Chapter 43
DARK SPOTS
KINGFISHER
“I’M SORRY. I’VE done my best, but I don’t see him anywhere.
I’ve scoured the entire realm, and he’s nowhere to be found.
But you know as well as I do, Fisher, this realm is full of dark spots.
Just because I can’t find him doesn’t mean he’s not there.
It just means that his blood is being shielded from me somehow. ”
“You’re saying this is intentional, then? That someone has taken him and is hiding him?”
Iseabail was out of her room.
I hadn’t wanted to let her out, but what other choice did I have?
She’d refused to be questioned while under lock and key like some sort of prisoner .
. . even though that was precisely what she was.
I couldn’t have kept her in there forever, anyway, since half of the estate had already disappeared through the monstrous shadow gate I’d opened on the slope leading down to the forest. The other half were patiently waiting their turn to pass through and evacuate Cahlish.
Soon enough, I would have to send her through, along with all the others .
. . apart from Ren, because Ren was still fucking missing.
For now, we were in the drawing room. My father had used it as a study once upon a time, though I had no recollection of that.
“Quicksilver pools. Sprite colonies. The black markets in Dow and on Tarran Ross. There are so many locations that are either warded from external magic or contain so much powerful magic that they drown out all other energy. Scrying isn’t—”
“Yes, I know scrying isn’t fucking perfect.” The floorboards creaked as I paced in front of the window, dragging my hands through my hair. “Try again,” I demanded. Then, out of sheer force of habit, coupled with a pinch of desperation, I added, “Please.”
Lorreth, who had been standing by the door glowering sullenly at the witch for the past half an hour, shot me a filthy look that implied I had just personally betrayed him. “We should just throw her in the jail down in the basement and let the rot take her,” he said.
Iseabail had endangered Saeris. She’d also used Tal in the most horrific way, and we’d all nearly died as a result.
She was probably my least favorite person in a two-hundred-mile radius right now, but I still wasn’t going to lock her up in a cell and let the rot infect her.
That was a fate worse than death, and I just didn’t have it in me.
Iseabail bridled at Lorreth’s comment but didn’t say anything to him directly.
Wouldn’t even look at the warrior. To me, she said, “Fine. I’ll try again for you, but you shouldn’t expect a different result.
I’ve been staring at this map for so long that my eyes feel like they’re about to shrivel up and fall out of my head.
If this was going to work, it would have done so five hours ago. ”
What did she think I was going to do? Just say, Okay, then, I guess that’s it. We won’t look for him anymore, then? I gave her a reproving look. “Just . . . try again, Iseabail.”
I’d noted when she’d returned from Nevercross that she had been promoted to prioress.
Only the ascended elders of the Balquhidder clan were permitted to wear their hair braided and pinned up the way Iseabail did now.
Normally, a witch was hundreds of years old before she was even considered for the priory.
Iseabail hadn’t even seen the end of her first century yet.
The leaders of her clan had rewarded her prematurely for the spellwork she’d wrought at Ammontraíeth.
It made perfect sense that they had. Iseabail had single-handedly eradicated thousands of high bloods in one night—something the Balquhidder clan hadn’t been able to achieve in all the years that had passed since they’d discovered the cure to the blood curse that was placed on the Fae.
But the witches were sticklers for honor and tradition.
They were rule makers, not rule breakers.
And they did not hold with dark magic. “I’m sending you back to Nevercross once you’re done here,” I told her, leaning back against the wall.
Iseabail’s head snapped up. Lorreth’s shoulders tensed at the same time, utter disbelief in his dark eyes.
“I’ll come and pay the high priestess a visit, too.
I’m thinking about bringing Tal with me,” I continued.
The scrying pendulum Iseabail held swung wildly—not because she had located Ren at last, but because her hands were shaking. She straightened slowly, looking up from the detailed map of the courts she had been poring over.
“Why would you do that?” she asked stiffly. “I’d have thought you had far too much going on, what with your sister, and Ren, and the evacuation.”
I considered her for a while. Let her stew a moment before I decided she had sweat enough. “Well, the witches have done us all a great service, cleansing the Blood Court. I need to thank them. It’d be remiss of me to let their sacrifice go unacknowledged.”
“That’s really unnecessary. We didn’t act on behalf of the Fae, Kingfisher. This was done for the betterment of our clan. No sacrifice was made.”
“Of course there was,” I said airily. “The High Council outlawed dark magic millennia ago. That’s how Algat found herself cast out of the Kinross clan, wasn’t it?
If they authorized forceful cleansing and the use of black hell gate spellwork to rid Sanasroth of the vampire nobles, then they made a grave sacrifice indeed.
They sacrificed their ethics. Their morals. Their—”
“Stop.” The word echoed around the drawing room.
I had her.
It had only been a suspicion, but now I knew it to be fact: The matriarchs of Iseabail’s house had no idea what she had done.
A lethal smile began to spread across my face, slow as honey.
“What did you tell them?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.
“Did you say you’d convince the high bloods that it was in their best interests to return to their natural-born states? ”
Iseabail locked eyes with me, defiance radiating from every pore of her as her face went carefully blank. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I told them.”
Lorreth made a scathing sound at the back of his throat, his leathers creaking as he looked away, out of the window, shaking his head, as if such a thing could ever have been done.
More than once, the witches had tried to convince the high bloods who had rejected the cure to reconsider their decisions.
The Fae kings had tried, too. Rurik Daianthus from Yvelia.
Royan from Gilaria. Shara from Lissia. No one had succeeded in persuading the high bloods that they would be better off as members of the Fae courts again.
How they’d believed Iseabail would persuade them now was a mystery.
I tutted, shaking my head from side to side in faux disapproval. “Oh dear. They’re going to be very disappointed when they find out about the fucking bloodbath you orchestrated then, aren’t they?”
“You can’t tell them.” Iseabail skirted around my father’s old desk, raising her hands.
My shadows were at the ready, but Lorreth got there first. He rarely used his own innate magic.
Once, he had told me that his people swore an oath not to use the magic they were born with.
From the North, his people lived in the wilds and carved a pitiful life for themselves out of the tundra.
They were strange folk, with even stranger beliefs.
They considered their magic sacred, accidentally stolen from nature during the process of being born.
To use their gifts was to flout that theft in front of the gods.
For Lorreth’s family, it was a sin worse than murder to use magic—inherited, small, or otherwise.
Though he was nothing like his family and didn’t share their beliefs, he had still been raised under their roof, and some things stuck with you, whether you believed in them or not.
I’d seen my friend wield his power only twice before, and both times had been to save someone else.
Later, if I asked him why he did it, he’d probably say he unleashed his power because he had thought Iseabail was going to attack me, and he’d be able to say it because he believed it.
But I saw the look on his face as he threw out his hands; he also did it because he was angry.
Iseabail was lifted from her feet. In a flash, she flew backward, slamming into the dusty old bookcase behind the desk.
Books toppled to the floor. A vase full of dried flowers fell and shattered on the ground.
White light snapped around Iseabail’s wrists and ankles, lashing her to the bookcase.
The band of energy that whipped around the witch’s throat dug into her skin and cinched tight.
“I . . . was . . .” Iseabail gasped. “Wasn’t . . .”
“Shut your mouth,” Lorreth snapped.
Iseabail’s eyes found mine, beseeching. “You’re . . . just going to . . . stand there? You’re not the . . . ethical, high and . . . mighty hero you pr . . . pretend to be around . . . your mate.”
Hero? I wanted to laugh. Gods, how I wanted to.
I’d never heard anything more ridiculous in all my life.
“I don’t pretend to be anything,” I told her.
“Saeris makes me kinder than I should be. Do not misjudge me. I would do all manner of unconscionable things in the pursuit of her safety. I’d take my friends and my mate to another realm and let this one burn if I thought for one second that it was what she wanted.
I’ve given everything I have to protect the people of Yvelia, and they spit on me and bay for my head because of it.
I’m about to lose my home to this godscursed rot.
I have no love left for this place, and I have very little good left in me.
I’m afraid if you’re hoping for a hero, you’ll have to look somewhere else. ”