Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Tabitha
I tear into the back of the picture frame and extract a fragile piece of paper, folded many times over and yellowing with age. Raiden sidles closer, watching my every move.
Once I smooth out the page and lay it flat, neat rows under distinct columns fill the space.
Names, dates, and locations on one side.
Throughout, a handful of names are highlighted, rows and rows apart, without explanation.
On the back of the page, an actual drawing of a family tree, revealing multiple branches stretching back thousands of years.
Raiden scowls. “There’s no family name listed, just the typical recording of births, unions, and deaths. I don’t understand. Why is this family special? Why would your father hide this list?”
Since I don’t understand either, I shrug.
He scans the page again, scowling. I can’t think of a single reason my father would have kept this family tree separate from the others. He mostly worked in secrecy. I helped occasionally…but now that he’s gone, there’s no one to ask.
The reality that I’ll never hear my father’s laugh, feel the safety of his embrace, or look into his gentle eyes threatens to fell me again.
But I don’t have the luxury of grief. I need to move on, solve this mystery.
Unfortunately, another glance at this paper tells me that I might as well be reading gibberish.
Then I notice that the entry at the bottom was altered. On the very last row, the child’s date and location of birth remain, but the name, once highlighted, was scratched off almost violently—or desperately—given the tear in the delicate paper.
“I know someone vastly smarter about magickind’s obscurities. She might be able to help us.” Raiden plucks up the paper, then reaches for my hand. “Come with me.”
Where? I dig in my heels. “Someone trustworthy?”
He nods. “Besides you and my twin, there’s no one I’d trust more.”
Since I’m out of options, I let him pull me along as he prowls through the caves, tugging me behind him. He stops when he finds a stunning blonde at the kitchen table, drinking tea. Her magical signature proclaims her mated.
“Tabitha, this is Sabelle Rion. She’s Bram’s sister. And, of course, Merlin’s granddaughter.”
I’m a bit shocked. Of course Raiden knows Bram, head of a family of penultimate power and prestige, since they’re fighting Mathias side by side.
But the fact that he’s acquainted with the wizard’s sister, the most beautiful icon of magical society…
The Wolvesey wizards are notorious for seedy pubs, random hookups, and generations of carousing, focused on wine, women, and song…
not necessarily in that order. Yet he’s on speaking terms with the Sabelle Rion?
Because Raiden bedded her before she mated with another? I shove the question aside. It’s not important now.
“How do you do? I’m Tabitha Lowrey.” I hold out my hand.
“Raiden never took me to bed, so you needn’t worry,” Sabelle assures with a smile as she takes my hand. “How do you do?”
I blush a hundred shades of red. “You…you can read my thoughts?”
Her smile deepens. “Quite clearly, so fair warning.” Then she turns to Raiden. “Did you finally pull your head out of your arse? I’m hoping so, and the fact you haven’t Called to her is merely temporary. Ronan knows you love her.”
Precisely what Raiden’s twin told me himself. But his opinion doesn’t make it true.
I swivel my gaze up to the wizard who owns my heart.
His jaw clenches as he glares at Sabelle. “Stifle the matchmaking. We were attacked ten minutes ago by Mathias and his goons while retrieving this. We barely made it out alive. Any bloody idea what this means?”
He shoves the thin page under her nose. Sabelle lifts it with careful fingers and studies it intently, her blue eyes growing wider by the moment. Finally, she peers up at us, suddenly pale. “Where did you get this?”
“It was my father’s, Nigel Lowery.”
“The record keeper?”
“Precisely. Mathias killed my family for this. My father’s last words were to protect the secret tree and—”
“This is a great secret, indeed.” Sabelle hesitates, as if she searches for the right words to impart momentous news. “I never considered this development until now. But it makes sense. The timing is right and—”
“For what? What are you on about?” Raiden barks impatiently, but not with anger. This morning’s attack rattled him. He’s worried—about me, about the baby, about magickind.
Just not about my heart, our future, or his own life.
“Sorry. After I recognized some of the names, I got carried away,” Sabelle explains. “What you’ve found is, I believe, the family tree of the Untouchables.”
I gasp. If she’s right, the implications are staggering. “How certain are you?”
“Quite.” She sends me an apologetic grimace.
Beside me, Raiden looks lost. “Why is that bad? What the bloody hell is an Untouchable?”
“So in addition to eschewing manners, you don’t read?” Sabelle raises a teasing brow his way.
Despite this terrifying development, her remark makes me smile. I decide that I very much like her.
Sabelle tilts her head in my direction. “Thank you. Likewise.”
“Stop reading her bloody mind,” he spits at the blonde. “I don’t sit about and stare at dusty tomes. I’m a wizard of action,” he defends.
She sends my belly a sideways glance, then drawls, “Indeed.”
Raiden looks as if he’s at wit’s end. “That’s enough. Explain.”
“The Untouchables are a sacred race,” I say. “Their origins are magical, but their abilities are…different. They separated from magickind long ago, blended in with humans.”
He scowls. “Why?”
It’s the obvious question. Magickind doesn’t typically blend well with human society. People are still afraid of what they don’t understand, and anyone magical is typically weeded out, accused. Destroyed.
Sabelle takes over. “As a way to hide. For centuries, they were systematically hunted. Their bloodline was nearly eliminated.”
His scowl deepens. “Because they’re more powerful than most? More than Mathias?”
I know why he’d wonder that, but… “No. They don’t actually cast magic.”
Sabelle nods and jumps in. “Whatever ‘normal’ magic the Untouchables once had seems long gone now after generations of breeding with humans. Or suppressed. Something. But every thousand years, a recessive trait rises and the lineage produces a child that’s different.”
“Different how?”
“They’re Untouchable—and not merely in name. We’re talking about someone completely impervious to magic.”
Raiden frowns. “So any spell I hurled at them would—”
“Roll off them, as if you never cast it at all.” Sabelle shrugs. “Or that’s what I’ve read. And according to this document, one such child was born in London twenty-five years ago, name redacted.”
“I suspect my father erased that child’s name to hide her identity.”
Raiden scrubs a hand across his face. “So no one would know who to hunt down?”
“That’s my guess,” I murmur. “My father never said for certain, but…I can guess why he would hide such knowledge. Someone with those abilities—”
“Would either be the ultimate shield or the ultimate weapon.”
Sabelle nods. “Precisely.”
And the implications are terrifying. “I’m not sure how Mathias found out. Or even thought to look.”
Raiden snorts. “Given the fact that he was likely alive the last time an Untouchable was alive, we shouldn’t have to guess too hard.”
“Even if he wasn’t, don’t be fooled by his violence. Mathias is smart, strategic, and well-read. He understands magical history in a way few do, and if he managed to get his hands on my grandfather’s journals in the ashes of Goldcroft…”
The Doomsday Brethren’s situation is far more dire than anyone even suspects. At least that’s the expression on Sabelle’s carefully arranged face.
“Would your father have destroyed such a record to protect the infant’s life?”
I don’t even have to think twice. I nod. Then I realize— “Wait. The hospital my father and I visited when I was a girl! That was twenty-five years ago.”
As I cover my gaping mouth, Raiden’s face tightens. “The man persuaded your father to conceal the baby’s name.”
“You’re sure?” Sabelle asked.
I nod. “They gave the baby, a little girl, up for adoption that very night.”
I’ll never forget that heartbroken mother clinging to her daughter, shedding the most wrenching tears as she clutched the infant before the father tugged her swaddled form away and put her in the arms of a capable, professional looking woman who disappeared moments later, never to return.
As a woman expecting a youngling, I can only imagine the devastation of being wrenched apart from your newborn.
“To protect her.” Sabelle’s face softens with compassion.
“Indeed.” Anything involving Untouchables is always dangerous. They’re often killed not only for their seeming immunity to magic, but also their ability to suppress all magic near them.
Whoever she is, if Mathias learns her identity, the woman is in terrible danger. And if she was given up as an infant, does she even know she’s Untouchable? How could she?
My blood runs cold at the implications. This woman would be completely unprepared. Completely unprotected. “We have to find her.”
“How? We can’t start with her parents.” Raiden points to the parchment. “The Untouchable’s mother died shortly after giving birth.”
“For refusing to divulge her daughter’s name?” I’m alarmed by that possibility. “Or perhaps not. Look, her father passed away mere weeks ago.”
But still most likely too young to die of natural causes.
Beside me, Raiden’s expression freezes. “If Mathias seeks this page, he must not know the Untouchable’s identity.”
“A logical assumption,” Sabelle grants, then frowns. “But…why find her now? If she’s uniquely able to derail whatever his nefarious plans are, why didn’t he track her down immediately after he rose from exile? What’s changed?”
Raiden’s eyes narrow sharply. “His last defeat at your mate’s hand? Ice handed him his ass.”