Lies of Murk by Eva Chase
1
Sylas
When I first glance toward the platform by the Heart’s pulsing light and notice that Talia is no longer perched on its edge, I don’t think much of it. No doubt she’s rejoined the dancing or stepped aside to chat with her dressmaker friend from our pack. Astrid will be watching over her, as will Corwin’s coterie.
I amble through the crowd of revelers, still in a celebratory mood myself. Just a couple of hours ago, I finally claimed the extraordinary human woman who’s won my heart as my official mate—alongside my two cadre-chosen who’ve earned her affections as well, and with the approval of her Unseelie soul-twined mate. The peace between Corwin’s winter realm and ours of summer feels more solid than it’s ever been.
I’m far from the only one wanting to celebrate both those things. It seems as if the whole of the fae world is laughing and whirling on the field around me and in the surrounding forest, moving with the rollicking music. Their eager toasts lace the air with the scent of duskapple wine. And why shouldn’t they be as happy as I am?
Whitt draws up beside me, tipping a wine glass of his own to his mouth. My spymaster taps my arm with his elbow and cranes his neck to peer through the crowd. “Where’s our mighty mate gotten to?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” I scan the revelers myself, my deadened eye adding the occasional after-image, both fleeting and vague, to the scene before me. Talia should be easy to pick out with the vivid pink and purple dye in her hair, a hue few even true-blooded fae could match, but I’m not seeing her.
She could have gone off into the forest, but a twang of uneasiness breaks through the joy inside me. At the same moment, Corwin appears at my side. The winter arch-lord rarely shows much emotion, so the obvious distress on his bronze-brown face puts all my senses on the alert in an instant.
“Have you seen Talia?” he asks in a low, urgent tone, his gaze flicking over the fae around us. “I wasn’t focused on our bond, so I’m not sure exactly where she was, but all of a sudden my impression of her vanished completely.”
Whitt stiffens. “She’s gone?”
Before an even deeper horror can grip me, Corwin shakes his head. “She must be alive and clearly not in any conscious distress. The bond is still there. I just can’t sense her on the other end. It’s similar to when she’s sleeping and not dreaming, although often I can pick up a bit of her emotional state even then. And she wouldn’t have fallen into sleep in a snap like that.”
“She was sitting on the platform just a few minutes ago,” I say, moving to weave through the crowd. Perhaps we’ll find some sign of what became of her there. “Did you notice nothing at all before she disappeared? There was no pain or panic?”
Corwin and Whitt follow me. The raven shifter’s mouth twists. “I caught a brief jolt of what felt like confusion and fear, but it was so abrupt I didn’t have time to reach out or study it all that carefully. I caught it and immediately focused on her presence, and she’d already gone blank.”
“That doesn’t bode well.” Cold apprehension winds through my body.
At the platform, we find no signs of any kind of scuffle or of where Talia might have gone from here. As we examine the area, August catches up with us. He looked so jovial the last time I saw him just minutes ago, but his frown now shows he’s noticed our change in mood.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his substantial muscles flexing across his broad shoulders. “Did something happen to Talia?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine,” Whitt says in a tense voice so unlike his usual carefree tone that I know he’s on the verge of panic himself.
“We need to find Astrid,” I say. “She’s always kept a close eye on Talia.” As we should have been too. I just hadn’t imagined anything could happen to her during this gathering with so many of us who care about her so close by. Guilt congeals in my gut alongside my worries.
Corwin makes a gesture, and within moments, his coterie woman Zelpha is at his side. She takes in our expressions and knits her brow. “Is there a problem?”
“Talia’s missing,” Corwin says. “She was here by the platform just a little while ago. Did you see where she went from there?”
The brawny woman’s eyes widen. “I was glancing over at her now and then, and she seemed fine. But I haven’t seen her in… maybe ten minutes? A little scuffle broke out between two men near me who must have had too much wine, and I was busy making sure they didn’t come to fatal blows. I’ll start searching the woods for her—and check with the rest of the coterie if I cross paths with them.”
“We could make an announcement,” August says, but he sounds doubtful. We both know that if we make it clear to all the fae celebrating around us that something’s happened to the human woman they’ve begun to revere, the festivities will turn chaotic in an instant.
“Let’s see what we can piece together on our own before we cause a mass panic,” I say. “Having all of the fae here upset might make it harder to determine what happened rather than easier.”
My eyes catch on Astrid’s gray hair and wiry form near the opposite end of the platform. I hurry over to the newest of my cadre-chosen, and she heads toward me when she notices me coming. “Is Talia with you?” she asks with obvious hope. “I lost track of her for a moment.”
Blast it. I can’t give her any relief. “So have we, and from her soul-twined mate’s impressions, we have reason to believe she’s been incapacitated. Did you see her leaving the platform?”
Astrid’s expression darkens with worry. “No. As soon as you went over to the refreshment table, I was keeping her in my line of sight. But then one of the dancers stumbled into me and knocked the feet right out from under me, and a few of us fell in a jumble…” She grimaces, rubbing her elbow where I can already tell a bruise is forming. “By the time I managed to get up, she’d moved. I haven’t seen her since.”
My apprehension is expanding by the second. I can’t shake the growing suspicion that it’s unnaturally convenient that our colleagues who would have been watching over Talia were all suddenly diverted shortly after we left her side.
“Make inquiries,” I tell her. “Discreetly, but we want to know which way she went and whether anyone was with her.”
Astrid nods with a jerk of her head. She heads back into the crowd, stopping to murmur to fae here and there.
Corwin appears to spot something farther away in the crowd. He beckons for us to follow him toward one of his other coterie members, an older man whose name I believe is Verik, who I assume Zelpha brought in on the search. He’s standing near Donovan and one of my colleague’s cadre-chosen.
Donovan’s forehead is furrowed. “You’re looking for Talia?” the younger arch-lord says. “Jagan saw her heading into the woods a few minutes ago.”
His cadre man nods and motions to the woods to the south. “She was walking with Kyo, one of our pack-kin. I’m sure Kyo wouldn’t have meant or done her any harm. She’s always spoken highly of Talia and her generosity in healing our curse.”
“Then perhaps something befell both of them.” I set off in the direction he indicated, knowing the other men will follow me.
As my chief warrior, August pushes a little ahead. At the edge of the forest, he scents the air and then drops into wolf form to lope between the trees. When I follow suit, I catch a slight hint of Talia’s sap-sweet smell in the air. It urges me onward.
Whitt’s wolf bounds through the woods a few feet to my left. A rustle of feathers tells me Corwin and perhaps his coterie man have taken flight in their raven forms. If Talia’s been taken beyond these woods, they’ll spot her faster than we Seelie can. But if it’s only been a matter of minutes, we may find her just as quickly here on the ground.
Her scent thickens just enough to lead us toward Donovan’s pack village. We leave the last of the reveling fae behind, and August stops with a bark of alarm several paces ahead of me. He straightens up into his usual shape and immediately kneels by a crumpled figure.
My pulse stutters with a jolt of alarm. I dash the last short distance to him, but it isn’t Talia’s smell that fills my nose, though I still catch traces of her essence around. The woman slumped at the base of the tree is old and fae.
As I shift out of my wolf, both Whitt and Donovan come up beside me. August is murmuring with his hand over the woman’s forehead. After a moment, her eyelids flutter. She stares up at him and then jerks into a sitting position. “What am I doing here? What happened?”
Donovan crouches down next to August, his tone urgent but full of compassion. “That’s what we’re hoping to find out, Kyo. One of my cadre-chosen saw you walking this way with Lady Talia. What were the two of you talking about?”
“Lady Talia?” The woman’s puzzled expression makes my heart sink. “I—I don’t think I’ve seen her since the ceremony. I went back to my house to fetch a shawl—the night brings a chill to these old bones more often than not—and…” She frowns. “That’s the last thing I remember: walking up to my house. Lady Talia certainly wasn’t there.” Her gaze darts around us, concern flashing across her wrinkled face. “Is she all right?”
I don’t sense any hint of pretence in her. She honestly doesn’t know.
Restraining a growl, I let loose my wolf once more. I’ll be more likely to pick up Talia’s trail with my canine nose given full rein.
I prowl through the forest with all my senses on the alert. There are whiffs of her scent here and there in this spot and along the trail she must have walked to reach here—but nothing in any other direction. She didn’t touch anything, with her feet or any other part of her, after she arrived in this part of the forest. Which means she was most likely carried off.
By whom?
Other than the scents of my companions and the old fae woman, I don’t pick up any indication of another presence that passed through. My deadened eye refuses to offer me any glimpses beyond the ordinary, no matter how I urge it to. Clenching my fangs, I dip my nose even lower, drag the air even deeper into my lungs. There has to be something. She couldn’t utterly disappear.
Whitt and August pad between the trees nearby. Donovan continues talking with his pack-kin in quiet tones, but I can tell he isn’t getting anything more useful from her. With a hoarse caw, Corwin’s raven alights on a branch near us and cocks his head. He doesn’t appear to have any news either.
Then, some distance from the spot where we found Kyo, the faintest hint of something bitter touches my nostrils. I freeze, weaving my head until the smell catches just a little more in my nose. No sniff around that area brings more of it to my awareness, but my fangs are already clenched. I’ve tasted enough to know what it is.
I spring up onto my feet, every muscle braced. Whitt and August hustle over, shedding their wolves as they come. Corwin drops down to join us, shifting in an instant.
My voice comes out just shy of a snarl. “There was a rat here. It covered its tracks well, but not perfectly. We must find it and whatever other Murk vermin slunk here with it as quickly as possible. Return to the celebration and send off every fae who’s able-bodied and still has enough of their wits about them to seek out the mangy rodents.”
Whitt’s eyes flashed the moment I said “rat.” He springs off into the forest, racing toward the field around the Heart with August swiftly overtaking him. As I move to join them, Donovan catches my arm. I’m so furious I nearly snap his nose off.
“Sylas,” he says hastily, with a hint of apology, “what would the rats want with Talia?”
That is the question, isn’t it?
My thoughts trip over all the minor intrusions of the Murk into our lives over the past few months. Vandalism and a murder at Aerik’s castle. The destruction of several homes in the Unseelie’s summer fae settlement and a woman who warned of more to come. A plume of toxic, iron-laced smoke, guarded by a man who lunged at Talia when she tried to put it out.
The story I heard from Aerik just a few days ago of how he stumbled on Talia’s town in the first place… hunting down a rat.
Have the Murk been sneaking through our lives even more than that without us realizing it? Have they had some interest in Talia all along? I still don’t fully understand, but clearly I should have acted on what I did know sooner, more thoroughly.
I should have never given the slightest opportunity for one of those vermin to get anywhere near my mate.
“I don’t know,” I reply, the rage mixing with my guilt into a searing ache within my chest. “To disrupt our celebration? To send us into a panic? Whatever their reason, it can’t be good—for us or her.”
Then I hurtle after my cadre, hoping my error won’t cost me the woman I love. Because if the rats wrench her beyond the boundaries of the Mists into their haunts in the human world before we find her, we may never find her at all.
