretend they were no one. Now they had names, hopes, fears, and I knew very well what the latter must be. I couldn’t imagine cavorting in a painting while the king slept—or did other things—in the bed not far away.
Pixies were quite prolific. She probably had seventeen other sisters living happily in the woods. But to see three of them trapped here pinched my throat tight, making it hard to suck in a breath.
“I don’t have a sister,” I said. “Or a brother for that matter.”
“Siblings can mean so much. Tell him that.”
“Who? ”
“At this point it doesn’t matter. You’ll know when it does.”
A tremor shot through me. “Tell me.”
“I won’t.”
Alright. “I’m sorry your sisters were trapped with you.”
“At least we have each other,” Triisa said. “Being with a sibling, even in a horrifying situation like this, is a gift one must never throw away. Remember this.”
“Sure.”
“Free us, and I’ll tell you why you truly came here,” she said, that lure back in her voice. What was it with magical creatures always trying to force others to do something against their will?
“I know why I came here.” Though I wouldn’t name it to her. “Don’t try to lull me again,” I said with a sigh.
She dipped her head forward, acknowledging my words.
“I already told you I can’t free you. He’ll know. You’re a little more obvious than fluffy blue creatures trapped in a small painting in a back hallway. I doubt anyone has noticed they’re gone.”
“The whisper of a bond with even the tiniest of creatures may one day summon the roar of a guardian beast,” she said. “Every ally holds a future fierce and grand.”
That was true. Look at how Madrood had saved me from Prenton. Protecting me or just reacting? I hadn’t decided. The beginning friendship I’d developed with the dragon had probably saved my life.
“Watch,” Triisa said. She rejoined her sisters, and they held hands, standing in a row. They danced in synchronicity over to the side of the picture, leaving their mirror images behind. “Free us, my pretty. With this spell, he’ll never know. ”
After he snarled about me going to Ivenrail’s bedroom, Vexxion would chide me for freeing the pixies. The dragon on the door would’ve been obvious, though I doubted the king ever strolled that way. Three pixies cavorting within a painting facing his bed, the only writhing beings in his room? He was bound to question the mirror images.
“How long will your magical images hold?” I asked, feeling my resolve waver.
“For longer than his lifetime,” they said in harmony, their voices glimmering whispers, a melody of delicate chimes.
My sigh ground out of me. I should leave. The longer I remained here, the bigger the chance I’d be caught. But . . .
Fuck him.
Ivenrail didn’t have the right to pin Triisa, Pelid, and Sowen in this frame, let alone all the poor creatures cavorting within paintings inside the castle. If they were going to dance, it should be beneath the moonlight with their sisters, deep within the forest, not here for the king’s grim pleasure.
I started gathering power, but stopped, swallowing it back down. “What did you do?”
“Do?” they asked, the solitary word echoed like three silver bells trilling through the air.
“Why did he trap you here?”
“We refused to dance at his wedding to the Lydel high lady.”
“He was going to marry her? I thought he tried to force her into his bed, and she refused.”
“He believed marriage might convince her,” Triisa said. “It did not, but by then, our fate and hers had been sealed. We told him no, and he laughed, stating that he’d make us dance for him always. Or they refuse to dance and die.”
“He kills those who won’t willingly enter the portraits?”
She dipped her head forward in agreement.
He really was a nasty piece of work.
“Alright, I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll try to do it, that is. The spell doesn’t always work.”
“When one tries, one finds growth and uncovers potential that a comfortable, untried stance never reveals,” she said sagely. “Effort is the seed of mastery.”
“You’ve got that right.” I closed my eyes and gathered power. Would it be harder to free three at once or would it feel the same as when I’d released Iasar?
I cast the spell, sending it at them like a bolt of lightning.
As I opened my eyes, they slipped from the picture, tumbling onto the floor in a jumble of thin limbs. They lay so still I thought they were dead, but then they stirred and climbed to their tiny bare feet, rising only to the height of my knees.
A pop, and Pelid and Sowen disappeared. I felt hollow surprise at their loss, a stab in the chest for the brief connection I’d found with them. I shook my head, scattering the feeling.
“To thank you, we will give you three gifts,” Triisa said.
“That’s nice of you but unnecessary.” It would be unwise to accept anything from them, but someone once said reject a pixie’s gift at your peril; slighted, they’ll spin luck into curses . Who’d told me that? Reyla, probably, reading from one of the many books she borrowed from the fortress’s library.
“Tis true,” Triisa said with a conniving smile that revealed tiny sharp teeth I suspected could rip into my flesh and leave a painful gouge that might never heal.
“What’s true?”
“Your friend’s statement.”
“Stay out of my mind,” I growled, reinforcing my mental guards.
She dipped her head forward and fed me a sly smile.
“Alright. I accept the gifts from you and your sisters,” I said.
She held out her hand and led me past the watching eyeballs and the closed closet door, over to the wall to the left of the dangling globes holding pulsing hearts.
“I don’t want a heart,” I said with a shiver.
“You may one day regret saying that, but that wasn’t my gift.”
“Who do the hearts belong to?” Now, of course, I wanted to know. Or did I? I couldn’t hold back my cringe. They looked like they were still alive, beating without a body to hold onto.
“Telling you this is not one of your gifts.”
Always words that teased but revealed nothing. What was it with freed creatures? Although, the blue beasties had fled, leaving no promises behind.
“I see five now,” she said. “Interesting. There were many more when we were first placed in this room.”
“Where are they?”
“Swallowed, I assume.”
“By what?”
“A very good question.”
I shook off that train of thought. “Vexxion’s isn’t there.” I wasn’t sure why I voiced the words .
“Do not fear. His heart beats only for you and it always will,” she said. “Come. We don’t have much time.”
The urgency in her voice made blood surge through my veins like lightning cleaving across the sky.
She pointed to the wall above the bedside table. A wooden frame made up of nine blocks in rows of three hung there, the front covered with a hinged glass panel. How had I missed it when I explored the room?
“Touch,” she said so softly I barely heard the tinkle of her voice. “Each leads down a different path, but I warn you. Never take one unless it has been offered to you by another.”
I couldn’t imagine taking any of them.
“Select two now as our gifts to you, though take one at a time,” she added. “The third will be chosen for you. Know that it will be different for each, but for you, my pretty, they will be special.”
“And the third?”
“Wait for that one until the right time, as it could burn you.”
“Touching it could burn me?”
“One might say this.” Her laughter rang out, high-pitched and torturous, a needle gouging my skin before dragging down my arm.
Could I change my mind and refuse their gifts?
“I don’t want to touch anything in the room,” I said. “He’ll know.”
Her sigh rang out, and her tiny lips thinned to almost nothing. “Not these. They don’t belong to him. They never have and never will. He stole them, so you must now steal them from him. ”
So much for “gifts”.
I leaned closer, gazing into the small case. The sticks were starkly white compared to the black wood encasing them. He’d see right away if three of them went missing.
“Magic will hide their loss,” she hissed. “Hurry. You don’t have much time, and you need them. Trust me in this.”
As if I trusted anyone with magic? But I’d helped them. They were returning the favor. And, as always, my curiosity had grabbed onto me and was urging me to at least lift one of the sticks from the case.
Sticks? I leaned closer, nearly touching my nose to the glass.
“Fuck, these are bones.”
“Yes. Take two, one at a time.”
I gulped back the bile rushing up my throat. My eyes widened, and my pulse throbbed in my throat. Repulsion clutched my windpipe as I took in the skeletal things enshrined eerily, each standing up starkly as if gouging toward the ceiling.
With the tip of my blade, I opened the case.
My leather tunic had a small pocket on the underside, and I flipped up the hem, exposing it. I’d find a way to place my two “gifts” inside without touching them.
“You must touch them,” Trissa said. “It’s vital.”
“Why?”
“The gift is what they bestow, not the bones themselves, though they will have value one day, so I suggest you not lose them.”
“I’ll hide them somewhere.”
“Keep them close. ”
“Alright. I’ll make a pouch and keep them in my pocket at all times.”
“Wisdom can unveil secrets that sway destinies.”
I sensed—again—that she was giving gifts that had nothing to do with bones.
“Take the first,” she said. “This gift is from Pelid.”
“Tell her thank you.” I reached inside and lifted out the bone from the center of the case.
It swallowed me into . . .