Memory's Wake Omnibus: The Complete Illustrated YA Fantasy Series (68 page)

“Color me unconvinced.” Memory started walking again and Peirs and Will matched her step.

“This is new, what we’ve been seeing, and targeted solely on Caermaellan,” Peirs said. “Some unseelie fae, like trolls, have been known to eat humans, but never drain their blood in the way we’ve seen in the bodies we’ve found. It’s almost medical precision. No teeth.”

“But we know it’s those rotted dark fae though,” Memory said. “How were they able to take everyone without being Branded?”

Will spoke up then, although his voice was quiet. “Fae tricks. Lost children are easy targets. They’re easy to seduce and trap with promises of riches or happiness, a home, or even a simple bite of food.”

Peirs nodded. “And when they make the wrong deal, they lose any protection from the Pact.”

Vampires or not, Memory knew she had to find and stop the fae doing this, and find out what their connection to Providence was. No matter what, Providence had taken enough blood.

Memory took the stairs up and headed into the Round Room. She found the room a mess, with piles of splintered wood in small stacks all over the marble floor. Eloryn sat amongst them, sorting the pieces out, holding them to her ear and whispering to them in turn. She’d managed to recreate almost a quarter of the round table from the shattered and charred timber that remained after the explosion. A makeshift desk sat in the corner, out of the way, where Roen, Roen’s father and a mousey legal advisory sat bleary eyed. They looked over contracts and searched through legal precedents to find a way to prevent Eloryn’s marriage to Hayes. Eloryn looked particularly worn. Memory was sure she hadn’t slept for days.

Memory worried about her sister, how she’d become so focused on repairing the round table, but Eloryn had said it helped her to think, and to relax, and that it was her way of trying to find a solution.

“How is it going?” Memory asked.

Roen looked up from the desk, his eyes red rimmed with grey smudges beneath. “Going splendidly if we want to amend the marriage contract for requiring a dowry or we wish to allow the husband’s family to inspect the bride before the wedding to approve of her or her virginal status. The more I look at the laws in detail, the more I’m beginning to agree with your sentiment, Mem.”

“That Avall kind of sucks for women? Yep, worked that one out back in etiquette class.”

Eloryn placed a finger length splinter of wood against the restored section of table and spoke a few words. The wood crackled softly as it melded and blended back together. “We’ll find a way. We can fix this.”

“I’m glad you’re still feeling positive, sis, because I need to break up your team. I need Roen for something else. I want Roen to find the place the gaunts are taking people and draining their blood. We think they have Maeve and the kids.”

Everyone around the room stopped their work and looked at Memory.

“I know you probably want to be here, finding a way to stop Hayes’s crazy demands, but I need you out there. You’ve got mad ninja skills like no one else I know. Finding Providence’s blood drinkers is important.”

Roen looked at Eloryn for a long moment, then turned back to Memory. He nodded, his jaw tight. “I know. I’ll do it.”

Brannon stood up from the table and put his hand on Roen’s shoulder, the look of pride on his face overwhelming.

Roen gave a small bashful chuckle. “To be honest it will be good to get out onto the streets again. The best luck to ever strike me has been when I’ve been working. Maybe I will find some luck again to help us here as well. Different ways of dealing with problems work for different people.”

Eloryn rose from the floor and scattered a stack of splintered wood when she rushed over to Roen and held him tight. “Don’t worry, I’ll find a solution to this before you get back.”

Peirs bowed to Memory. “Let me accompany him. I need to help. I need to right this.”

“Of course,” Memory said. “I’d go too, but there’s more I need to do here.”

Will, who had been standing to one side during the conversation stepped forward. “Do you want me to look too?”

“Yes, if you can. But somewhere else. I need you talking with the fae to find out what they know. There has to be some gossip to be had, and Mina strikes me as the kind of girl to gossip.”

Will flinched ever so slightly, making his icy blue eyes flash. “I will go to her.”

He turned to leave, and Memory caught him by his hand. “Come back soon, ‘kay?”

Will turned away, his expression hidden behind tangled hair. “I’ll try.”

Eloryn walked slowly through the halls of the castle toward Thayl’s old quarters. She had grown so used to hearing many sets of footsteps walking with her wherever she went, that now she was without her guards she felt very alone. She knew there was only one person she truly missed, and made a silent wish that Roen would stay safe and return to her soon.

Her sister had summoned her, and when Eloryn reached the entrance to what had been Thayl’s chambers, she nodded to the guards that used to be hers waiting outside, then stepped in to see Memory.

Eloryn gasped. “Mem, you look… Stunning.”

Memory grinned bashfully and tugged at the short skirt of the new outfit she wore. “Not bad, right? This was Clara’s newest mission. I gave her my old clothes and asked her to work with the seamstresses to come up with something that was more me. I kind of just wanted some new pants, but I think they saw the little skirt-belt-thing on my jeans and rolled with it.”

Eloryn smiled. The outfit was traditional enough not to cause a scandal, but at the same time very much suited her sister. Fitted pants in grape purple had lace cuffs around Memory’s ankles, and around her waist a full bustle hung from the back with a shorter frill of skirt at the front. The seamstress had incorporated pink lace onto the front of the tight bodice, in a cascading collar reminiscent of the heart design on Memory’s shirt from the other world. A black, ruffled shrug jacket kept the whole ensemble modest and practical.

Memory had also taken to wearing most of her old piercings again, except the one in her lip, and over the top of lace gloves, she wore the collection of bracelets, buckles and cuffs that she had worn the day Eloryn first met her.

Eloryn hid her smile and stuck her nose into the air. “First hamburgers, now this. You’ll have everyone wanting fashion like yours.”

Memory laughed. “Just wait until I introduce Avall to coffee.”

Smiling back, Eloryn ran her finger over a layer of dust on the desk beside her. “So, where do we start?”

“I guess I’ll have to import some coffee beans or trees from the other world somehow…”

“I meant with your search plan, here, now,” Eloryn said.

“I was honestly hoping you’d walk in and be all bam, solved the mystery with superhuman senses of observation and deduction, Sherlock Holmes style.” Memory turned on the spot, looking around the room. “But you didn’t. So I guess we just poke around.”

“You really do think far too much of me,” Eloryn said.

The rooms had barely been touched since Thayl was deposed. Eloryn knew the Council had been through once, looking for clues to Thayl’s powers, but left quickly when they found no magical documents. His chambers consisted of a single large room that served as bedroom, lounge and office, unlike the royal chambers Memory and Eloryn now occupied which had a separate bedroom and sitting room each. The room hadn’t been on the cleaners’ rounds for a while, and grime had settled across all surfaces. Thayl’s old clothes, worn during his imprisonment, still lay on the floor in front of an open wardrobe.

Eloryn frowned at the bed, which was small, a single bed only. As though Thayl had never even imagined sharing his bed with another person again after Loredanna died.

Eloryn made her way to the bedside table and began flicking through the books stacked there, searching for a journal or some other clue.

Memory followed, and bent down next to the bed, feeling around its base for anything hidden. She glanced at Eloryn a few times as she did so. “How are you hanging in there, with that whole nasty forced marriage business?”

Eloryn paused for a moment, then continued to flick through the copy of
Troilus and Criseyde
, although she doubted it would be of much relevance to their search. “Hayes has set a date for the wedding, a week from today, to be held in his cell.”

“He’s being a right asshat about this, isn’t he? I’m starting to rethink my position of anti-killing.”

“Don’t. I do not want his death on my hands or yours. We will find a solution. Anything broken can be fixed. Changing the laws about a woman’s rights in marriage will help me a little, but unfortunately I will still be married, just with more rights.” Eloryn closed the book and a puff of dust blew into her face, stinging eyes that already felt raw. She blinked them clear. “It would almost be funny if not so horrible. We fought Hayes for wanting to arrange marriages for us, and now I’ve locked myself into an arranged marriage with him.”

“If it weren’t for this damn fairy oath, I would whoosh him away to the rest of the world for you.” Memory winced as she reached her arm full length under the bed, fumbling around.

“I would still be bound by contract to marry him, regardless of his location. And without your magic we are unable to get to the other world anyway, regardless of what miraculous wonders it may hold, be it coffee or a solution to my problem.”

Memory stopped searching and sat on the side of the bed, looking up at Eloryn. “What if you do go through with the marriage, and then get a divorce right after? Would that satisfy the contract?”

“A divorce?”

Her sister explained the concept to her. Apparently it was more common in her world than marriages that lasted.

“Happily ever afters aren’t really a thing where I come from,” Memory said.

“That would be a very big change for Avall in order to solve my problem.”

“Meh, it should be allowed anyway. Even in the rest of the world I’m pretty sure divorce becoming legal was always because of some king or another wanting to do it themselves.”

Eloryn nodded, a small spark of hope lighting in her then extinguishing just as fast. “It may be a solution, but it’s not the sort of law change we could rush through. Nor are the other changes regarding women’s rights. I will still be married to Hayes for some time.”

“And any amount of time is too much time, I know.” Memory leant back on her elbows, staring around the room as though it held answers. She pointed at the wall behind Eloryn.

“That’s Thayl’s sister,” she said. “I saw her once before, in a dream.”

Eloryn turned and looked at the large portrait on the wall. The girl looked about twelve years old and her rose red lips were highlighted by her pale skin and thick, ebony hair. She smiled like she’d just seen a rainbow for the first time.

Eloryn’s heart sank like a sack of stones into black water. Memory had explained what happened to the child at just sixteen years of age. She’d been lost to sacrifice in Providence’s dark ritual.

“She was so pretty,” Memory said, looking as grim as Eloryn felt. “I can almost see some of her in you. In us, I guess.”

“We do not know for sure she is family,” Eloryn said.

Memory opened her mouth but Eloryn spoke first. “If you want to know, if you truly feel the need to know for sure, there are magical ways we could use to discover whether Thayl was our father. But I don't feel the need. Since learning the rumor about Loredanna not consummating her marriage, I see more and more a resemblance to Thayl in our features. I know he was special to our mother, and I know he was to you, too, in a way. Knowing all I know now, I don't hate the thought of him being our father. But nor do I wish to embrace it. Alward was my father in all ways that mattered, and I cannot forget that it was Thayl who killed him.”

Memory had turned away so Eloryn couldn’t see her face. “I thought I was a fool for wanting a father figure in my life so desperately that I turned to Thayl. You had Alward, who sounds like he rocked the father role. I had no one. Either of the men who could have been our father is just as tragic really, Thayl or Edmund. I think I also prefer not to know for sure. I know Thayl made mistakes, but at least I knew him, for a while. It would hurt too much for both of us, I think, to know for sure he was our father, or to know he wasn’t. Maybe sometimes it’s best to just leave things at maybe.”

With a shake of her head, Memory stood up and ran her hands around the gilt frame holding the life-sized portrait of Thayl’s sister. “Help me lift this down.”

Eloryn took hold of the other side, and together they hefted the thick framed canvas from the wall.

Eloryn looked at the space on the wall the painting came from. “Nothing behind the painting.”

Memory pried the backing board off the frame and then pouted. “Nothing, damn it. People always hide things in frames in the movies.”

“Movies?”

Memory shook her head. “Oh sister dearest, I have
so
much to catch you up on.”

Eloryn grinned and went over to the cluttered desk.

“What’s this?” she said, lifting up a small box, wrapped like a present with a small envelope on top. She opened the note and read it.

More as requested. Use them well. I grow impatient.

Memory had come over to look over her shoulder. “See? You do have super detective powers.”

Eloryn rolled her eyes as she pried at the lid. The box opened with a snap and revealed a row of neatly laid out darts inside.

Eloryn reached to her neck. “Those are the same sort of darts the Wizard Hunters used to block the Spark of Connection.”

“That’s weird.” Memory pried one out and held it near her eye, examining it. “They look like iron. It makes no sense that iron would stop magic from working.”

As though to demonstrate the point, Memory pulled out her knife from a neat pocket in the waist band of her new outfit that looked made just for it. The way it was concealed there made Eloryn think it had been inspired by how Roen used to carry his fine electrum sword.

When she held the two pieces of metal together, the small dart wriggled from Memory’s fingers with a life of its own and flung itself at the nearby blade.

Eloryn gasped.

“Magnetized?” Memory said. “More sense being made now. Hey, can I try something?”

Memory got a wicked look in her eye, and before Eloryn could reply, Memory jabbed her in the shoulder with the dart. It pricked lightly through her skin and wooziness rushed through Eloryn as her Spark of Connection closed down.

“Mem!” Eloryn clutched her sister’s arm for support and Memory helped ease her down to sit on the bed. “Some warning would have been nice. And you better have a good excuse for doing that.”

“Warning takes away all the fun,” Memory said, her eyebrows wriggling cheekily. “We are pretty sure normal iron draws magic into humans. And it looks like magnetized iron draws it out, like the change in polarity affects the way it funnels magic. It’s just drawing magic out of you, right? So maybe the Spark of Connection is just a small bit of magic that’s been put inside each human.”

“It matches existing theory on the subject, yes. And it’s a small bit of magic I would like back now please.” Eloryn reached to collect the arrow-head she now carried in her purse, but Memory grabbed her hand.

“Wait, we haven’t gotten to what I want to try yet. We already know that holding iron can re-start the spark. I want to try giving you some of the magic in me. I won’t be casting anything, just sharing.”

Eloryn frowned. “It sounds a little too close for comfort to me. You must be mindful of your oath.”

“Oh shush. There’s no behest for this, and it’s behests I’m not allowed to do. It’s just a little involuntary overflow.”

Memory held her palms up in front of Eloryn’s chest. “Okay. Now make me angry.”

Eloryn laughed. “How shall I make you angry?”

“Tell me more about Hayes’s scumbucketry, or Avall’s women’s rights issues, or the vampires stealing my friends, or talk about Mina, or…”

A glow flashed between them and Eloryn felt her spark re-open.

“It worked,” she said, a little breathless.

Memory’s face was closed for a moment as she breathed out an angry pant, then she shrugged and smiled. “And no fairy army banging down the door demanding my head. So we’re all good.”

“You really aren’t fond of Mina, are you?” Eloryn asked.

A frown reappeared quickly on Memory. “She’s only the most awful girlfriend ever, or whatever she is or was to Will.”

Eloryn hesitated. She had grown increasingly worried about Will’s situation with the fae the more she got to know him. For all she’d read about how the fae can claim human children or partners, Will seemed to fit that description. It was only the amount of freedom she’d seen him have that made her believe it wasn’t true. Most humans claimed by the fae are taken to their world and kept there, or so the stories went. Like Lugh. Perhaps Will was simply friends with Mina and the sprites, and until Eloryn knew better, she decided it wasn’t worth worrying Memory about.