Chapter 37
HEMMING
S hayfer’s eyes tracked me as I hurried through the room as quickly as I could without causing a scene; there was no time to maintain the subterfuge beyond that. “Ariel’s gone,” I said bluntly as I reached them.
Eldrien looked to where she’d just been standing, brows furrowed. “But she was just here.”
“And now she’s not,” I growled under my breath.
“Surely one of us would have seen them leave.”
Shayfer headed for the doors with hastened steps. “There are many magical ways he could have removed her from this place without us knowing—I just don’t know which he possesses.”
“We need to find her now ,” I snapped at him as we pushed through the ballroom doors. “Kier is all she has, and that won’t be enough if this goes badly.” My rage boiled to the surface again as we spilled into the hallway, and along with it came the beast. His growl became my own as I stormed down the dimly lit corridor, wondering if I had the strength to contain him. But the closer he got to escaping, the more I realized I didn’t care.
Because nothing else mattered if we didn’t find her.
I closed my eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply to try to calm myself. Amid the cloying scents of flowers and wine, there was a note of something else I could just barely detect. Something warm and sweet and familiar.
“ Ariel ,” I whispered as my eyes shot open. Before the others could even ask, I bolted down the gilded hallway, following nothing but her faint scent in the air and the hope that I hadn’t imagined it; that it wasn’t a mix of alcohol, desperation, and fear causing me to hallucinate. But my conviction became clearer with every step I took as we made our way through the ever-darkening halls, her essence growing stronger.
I slammed to a halt near a closed door, so sudden that Shayfer barely averted crashing into my back, and Eldrien into his. The duo stared at me while I narrowed my eyes at the wooden barricade. “The trail ends here,” I said without prompting. “Wherever this leads, that is where we’ll find her.” I pressed my palm to the stone floor in front of the door and closed my eyes so I could focus on any vibrations. Any sounds. Any movements.
But I felt nothing.
“What’s he doing now?” Eldrien asked Shayfer in a hushed tone.
“Whatever he must,” was the fae’s only response.
I stood slowly and looked at them. “There’s nothing in there.”
“Perhaps it’s not a room, but a door to something else,” Shayfer suggested, and though he kept his tone even and casual, I could hear the note of concern hiding just beneath. “ Somewhere else…”
“There’s only one way to find out.” I grabbed the handle to rip it open, but it was locked. With a roar of frustration, I pulled as hard as I could, to no avail. The beast prowling within forced me a few paces back, ready to make an appearance to ram it into submission. But before he could, Eldrien hurried forward and crouched down by the hardware.
As scales erupted along his skin, he took a deep breath and held it for a moment. Then he unleashed a torrent of fire that engulfed the entire barricade, including the lock. When the veil of flames subsided, he hooked his hand into the hole where the lock had been—along with a massive section of the door itself—and pulled it open with ease.
“Sometimes destruction calls for a bit more finesse,” he said over his shoulder before stepping into the dim hall beyond. I quickly followed.
“Gentlemen,” a voice boomed from down the corridor, stopping us short, “you’re a long way from the festivities. Tell me, is my hospitality not to your liking?” Vesstan walked toward us with a virtual army at his back. He’d changed his clothes from the silken finery he’d worn to the ball, and every inch of my skin crawled at the potential implications.
“Of course it is, Lord Vesstan,” Shayfer said with a bow. “We left because we could not find Ariel, and we were concerned about her. Nothing more.”
“And why would her well-being be of concern in my home?” he asked. I could hear the challenge in his tone, though his expression gave nothing away. My hand yearned for my sword’s pommel.
Shayfer, feigning calm despite our predicament, straightened elegantly and smoothed his embroidered coat. “I know firsthand just how poorly Ariel handles her wine, my lord—and how much she loves it. The combination can make for an interesting evening, in my experience. She’s been known to wander off and find herself in precarious situations at times.”
“Precarious how? Like lost in an unfamiliar castle?” he asked as he leaned closer, hands clasped behind his back in a menacing way. “Or in bed with the lord of the manor?”
Even under the weight of the god’s veiled threat, Shayfer did not falter. “The former,” he countered. “I would not have presumed her in danger were she in your bed.” His pause seemed to draw on for an eternity before he dared to ask the question. “Is that where she’s been?”
Vesstan’s eyes drifted to me. “Would it bother you if my answer was yes?”
“Her absence is what bothers me,” I replied as I fisted my hands.
His eyes flared with rage before his expression smoothed to a perfectly practiced mask of indifference. “Yes, I imagine it does.” Those eyes drifted to my clenched fists as if he knew what they craved. “Did you plan on fighting someone this evening? Killing someone?” The way he asked that question sent a warning through my body, but the sensation dulled as quickly as it had come, a strange, warm fuzziness replacing it.
“I don’t think fighting or killing anyone will be necessary today,” Shayfer replied calmly as he inched closer to me with Eldrien at his side. “This is all just a misunderstanding. I do seem to find myself embroiled in those quite often when Hemming is present. Perhaps I should take him back to our room and?—”
Before Shayfer could finish his words, a guard slammed the hilt of his blade against his skull. The sickening sound it made echoed through the hall, followed abruptly by Shayfer’s body collapsing to the ground, unmoving.
“I really don’t enjoy being pandered to,” Vesstan said as he wiped a droplet of sprayed blood from his cheek.
Eldrien dropped to Shayfer’s side and gently rolled him over, and the spy’s arm splayed limply over Eldrien’s lap. Nothing he did in an attempt to rouse him had any effect.
“Tell me something,” Vesstan continued as he stepped over Shayfer’s legs to approach me. “Do you think lying to me is a wise course of action?” He stopped before me, eyes simmering with rage as they raked slowly over me.
I forced myself to focus. “No.”
“Good. Because, you see, I discovered this evening that Ariel has been lying to me since she arrived here.” His assessing gaze lingered on me as I said nothing. Did nothing. And all the while, Shayfer’s blood pooled on the stone floor beside me. “Do you know why she’d do such a thing?”
“No—”
“Ah, and here I thought that you and I had an understanding,” he said as his features twisted with mock disappointment. “That you grasped how I feel about lying.”
“I do?—”
“You don’t. And neither did Ariel.” A malicious smile spread across his face. “Do the words ‘if he tries to touch you the way I have tonight, kill him right there’ sound familiar at all?” Shock niggled in my mind at his words—and the malevolence in his tone as he said them. “You see, Hemming, I have many gifts, not unlike you and your fae companion. And one of those abilities allows me to sneak through the halls of this castle undetected.”
Fear snaked up my spine as the pieces of the evening began to fall into place, but I did nothing; and neither did the beast. With every passing second, my mind grew fuzzy, and though I begged my body to move—to react somehow—it did not. Instead, I stood motionless as Shayfer lay dying beside me and Vesstan drew ever closer. “Can you imagine all the juicy conversations I overhear?” he continued as I stood still as stone. “All the scandalous things I witness ?” His eyes flared as he spoke those final words. “You thought you could take what is mine?” he seethed in my ear as the world before me began to blur. “That you could best me? Trick me?” I tried to pull away from him—to lift a hand in my defense—but nothing in my body obeyed. Including the beast.
The corridor began to swim in my vision, and I collapsed to the ground at Vesstan’s feet. Eldrien’s shouts were dull background noise as the vengeant god crouched down low to stare at me as though my world wasn’t growing darker by the second. “Hear me when I say this, boy: you might have touched her tonight. But you will never touch her again.”
Those words crept through my addled mind as the might of my captor drove my face into the cold floor and the endless abyss of unconsciousness.