26. Chapter Twenty Six Lennox
Chapter Twenty Six: Lennox
I gazed down at Rhowyn's face as she passed out, her breaths evening out. I could feel the tremble in my own limbs, exhausted myself from the whole ordeal. We almost hadn't made it. We had both almost been consumed by whatever magic that had been. If I hadn't shown up when I did, she would have died.
“What the hell was that!?” I demanded from the guys who were huddled behind me, searching Rhowyn for injuries themselves. I knew it hadn't been intentional, but I couldn't help blaming them for placing her at such a risk.
Arryn knelt down on the other side of Rhowyn and placed his hands on her chest. I felt his magic course through her, searching for any injuries we couldn't see. When he was done, he rocked back to sit on his heels, his head hung low. I could feel his sorrow and shame at having allowed this to happen. He took his role more seriously than we all had, but it hadn't been enough to keep her safe.
“I have no idea. That shouldn't have happened. I just told her to look at her magic and describe it to me. We were trying to determine what affinity she had by the feeling, trying to cut down on having to try all the variations of the different seasons. It shouldn't have resulted in that , whatever that was,” Callum stated angrily.
He wasn't angry at me or the others, just the situation and the loss of control. There was nothing he hated more than not being in control or having the answers. Especially not after what happened to his family and people at the hands of my mother.
“I was across the room sorting through the weapons and trying to plan out how to further her training when I felt magic rise in the air. Almost as if she had triggered some kind of spell.” Arryn stated, his eyes haunted with pain as they met mine across her body.
“How is she? Will she be okay?” Baer demanded impatiently behind us, his usually energetic and bubbly self now pacing with his need to hold her.
“She's physically fine. No injuries, but her magic was almost completely burned out during whatever this was.” Arryn stated what I already knew. She had poured an inordinate amount of power through me, my own magic consuming it greedily and exhausting me in the process.
“Speaking of which, how exactly did you keep her power from consuming her, Lennox?” Arryn asked me, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. He was right to be suspicious. I had deliberately kept this from him and the others. From everyone.
Seeing no other way out of this, I knew I had to come clean with them. It would be the first time I would say this out loud, and I was nervous, but it wasn't because I didn't trust them. I was nervous about how they'd react. I had kept this from everyone, even my mother, for fear of how she would use me. I didn't trust anyone with this knowledge, at least until now.
I met his eyes. “I'm a soul sucker. I can consume the magics of others,” I said matter-of-factly as if discussing the weather.
“What the hell?” Baer exclaimed .
“I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone else about this. I've taken great care to ensure that it doesn't get out, so if you don't mind, please keep your voices down.” I glared at Baer.
When he nodded at me, thoroughly chastised, I turned back to Arryn. “I discovered what I could do when I was around ten, when my powers first started to show. I’ve made sure to keep them to myself, never having told another soul until now. I didn't want them to be used by anyone other than me,” I said simply, not wanting to go into the actual amount of fear I had felt at the time. I had been terrified that Mother would find out what I could do, and that she would turn me into her new executioner, even as a child.
Now that I was older, I knew that having a power such as this as a secret would also ensure my safety in this treacherous cesspool of a Court. By keeping this to myself, I could ensure my survival no matter what. I was giving that up now, trusting these men with my life, and I wasn't sure they fully understood the gravity of the situation. But as I looked at Arryn and then Callum, I saw that they understood completely, having grown up in the same mess I had. Not liking the empathy I saw there, I glanced back down at Rhowyn, my hand caressing her cheek almost against my will. I was drawn to her despite my desire not to be.
“We should take her back to our room. Hopefully, without being seen. We wouldn't want anyone to see her like this and to start asking questions. The fewer of those we have to answer, the better,” I stated. I would carry her myself, but I wasn't sure if I could even stand without assistance right now. She had taken almost everything I had; her magic had been so great. She was inexplicably powerful, and no one had any clue.
“I know a secret tunnel we can take that should deliver us to the guest hall, but we'll have to brave the hallway from there,” I told them simply. I tried to push to my feet, almost making it, but my muscles gave way at the last moment. Callum caught me before I could fall. His arm wrapped around my back and under my shoulders, supporting my weight easily enough. It wasn't like I was soft, but I also wasn't the bulkiest of men either. I preferred to keep my abilities to myself, including the fact that I was quite capable of holding my own in a fight.
Arryn picked up Rhowyn, cradling her to his chest protectively. I pointed to the far wall. “Over there, you'll find a hidden door behind the panel in the weapon’s closet.”
Baer rushed over to the room and opened the door as we all made our way after him slowly. “This is so cool!” he exclaimed as we entered the passageway.
“It's not cool. It's actually quite warm after that display,” Callum stated. Baer laughed at him, and I felt Callum stiffen next to me. “Why do you laugh at me?” he demanded.
Baer chuckled softly. “It's just that cool is a human term for swell or awesome. Rhowyn uses the term frequently, along with many other humans. It was one of the first terms I learned during my time on Earth,” he stated simply.
I had a general idea of the meaning but hadn't really known what it meant. Apparently, I hadn't been the only one. “Then why doesn't she just say that?” Callum asked as we ambled through the passages.
“Not sure. It's just something they all use almost without thinking about it,” Baer explained further.
“That's why she laughed at me earlier,” Callum mumbled to himself, so quietly I almost didn't hear it. I bit back a smile, imagining her laughing at the hulk of a man currently supporting most of my weight. He wouldn't have liked that much if he was still the same as I remembered. He never did like being the one outside of the know or the center of the joke.
We drew near to an intersection, and Baer paused in front of us, waiting for me to tell him which way to go. “Go left up here, but we need to be quiet from this point on, so we don’t draw attention to ourselves. We're next to a hallway, which is on the other side of that wall,” I told them.
We walked the rest of the way in silence, Callum moving more quietly than I had anticipated for someone as large as he was. We reached the end of the passage, and we paused together in the cramped space. Arryn whispered, “Baer, exit quietly while we wait here. Check out the area and make sure it's clear before coming back to let us know when to go.”
Baer saluted him playfully, the earlier scare with Rhowyn not seeming to affect him as much. If he only knew what I did, he'd feel differently. Once we were back in the suite, I'd have to let them in on what I had gathered during the incident.
He pushed the door out just far enough for him to get a peek and then slipped out. He shut the door behind him as he walked off. We stood there in silence, waiting for him to return, when Rhowyn let out a groan. Shit! She was starting to wake, and we couldn't have that just yet. We needed to keep this passageway a secret, which meant we needed absolute silence.
I looked over my shoulder at Arryn and Rhowyn. He was glancing down at her as she started to shift in his arms. “Arryn, you need to keep her quiet,” I hissed at him, praying no one was near enough to hear us. Before he could do anything though, the door opened, and I jerked my gaze to the door. Someone had heard us and found the passage. Shit!
I relaxed when I realized it was just Baer, and he stuck his head inside. “Come on!” he whispered. “There's a group heading our way, but if we leave now, we can beat them to the room.”
Callum rushed out the door, dragging me along with him, Arryn following with Rhowyn. Baer shut the door behind us again as we dashed down the hallway to our suite. I could hear the voices of another group drawing nearer, but we managed to get inside just as they were rounding the corner .
Thank goodness they didn't see us. Any Fae worth their station would use our injuries and issues against us in the trials to ensure they came out on top. We couldn’t afford that, along with everything else we were dealing with.
Callum led me to the chair opposite the couch as Arryn laid Rhowyn down, resting her head on a pillow. She looked so peaceful lying there when, not thirty minutes ago, she was on the verge of death. I couldn't think about how close we came without getting thoroughly pissed, so I asked Callum to get me a glass of water. I needed to focus on something else, anything else.
Arryn stood there, gazing at her sleeping form, Baer sitting on the floor by her feet, needing to be close to her. Those two had drawn much closer to her than Callum and I had, but I knew the only reason we hadn't yet was because we were both stubborn asses. I was beginning to realize it was only a matter of time before we all succumbed to her charms.
She really was so different from any other fae I had ever met. I couldn't help but respect her, even after she had embarrassed me earlier this morning. I hadn't been mad at her winning. She was honestly the better fighter, and I was glad. It meant that she wasn't as helpless as I had originally thought. I’d been mad that I was finding myself with fewer and fewer reasons to leave here and to push her into returning to Earth.
I was angry that in that moment, I wanted to kiss her when she’d been straddling me with her desire so potent. I wanted to roll her over and consume her so completely, but my mind wasn't ready to let go of my dream of freedom. However, I was realizing more and more that I would never know what freedom felt like. I would never be able to live in solitude. It was not to be my destiny and, by fighting that, I was only making myself and everyone around me miserable.
Those conflicting emotions had angered me. I’d needed the space to clear my head. It was while I was storming off that I realized if my life included her in it, I might just find myself being happy for once. I had never been happy, not since finding out just what my mother was capable of at the age of eight. And now, I was afraid of truly letting myself be at peace, afraid of how fragile something like that could be.
I shook my head and accepted the glass from Callum, who sat in the chair next to me. All of us were watching Rhowyn, lost in our own thoughts. Now, I needed to let them in on what had happened. I took a deep breath and exhaled. “Now that you guys know what I can do, you can see how I helped her. But what was truly terrifying was that the amount of power I had to consume drained me. I have never had to exert that much of myself before,” I said.
Arryn glanced at me. “She was that powerful?” he asked, concern evident in his face.
“More than that. She was something I have never experienced before. I have tasted almost every single magic there is, little tastes here and there. Never enough to be noticed but enough to know what each one feels like. And she was something new entirely,” I said, my gaze on her face as I tried to puzzle out just what she was.
“What do you mean?” Baer asked, leaning forward into my peripheral view.
“I mean that she had so much power, but it wasn't electrifying, like I’d been struck by lightning,” I said, finally making eye contact with Arryn.
“That's not possible. There's never been anyone with that kind of magical affinity,” he insisted.
“I would have agreed with you this morning, before I consumed so much of her magic that I almost drained myself. I am completely certain that she is something new entirely. I don't know how or why, but she is,” I said softly, my exhaustion weighing on me, along with the need to keep this quiet.
We all sat quietly with that information, letting it sink in fully. Callum finally chimed in. “So, how do we plan on training her? Because we can't repeat what happened this morning. She needs a way to access her magic without it getting out of hand.”
“I won't be able to consume that much again for another twenty-four hours at least,” I muttered, making sure they took that into account. I had no clue how we were going to manage this, but I knew we needed to figure something out. Arryn was our best bet at making sure we planned for all possibilities.
“I can create a shield if we need it,” Baer offered. “You know, in case she is unable to control it while training.”
“We may need to find some way of limiting her magic for the time being. At least until she has some control over the small amount. As it is, the problem seems to be that she has too much power to control, which means she’ll be consumed by it rushing out of her each time, unless we can turn it into a trickle,” Arryn mused.
“I can speak with Master Jude about a way to do that. If anyone knows how to make that happen, it would be him,” I said, knowing that me speaking to him would result in less questions than if one of the others went to him.
“I think that's probably best. How soon do you think you'll be able to reach out to him?” Arryn asked me.
I sighed, considering his question. “I should probably be well enough to walk to his temple in a couple of hours. I need to eat and rehydrate before I can do anything else,” I admitted, even though it went against everything in me to reveal such weakness.
“Did someone mention food?” Rhowyn groaned out, her eyes fluttering open. All of us sat forward, and it took everything in me not to rush to her side. I grasped the arms of the chair with my hands, holding myself in place. She didn't need all of us ambushing her at once.
Arryn walked toward her as she pushed up to sit on the couch, her hands going to her head as she did so. “How are you feeling?” he asked her the one question we all needed the answer to.
“I feel like I got hit by a semi,” she mumbled. Whatever that was, it must not be good by the way she winced her eyes with each movement. “My head is pounding, but mostly, I'm thirsty and starving.”
Baer jumped up and rushed to get her a glass of water, like a puppy, eager to please her. He ran back, careful not to slosh it all over the place and handed it to her. She drank it all in one go, my consumption of her magic having left her drained of everything.
Arryn sat next to her. “Do you mind if I check you over again, just to make sure everything is good?” he asked hesitantly.
I was pretty sure she was fine, she just needed to replenish the energy she expended during her episode. Callum got up and walked to the door, exiting the suite and leaving us with her. Arryn's hands went to her shoulders, and he closed his eyes as he focused in on her.
When he opened his eyes, she asked, “Good?” A new glass of water appeared in her hands, after Baer rushed to refill it as soon as she had emptied it.
“Everything's fine. No lingering effects,” he confirmed, but his worry was still present on his face. No doubt a result of our conversation prior to her waking.
“So...” she started, making sure to make eye contact with each of us. “What the hell was that? I don't know much about this whole magic thing, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't normal.”
Of course she would want answers. Arryn's eyes met mine, questioning whether we should tell her right now. She needed to know if for no other reason except to keep her from accessing her magic before we could limit it somehow. Now, the question was, how to tell her all of this in a way she could understand.
I nodded at Arryn in agreement, and he turned to face her on the couch. She turned to him as well, meeting his gaze as he started speaking. “To be honest, we’re not entirely sure what that was. All we know right now is that you are more powerful than we had initially realized and that your affinity didn’t coincide with anything we’ve ever seen before.”
“Isn't that a good thing? Why do I get the feeling it's not?” she asked.
“Normally, it would be great. It would mean that we have an advantage in the trials. The problem is that because you currently have no control over your magic, you seem to be accessing it all at once, and it's overtaking you. If it hadn't been for Lennox's intervention earlier, you would have burned up completely. He saved your life,” Arryn stated plainly.
“Okay,” she said simply, glancing down at the water glass she played with in her hands as she considered his words. “So, if I understand correctly, all my power is rushing out at once, and it's burning me up?”
“Correct. We've never seen something like that before, and we were lucky that Lennox just happened to have an affinity that prevented that from taking place,” Arryn said.
“It wasn't luck. It was the fates,” Baer stated. He stepped forward, drawing all of our attention. “I think something bigger is going on. I think it was more than luck that brought us all together. They knew Rhowyn would need someone who could balance out her magic, and so they gave her Lennox.”
My initial reaction was to protest. I wasn't sure I believed in the fates after all the pain I had seen occur at the hands of my mother. Surely, they would have seen what destruction she would bring, and yet she was selected to be queen during the last trials. But when I sat with it, I couldn't deny that something more was pulling us together, something outside of the consort relationship and the trials.
Rhowyn went to laugh, but she stopped, holding my gaze. “As much as we want to deny it, Princess, I think he may be right. There's something else going on that we haven't discovered yet,” I said, leaning back into my chair.
“I agree,” Callum said as he entered the room again with a large tray of finger foods for us. He set the tray on the table and filled a plate, handing it to Rhowyn.
She took a bite, considering us, “I'm not so sure I want to believe in fates. Because that would mean we have no choices, but that's not the case. I make my own choices and decisions. Fate doesn't get to decide that for me,” she said, almost angrily. Watching her, I caught a glimpse of pain behind her eyes as she ducked them down to her plate to eat more.
“The fates don't take away free will, they simply set the board for those choices from what I understand about them,” Callum said as he handed me a plate. “The choices we make with those pieces are up to us.”
“How else do you explain the fact that I just happened to have a rare affinity, so rare that no one else currently living has the same gift, and I just so happened to be there when you needed me?” I asked her.
“Coincidence,” she stated firmly, not ready to believe us. I didn't blame her. She wasn't raised with the knowledge we had. She had never heard of or seen magic before in her life, and now we were asking her to believe in fates and destinies.
“That's a bullshit answer, and you know it,” I pushed her. Needing her to be on the same page. The others coddled her too much, and Callum was too withdrawn. So, the job fell to me to push her when no one else would, for her own good.
“Excuse me?” she demanded. “It's not bullshit. It's merely luck. Nothing more.” She glared at me, her food temporarily forgotten.
Arryn looked at me questioningly, but I ignored him. “So, you believe in luck but not the fates?” I asked her.
“Yes. Because luck doesn't mean that someone chose to put me through everything I've been through. If there is such a thing as the fates, it means that they decided I should be hurt. I can't accept that anything good would ever put anyone through that kind of pain,” she spat at me, her anger flaring with her words.
Ah. That was the crux of the matter. “Sometimes, it's the pain that makes us into better people. A sword can only become a true weapon through the tempering process. It must be molded, which is what the fates have done for you. They made you into a fighter,” I explained to her, my voice remaining calm but firm.
“No. I don't buy that. They had no way of knowing I would be able to rise above that. If I hadn't, then I would have suffered for no reason,” she said, still in denial.
“I'm sorry to tell you, Princess, but that was the choice in the matter. You chose right, and you survived. The fates can't make that choice for you, but they did set up the choices.”
“I didn't have a choice. I have never had any choice in the matter. I was abused and raped. How can that be what they wanted?” she demanded, her hurt pouring from her eyes and slamming into me before they widened in shock as if she hadn’t meant to let that information slip.
“What!?” Callum growled, but neither of us broke eye contact. I refused to let her see the pain I felt on her behalf. She wouldn't want sympathy from me. So, I hid that from her.
“Someone raped you?!” Callum demanded again, his fists clenched as he stomped between us, breaking our eye contact. She flinched back from him, startled to find him so close.
“It's no big deal.” She tried to brush him off, but we all knew it was a lie. It was probably what had prompted her to learn how to fight and why she was so good at it now. “I don't want to talk about it,” she told him firmly, not backing down from him.
“I promise you this, Rhowyn, when I find out who did that to you, they will pay. No woman should ever have to go through something like that,” he vowed, his voice low, the threat evident in every line of his body.
“Well, I did. And I’ve moved on. I've dealt with it, and he’ll never be a problem again. I didn't intend on y'all finding out, but the fact is, it did happen. And so, I can't believe in the fates, because if they exist, they allowed that to happen to me,” she said firmly, ending the discussion completely.
It wasn't over for me, but I would drop it for now. I could push her later when it was just us. I let it go and started to eat from my plate, shoving the food into my mouth so I could regain my strength and fetch Master Jude.
We sat in silence for a moment, Callum having stomped away after her declaration, his fists still clenched. He paced back and forth, his fury evident. No one knew what to say, even Baer, who was surprisingly good at relieving the tension between us all.
As if my thinking of him spurred him into action, he cleared his throat. “So, the current plan is to have Lennox get Master Jude to help us with a limiting spell that we can use to put a cap on your magic, so it doesn't get out of control again. That way we can train you on control of small stuff before moving on to more complex spells.”
Jumping on the chance to change the subject, Arryn chimed in. “Yes. Basically, you have a river of magic at your disposal, and we want to turn it down to a trickle until you have a handle on it. Then we can increase the amount of access slowly. At least that's the hope,” he explained to her further .
“That sounds smart. I don't want to go through that again,” she mumbled, pausing between bites. “Although it felt intoxicating, it was terrifying.”
“I can imagine,” Baer stated in sympathy.
The room fell silent again as we all processed what happened and what had been said. I shoveled food into my mouth as quickly as I could. When I felt I was finally strong enough to make the trek, I stood. “Hopefully, Master Jude will have some answers for us. I'll go get him now.” Even though I wasn’t quite feeling up to the task fully, I needed answers more.