Chapter Twelve
The outrage over the assassination attempt kept Emiana’s hooks on my mind and mouth for hours. I harangued and accused everyone—screeching and making a nuisance of myself for so long after my shoulder and mouth were healed that Bradach threw another bucket of ice water in my face.
I came back to myself sputtering and gasping. Alisdair observed the exchange with a raised brow, but didn’t question his brother. He was likely as relieved as I was that Emiana had finally shut the hell up.
“Whoever did this will be found and slowly killed,” Alisdair dropped without irony or inflection. “That I promise you.”
I just nodded, sinking back against the wet sheets. Alisdair snapped his fingers and the sheets and I were dried. I was lying down in our bed, though I didn’t need to be. The healers did their job well.
“Who was it who told Eadaoin they heard a child’s voice in the east wing?” Bradach asked. “Surely that’s our culprit.”
“Eadaoin said it was Honora,” I replied to him but looked at Alisdair. “The same person who taught me that stupid dance, claiming you’d love it.”
Alisdair inclined his head. “Luring you into a death trap isn’t the natural leap from tricking you into humiliating yourself.”
“I didn’t humiliate myself, you humiliated me,” I snapped.
“I did no such thing. I was merely a captive to the comedy play.”
“You know what, have you considered that Honora told me to do that dance so I’d kill you! My only regret is that a dented skull wasn’t enough!”
Alisdair laughed heartily. I looked around for another candelabra to finish the job.
“As amusing as this is, are we truly considering Honora?” Bradach broke in. “Why would she wish Lady Ana harm? She wants this as much as we all do.”
“Wants what?” I asked, flicking between them and their locked stares. “Guys? Hello? What does she want?”
“She wants you to be happy,” Bradach said, finally turning to me. “As we all do. Like my lord said, a silly little trick is nowhere near trying to kill you. I don’t believe this of her.”
I gave him a grave look. “Then, do you believe Eadaoin is lying, and that she’s the one who—”
“No.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Neither do I. Eadaoin wouldn’t hurt me. And even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t need to lure me into a trap. I’m alone with her more than anyone else in Lumenfell. Meya knows she’s had plenty of easy opportunities.”
“Both Eadaoin and Honora are innocent of this,” Alisdair stated, crossing to the bed. His touch was light stroking my shoulder. “Whoever did this hoped we would come to the simplest conclusion that whoever passed the message of the voice in the empty hall, was the culprit.
“But the fact is this, there was no child’s voice coming through the wall because there was no child in that hallway. So who was it really?”
I stared at him. “Oh,” I whispered.
He nodded. “No magic is strong enough to turn Honora into a traitor. But voice-mimicking magic couldn’t be simpler.
By now, everyone knows you’re looking for that fox boy.
All one has to do is make a passerby believe the child you’re looking for is in the east wing, they pass the message on to you, and off you go.
Simple, yes, but clever,” he growled, eyes glittering with rage even as gentle fingers stroked my cheek.
“Clever little bastard, I will enjoy ripping him apart and spitting out his bones.
“I’ll enjoy it very much.”
My heart fluttered, toes curling. His protectiveness over me was a good thing. It was a sign of the love I needed to bloom in his empty chest. But my reaction to him whenever he was... that was not a good sign.
“What do we do now?” I asked. “Foalan is commander of the army and we’re in the middle of planning a war. He doesn’t have time to follow me around all day.”
“Why in the name of Meya would he? You’re my wife,” he said. “I will protect you—watch over you day and night. Should a single person even glare in your direction, I will pluck their eyes out. No one and nothing will ever hurt you again.”
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. THUMP-THUMP!
I didn’t need to know whose heart that was or where it was coming from.
It was mine, and I was in trouble. In more danger than I’d ever been in my life, but not because of any assassin.
My breath hitched when Alisdair laced his fingers through mine.
Fall in love with me quickly, beast... before I fall in love with you.
ALISDAIR KEPT TO HIS word over the next fortnight.
He went where I went. Or more accurately, I went where he went. Trailing him throughout the day and glimpsing what he did outside the times we planned in the war room, or practiced archery on the field. I was treated to what Alisdair Shadowsoul did when I wasn’t looking—
—and it was horrible.
A coyote faeriken knelt in the snow, still under the shadow of two swords, but not silent. He growled a steady, ferocious snarl—his expression showing nothing resembling remorse.
“You don’t have to do this!” I jumped off the litter and threw myself at Alisdair—holding him back with my body alone.
Emiana enjoyed watching this, but she never got to the end. My horror always brought me back to consciousness.
“We can put him in jail,” I cried. “Life sentence. He deserves nothing less.”
“We do not have jails, Princess.” He kept walking, easily dragging me behind him. “Children are put into corners to think about what they’ve done after misbehaving. But adults know what they’ve done, and this adult knows the cost. He chose this.”
“That’s bullshit!”
Alisdair raised his arm—claws growing to their lethal, impossible length. I dangled off his elbow trying to bring his hand back down.
“You’ll keep an innocent siren imprisoned in a dungeon, but your criminal subjects are too good for the same treatment!”
“Because they get worse,” he roared, flinging me about trying to shake me off. “You’re still not ready, little bird. You’re soft!”
“And you’re still a bastard!” Heaving up, I sank my teeth in his forearm.
His bellow echoed through the endless night. “Damn you, nightmare woman!” Alisdair tore me off and tossed me over his shoulder, ignoring my kicking and pummeling. “Fine!” he barked. “Since you’ve declared me unfit to be judge, jury, and executioner, I will pass the task to another.”
“Good. I sentence him to the dungeon—”
“Not you,” Alisdair sliced in. He turned on a twitching, trembling figure in the snow. “You. What say you, Oona. What will his sentence be?”
Oona looked from Alisdair to the kneeling coyote man—shaking harder. Oona was older than me, but not by much. Brown and gray fur covered her head to toe, and flicking over her shoulder, was a large, bushy tail.
She was the first squirrel faeriken I met in Lumenfell, and she seemed just as skittish and nervous as the animal who possessed her, but it wasn’t hard to see why.
Oona clutched her arm to her chest. It was bandaged with thick, heavy wrappings soaked in healing ointments.
A smell so strong it turned the nose of every faeriken with heightened scent.
The care was necessary considering that the same coyote man kneeling in the snow bit through fur, skin, and muscle when he tried to eat her.
“Oona,” I called, straining to see around Alisdair’s back upside down. “You don’t have to do this. I will—”
“Kill him.” Oona shook and twitched, but her voice didn’t. “My lord, do it. Slit the worthless son of a whore’s throat.”
Alisdair didn’t even put me down. He ripped the head off the coyote’s shoulders, spraying warm, thick blood on the back of my boots and legs.
My scream disturbed no other ears than mine.
WE WERE A SILENT PARTY trekking back to Castle Riagin. Alisdair left three guards behind to clean up the mess and escort Oona back to her home. The rest protected me, including Alisdair.
“I can’t believe you bit me,” he gritted. “I should’ve traded an actual fucking bird off Salman. At least that creature wouldn’t be so ill-mannered!”
I bared my teeth. “I’m ill-mannered? You do these horrible fucking things for no reason, and you dare to say that I’m the problem? My only regret is not tearing a chunk out of you like he did to Oona— Oh,” I cried, slapping a hand over my mouth. “Of course I can’t. If I did, you’d rip off my head!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Ridiculous? You mean to say your terrible, barbaric laws don’t apply to me?” I scoffed. “If only you could spare such mercy for your people.”
“Barbaric, you say?” True anger burned in his eyes. “You are a wonder, Princess. You’ve ruled in my kingdom for an entire two moons, and you believe you know better what my kingdom and my people need?
“Bradach.” Alisdair spoke to him, but glared at me. “Who’s next?”
“Emer. She says Sheena stole her baby out of the cot, put her own child there in his place, and then she put Emer’s child out in the cold to die,” Bradach replied, dropping my jaw. “They were able to save the baby in time, but Emer’s calling for blood.”
“Oh, Meya.” My stomach churned thinking of that poor child stolen and left to die. “Why would this Sheena do such a thing?”
“Cuckoo birds,” Bradach replied. “It’s what they do. Throw all the other eggs out of a nest, lay their own, and leave the borrowed mother to raise their offspring. Sheena wasn’t in her right mind when she did it.” He shook his head. “But that’s little comfort to Emer.”
“The change has taken her.” Alisdair’s deep baritone floated to my ears.
“Her faemanity has so eroded, she abandoned one child and tried to kill another. As my people become more and more animal-like, the laws of fae are discarded for the law of beasts, and in the wild, the only thing an animal fears is a predator.”
The litter stopped. I peered from the blankets into Alisdair’s shadowed eyes.
“I am the law, Ana, because they fear me. They don’t want to be an animal. They don’t want to give in to their instincts, because then they become my prey. As long as that is true, there is peace in Lumenfell, and when it isn’t true... there is death.”