Princess Rasha and Lady Gwen’s uttered cries match Lord Wellimton’s, as do those of much of the Assembly.
They are animals morphed with long-dead humans. And they reek of unnatural magic.
I will my face straight, will my eyes not to give any reaction as the horror dawns, slow and nauseating. This is what Draewulf can do. It’s what he’s been doing for years.
But where did he get the dead bodies?
A sickening feeling creeps into my gut.
A noise from beyond the doors overpowers the outcry from the Assembly.
“What in litches’ name?” Lord Wellimton mutters just as I careen my head to see behind them. And then they’re jostling, writhing, spilling into the room—an entire hissing horde of them.
The wraiths cover the space in a horrific wave until they’re surrounding the Assembly and filling up the center aisle behind the first two who entered. Around me, the delegates’ faces mimic the revulsion plastered on those of the Assembly’s, and Lord Percival seems to be making some type of gagging noise with his throat. Lord Wellimton’s red face is swelling up so heatedly, he looks in danger of popping.
Eogan-who-is-Draewulf extends a hand. “My friends, my countrymen. Just as Odion brought Bron into the future with technological advancements, so I carry us even further. This Dark Army is the key to your future. Cooperate with me, and together we will take what we need from Tulla. Choose not to cooperate with me and . . .” He nods toward the two wraith-things facing us, who immediately let out a hiss. “We will advance without you.”
The way he says it, I’ve no doubt we all know what he’s just implied. He spells it out anyway. “The Dark Army is currently moving through Bron toward us. Even now, many are camped outside the city, ready to . . . lend assistance as we prepare.”
“What about the rest of our negotiations?” Lord Wellimton’s face is five shades of insulted. “Surely Your Highness doesn’t think we delegates, nor Faelen’s treaty—”
“From here on out you will continue to consider yourselves my guests. It is not your country we are going to war against. However—”
Lord Wellimton actually stomps his foot. “I demand—”
“
You’ll demand nothing. Interfere with our plans and you and your kingdom will be considered enemies of this Assembly, Bron, and the Dark Army itself.”
With that, Draewulf waves his hand and our Bron guards, accompanied by three of the terrifying wraiths, appear to escort us and the Faelen bodyguards to our quarters.
I
CAN’T BELIEVE HE WOULD THREATEN US WITH THE very weapon that defeated Bron seated in front of them!” Lord Wellimton’s voice clips off the walls of his room we’re stuffed into. He points his frown at me, as if to indicate I should’ve done something. Said something.
The expectation in his gaze makes my chest bones ache with the expanding weight of that vortex inside. I’m shivering again. I turn toward the door to where our Faelen and Cashlin guards are standing, having been taken semi-hostage along with us. I need to leave. I need to focus—to continue training before the shuddering and poison in my bones set in to the point I’m cowed over.
“Perhaps it’s the best solution,” Lord Percival says. “After all, he’s in a delicate situation trying to hold on to his throne.”
Every one of us rotates to stare at him. He ducks his head. “Or perhaps not.”
“War is never the best solution,” Princess Rasha says.
Lady Gwen looks scared. “Most of the Assembly seemed confused or furious. How could King Eogan keep his throne by murdering their generals? Why don’t they fight back? Were this Faelen’s council,
my father and grandfather would’ve never allowed this when they were alive.”
Rasha’s perched on the couch. She smiles tight. “The Assembly just lost a war and aren’t prepared to fight another of this magnitude. Especially one that snuck up within their own territory.”
I recall Eogan saying something similar a few weeks ago to Colin and me:
“If anything, Bron’s arrogance has blinded them to the real danger in recent years. Their focus on Faelen will be their undoing.”
I nod. “Eogan said Draewulf’s been developing the army for years under Bron’s nose. They just refused to acknowledge it until now.” I eye Rasha but she’s still declining to look at me.
“
Eogan
told you?” Lord Wellimton’s face thins. “Meaning the same man who just murdered his generals and informed us he plans to destroy Tulla?” He snorts. “Seems a bit convenient, don’t you think? He hides out in Faelen a few years, scouts out our weaknesses until opportunity strikes, and then happens to kill the shape-shifter to take over his army? Not to mention he spent weeks courting the only person who could probably put a stop to it.” He leans near me. “The person who, if rumors be true, is vying to be his queen. Tell me, did you know about this?”
I don’t dignify him with a response. Just turn to the others. “We need to send word to King Sedric and Cashlin’s queen as well as Tulla.”
Myles scowls. “You think Eogan’sss merely going to allow that, do you?”
“Maybe one of his dissenting Assembly will.”
“On what? A guarded airship?”
“Excuse me!” Wellimton bursts out. “Is no one else concerned by the fact that Nym did nothing back there to stop that, nor will she
answer a fair question? Because I think it’s time we discuss where her allegiances lie—”
His voice is grating my head. I crush my fingers into a fist to lift in his direction as that icy ache flares, craving to shut him up. I feel the sensation press out toward him, like a wave, and midsentence his face turns a strange shade of gray. The tension in my veins pulls harder, as if wanting to drink the idiotic air from his lungs.
Then he gasps and begins to gag, and the cold flare inside me dims. I drop my hand and look down as if it’s just caught fire.
What in hulls?
When I peek back up, only Wellimton and Rasha seem to have noticed my action as anything more than a gesture of annoyance. The princess gives a sharp frown, and Wellimton’s face alters from gray to pale as he coughs.
I fight to steady my frightened breathing and temper. “I assure you, Lord Wellimton, that the king in that Hall is not the same man he was in Faelen. And I will do everything I can to stop this, in the right time, in the best way.” I keep my gaze averted from Rasha.
He nods once, quick, then peers away—to recover his composure, I suspect.
“Might I ask when you think that will be?” Lord Percival says hesitantly.
“I think the questions we should be asking are, why is Bron pursuing this now?” I say. “Why against Tulla?”
“You heard him—the resources.” Lady Gwen looks back and forth between the delegates, and her voice goes shrill. “Except now they’ll bypass Faelen with that treaty, and even if King Sedric finds out, we’ll be used as hostages.”
“It’s not only about the resources. And they won’t stop with Tulla,” Rasha says.
“What do you mean?” Lord Wellimton dabs his forehead with a handkerchief and eyes my hand. “What else could it possibly be?”
She glances at Myles and me. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Now look here, Your Majesty. If you know something—”
“I know a lot of things,” she says coolly.
“That doesn’t answer the question as to why he would dare chance this when we’ve got Nym.” Lord Percival peers at me.
Gwen nods. “I agree. How could they actually try it while she’s alive sitting in their Castle?”
“Maybe they’re not planning on having her alive much longer,” Myles says, smoothing over his fingernails. “Maybe that’s why the guardsss were killed. Maybe they’re whittling usss down.”
I peer back at the guards. “But who is doing the whittling?”
Two of them shrug at me just as Rasha steps over to them. She rubs her temple and beckons her soldiers. “If you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to lie down where I can think without all the noise. It’s been a long few days.”
I push off the warm wall I’m leaning against even though her expression says she’s not ready to talk. Myles joins me as her guards knock on the door, which is promptly opened by the Bron soldiers who, after a moment’s conversation, proceed to let us out to the hall. At the end of which stand three wraiths. They hiss when they see me and that vortex in my chest lurches.
Rasha pushes ahead toward her room as her guards step in front of me and Myles, slowing us down.
“Forgetting something, Princessss?” Myles snarls.
“I can’t imagine what.”
“Perhaps our fate? Maybe when you’re done being mad, the three of us could move on with discussing what’s next.”
“Our fate?” Rasha gives a sharp laugh at her open door. Then dips her tone bitterly. “You’ll be lucky if you both haven’t already single-handedly sealed it yourselves.”
“You know that high horse you’re riding is—”
I grab Myles’s arm. “Just leave it. She needs more time.”
“I hate to point it out, sssweetheart”—he juts his chin toward the wraiths—“but I’m afraid time’s something we’re running short on.”
“Just give her a couple of hours, then I’ll—”
A scream pierces the air.
Bron’s guards spin back toward the princess’s room. In an instant Myles and I are running.
The soldiers don’t stop us. They’re too busy throwing the door open, and we press through to find Rasha bent down on the floor, holding her maid-in-waiting’s head in her lap. Beside her lies one of Rasha’s Cashlin guards and one from Faelen. I recognize him from the airship. Or what’s left of him. Both of them seem to be missing a limb or two.
I choke and push toward him, but Rasha’s men force me back against Myles just as a chill enters the room. Spinning around, I see two of the Dark Army wraiths enter. Their black eyes glitter in the shadows of their dirty hoods and their stretched mouths move in that wordless, off-rhythm hissing.
“Everyone but the Cashlin guards out,” the large Bron soldier says.
Rasha looks up through tear-flushed eyes. “Not until I’ve questioned every person here.”
“I want to go over the bodies,” I say, but the Faelen and Bron
guards are already pulling Myles and me away, dragging us out the door as the hissing surrounding us gets louder. Rasha sets the maid’s head tenderly on the carpet and stands, and then her men are closing the door behind us.
“My apologies, Lord Myles, but we need to get you both to your rooms,” mutters a Faelen soldier who is clearly as much under guard as we are.
The Bron leader behind us yells at the men stationed in front of Lord Wellimton’s room. “Lady Rasha’s maid and two guards have been murdered. Lock down the other delegates.”
“I’ll join Lord Myles in his room,” I say.
“Miss, this is not the time to—”
“Do it,” Myles snarls.
The Faelen guard acquiesces only after he and two Bron men have thoroughly searched Myles’s quarters.
“M’lord,” he says after they’ve finished, “I think it wise if I stay—”
“Leave us. Go check on Lady Gwen and the others.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
The door shuts and I look at Myles. “We train.”
A
GAIN,” I GROWL.
I allow Myles’s hand to clamp onto my owner circles and resist the urge to shudder at his touch, which is clammy and cold compared to Eogan’s. As is his breath.
An immediate image of Isobel rises from the floor to stroll toward me. Her dark eyes laugh, taunting me to engage in a duel with her. For a second I expect the familiar storm static across my skin, but instead there’s a void, as if my Elemental heat has been replaced by cold. The aching hunger flares in my chest and travels up to my mouth. And for a second I swear I can taste it—the beauty, the power, the potential of her Mortisfaire blood.
I find myself gagging before Myles’s distant voice says, “Quit testing and make the first move.”
The first move.
Eogan would be furious. I should be furious. But I’m not, because that strange hunger is consuming everything but a growing hatred for Isobel and what she’s done. For what she’s perhaps already done to Eogan.
She steps toward me and suddenly Eogan is beside her. She smiles and giggles and places her hand over his chest like I watched her do that night at Adora’s. He grimaces.
My hands lash out to shove her off, to press against her skin and use my anger to diminish whoever she thinks she is. She claws my cheek in her grab for my heart. She thrusts against my chest, but my ability is already working, draining, taking. I can feel it—my fingers absorbing the dark magic she owns. Until she utters a cry and her eyes go wide and she pulls away to disappear in a black cloud from the vision.
Next I turn to Eogan to let the power tug and steal her magic out of his chest, until I can only feel the healthy
thump
of his beating heart.
Except it’s not healthy. There’s a greater sorcery there.
Draewulf smiles at me through Eogan’s lips.
I shove harder and twist as if to grip the very essence of him, the soul he’s devouring Eogan with, and try to yank it out—fighting every last bit of him as if I can separate them by sheer force of my hateful will. Except next thing I know my vision’s gone hazy and my lungs are seizing up. I can’t find my breath.
What in—?
My legs begin shaking, followed by the floor, and suddenly the lamps and shelves along the walls are vibrating so strong I know they will fall and shatter.
I ease back and shut my eyes to block out the image of Eogan as the wraiths hiss out in the hall.
How strange that I can hear them.
Or maybe the sound is in my head because it suddenly feels light and my thoughts aren’t making sense. I open my eyes and turn to Myles. And discover him bent over choking for air.
Abruptly I am too.
It’s a full minute before my lungs draw in enough atmosphere
for my breathing to steady. And another before Myles puts his hands on his knees and looks up at me.
“What in hulls happened?” I gasp.
“You just magnified your abilities, my dear.”
“But it wasn’t enough.” I shake my head. I can feel it in my skin—that hunger, that need. It strums empty behind my lungs and makes the growing vortex feel wider.
Train faster, Nym.