Mist-Torn 01 - The Mist-Torn Witches (22 page)

That was hardly fair.

He led them both through the great hall to the small side chamber—where the door was closed
and locked. He unlocked it with a key and ushered them both inside. A few servants who were milling about, laying out the midday meal, glanced in their direction, and Jaromir closed the door behind himself, shutting off any view from outside.

Inside the chamber, Master Feodor was sitting in a chair with Corporal Pavel standing directly behind him, towering over him like hostile guard dog. Feodor had always given Amelie the shivers. She didn’t care for his long mustache or his politely veiled contempt. But Jaromir and Pavel were tall men, wearing swords, daggers, and chain armor. Feodor was a slender, almost fragile-looking man. He was unarmed, and it appeared Pavel had been keeping him in that chair.

“Lieutenant!” Feodor said angrily. “I demand to know the meaning of this. Your…
man
has refused to let me leave this room. The prince will hear of this.”

“The prince ordered it,” Jaromir answered.

Feodor’s jaw twitched, and he was perspiring enough for Amelie to see a few beads of sweat on his face.

He’s afraid,
she thought.

“Where is the prince?” Céline asked, not looking at Jaromir or Pavel.

The tension felt just as thick in here, only now it held a hint of threat.

“He isn’t well,” Jaromir answered shortly. “Can you do this?”

Céline refused to look at him and instead turned to Amelie. “Please try this for me. Helga seems to…know things. Just try.”

Amelie was nearly trembling. She wanted this suspicion of Céline’s to be true more than she’d ever admit, but she was terrified of failing if she tried, of condemning herself to the mundane forever.

“All you need do is touch his hand and focus on the past,” Céline said, “on what brought him here.”

“What is this?” Feodor demanded. He began to stand up, but Pavel shoved him back down into the chair.

“This girl is going to read you,” Jaromir said, gesturing to Amelie. “She’s going to read your past.”

The whites of Feodor’s eyes showed bright around his irises. “I will not submit to such indignity!” He started to rise again, and this time Pavel held him down, with both hands on his shoulders.

“That isn’t necessary,” Céline said raggedly.

“Just do it!” Jaromir barked at her.

Amelie got the feeling he was nearing the end of his tether and probably blaming himself for the deaths of Inna, Winshaw, and Stiva. Céline was not helping here, but she was also pale and stretched tightly herself.

“How do I start?” Amelie asked, trying to move this forward, even if she failed.

Céline closed her eyes briefly and opened them again. Without having to be told, Jaromir dragged a chair across the floor, directly in front of Feodor, who was perspiring more freely now. Amelie almost pitied him. But Jaromir and Pavel were both acting like bullies, and she’d never cared much for bullies.

Sitting down, she looked to Céline, who crouched beside her.

“Take his hand and close your eyes,” Céline said. “Then try to sense for the spark of his spirit and focus on what brought him here, on what he’s doing here.”

“Prince Lieven will hear of this!” Feodor protested weakly.

“Shut up,” Jaromir told him.

If Feodor turned out to be guiltless, Jaromir had probably gone too far and there would be repercussions…but if he were guiltless, why would he have instructed Inna to secretly drug Anton?

Suddenly, Amelie’s curiosity, her need to seek information and know what Feodor was doing here, overrode her discomfort with all the tension and edge of threat filling the room.

Reaching out, she touched Feodor’s hand. He flinched but didn’t pull it away, as if realizing he had no choice.

Amelie closed her eyes, trying not to tremble visibly, experiencing for the first time what it must feel like to be Céline, to have everyone watching
expectantly, wondering what the “seer” might actually reveal.

Pushing such self-absorbed thoughts away, she focused all her energy on Feodor, on seeking the spark of his spirit…and she felt something, a hint of his essence. Focusing harder, she pinpointed the questions in her mind on what he was doing here, on why he had come.

Nothing happened.

She saw nothing.

This went on long enough that panic began to set in. What if Céline and Helga were wrong? What if she and Céline were not two sides of the same coin and Céline was the only one who’d inherited the powers of the “Mist-Torn,” as Helga called their mother’s line.

With her eyes still closed, Amelie thought on the white powder Céline had described, laced with hemlock, being poured into Anton’s wine goblet.

Then…a sharp jolt struck her, almost painful. A second one hit, and the small room around her vanished. A whooshing sound rushed in her ears, and she was being swept backward down a corridor of white mist. For all her courage, the sensation was terrifying. Amelie liked control, and she’d lost control of her own body.

The white mists swept and swirled around her, and she couldn’t stop or escape them.

Without warning, they vanished, and she found
herself standing in a large room with polished pine walls and a burning hearth. How could this be?

Looking around, she realized she was no longer in Castle Sèone. By the antlers and boar heads on the walls, it appeared to be some sort of hunting lodge, but soldiers in black tabards stood at attention all around.

Frightened, she reached automatically for the sword on her hip, but none of the soldiers reacted. It was as if they couldn’t see her.

There was a rough-edged table at the top of the room, along with a man sitting in an ornate chair. He looked to be about twenty-five, handsome and slender. His hair was long and dark. His skin was pale to the point of being white, and he wore a sleeveless blue embroidered tunic. He looked like Anton—only with darker, longer hair. But his eyes were cruel, and he was gazing downward at someone over the top of the table.

Amelie followed his gaze to see Master Feodor kneeling on the floor.

“My father has finally made arrangements to send you to my brother, as his personal physician,” said the man in the ornate chair. “This has taken no small effort on my part.”

Amelie drew a sharp breath. She knew who he was: Sub-Prince Damek. In her time living under his rule in Shetâna, she’d never once seen him.

“Yes, my prince,” Feodor said in oily voice. He didn’t appear remotely frightened, only expectant.

“So you understand what I’m asking you to do?” Damek asked.

“Fully, my prince. I will send regular reports of everything occurring at Sèone, and I will endeavor to…hinder his progress as the master of his fiefdoms.”

“He must appear weak,” Damek said, “both in body and mind, in strength and his ability to lead. Can you manage this?”

“Easily, my prince, and in return…?”

“You’ll be well rewarded, do not fear, but do not disappoint me. He must appear weak.”

Feodor bowed low. “I will not fail.”

“See that you don’t.”

Amelie was breathing hard, trying to take this in. She was here, but not here—present but unable to be seen or heard. Just the sight of Damek in his chair filled her with revulsion.

And Feodor was a traitor.

The hunting lodge vanished, and she found herself back inside the small chamber with her eyes open, staring at Master Feodor sitting in his chair across from hers. He was staring back, his terrified eyes fixed on hers.

Céline crouched beside her. “Amelie, are you all right? What did you see?”

But she was still breathing hard, overwhelmed by the reality of what had just happened, of her experience, the knowledge of her ability…and of what she’d just witnessed.

“Jaromir!” she cried without thinking, and he
grabbed the arm of her chair, pulling it around effortlessly to face him.

“What?” he asked. “Amelie, what did you see?”

“He’s in the pay of Sub-Prince Damek,” she choked. “He came here to hurt Anton.”

A
short while later, Céline and Amelie were hiding out in their room. The scene following Amelie’s revelations had not been pretty, culminating in Jaromir ordering Pavel to take Master Feodor down beneath the old barracks and lock him in a prison cell.

Feodor had not taken this with bravery or good grace, subjecting the servants in the great hall to quite an unseemly display as he was dragged from the chamber.

As soon as possible, Céline and Amelie had both fled for the stairs, hurrying to the solitude of their room.

“What do you think will happen to him?” Amelie asked, sinking down onto the bed.

Céline understood what she was going through—the latent responsibility for having spoken up about the events in a vision. “I suppose it depends on whether or not Jaromir can find any proof. I know he believes you, but right now, all
he has is the word of a ‘gypsy seer,’ as Feodor will state in his own defense.”

“Yes,” Amelie said, nodding. “There has to be some kind of hearing, right? Even if it’s just Anton and his council presiding? And Jaromir has to find proof, doesn’t he? It won’t all rest on what I saw.”

“No, of course it won’t.” With mild annoyance, Céline then noted that the miniature portrait of the chestnut-haired woman was back on the dressing table. She picked it up. “How does this keep getting back out here?” She didn’t know why the sight of the portrait bothered her, only that it did.

The door opened and Helga hobbled in carrying a plate of bread, ham, and sliced carrots. “I know you’ve had no lunch,” she said, “either of you.”

She left the door open, but Céline didn’t mind. Few people ever came down this passage, and the open door made their space feel bigger. But as Helga set the tray on the dressing table, Céline asked her.

“Helga, are you taking this miniature from the drawer and setting it back out again?”

Helga blinked. “Of Lady Bethany? No, I’ve not touched it. I thought the prince must have given it into your keeping for some reason.”

That made no sense at all.

“Who is Lady Bethany?”

“Who is…why, she was the prince’s mother. He used to have that picture in his bedroom, and
I would sometimes dust it when I helped the housemaids.”

“What?” Amelie asked, hopping off the bed and coming closer.

“You didn’t know?” Helga responded in genuine surprise.

And then Céline realized why the face in the miniature seemed vaguely familiar. Her face was round, and she looked more cheerful than exotic, but her chestnut hair and skin tones were similar to Lady Karina’s.

“This is Anton’s mother?” Céline asked, alarmed now as she remembered something else. “He told me he’d lost this. How could it have ended up in here?”

“Should we try and give it back to him?” Amelie asked, sounding reluctant.

Céline understood why, and she herself didn’t care for the idea of simply walking up to Anton, handing him a miniature of his mother, and saying, “Oh, by the way, we’ve had this in our room since we arrived.”

How would that look?

“No…,” she said. “Let me think of something else. I’ll try to put it someplace where he’ll find it.”

Amelie nodded. “Good. I think that’s best.” She studied the tiny portrait. “She was pretty. Helga, do you know how she died?”

“Of the rupture, when his lordship was only eight years old.”

“The rupture?” Amelie asked.

“You know,” Céline said quietly, “that pain that starts in the right side, like Jareth’s oldest son back in Shetâna.”

Amelie fell silent. She and Céline had both seen people die this way. Normally, it began with someone feeling sick to their stomach, followed by a sharp pain in the right side of the abdomen that turned to agony, followed by an organ erupting inside them, followed by death. Once it began, there was nothing the finest physician could do to stop it, and it was a terrible way to die.

“Poor lamb,” Helga said, still gazing at the portrait. “I heard the pain started in the morning, and she was gone before the next day.”

And poor Anton, to have lost his mother so young.

No one spoke for a moment, and then Céline put the portrait back in the drawer.

As if eager to change the subject, Helga began slapping ham onto slices of bread and glanced at Amelie. “I heard what happened downstairs with Master Feodor,” she told Amelie. “So you found your side of the coin.”

Amelie didn’t respond. Perhaps she wasn’t ready to talk about her new ability yet.

Sitting on the bed again, Amelie leaned back against the headboard and said to Céline, “I wanted to stay here so badly…but now I’m not sure. I thought this place was different from home, but you saw Jaromir and Pavel down there. Maybe it’s not so different.”

Céline wasn’t surprised that her sister had been
suffering the same doubts. “Well, we could set up someplace else. With me reading futures and you reading pasts, I doubt we’d starve.”

“You could go and find your own people,” Helga suggested. “Always a place for the Mist-Torn with the Móndyalítko.”

A sound in the doorway caught Céline’s attention, and she turned to see Anton standing there. Two male servants stood behind him, carrying
the
portrait from the upstairs hall. Anton looked terrible. His hands were trembling and his skin was tinged green. She had a fairly good idea of what was wrong with him, but she feared offending him by speaking up.

However, his expression was stricken, and she wondered how long he’d been there. She knew he hadn’t been there when they’d spoken of his mother, but had he heard them discussing the possibility of leaving Sèone?

“My lord,” she said, for lack of anything else to say.

Thankfully, Amelie broke the moment by climbing off the bed and moving closer to the door. “Is that it?” she asked, fixating with a kind of awe on the image of the pale, dark-haired young woman by the fire—wearing long black gloves.

Anton recovered his composure. “Yes, I’m having it moved to my rooms. I want to keep it close to myself and away from everyone else.”

Céline wondered about the wisdom of that but knew better than to challenge him. Why had he
stopped at their door? It was unusual for him make any sort of visit. If he wanted to speak to someone, he normally sent a messenger and had the person summoned.