9. Clash of Stone and Steel #2
“I’ll find her,” Samhail said quietly, realizing even as the words left his mouth that he couldn’t even be sure it was a woman they sought. How did one look for a person who could change their face and body at will?
“And how do you plan to do that?” Bressen asked, apparently thinking the same thing.
“I don’t know yet,” Samhail said, “but I’ll figure it out.”
“My negation powers,” Cyra said. “If I can get close enough to the masque to negate her shapeshifting abilities, she’ll go back to her original form, won’t she?”
“How close do you need to be?” Bressen asked her.
“Maybe within about fifteen feet or so?” Cyra said. “Since my power boost from the gods, I think I have a slightly greater range now.”
“What if she’s already in her original form?” Samhail asked. “She can change into Cyra, but she may not be wandering around in a false form all the time.”
“Chances are good that she’s wearing at least some kind of disguise,” Bressen said, standing from where he knelt beside Cyra. “If she’s here to spy, I doubt she’d want to use her actual face to do it.”
“Does the house have any relatively new staff?” Samhail asked.
“Several,” Bressen answered. “We hired a new stable hand, a cook, a scullery maid, Cyra’s lady’s maid, and at least two guards within the last couple months.”
“It’s likely one of the women, but with a masque you can never be sure,” Samhail reasoned.
Something gnawed at the back of his mind as he ran over the list of new staff Bressen had just named, then something clicked into place as he remembered where he’d last smelled the faint scent of lemon verbena.
“Your new lady’s maid, Cyra,” Samhail said as he furrowed his brows. “How long has she been here?”
Cyra frowned. “Leeda? A few weeks,” she said. “We hired her right before the wedding, but I…I can’t believe it could be her.”
“Why not?” Samhail asked. “She’d be the perfect spy. She has direct access to you, so she’s far better placed to gather information than a scullery maid or a stable hand.”
“Besides her position, do you have any specific reason for suspecting Leeda?” Bressen asked him.
Samhail sighed inwardly. He wasn’t looking forward to admitting his next news. “I found her in the hall outside your room in the dead of night a week or so ago,” he said.
Bressen’s brows shot up. “And this didn’t seem worth mentioning earlier?” he asked incredulously.
“Honestly, not at the time,” Samhail said.
“I ran into her coming down the hall from your room at almost one o’clock in the morning.
I questioned her, but she said she’d lost her necklace while cleaning your sitting room that day.
She said it was special to her, and she couldn’t sleep until she found it.
I admonished her for going into the sitting room while you were asleep, but she begged me not to tell you.
It seemed harmless enough at the time, and I didn’t think it would do any good to get the girl in trouble.
I forgot about it by the next morning. It’s only now it seems like there could’ve been more to it. ”
“And why were you outside our bedchamber at one in the morning?” Bressen asked Samhail. “That seems like a lot of traffic coming and going in our hall for such an early hour.”
Samhail remembered that night well. He’d just learned Cyra was a Hand of the Gods and that he was divinely bound to protect her.
Strangely, he’d woken from a sound sleep for some reason and had the urge to check on her.
He’d tried to ignore the feeling, but his mind wouldn’t rest until he’d pulled on his clothes, grabbed his swords, and walked up to Bressen and Cyra’s bedchamber.
Stupid idiot. There’d been so many warning signs he’d just dismissed. He didn’t deserve to call himself Cyra’s protector for all the times just in the last few weeks he’d failed her.
“Something woke me, and I felt the urge to get up and be sure everything was alright,” Samhail explained.
“And when you found the girl in our hallway, did you think to check on us?” Bressen asked.
“Of course I did,” Samhail said, annoyed. He wasn’t completely inept. “I went into the sitting room and was about to look in on you.”
“But you didn’t?” Cyra asked.
“I didn’t need to,” he said, crossing his arms. “I could hear you were both awake and…otherwise occupied. So I left.”
Cyra blushed, but Bressen just nodded.
“What night was this exactly?” Bressen asked.
“The night Axenus and I found you and Cyra on the beach venting her powers,” he said. “The night you told us what Phaedrus discovered.”
Cyra gasped.
“What?” Bressen asked.
“That was the night-,” Cyra started to say, but she stopped short and glanced at Samhail. She looked at Bressen instead and must’ve explained in his head because he nodded gravely.
Samhail was getting tired of them having private conversations with him in the room. “That was the night of what?” he snapped, deciding he wasn’t going to let them leave him in the dark on this.
Cyra and Bressen exchanged glances before Bressen answered.
“Cyra accidentally dream walked into one of Axenus’s nightmares.”
Samhail’s eyes widened in understanding. “You know what happened to him?” he asked Cyra, and she nodded.
“And if you tell Axenus any of this, I’ll-,” Bressen began, but Samhail lifted a hand to cut off the threat.
“I won’t say anything,” he said. “I’m not that big an asshole.”
Bressen gave him a look that said he wasn’t convinced.
“So it’s possible the masque overheard our conversation that night,” Cyra said. She seemed to be replaying it in her head because a moment later she gasped in horror. “Bressen, we were talking about…” She trailed off as the rest of her thought was likely sent to Bressen mentally.
“What?” Samhail snapped, impatient now.
“The turn our conversation took,” Bressen said, “might explain why the masque tried to seduce you as Cyra.”
Samhail’s eyes widened. “Fuck me. Were you talking about-?”
“About fucking you, yes,” Bressen said wryly. “Orgies might have come up as well.”
“Bressen!” Cyra said, her face flushing hotly.
“If the two of you had an orgy and didn’t invite me, I’m going to be very offended,” Samhail said.
“Not yet,” Bressen drawled. “We’re still trying to pick a date that works for everyone.”
“Enough! Both of you,” Cyra admonished. “This isn’t the time.”
Both Samhail and Bressen turned contrite, but Samhail caught the lord’s wink at him out of the corner of his eye.
“So what do we do about the masque?” Samhail asked.
“Axenus gets back tonight,” Bressen said. “We don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with, so we’ll wait for him to be on the safe side. He may know something about masques we don’t.”
Samhail rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything. What the merman could do that he, two other gargoyles, a mind wraith, and a syphon couldn’t do, he wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t about to argue with Bressen.
“After dinner, we’ll start with the new staff and call them to my study for questioning,” Bressen said.
“Cyra can get just close enough to negate any power they might be using, and we’ll see what happens.
If it turns out none of them are masques, we’ll start calling in the older staff to see if the masque is pretending to be one of them. ”
Samhail and Cyra nodded.
“I’ll find Surgeon and Serise and let them know,” Samhail said.
“No need,” Bressen said. “They’re outside the door waiting for Cyra.”
Samhail glanced toward the door. “Then I need to speak with them to be sure we’re all on the same page about Cyra’s protection,” he said.
Bressen cocked a brow at him. “Just make sure your idea of speaking actually involves words. My wife’s bodyguards need to be able to fight.”
“Words only,” Samhail promised, although he left out that the words would contain plenty of threats.
“And when you’re done with them,” Bressen added, “I’ll meet you in the training yard.”
Samhail tensed but nodded to his friend.
It was early for their daily sparring session, but he had a feeling the lord had some extra energy to burn and perhaps some things to get off his chest. Today’s training was going to be far more intense than normal, and if he was honest with himself, he was looking forward to it in a resigned sort of way.
Bressen would punish him for everything he’d done or hadn’t done recently, and he was ready to receive that punishment.
“Come with me,” Samhail barked at Surgeon and Serise as he exited Bressen’s study ahead of the lord and lady.
The twins exchanged looks but didn’t move.
“Now,” he said. “I believe you were told you answer to me. I need a word, and Lady Cyra is perfectly safe with Lord Bressen at the moment.”
His siblings exchanged another look, darker this time, but they fell into step behind him as he led them somewhere they could speak without being overheard. He’d make it clear to his brother and sister that their lives depended on keeping Cyra safe.