Chapter 43 #2
Iseabail blinked at that, the accusation in her watering eyes cutting into me. “You don’t . . . mean that. I see you . . .” She rasped. “Your soul. You’d fight and bleed . . . for this . . . realm—”
“Lorreth!” The door to the drawing room was open. There Saeris stood, hair and clothes dripping wet, her mouth hanging open in dismay. “What are you doing?”
Lorreth reacted as though he’d been scalded.
His power crackled out of existence, leaving the reek of ozone in its wake.
Iseabail slid down the bookcase, coughing as she crumpled into a heap amid the fallen books.
The warrior’s cheeks and ears burned bright red as he turned away from the witch and set his gaze on the casement above the window, unable to meet Saeris’s eyes.
“What the hell is going on?” Saeris brought the scent of rain with her as she entered the room. She looked from Iseabail to Lorreth and then to me. “Are we torturing people now?” she asked quietly.
“It’s all right,” Iseabail croaked. “Lorreth wasn’t going to hurt me.”
“I fucking was,” the warrior argued.
There were witches among the clans who could look into a person’s soul.
It was said that they could get the measure of a male just by taking one look at him.
Good. Bad. Kind. Cold. It was all there, apparently: the blueprints to our souls, laid bare for certain witches to read as easily as the lines of a book.
Iseabail had never mentioned that she was such a witch, but the certainty she spoke with gave the impression that she might have been.
Regardless of her abilities, she was right about Lorreth. He wouldn’t have hurt her. The damned witch had him acting the fool—to say his people had history with the Balquhidder clan would have been an understatement—but he wouldn’t have caused her any harm, even if he didn’t believe that right now.
Saeris shot the warrior a baleful glance as she crossed the room and offered her hand to the witch, helping her to her feet. “Have you found Ren?” She posed the question to all three of us as one.
“No,” Iseabail answered. “I’ve tried every which way I can think of, but he’s nowhere that my spellwork can detect.”
“All right, then. If you’re certain he’s not on his way here, then we’ll have to regroup and pick this up later. I just ran into Danya as I was coming back into the house. She says the rot is here.”
Black vines snaked over the blanket of snow that covered the lawns.
Wherever the rot touched, the snow melted, already softened by the rain, and the ground was momentarily exposed—blades of grass, still green thanks to my father’s wards, saw the light for the first time in centuries, only to wilt, turn brittle, and break seconds later.
The necrotic spread crept forward before my eyes, its progress startlingly efficient as it made for the house.
The last remaining unit of warriors moved quickly through the shadow gate.
Only two hundred fighters waited in rank and file to be transported.
The warriors who had already gone through had carried large trunks with them, full of the family rings and other items of jewelry and that I’d once tasked Saeris to turn into relics.
The last of the warriors carried the silver that we’d brought back from Zilvaren.
Their breath clouded the air, their laughter nervous as they watched the hellish tide come in.
Swords, daggers, staffs, bows, and arrows: They were armed to the teeth, and magic danced at their fingertips, but still, they were not equipped to face this foe.
“As fast as you can!” I called. “When you’re through, wait at the campsite! Do not go down into the village. The satyrs aren’t expecting us. The last time this many fighting Fae showed up on their doorstep, a bloody battle ensued. Let’s not give them the wrong impression!”
I was met with curiosity and uncertainty as the troops stepped single file through the lucent smoke and shadow.
Down to the last one of them, they knew me.
I had led them once. Been their commander.
I had charged with them up the steep slope of victory and fallen back with them in retreat.
Every horror I had ever asked them to face, I’d made damned sure I had faced it first .
. . and then I’d left them. None of them had known why.
None had known where I’d gone. Thanks to Tal, Renfis had known.
Everlayne, too. But they’d been Oath Bound not to tell anyone where I was.
They hadn’t been able to explain to these fighters that I had not abandoned them willingly.
They knew the truth now—the details of Gillethrye and what had taken place there had spread through Irrín quickly enough after we’d faced Malcolm in the maze.
But a hundred years was a long time, and trust was lost far quicker than that.
Renfis was their leader now. Ren should have been the one urging them through the shadow gate toward safety, but he was missing, and I was an unreliable substitute.
The rain had stopped a little while ago.
It was almost dusk, and the clouds were low and dense enough that Saeris could stand to be outside.
She wore a heavy woolen cloak with the hood drawn up to shield her from the last of the day’s light.
As she crossed the snowy slope toward me, Onyx trotting close on her heels, I was once again struck by how strange but normal it was to have her here, to have her as my mate.
She wasn’t what I’d expected. She was so much more.
She really had come blazing into my life like a comet, and now she was changing everything.
She was different, too. The past few weeks had changed her.
There was a lithe confidence to her as she approached, her boots crunching in the snow.
She’d always looked good in her fighting leathers, but now they belonged on her.
My chest tightened with unspeakable pride when I saw her black tresses now hung in war braids beneath her hood.
Fae war braids. She had become a part of this world—a part of me—and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Her eyes flashed daggers at me when she pitched up at my side, and I braced for the shit-kicking I was about to receive. “We don’t torture people,” she said, her tone full of ice.
“Carrion tortures me daily,” I muttered.
“If we torture people, then we’re like them,” she said, ignoring me.
“And if we capture an enemy warrior and they have information we need?” I asked.
She gave me a dry, displeased, sidelong look from the depths of her hood.
I held up my hands. “All right. Okay. We don’t torture people.”
“I think we should send Iseabail back to Nevercross. We might need to call on the witches again. We won’t be able to do that if we’re holding one of them hostage.”
Decisive. Strategic. I knew Saeris could be both, but I liked seeing this side of her right now.
She was making plans, working to stay one step ahead, and that cheered me no end.
I nodded, setting my eyes on the fading horizon, trying not to look at the black infection that was slithering ever closer toward my family home.
“You’re right. As soon as everyone’s through the gate, I’ll make sure she finds her way back to clan lands. ”
“And in the morning, I’d like to go back to Ammontraíeth. All those people—”
“Aren’t your responsibility,” I told her gently. “Not if you don’t want them to be. There is no Blood Court anymore, Saeris.”
“But there’s still Ammontraíeth. There’s still Sanasroth. And we have no idea if the horde is where I commanded them to stay. What if they’ve broken free and are tearing through the palace right now, draining all the people who chose to come back?”
I worked my jaw, not wanting to answer. That scenario had crossed my mind, too, and my initial response had not been very generous.
Did their renewed Fae status undo all the terrible crimes they’d committed over the centuries? Thank fuck it wasn’t up to me to make that call.
“Most of those people didn’t choose to become high bloods,” Saeris said.
She had no way of knowing what I was thinking.
Not even with the connection we shared as mates.
I supposed it made sense that she was also contemplating the question of their guilt.
“Malcolm murdered most of them. They might have been kind people before. Good. And despite your frown, I don’t think you’d leave them there to be eaten by feeders.
Just on the off chance that they’re not assholes. ”
“On the off chance that they’re not assholes.
Gods.” I laughed mirthlessly at that, and the laughter turned into a sigh.
An uncomfortable realization had struck while she’d been talking.
What if these were the people from Gillethrye?
The ones I hadn’t been able to save. The ones I had ordered to be burned when Malcolm’s feeders had scaled the walls of the city and torn through its streets, leaving death and decay in their wake.
What if I had been able to save them? Saeris wanted the same opportunity, and I wasn’t about to deny her that.
I wouldn’t sentence her to endure the same kind of regret that gnawed on my soul every day.
“We won’t take Tal with us,” I said abruptly.
“I doubt he’s up to it. And anyway, after everything he went through there, I think it’s best if he never has to step foot in Ammontraíeth again. ”
Saeris’s eyes went wide. “Wait. So you agree, then? We can go back?” Her surprise was endearing. I wrapped my arm around her and pressed a kiss to her temple through her hood.
“I shouldn’t tell you this, since you seem blissfully unaware of the power you hold over me, but . . . I will give you whatever you want, Saeris Fane. Always. No matter what it costs me.”