Chapter 34
Neither Fen nor Colt heard me, too lost in the moment.
The room was cold and bare, with just a cot in one corner and a meager fire in the fireplace on one wall. It looked like a prison cell from the World of the Living.
My bond with Fen was a tumult of emotions and sensations, each one racing faster than the last. I could feel Colt’s pain through it as Fen’s shadows transferred it from one man to the other, so sharp that it turned my stomach. Equally disturbing was Fen’s euphoria.
“Fen. Stop.” My voice rose, but he still didn’t hear me. I took a mental hold of our bond and yanked as hard as I could. “Stop.”
Fen jerked back, his shadows faltering, hanging in the air like smoke.
Colt collapsed into a ball on the floor, rocking and moaning.
I grabbed Fen’s shoulder to pull him away, but his hand shot out and wrapped around my throat.
Scrabbling at his wrist, I tried to pry him off me.
This was different from his grip in his office.
That had been possessive but gentle. This was hard, nearly cutting off my air. “Fen,” I gasped. “You’re hurting me.”
He turned to look at me, his eyes completely black, and there was no recognition in his gaze. I even felt it in our bond, like he was barely aware of his surroundings.
I smacked at his arm, scratching and clawing as I tried to breathe.
After what seemed like an eternity, the black in Fen’s eyes retreated to reveal their usual golden-brown color. Awareness crept in slowly, his grip loosening by degrees until I was able to pull his hand off of me.
Grabbing my throat, I sucked in air and coughed, my eyes watering.
Shock flooded our bond like a splash of ice-cold water.
“Maeve? What?” He turned around, as if seeing the room for the first time.
When he spotted Colt on the floor, shock turned to horror, then shame, and then his emotions were muffled, like he’d pulled them back on purpose. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. What were you doing here?”
“Working with a soul. What does it look like?” His voice had a hysterical edge to it.
“It looked like you were feeding on him.” It sounded ridiculous, but I knew what I’d felt.
“Feeding?” He laughed, short and high, too high to be natural. “That’s not what happened.”
“Oh, really? What, then?”
“I just told you.” He was outwardly calm, except for the way his eyes darted around the room, unable to settle on one spot. The gold flecks surrounding his iris whirled so fast I could barely see the brown in them.
“Liar. He was in pain,” I pointed to Colt who was murmuring something that sounded like I deserve it over and over.
“Working through the past is often painful.” His dismissal felt like a slap.
“Don’t do this. Don’t lie to me. I felt it.”
Fen flinched at my words.
“What’s going on?” Titus’s voice sounded behind me.
“Fen was feeding on a soul.” I crossed my arms, suddenly cold.
Fen scoffed, but Titus looked at Colt and frowned, like a soul should not be in that state. His reaction both soothed and terrified me.
Marcus crossed the room with a similar expression on his face. Grabbing a ragged blanket off the cot in the corner, he knelt and covered Colt with it.
“Let’s move this conversation to another room,” Titus said, ushering me towards the door.
“Why?” Fen said. “There’s nothing to discuss.”
“That is not normal,” Titus said, his voice hard, pointing to where Marcus was soothing Colt with soft words and gentle touches. “None of us would be in here with a soul like that without another Tempter. Besides, there’s nothing you can do with him now.”
Fen looked like he wanted to argue, but after staring at the three of us he just shrugged and sauntered out of the room.
“Are you alright?” Titus asked quietly as he led me to a room three doors down.
My throat was too tight to answer so I just wobbled my head back and forth.
Physically I was okay, if a bit sore, but I was confused and terrified of the way Fen was acting.
I’d seen glimpses of this kind of behavior from him, but nothing this extreme.
It was like he was an entirely different person.
The room we entered looked nothing like the one we’d just left.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were all a light gray, neither stone nor wood, and it was completely empty.
It was like standing inside a blank canvas.
Fen was already there standing in the middle, arms crossed, expression shuttered.
As soon as we walked in, the room shifted.
Wood floors and a carpet appeared under our feet; shadow and wood walls, like the ones in Fen’s office, took shape along with a fireplace with a cheerful blaze in the grate.
Two leather couches and a side table appeared next, and sconces lit up on the walls.
A comfortable place for an uncomfortable conversation.
“The cells become whatever the occupants need, or will allow,” Titus said at my confused expression.
This place never ceased to amaze me.
Marcus joined us a few moments later, nodding to Titus, as if to indicate Colt had been taken care of for the moment.
The atmosphere in the room shifted. Titus and Marcus were clearly worried, and yet Fen acted like nothing was wrong. Like his friends’ concern, and mine, was an imposition.
I wrapped my arms around myself. It felt so wrong, like everything was teetering on the edge of a cliff and one wrong move might send us tumbling off.
“Well?” Fen asked as Marcus shut the door. “You want to talk, so talk.” He sat down and crossed one of his legs over the other, resting his arms on the back of the couch.
“Why were you alone with that soul when he was in that state?” Titus asked.
“I had everything under control.”
“He was catatonic,” Marcus said.
“I was just about to go for help.” Fen waved his hand lazily.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time working with a soul lately,” Titus said. “Was it that one?”
Fen shut his mouth and crossed his arms.
Oh, Gods. Was this what he’d been doing all this time? “How long has Colt been here? Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice broke a little on the last word.
Recognition of the name sparked on Titus’s and Marcus’s faces.
“Since shortly after you fled Death’s castle,” Fen said. “I didn’t tell you because you didn’t need to know. It wasn’t as if you’d be able to visit him. It would have distracted you. And him.”
“But—”
“He’s right,” Marcus said. “About that.”
Titus looked grim but nodded.
My jaw clenched. I didn’t want to hear that Fen was being reasonable. It felt like a betrayal for him to have kept it from me. Especially in light of what I’d discovered him doing, which I still didn’t understand. It made me wonder what else he was keeping from me.
I thought back. The wall I’d discovered in our bond after Talia revealed she’d been a Tempter had disappeared after I confronted him about it, but then I’d run into a limit on the amount of power I could pull, even though I’d felt how vast his stores were when we first bonded.
I knew he’d blocked me after Talia. It never occurred to me that he might have also purposely limited how much power I could draw from him, perhaps to keep more secrets from me.
Except that didn’t make any sense. He needed me to destroy Death, and I needed his power to do it.
Limiting what I could draw would be self-defeating. Why would he sabotage us like that?
I watched him argue with Titus, his expression relaxed except for the tightness around his eyes. He was so unlike the Fen I was used to. Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought. Given the troubled expressions on Titus’s and Marcus’s faces, maybe none of us did.
It was happening again. Rage rose in my chest, hot and sticky.
Just like with Colt, I’d misjudged Fen. If what I suspected was true, his behavior was putting the fate of the realms in danger.
I’d trusted him, that he had everyone’s best interests at heart, but if that were true, he wouldn’t be stonewalling us. Right?
I had to know for sure.
Closing my eyes, I plunged into our bond, diving down until I hit the bottom of Fen’s well of power.
This close, it was clear it was an artificial barrier.
A construct of stone and will. He was hiding something.
My fury boiled over. Gathering every ounce of anger and grief running through me, I mentally hurled myself at the wall.
I felt Fen jolt, but I didn’t hesitate. Battering it, I ripped at it with mental claws and rammed into it over and over until it buckled.
“Maeve.” Fen’s voice sounded far away. I vaguely registered his panic, but I was too concentrated on my task to care.
Another couple of hits and the wall collapsed.
My breath stalled in my lungs as I took in what was on the other side.
A vast reservoir of power, far larger than the well he’d allowed me access to.
This was what I’d seen when we bonded. He’d been keeping it from me, putting all of us in danger, and pretending it had all been in my head.
My chest constricted at the proof of his betrayal. Everything I’d thought was between us was a lie.
I was such a fool.
I could feel him trying to push me out as he scrambled to reconstruct the wall between us.
His anger, panic and shame overwhelmed me, a tempest of emotions that swept me up and tossed me straight into the sea of his power.
It flowed through me, filling every nook and cranny of my mind and body, far more than I’d ever channeled before.
Then everything faded, and I was in a room much like Colt’s cell, in a body not my own.
“What are you doing?” Talia stood at the open door, eyes wide with horror.