Chapter 11 A Masked Deception #4
“She’s my cousin,” Kiran pointed out, “and I’m sure she meant well, defending you to The Lady’s Letter. It’s all gone a bit sideways.”
Old Blackwood continued, “Her reasons aren’t important.
As Hero of the Realm and the future Duke of Gravenmere, you’re in the public eye.
Your mother is tired of defending her son at her socials, and your last seven fiancées are telling.
We would both like to see you married and settled, and sooner rather than later.
" On a more dour note, he added, "Just so you’re both aware, King Valienthe has threatened to seize Gravenmere Castle if Elias doesn’t marry and produce an heir within a year.
So we must secure a bride by midnight, no matter the cost! ”
“Ah . . .” Kiran’s eyes slid to Elias with a mildly shocked expression. “That’s a lot of pressure.”
Elias returned Kiran’s look with a somber frown.
This was not news to him; he had overheard his parents arguing about it when they thought he wasn’t in earshot.
It had been discussed many times at the dinner table.
As much as his father looked down his nose at the royal family, Old Blackwood wouldn’t risk their title and lands.
A moment of silence settled upon the room as the gravity of the evening took hold. Kiran adjusted the cuffs on his jacket. Elias picked at the leather covering of the chaise. Then he forced his hand to be still. He climbed to his feet and straightened his jacket.
“Come along, Kiran. We have some business to discuss.” He was tired of this nonsense about a ball and a bride. With a nod to his father, he turned and headed for the door. Kiran followed at his heels with a fluid grace that seemed to embody all the people of Illysea.
“The banquet is only a few hours away!” his father called after them. “If you fail to show up, Elias, I will personally ensure you marry a mule out of my own stables.”
The Mad Dog raised a gloved hand as he exited the room.
“What was that all about?” Kiran asked as they started down the long corridor toward Elias’s study. “Don’t you want to find a bride, Elias?”
“There are more pressing matters at hand—like the safety of the castle.” Elias reached into his coat pocket and passed Kiran the sopping wet letter. Kiran’s eyes scanned over it as they walked. He snorted in mild amusement.
“Well, someone has a flair for drama,” he said.
“I think it’s from him.”
“I doubt that, Elias. Ghosts can’t write letters, and our old friend is definitely dead.”
“I have my suspicions. The thieves last night targeted rare, shined weapons from our treasury. Only a specialist would know their value. Someone who’s fought in the Abyss—who knows what the blades can do.”
“Do you think it’s a conspiracy, then? Our old friend survived the battle and is now stealing weapons for some nefarious purpose?”
Elias’s face hardened, but he said nothing.
“You’re sounding a bit paranoid, old boy,” Kiran said in a softer tone.
Elias brushed his hair back from his face and picked up the pace, his boots slamming against the polished wood floors of Gravenmere Castle.
Paranoia, moodiness, headaches, obsessions—all symptoms of an unnamed condition his doctors were eager to treat with all sorts of experimental potions.
For the last two years, he had felt more like a lab rat than a soldier.
But he didn’t think he was wrong about this.
Five elite Luminaries had entered the heart of the Abyss to fight the Daemon King in the final battle. Three had died. Well, four had died, technically. Some miracle or mistake of medical science had resurrected him.
Lysander of Dresengard, the Hero of the North, had disappeared. His whereabouts were unknown.
Something about the letter—its poetry and the personal nature of its contents—reminded him of his old comrade-in-arms.
Or perhaps he was truly fighting a ghost.
“How did your investigation go? Did you find her?” Elias asked, changing the subject.
“Her? I found many ‘hers,” Kiran quipped.
“Did you check the Dhastel family?”
“They were the first family on your extensive list. But yes, I checked with them before coming to report. You can’t imagine their reactions, Elias, when I showed them the hairpin.
You’d think I was asking them to identify an obscure mineral.
Everything from confusion to excitement to concern.
I couldn’t tell them why I was asking about it, of course, so most of our conversation turned to the ball—”
“Did the hairpin belong to one of their daughters?”
“No, it didn’t.”
Elias paused. He gave Kiran a piercing look. His old friend shrugged. “Their daughters didn’t fit the description you gave me. Neither had Sera’nayan blood nor a bruise along her jaw.”
“I see.”
His mind returned to the mysterious girl he had encountered in the woods.
Actually, she had been on his mind all day.
Furiously, obsessively on his mind.
He hadn’t mentioned the odd little moonflower to his father. He felt protective of her, though he couldn’t say why.
Who is she?
Soft-spoken, gentle and unassuming. A wallflower. Slight and small, somehow invisible. The perfect spy, if she was from Sera’naya.
She knew her way around Hellions, which was unusual for a highborn woman.
Tempest liked her, which was rare.
Not only did his horse like her—Tempest obeyed her, which was unheard of.
Not even the Blackwood servants approached his horse. Elias was the only man who could tend to the stormy stallion. Tempest was kept in a solitary stall reinforced with iron bars and fed through a slat in the wall. Yet this girl cleaned his hooves like he was a mild old mare!
Elias was a master at sizing up personalities—he had honed the skill over years of selecting soldiers for missions in the Abyss. He knew a coward when he saw one, and this girl was no coward. Even if she seemed meek at first, she had shown herself to be headstrong and bold.
Yet she kept herself small.
Another contradiction.
He thought of the bruise on her face. Troubling.
He lingered on that. Someone had struck her, but who? Not the thieves; she had denied it. Clumsy, she had said. He doubted that very much after seeing her vault onto the back of his horse. It only fueled the fire of fascination in his mind. He regretted not pressing her harder for her name.
They reached the doors of his private study.
Elias removed one of his black gloves and touched the shined lock.
With a brush of his fingers, a tendril of mana ran from his hand through the study’s locked doors.
He heard a series of turning gears and shifting pins as the door unlocked.
Then he turned the knob and thrust it open. The two men entered the study.
His office was as gloomy and cluttered as the day before. Heavy, dark curtains blocked out the light from the windows. The sharp scent of old tinctures lay heavy in the air. The broken bottles lay next to his desk, untouched.
Elias barely saw them. His gaze remained focused blindly on the desk, immersed in thoughts of the girl.
He still hadn’t puzzled out why she was dressed in her nightshift.
That, and she had made off with his favorite coat.
He could afford any number of jackets, but that particular frock coat had survived several campaigns in the Abyss. He considered it good luck.
He wanted it back.
Elias released a dusty, weatherworn sound from deep in his chest, thinking of his favorite jacket.
Behind him, Kiran touched the shined wall sconces to either side of the door to shed a little light in the room.
“This place really does feel like the Abyss,” he mentioned.
Elias didn’t respond but crossed the wide chamber to his cluttered desk, which was covered in boxes of folders and sealed envelopes.
“Mother of Dust, Elias, what in the five kingdoms . . .” Kiran muttered when he saw the desk. “What is all this?”
“Records of every family attending the ball tonight.”
Kiran’s eyes cast distastefully over the desk again, sizing up the stacks of folders, his eyebrows raised. “Every family? Why?" At Elias’s silence, Kiran tutted under his breath. “I daresay this is the most interest you’ve ever shown a woman. By your measure, I’d call it romantic.”
Elias ignored his friend’s teasing and began rearranging the stacks of folders.
He had brought them up from his father’s archives early that morning, just as the light of dawn broke across the sky.
He hadn’t slept at all since his encounter with the girl.
If Kiran hadn’t stopped him that morning, he would have been walking around the castle with his hair mussed and pine needles clinging to his jacket.
After returning to the castle last night, he had found Tempest tethered to a pine tree just outside the gate in the south wall.
The girl had returned by the same way she had come.
He wasn’t surprised. But when he entered the grounds, he saw no sign of her, except for a telltale strand of raspberry hair clinging to a shrub near the gatehouse.
The unmanned gatehouse.
The guards were with him, of course.
Hellfire heathens, he was growing tired of this wild goose chase, and it had only just begun!
“Give me the hairpin,” he snapped and held out his hand.
Kiran passed it over to him. “Pretty little bauble,” he offered, “but the crystals are not rare. If it belongs to a highborn lass, I can’t imagine she’s very rich.”
Elias rolled the hairpin around in his hand as he sorted through the open file on his desk.
Kiran peeked curiously over his shoulder. “And this record belongs to . . . ?”
“The Dhastel family.”
“Ah.”