Chapter 34
The following day, Delphi stared at the soil samples in front of her and tried to figure out what she was missing. It looked normal, and it grew edible food, but she could feel the faint wrongness clinging to it. When she focused her magic on it, her own power would tingle in warning.
She added a drop of purifying solution she had learned to make with the help of a woman in Bellemere. She had created it for traders to use when testing water and food in other lands to see if it was poisonous.
Instead of cleansing the sample, the liquid sizzled. Tiny, necrotic threads of magic, black and sticky like burnt sugar, writhed away from the solution's touch. They didn't dissolve. They simply retreated, burrowing deeper into the granules of dirt.
"Fuck," she breathed, leaning back from the worktable. She had taken over the old laboratory again because she knew how to work with Narcisse's setup. The scent of old paper and beeswax was a comforting backdrop to her grim discovery.
The plague wasn't gone. It was dormant. Waiting. A cold certainty settled in her gut. She couldn't let Tenebrys call the other shifter clans for help. Inviting them here would be a death sentence. She had to cleanse the land first. No, she had to figure out how to cleanse it and then do it.
A dull throb started behind her eyes, a familiar pressure that had been building since she'd woken up in Tenebrys's arms that morning. She'd dismissed it as a consequence of their raw, consuming night, and the mating bond settling into her bones.
But this was different. It wasn't a normal headache. It was a hum. A frequency just below hearing, vibrating through the stone floors, up the legs of her chair, and into her very marrow.
The heart of the chateau was trying to tell her something.
Curiosity overriding caution, Delphi closed her eyes and leaned into the sensation. For a moment, there was only darkness. Then, a spark. She focused on it, feeding it a trickle of her own magic, and the spark bloomed into a network of shimmering lines.
What is this? Delphi fed it more power, and the answer struck her.
It was the entire estate, not as a map, but as a living extension of herself.
She could feel the ancient roots of the building plunging deep into the earth, the precise layout of the shadowed hallways, the pulsing power of the crypts far below.
The sensation expanded past the stone walls, past the overgrown gardens. It spread into the Mistwood.
In her mind's eye, a tapestry of the forest unfurled for her. She could see the dense canopy and the winding game trails. It was a perfect, intuitive awareness, as if the chateau's heart had tethered itself to hers, granting her its secrets.
Pinpricks of shimmering light, scattered through the woods. They pulsed with a strange, otherworldly energy, a soft, ethereal chime against the deeper thrum of the earth.
The gateways.
The magic there wasn't just in the soil or the stones. It was woven into the very fabric of the world. Tenebrys had said they were where the two worlds touched, and she could now see what he meant.
A dizzying wave of vertigo and wonder washed over her. Delphi gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles white as she pulled her magic back in and opened her eyes again.
All her life, she had been a ghost, haunting the edges of other people's lives. Rootless. Unseen. Now she was anchored to a fortress of living stone and a forest of ancient magic.
She was a part of something, tied so intrinsically to it that she could map its soul with her eyes closed.
The feeling was terrifying. It was exhilarating.
It was…home.
Delphi's gaze drifted to the tall, arched window overlooking the grounds.
Tenebrys was down there, training with the shifters who were all that remained of his people.
He was bare-chested, the afternoon sun glinting off the intricate gold markings that coiled over his muscled back and arms. He moved with devastating grace, a fluid dance of predator and king, instructing his men and correcting their form.
A god of war preparing to protect his own.
Delphi's heart ached with a sudden, fierce empathy. To have commanded legions, to have ruled a thriving kingdom, and to be reduced to this. Six loyal souls and a cursed land.
The weight he carried would have crushed anyone else. But Tenebrys stood tall in defiance of all the darkness the world had thrown at him.
The mating bond between them flared, a warm current of pure lust that made her body clench with need.
Delphi was still a little tender from the night before, despite the healing bath they had taken. This yearning was a constant, living thing. An obsession that hummed in Delphi's blood, a desperate need to be near him, to touch him, to feel his power and body covering her.
And she knew, with absolute certainty, that he felt it too. She could feel the echo of his own possessiveness, a fierce, unwavering love that was both a shield and a cage. It felt…possessive. And she possessed him right back.
My beast king.
The afternoon was bleeding into gold, the light softening, stretching shadows long across the grass. The lab was stifling, and Delphi felt like no matter what she did, she hit a dead end.
Needing air and perhaps a sneaky kiss from her mate, Delphi pushed away from her work and went outside, drawn toward the gardens that bordered the woods. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and blooming flowers.
She traced the edge of the forest, her new inner map giving her a strange sense of familiarity with the looming trees and where the protective wards hummed. Just for a moment, the world was quiet, peaceful.
And then it wasn't.
A violent, ripping sensation tore through Delphi's magical awareness.
It was a shriek of corrupted power, raw and jagged, flaring from deep within the Mistwood.
It was nothing like the dormant plague in the soil.
This was active. Vicious. A spike of malevolence that made the hair on her arms stand on end and bile rise in her throat.
Delphi stumbled back, a gasp tearing from her lips. Her connection to the chateau's magic amplified the feeling, an alarm bell tolling in her head.
Something was wrong. Terribly, violently wrong.
"Delphi!" Tenebrys was across the training grounds in seconds, his powerful strides eating up the distance.
The concern pouring from him through their bond hit her like a wave, a testament to how instantly her terror had reached him.
He was there, his hands gripping her arms, steadying her. His golden eyes, blazing with alarm, scanned her face, then swept over the woods. "What is it? What did you feel?"
Before Delphi could answer, a shadow shot out from the canopy. Luna. She flew with a frantic, uneven pattern, a desperate cry escaping her. She crash-landed in the grass near Tenebrys's feet, one of her wings bent at an unnatural angle. A dark, ugly gash marred her sleek side.
Tenebrys knelt, his movements swift and sure as he cradled her to him. "Sweet girl, what happened?"
The cat mewed in pain and fixed her intelligent, luminous eyes on her master. She didn't speak in words, but Delphi could feel a jumble of frantic images pushed into Tenebrys's mind, images that bled through their bond into hers.
She saw an annoyed face she knew all too well, his silver hair, bloodshot eyes, and a mouth set in a scowl that she had grown up fearing. Narcisse.
Another face joined his. Louis Boudon, the sniveling, grasping nobleman who had tried blackmailing her, his expression a sickening mix of greed and lust.
They were riding hard with a small force of soldiers, their horses churning up mud, their eyes fixed on the distant silhouette of the chateau. One had shot an arrow at Luna, and she had only just managed to dodge it.
"Narcisse," Delphi whispered, the name tasting like ash. "He's with Louis, and they are coming here. They must be fucking mad to go through the Mistwood. My father wouldn't even step into it when you came for him! He's not this courageous, so Louis must have promised him money."
Tenebrys rose, his face a mask of cold fury. His power rolled off him in palpable waves, a low growl rumbling in his chest. "Damn fools. Let them come."
"No," Delphi said, grabbing his arm. "This isn't right."
Her mind was racing, connecting the pieces. The arriving threat. The violent flare of magic. They didn't line up. The power she'd felt… It was older, darker, more elemental than anything she had experienced before.
"Ten, they aren't alone in the woods."
He looked at her, his focus sharpening. "What do you mean?"
"The flare," she insisted, her voice trembling with a terrifying realization. "The magic I felt in the woods. It was brutal, unnatural. Narcisse doesn't have magic."
"Damn it to hell, it's not even full moon," Tenebrys snarled under his breath.
Silence fell between them, thick and heavy. The peace of the afternoon was shattered, replaced by the chilling certainty of converging threats. Her father and that fool lordling were on their way to her door. Those idiots she knew and could handle.
But this other presence lurking in the shadows of the Mistwood? It wasn't like the normal fae that had tried to breach the gates before. It was something far more powerful.
They were caught between the monsters she knew and the ones she didn't.
There was only one thing she knew for certain: she would burn the Mistwood to ash before she let herself be taken away from Tenebrys.