Chapter 30 Leash
LEASH
SAERIS
“SIRE! SIRE, COME quick. Te Léna needs your help!”
Archer’s call outside the bedroom door woke us.
Fisher was on his feet and moving before I’d fully opened my eyes.
He kicked his way into a pair of pants and hurtled out of the door, barefoot and shirtless.
It took me ten seconds longer to dress. I followed behind, a million anxious questions streaking through my mind like meteors across the night sky.
I nearly crashed into Archer, who was still standing in the hallway outside the room.
“Mistress! Wait, mistress! You’re—”
I ran.
What’s happened? Hayden was fine when we left him last night. Did traveling through the quicksilver do something to him?
Did his relic not work? Oh—oh, gods, did I fuck up his relic somehow?
Is he awake?
Is he sick?
Is . . .
I stumbled to a halt in the open doorway. Evening light spilled through the window of the bedroom, falling in rectangles across the rumpled duvet that was still drawn up to my brother’s chin. His head was tipped back, his mouth open, and he was snoring loudly.
Besides my brother, the room was empty.
“Mistress! Miss . . . tress!” Archer thudded into the room, fighting for breath and struggling to speak. “You went . . . the wrong . . . way. It isn’t your . . . brother. It’s . . . the master’s sister.”
Everlayne.
I took off again, sidling past the fire sprite and bolting for the stairs.
I could smell him now—my mate had come this way and had left a trail of his scent thick in the air behind him.
I raced down the hallway and turned right, vaulting up the stairs four at a time.
There was a commotion up ahead; Everlayne’s room was fit to bursting, too many people packed inside the small space.
Te Léna. Her husband, Maynir. Danya. Fisher. Carrion—gods, everyone was here.
“Hold her still!” Te Léna cried. “She’s going to bite through her tongue!”
On the bed, Everlayne was in the grips of a seizure.
Her body was bowed so badly that the only part of her touching the sweat-soaked sheets was the crown of her head and the heels of her feet.
She shook, eyes rolled back into her head, jaw wrenched to one side, her fingers bent at odd angles and spasming.
Fisher had his sister by the head. He was trying to work a piece of leather between her teeth.
“I’m going to break her fucking jaw if I pull any harder,” he hissed.
“Everlayne? Layne, can you hear me?” Te Léna called. The healer’s eyes were wild with worry.
I took in the scene—the noise, and scents, the panic. “What the hell’s going on?”
Carrion was trying to hold Layne’s hand, but the female was thrashing so hard that maintaining his grip looked to be proving difficult.
“I was up in the bedroom across the way, absolutely minding my own business, and I heard screaming. I had to kick the door down to get in. She was strangling Te Léna.”
“Who was?”
“Who do you think? Layne,” Danya barked. “It took both of us to pry her fingers from Te Léna’s throat.”
“Why were you up here?” Fisher had climbed down from the bed; he had managed to slip the leather between his sister’s teeth and was now trying to gather her hair out of her face.
Danya didn’t look at him. “I was also minding my own business,” she snapped.
“Gods a-fucking-live.” Fisher shook his head. “Go find Lorreth, Danya. Tell him he’s needed up here.”
The warrior wiped her nose with the back of her hand, smearing blood across her cheek—she must have caught a stray fist from Layne. Her eyes flitted to Carrion and lingered there. “I’m on it.”
“Stay. . . . back!” Layne yelled. She had already spat out the leather.
“Just leave me! Leave me alone!” Fear echoed off the walls.
It hung thick in the air. This was nothing like what had happened when I’d been alone with Layne.
It wasn’t Edina’s voice that rushed past Layne’s lips.
It was Layne’s herself. “Please! Please, please nooooo!” she begged.
“What the fuck is wrong with her?” Fisher demanded, eyes sharp on Te Léna.
The healer rubbed her neck, but she was still there beside the bed, peering down at Layne, holding her other hand over the female’s chest. “I don’t know. I can feel. . . .” She shook her head. “Something. It doesn’t
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Easy.” Maynir stepped forward, placing a hand on his mate’s shoulder.
“She’s doing her best. The girl nearly snapped her neck just now.
” His tone was testimony to how much he cared for Te Léna.
In the face of how terrifying Fisher looked right now, most males would have quailed in his presence rather than dared to reprimand him.
The air thrummed with Fisher’s mounting power.
He was clearly drawing his magic to him, though the act was futile; there was nowhere for him to direct it. No enemy for him to strike down.
“Noooo, no, no, no, no. Please!” Layne suddenly dropped back down onto the bed, her head bouncing off the mattress.
Her eyes snapped wide open. “Don’t! Please, don’t.
Don’t . . . don’t . . .” A figure lurked in her pale green eyes—the dark outline of a looming figure. It seemed to grow, getting closer . . .
“Please . . .” Layne sobbed. Her voice had lost all power. It was a whisper now, desperate and resigned.
Fisher was pale as a ghost. It was freezing in the bedroom despite the fire that roared on the other side of the room. The ink on Fisher’s chest writhed, scattered to jagged lines. “Is she awake?” Fisher asked. “Who is she talking to?”
Te Léna shook her head. “No. Yes, I—She isn’t here. I—I can feel her mind, as if she is awake, but her consciousness feels like it’s behind a wall or something.”
“Can you break through it?”
“No.” Te Léna’s eyes had adopted a strange, vacant look. “It’s so thick. So high. There’s no way to bring it down.”
“Try! Please! Just try!”
“Oh, gods, no. Stop! Plea—” Layne’s shriek cut off dead. Her back arched again, her heels hammering like pistons against the bed as she convulsed.
“Something’s hurting her!” Fisher stepped back from the bedside, dragging his hands through his hair, pulling on fists of it.
His eyes found mine, and all was hopelessness and panic there.
Fisher could wield a sword. Could cut down his foes.
He could form shadow gates and fly to his friends’ sides when they needed him.
But there was no enemy to face here. No destination he could fathom.
He could do nothing to help, and that knowledge was killing him.
I was in no better position. My throat was burning so badly that it felt scorched. I reached out with the strange magic that roiled beneath my skin and found only the quicksilver, whispering softly, calm as a slow-flowing river.
Run. Run. Run. Run . . .
Dread crept along my bones like hoarfrost. I went to Layne, placing my hand on the top of her head. Her blond hair was tangled, wet with sweat. Her breathing faltered for a second, but then resumed its rapid pace, sawing in and out of her, her shaking growing even faster.
I felt what Te Léna had felt: a dark hand hovering over my friend, pressing her down into the wet soils of hell. And she was not alone in that place.
Layne’s eyelids flew open again, her pupils the size of pinpricks. Her tongue protruded awkwardly from her mouth, wet with saliva. Her teeth were stained red. The gate is open, a dread voice said, speaking from her mouth. It cannot be closed. The gate is open. The gate is open. The gate is—
I snatched back my hand like her skin had burned me.
The voice stopped.
Layne gave a terrible shudder, her eyes rolling back into her head, and then she fell motionless, the tension fleeing her body.
The air in the room was oppressively still, thick with a horror-laden silence.
No one moved.
No one said a word.
Fisher let go of his sister’s hand. His eyes were hollow as he padded stiffly, barefoot, from the room.
“Could it be connected to the rot?” Lorreth paced up and down, the thud of his boots pounding like a second pulse in my temples.
We had all migrated to the dining room, one by one, not sure where else to go.
Before the fireplace, Fisher’s hands were planted high over his head against the stone lintel of the hearth, the muscles in his back bunched into knots. He was lost in the flames.
“It’s possible,” Maynir said. His hand rested on top of Te Léna’s, his fingers intertwined with hers.
“I’ve never read of anything like this happening in Yvelia before.
But my research has revolved mostly around court politics.
My own personal interest in varying magics has given me some insight into elemental magics, shadow magics, blood magics and the like .
. . but this?” He puffed out his cheeks.
“This infection stems from no vein of magic that I’ve heard of before.
It is either very old or very new. Either way, we currently have no way of stopping it, and we have no clue how it might be affecting the realm.
The presence of some magics have been known to cause seizures in the very young.
It could be that, as this rot approached Cahlish, it affects Everlayne somehow? ”
Conjecture. That’s all this was.
Maynir was grasping at straws, but he couldn’t be faulted for it. No one else had any idea what was going on.
Lorreth scratched at his stubble. “We need to find Ren—”
“No.” Fisher took a deep breath, speaking for the first time since we’d relocated. “Not yet. He needs to warn as many of the villages and the small holdings along the coast and into the forests as he can. There’s nothing he can do for Layne here, and the people need to know what’s happening.”
Uncertainty flickered in Lorreth’s eyes, but he nodded. “You’re right. There’s nothing he can do. So what are we going to do?”