Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
The council room doors opened to reveal everyone already assembled.
Snow had accumulated on the window ledges outside, casting strange blue shadows across the floor.
Arion stood near the windows, and Briar noticed the way he held himself—careful, controlled.
A faint line of dried blood marked his collar where Eliam's thorn had caught him.
Sian and Halian flanked him, their usual ease replaced with something tighter, watchful.
Thaine leaned against the far wall, still looking at them both with that bewildered expression he'd worn in the garden.
Karse was sprawled in a chair in the corner, one leg thrown over the armrest. His amber eyes tracked them as they approached, lingering on the possessive spread of Eliam's fingers against her waist. His lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "You smell like sex."
Heat flooded Briar's face. Beside her, she felt Eliam go rigid, but not with embarrassment. With warning.
"Is there a point to that observation?" Eliam's voice was dangerously calm.
"Just noting that someone had a better morning than the rest of us." Karse's tone carried amusement but no actual judgment. "Though I suppose that's one way to deal with attempted kidnapping and ah… territorial disputes."
"Karse," Thaine said, his tone suggesting this wasn't helpful.
The Drak shrugged, clearly unbothered. "What? We're all thinking it."
"We're not all thinking it," Sian said firmly, though her cheeks had gone pink. "And it's not relevant to why we're here."
Arion's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
His eyes found Briar's for a moment, and she saw something complicated there—hurt and resignation and that same determined intensity from last night.
The warmth in Briar's chest suddenly pulled in two directions—toward Eliam at her side and, disturbingly, toward Arion by the window.
She pressed her hand against it, trying to quiet the sensation.
He finally looked away, focusing on the room at large.
"Thank you for coming," Arion began, his tone formal. His gaze met Eliam's briefly before settling on Briar. "We need to discuss what happened last night."
"Malus tried to steal her through the marks," Eliam said flatly. "The discussion should be about how to prevent it happening again."
"The discussion," Arion said, his jaw tightening, "should be about why it was possible at all. The Star Court's wards should have prevented any external compulsion. Yet he still reached her. If I hadn't been in the gardens, she would have crossed the border."
Briar felt the weight of everyone's attention shift to her. She touched her throat self-consciously, feeling the autumn marks rustle beneath her fingers.
"What do you remember?" Sian asked gently.
"Waking up at the stones," Briar said. "I was already there, already moving toward the border. I couldn't stop. My body wouldn't respond to what I wanted, only to what the marks were telling me to do." She swallowed hard. "Malus was there. Beyond the border. Waiting."
"He knew it would work," Thaine said quietly. "He knew he could call you through the marks and you'd have no choice but to obey."
"This happened because your wards failed," Eliam's voice carried an edge of accusation. "So much for the vaunted protection of the Star Court."
"They didn't fail." Halian stepped forward, his usual cheerfulness replaced by concern. "That's what's troubling. The wards are intact, stronger than ever. Whatever Malus did, he didn't break through them."
"Then how—" Briar started, then stopped as understanding dawned. "The marks. They're not external magic."
"No," Sian said quietly. "They're part of you now. Woven into your being through the bargain. The wards can't protect you from something that's already inside."
The warmth in Briar's chest pulsed with agitation, responding to her spike of fear. She felt Eliam's hand tighten on her waist.
"Which means," Karse said lazily from his corner, "that as long as those pretty marks decorate her throat, the copper-haired one can call to her whenever he pleases."
"Not if she's properly warded," Arion said, moving closer. "Individual protections, layered and reinforced daily."
"Temporary measures," Eliam countered. "Bandages on a severed artery."
"Better than letting her bleed out." Arion's light flickered faintly around his fingers. "Or would you prefer to wait until Malus succeeds in stealing her?"
The temperature in the room dropped as Eliam's shadows began to gather. Briar pressed her hand against his chest before another fight could erupt.
"Stop," she said quietly. "Both of you. This isn't helping."
"She's right," Thaine said, pushing off from the wall. "You're too busy marking territory to focus on the real problem."
"Which is?" Eliam's tone suggested Thaine was walking on dangerous ground.
"That Malus knows something we don't." Thaine's dark eyes were serious.
Silence fell over the room. Briar felt the warmth pulse again, stronger this time, as if responding to being discussed.
"There's more," Halian said reluctantly. "When I was reinforcing the wards this morning, I noticed something. A foreign energy signature from the eastern boundaries match the residue Malus left behind when he attacked the first time."
"He's been testing our defenses," Sian added. "For days, maybe longer."
"Looking for weaknesses," Arion said, his expression grim. "Planning."
"The question is what he's planning," Karse said, examining his fingers with apparent boredom.
"Does it matter?" Eliam's voice was cold.
"It matters if we want to stop him," Thaine said. "Know your enemy's desires and you know his moves."
Briar's hand rose involuntarily to her chest, feeling the warmth pulse beneath her palm. Everyone's attention shifted to the gesture.
"We should tell them," she said quietly.
“Tell us what? What exactly are you keeping to yourselves?” Arion asked, his gaze fixed on Eliam. “Or rather what secrets are you forcing her to keep?”
“Nothing that concerns you, brightling,” Eliam sneered.
"Ever since I arrived I’ve felt a warmth, a pull, that I didn’t understand,” Briar said, interrupting Arion before the argument could escalate again.
“Ever since… ever since the Wild Hunt, it's been getting stronger.
Reacting to things. To danger, to emotions, to.
.." she glanced at Arion, then away, "to certain people. "
"It has always recognized me," Eliam said, his tone carrying a note of possession. "Responded to me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was."
“Malus when he fed from me… he said I tasted of old magic, of the forest…” she glanced towards Eliam. “He said it was because of a piece of Eliam’s essence that had been hidden inside me. The night he made the bargain with my mother.”
"But it responded to me too," Arion said quietly. "Last night. When I..." He didn't finish, but everyone understood.
Eliam's shadows surged before he controlled them. "A fluke. Desperation."
"Was it?" Arion's gaze stayed on Briar. "Or is there something more to this magic than simple recognition?"
"What do you mean?" Sian asked.
"I mean," Arion said slowly, "that if Eliam hid something in her, then we need to understand what it is and why it’s been getting stronger. What exactly did you do that night?”
Eliam hesitated. "I don't remember clearly. Making the bargain with her mother, yes. But what happened before, why I was there..." Frustration bled through his controlled tone. "There are gaps."
"Malus said he was conducting a ritual," Briar explained. "Something meant to strip Eliam's power. That Eliam must have intervened when my mother was dying."
"A ritual?" Arion questioned, gaze flickering towards Eliam.
Eliam had gone very still. Briar looked up at him, seeing the calculation in his eyes, the pieces he was putting together that he wasn't sharing.
"What aren't you telling us?" she asked.
He met her gaze, and she saw the conflict there. The desire to protect her from knowledge that might hurt her, warring with the necessity of information.
"There are... stories," he said finally. "Old ones. About fae who split their power to protect it."
"Protect it from what?" Halian asked.
"From being stolen. Destroyed. Corrupted." Eliam's jaw tightened. "From family members who might try to take what isn't theirs."
Understanding rippled through the room.
"You think you knew," Arion said. "You think you knew Malus would come for your power."
"I think," Eliam said carefully, "that my brother has always been ambitious. And that hiding something valuable where he wouldn't think to look would be exactly the kind of thing I would do."
"Inside a human," Sian said softly. "Brilliant. Insane, but brilliant."
"Except now Malus knows," Thaine pointed out. "So the hiding place isn't hidden anymore."
"Which is why he's testing the borders," Halian said, understanding dawning.
"He talked about taking me apart," she said, her voice smaller than she intended. "About seeing how I work."
Eliam pulled her against him, his arms wrapping around her protectively. "That won't happen."
"Won't it?" Karse asked, his tone deceptively mild. "He got her to walk to the border in her sleep. What happens next time? Or the time after that?"
"I think the better question is, what did Malus want with your power, Eliam?" Thaine's voice cut through the tension.
Eliam's jaw tightened. "Power is power. Does he need another reason?"
Karse straightened in his chair for the first time since they'd entered. "Power for power's sake? No. The copper-haired one has plenty of his own."
"Unless he needs yours specifically," Thaine said, pushing off from the wall. "Forest Court magic for something only Forest Court magic can accomplish."
"There are things sealed in the Wildwood," Eliam said, choosing each word with extreme care. "Old things. Dangerous things."
"The Night Court," Sian breathed.
The air in the room seemed to shift and grow heavy.