Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
HASANNAH
A s soon as I left the stage those witches, grace and poise, deserted me like I was trash. I stumbled past the waiting dancers, ignoring stares and babbled conversation, riding the waves of euphoria I knew meant I would be in trouble with Andrei later.
My succubus might have slipped the leash just a teensy bit.
But none of my fellow dancers were attempting to follow me, or calling my name, so it meant I'd more or less controlled myself. I returned to the dressing room, using the wall as support and headed towards my vanity, plopping onto my stool as I stared at the large bouquet of flowers that obscured the mirror.
As my heart rate slowed, I smiled. Only Andrei would have sent me flowers and, of course, it was a huge, almost extravagant arrangement.
Exactly to his taste.
I leaned forward, inhaling the fragrant scent of multiple blooms. Wow. I'd never scented flowers so sweet before. I breathed deep, dizzy with sudden giddiness as tension left my body.
Chúa ?i, good stuff.
I wanted to dive into the flowerpot and roll around in it.
It smelled like Nirvana.
Or was that teen spirit?
Wait a minute, I recognized this scent.
. . .never mind. Who cared? Besides, Andrei had sent them.
I inhaled again, giggling. Oh, wow. The florist should have these flowers crushed and bottled. Trust Fae blooms to behave like a good blend of weed.
This was wonderful. What kind of flowers were these? And why hadn't my High Lord gifted me such a bouquet before? I needed one of these to inhale after every single rehearsal.
Something clicked, and there was movement off to the side. I turned my head and glimpsed white blonde hair cropped short, and a tall, elegant body.
I shoved to my feet, startled. “Xavi!”
He disappeared.
Xavi was alive ? Huh. That was. . .surprising.
“Xavi! Come back.”
I ran, stumbling into chairs and banging my head against the threshold of the door because somehow I missed it. I wanted to talk to him; suddenly it seemed important to make sure he was unharmed. I hadn't wanted him dead after all. At least I didn't think I had wanted him dead.
I hadn't shed any tears.
Which still disturbed me.
No, I didn't want him dead, and I’d tell myself that until I believed it. Maybe seeing him in person forced me to care.
I stumbled into the hallway as he disappeared into shadows where the hallways weren’t lit, and followed.
Followed until I reached the dark backside of the building and walked out a side door. It crashed closed behind me, and cool evening air slapped me in the face.
I drug in more oxygen, but this time there were no fragrant blooms infiltrating my lungs.
Instead of perfume, suspicion bloomed. I stepped forward several feet, realizing I was in a darkened alley; so cliche.
I shouldn't be outside. How in the world had Mathen let me leave the building on my own? Con was with Andrei, and Philea was on crowd duty, but Mathen and Theland and I thought Esseum were assigned to me tonight. There was no way I should have been able to escape into an alley before one of them pounced and dragged me back to sit me in a neurotically defended corner.
Something was wrong.
“Xavi?”
Wait, I’d seen this movie.
You know what, forget Xavi.
I whirled around, about to head right back to that door because no way was I that girl, when an explosion picked me up and flung me against the neighboring building.
MATHEN
Esseum sneezed.
I sympathized, eyeing the blooms he carried. My Lord had advised me there would be a delivery for his consort before the evening was over, so we had not subjected the terrified delivery boy to too rough an interrogation.
The bouquet was what it appeared to be; an extravagant arrangement of the rarest blooms available in Casakraine, no expense spared, which when seen by the other dancers would stand as another mark of Andreien’s favor towards Hasannah.
Of course, Anali would see only a bouquet of lovely flowers. Fussy, she would likely call it, as she smiled and stroked the petals, pleased in spite of herself. She chafed against her cage, but her flutters for freedom were weakening by the day. My Lord was building such a pretty, delicate trap, baited with every pleasure she might possibly desire. Soon, she would not fight him at all.
I almost pitied Anali, but our Lord loved her. She was safest with him, and she needed someone to take care of her.
Esseum set the bouquet on her vanity, pausing to bend and inhale the fragrance. “There's something about this.”
I frowned, alerted by the bemusement in his tone. “By what do you mean?”
“I feel as if I've scented this fragrance before.” He inhaled again. “No, not this, but something similar.”
Wanting to understand what he was experiencing, I followed his lead. The scent invaded my nostrils and filtered down into my lungs. . .
And hit my head moments later.
I sneezed. Sneezed again.
Laughed. “I think we are both allergic.” I clasped him on the shoulder and tugged him back towards the door. “Come. Her time on the stage will be ending soon.”
We left the dressing room to return to the outskirts of the stage where Theland watched our little dancer as she performed for the pleasure of the Sahakians. I regretted missing her performance, but her safety was more important, and there would be other times to watch her dance.
Alone. If I was lucky, clothed in nothing but moonlight and her long hair. Perhaps in the future I would have a bonded of my own, but I almost dreaded the day. Anali was becoming as dear to me as if she were mine.
As we walked the corridor, the faintest scuffing of feet caught my attention. I turned, hand going for my blade, and narrowed my eyes when I recognized features that should absolutely not be present.
“Find Lady Hasannah,” I ordered Esseum and Theland, and followed the ghost.
What should be a ghost.
By the time I realized I'd been led on a fool’s chase, fear wrapped around my spine. I abandoned hunting the white rabbit and turned on my heels, running back towards the stage.
Bright light and heat ripped through the hallway followed by a shock of sound, stone and wood breaking.
I tripped over something; no, someone. “Esseum!”
He groaned, proof of life. I bent down to grab his shoulder and stumbled, the same fragrance from the bouquet wafting in the air.
Darkness be damned. I was an idiot.
“Hold your breath,” I snarled at my fallen luudthen and inhaled a deep, fast sink of air before the contamination reached me.
After pulling him to his feet, we staggered towards the backstage, only to discover Anali had left a half hour prior.
I’d lost a half hour of time, and it had felt like five minutes.
Terror I had never known before gripped me.
Darkness do not let her be dead.
I had failed her so many times. If she died, this would be my last failure.
I feared simple death was not to be her fate, however.
ANDREIEN
Because I was monitoring my own emotional state, I sensed an internal wrongness.
I didn't move other than to inhale silently. Inhale, and observe my mind's instinctive relaxation, a smile that wanted to pull at the corner of my lips when I was in no mood for smiling or relaxing. A faint underlying scent of sweets and roses in bloom wafted through the air. I knew the scent intimately, of course, but what had it to do with Hasannah? I followed the tendril of thought for what my mind was trying to?—
“I could even smell the cotton candy in the air.”
Hasannah’s euphoria the day Dartanyon had tried to take her. I’d missed it, and it had been in front of my face. That I’d been self-experimenting with doses of Ixnie in order to build an immunity was no excuse. I didn’t associate Ixnie’s unique fragrance with spun carnival sugar, but that was only because my reference was from my culture, not hers.
I should not be scenting it in the air now unless one of our concerns had come to fruition.
I rose and held out a hand to my mother, and glanced at my sister. “Lord Miahela, assist me in escorting our Lord to her coach.”
My sister was no fool. She stood, expression vaguely bored. I knew her well enough to see the subtle, vicious sharpening of her eyes. In an instant she morphed from pampered princess into sleek warrior, though not a twitch of a muscle gave her away. I felt the telltale stirring in the air immediately surrounding us, warning she was sinking into the well of her power the same as I, and the same as my mother.
Mia knew something was wrong.
My mother was also not an idiot.
The High Lord accepted my hand, rising without further comment. I was her Heir as well as her son; it wasn’t beneath her dignity to accept my aid publicly.
Urgency beat at me to get my family into the coach and away from the building so I could return to Hasannah. With a subtle gesture, I sent another quad to support the one assigned to her as our remaining guards flanked Issahelle and Miahela.
More warriors joined us once we exited the building. My mother was trained, but as Lord of our House as well as the ruler of Casakraine she wouldn't fight unless there was no other choice; that was what Mia and I were for. Besides, she wasn’t highly discriminate on a battlefield; we preferred she simply stay off them.
“What has happened?” Issahelle asked, voice cool as she allowed me to usher her into the coach.
“Ixnie,” I replied curtly. “Someone released it in the vents. The theater will be flooded in minutes.”
There was much more I could tell her about the drug that I’d learned over the last few weeks, from investigation and from direct use, but it would have to wait.
She stilled, a flash in her blue-gray eyes that promised an unpleasant death if I happened to leave any of the perpetrators alive. If Ashlyun had betrayed us, I would leave him alive—my mother’s punishment would be a hundred times worse than anything I could devise.
“And the target of this attack?” she asked.
“I don't yet know.” I glanced at Miahela. “Be on alert, sister. Remain with our Lord in the palace.”
Mia threw me a chilly, unpleasant glare. She disliked being shunted to the side, but I outranked her, and she would obey. Still, I understood the seething frustration in her look.
“I’m not coddling you,” I said, my hand on the coach door. “You'll protect her with your life. If you don’t like being required to flee, think of how Mother feels.”
She dipped her chin as I slammed the door, and the coach pulled off. Turning on my heels, I dashed back in the building in time to encounter the hot blast of a percussion of power. Either someone was fighting, or someone had tripped wards designed to slow down pursuit. It could also be a distraction.
From what?
I feared I knew.
I braced, gritting my teeth, and pushed through the backlash, my personal shields taking the brunt of the unfettered, undirected power. I knew nothing but fear, and the intense need to get to my bonded.
I hadn't lied to my mother of course; I didn't know who the target was. But I suspected. We still hadn’t found Dartanyon.
I ran into the theater, pushing through the chaos of people fleeing—and the chaos of people descending into a particular kind of mass euphoria. For now. Ixnie always began wonderful, but the aftermath was less so. I was going to root this drug out of Casakraine and burn the chemists who’d created it on stakes. After I crucified them.
“Lord Andreien!” someone snapped, projecting their voice.
I suppressed the urge to eliminate the distraction, and the rage that threatened to distill rational thought down to mindless instinct. The Ninephene female leaped off the stage, approaching me with her hands up.
“The bomb was a distraction. I set it off on purpose to control the damage. There are no injuries.” She paused, eyes hardening. “Dartanyon took Han. I can follow her trail, or I can follow the drug.”
My gaze scored her face. This could be a trap. She was connected to Ashlyun, and though we were now new, tentative allies, this could all be a play. She didn’t appear affected at all. I knew of only one way to develop immunity.
“I addicted myself when it came on the market,” she said, reading my lack of expression with an ease I liked not at all. “I do it with every drug there’s no known defense against which has the potential to be weaponized. I have a tolerance.”
So did I. My last dose had been only days ago, and my tolerance was now at seventy percent. I tried to stay away from Anah while in its throes. Con had been forced to distract me a time or two.
“Han owes me a debt,” she added.
I made a split-second decision. “Go after the drug.” If it led to Coal District, she was better deployed there than one of my warriors. “Coralene. Lord Dartanyon was the one supplying the dancers. Tell Ashlyun.”
She nodded, clearly unsurprised, and was gone the next moment.
HASANNAH
It occurred to me, belatedly, after I woke that I should play dead. But the first thing I did was rotate my ankles and flex my toes, instinctively checking for damage. My brain caught up with those rather narrow-minded instincts seconds later, but I accepted I'd blown my chance for deception.
The ground was cool, hard and smooth under my back, the silence unnatural.
I heard nothing, not the clop of hooves or what should have been the panicked chatter of a crowd. No breeze on my face or sense of the city around me. I opened my eyes to oppressive darkness.
Absolute darkness, stale air. I was inside, though as I sat up, I didn't get the impression I was underground.
Despite stale air, it wasn't damp or dank. It lacked odor at all, the temperature ambient.
If it weren't for the very physical floor beneath me, I would have thought I'd woken up in some type of magical mist.
The click of low heels on a hard floor, and light flared.
I stared up, up, at ceilings that must be three stories high, at white walls inlaid with the rows of mirrors framed in gold gilt.
At a glossy white and gold veined marble floor. No windows, no obvious source of the light reflecting off mirrors, bouncing off gold frames, gleaming on marble. I flinched, wanting to cover my face to shield myself from the awful brightness.
When I finally turned my head, I stared into the cornflower blue eyes of Lord Dartanyon.
And realized that some of the distortion was because we were separated by a dome of glass.