Lies of Murk by Eva Chase
16
Talia
The moment I step into the throne room, I can tell something has shifted in the atmosphere. Orion is poised on his throne, his tail slung over one arm and flicking idly but the rest of him absolutely still. His usual close companions, including Madoc, are standing as if at attention on the dais around him rather than lounging in their typical casual poses.
There are only a few other fae around, hanging back by the walls, tensed but with hints of anticipation in their faces. And the twitching orange glow of their Heart washes over them all.
I pause just inside the room, abruptly uncertain. When one of the Murk told me the king wanted to see me, I assumed Orion was going to offer to share another meal with me and chat a little like he has before. Or maybe suggest another job he thinks I could help with. This… feels very different, in a way that makes my skin crawl.
Orion beckons me closer. “Come along, my pet,” he says in a tone much more mocking than affectionate. “I don’t want to be yelling across the room to talk to you.”
I limp forward, even though every particle in my body is clanging with alarm. What good would running away do? It’s not as if there’s anywhere I could flee to that he wouldn’t find me. My fingers itch to reach for my bronze bracelet, to rub the cool metal to remind myself I have that one secret tool, but I’m afraid of drawing attention to it.
“What did you want to talk about?” I ask, keeping my voice as steady as I can. He can probably pick up on my nervousness with his sharp senses, but I don’t want to make it any more obvious than I have to. My gaze darts to Madoc of its own accord, and his mouth moves just slightly. I can’t tell whether he wants to reassure me or warn me—or maybe it’s neither.
“We’re fine-tuning our plans for our invasion of the Mists,” Orion says. He pauses until I’ve come to a stop right at the edge of the dais and motions for me to step up so I’m right in front of him. “We’ve been able to gather plenty of information, but our methods do still have a few limitations. I think it’s time I saw through the rest of your purpose there.”
A chill prickles through my nerves. I hold myself stiffly, just a couple of steps from his chair. “What do you mean?”
The Murk king gives me a narrow smirk. “You’ve spent a lot of time among the highest ranking fae of the Mists. You’ve had access to an Unseelie arch-lord’s entire mind. I’m sure you know all kinds of details about their habits and strategies that we couldn’t glimpse otherwise.”
My pulse stutters. Both he and Madoc have nudged me about my knowledge of the other fae from time to time over the past few days, but they’ve never demanded information. I assumed it was because they didn’t think I’d necessarily learned all that much that would be useful to them. Apparently they were only biding their time, hoping I’d volunteer more than I have.
I can still attempt to play the ignorance card. I offer a sheepish smile. “There weren’t any invasions or wars when I was with them. I don’t think I know very much that would help you prepare, or I’d have mentioned it already. Mostly… Mostly we talked about more personal things.”
I duck my head as if I’m embarrassed by the reference to the intimacy of my relationship with most of the fae who told me much of anything.
Orion’s tail keeps flicking, his smirk still in place, his eyes glittering coldly. “I think you still have some loyalties to the fae who took you as their mate, and that’s keeping you quiet. As if they aren’t just as bad as the others when it suits them. Why do you think I chose a human to shape rather than one of my own kind? If you’d been a Murk, you’d never have made it out of that first cage.”
Is that true? My gut twists with the question, but there’s really no way of knowing.
And it doesn’t change the fact that I believe the fae I trusted back home would be willing to consider that the Murk might deserve more than the lot they’ve been given. That they’d be horrified by the violence I witnessed in the vault of memories yesterday.
“That might be true,” I say, the lie heavy on my tongue, “but I still don’t know what I could say that would help you.”
“And that is why I’ve gotten tired of waiting for you to get your head on straight and fully embrace your true loyalties.”
In one swift movement, so sudden I have no chance to react, Orion shoots forward to the edge of his seat and snatches my wrist. As he yanks me right up to him with a strength I wasn’t prepared for, my warped foot stumbles. I nearly fall right into his lap.
But maybe he wouldn’t have minded that, because the next second, he’s swept out his own foot to knock my legs out from under me. My knees hit the surface of the dais, leaving me kneeling in front of him, my breath locked in my throat. When I open my mouth to protest, he grasps a clump of my hair and hauls my head back so I’m staring up to meet his gaze. His claws have come out, pricking my scalp like needles.
There’s a rustling beside us. “Orion,” Madoc starts, with a rough note in his voice.
But if he was going to speak on my behalf, his king doesn’t want to hear it. Orion waves him off with his other hand. “It’s time she understood who exactly is in control here, and just how much control I can wield.” He grins at me, his face full of wicked amusement even as the pain of his grip radiates through my head.
I don’t want to beg, and I don’t expect it to do me any good, but the words spill out anyway. “Please. Ask me whatever you want, and I’ll tell you what I can. I don’t want—”
He jerks my head back and forth, sending another jab of pain through my wrenched neck. “I don’t care what you want, little girl. You are mine. I made you. And now I’ll take what I want.”
He intones a few harsh words of magic, and the dissonant energy of the Heart hits me even harder. A burning sensation flares deep in my mind, spreading through my awareness as if my brain has caught fire.
I gasp, tears springing to my eyes. I try to blink them away, but something in Orion’s spell holds my eyelids open as he peers into me as if seeing right inside my mind.
Which maybe he is. My thoughts jumble and whirl, and I nearly choke on the realization of how many things I do know that I’d hate for him to find out. But the burning is heightening into a full-out blaze, and I can’t focus on anything except those gleaming yellow eyes pinning me in place.
However much he’s dragging from my mind into his, he mustn’t be able to control it perfectly. His pupils flicker back and forth like he’s reading a book, and he snaps out a demanding question. “The illegal artifact collection the former arch-lord was keeping—your Arch-Lord Sylas didn’t dispose of all of it?”
The answer tears up my throat as if dredged up by a barbed net. I can’t hold it in. “I—I think he and the other arch-lords got rid of everything they thought was dangerous. But there might still be some things left.” Has Celia held onto anything along with the collar she used on Corwin? I try to swallow down the words, but more crawl from my lungs. “I don’t know where it would be, though.”
Orion gives my head another brisk shake, but he seems satisfied that I’ve told him enough about that subject. “The magic used to create your new castle on the border. How did the opposing realms come together on it?”
I don’t know much about that either, but what I do comes searing across my tongue. “They said they—they just had to appeal to the Heart of the Mists, and it accepted their intentions. And the border vow had to stay in place.”
I can’t feel my limbs anymore, not even my knees braced against the dais—only the scorching agony and the piercing of the Murk king’s gaze. “What exactly did you say to convince Arch-Lord Laoni to back off on destroying that castle when she called you to attend to her alone?”
“I’m not sure,” I gasp out. “She—she’d come down with the curse, and I reminded her that I didn’t have to heal her. That it would probably be easier for me if I didn’t. But I told her that she and her people mattered enough to me that I’d cure her even though she’d been attacking me. I think—I think she finally realized I didn’t have any intention of hurting her.”
But I am anyway. Nausea twines with the pain inside me. I’m betraying every one of the fae of the seasons right now, and I don’t know how to stop myself.
The burning sensation is starting to ease back, though it still hurts like hell. I don’t know if Orion is exhausting his powers or if he’s simply winding down on purpose. “What did your mates do to make the Heart of the Mists flare the way it did at your mating ceremony?”
My voice comes out in a croak. “I don’t know. I had no idea that was going to happen. They didn’t mention it before or after.”
He lets go. My bones have turned to jelly. I collapse at his feet, my nerves jittering as if I’ve been stabbed by a thousand splinters all over my body. A dull ache fills my head.
“That’s enough for now,” Orion says, nudging me with the toe of his shoe. “Bring her back to her house and let her sleep it off.”
I don’t know who he’s spoken to until firm but gentle hands slide over my shoulders and a familiar voice murmurs close to my ear, “I’m going to help you up now. Can you walk at all?”
Madoc eases my arm around him for support and lifts me to my feet. I wobble on my legs, my sense of the room around me still hazy. Orion has already turned to converse with his other men as if he doesn’t care whether I even make it out of the room.
When I stumble with my first step, Madoc lets out a soft noise of consternation and hefts me right up into his arms. His thunderstorm scent fills my nose.
I don’t want to be carried—I don’t want to be handled like an invalid—but I can’t convince any part of my body to move to my will.
Madoc strides out of the throne room with me. As we head down the tunnel toward the station where he built my hovel, his voice drops even lower than before, his chin grazing my forehead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was going to do that.”
What could Madoc have done about it if he had known? What would he even have wanted to do about it? It was all in the service of his cause, wasn’t it?
How much did Orion see that will help the Murk ruin every part of the life I came to love in the Mists? How many fae are going to die because I didn’t have the power to fight him off? Fresh tears well up behind my eyes.
“I’ll talk to him, tell him you want to help, that he doesn’t have to go about it that way,” Madoc continues. “He’ll see reason—he’s just impatient now that we’re so close to the goal. That doesn’t excuse—” His voice goes raw. “You didn’t deserve this.”
Maybe not, but it happened anyway. And I have no doubt it’ll happen again if I’m still here—maybe even tomorrow. I have the urge to crawl away inside myself as if that’s even possible, as if Orion couldn’t drag me out with his awful magic anyway.
Madoc sets me down in front of my “house.” He speaks a few magical words, and the already fading pain pulls back even more. My head is starting to clear, but being able to think about what just happened only makes me more miserable.
“If I can do anything else for you,” Madoc starts.
I shake my head before he can go on, not meeting his eyes. “Let me just be alone, please,” I rasp.
My arms and legs have recovered enough that I can crawl inside the hovel. I have the sense of Madoc lingering outside for a few minutes longer as if to make sure I don’t change my mind and call out to him after all. Then he’s gone.
I curl up on the blankets, staring vacantly at my hands. I have no idea how much Orion saw in my head that he could turn into a weapon against the men I love. I don’t think he saw some of the worst things I could have given away, like my ability with true names or the fact that Whitt gave me his, maybe because it didn’t occur to him to search for that. Surely he’d have remarked on it if he’d noticed.
But that doesn’t mean he won’t dig that out of me later. Soon. He could turn me into an outright weapon. In some ways he already has.
My gaze narrows in on the bronze bracelet. A wild, desperate impulse floods me.
I can make sure he never uses me again, that he can’t steal one more thought from my head. The Murk haven’t left any sharp weapons in my reach, but I could transform that bracelet into a knife right now and slash it across my own throat like I once threatened to in front of Ambrose.
Every awful thing Orion wants from me would drain away with my blood gushing over the floor. It’d all be done.
I sit up and touch the bracelet. “Fee-doom-ace-own,” I hiss, pouring all my fear and guilt into the words.
The band releases my wrist and straightens into a razor-sharp blade.
Staring down at it, I run my fingers over the warmed bronze. I should just do it. It would be definite, final… and easy. An immediate escape.
Something in me balks at that.
How much would I be leaving behind? I’d destroy any chance of Orion getting more information out of me—if there’s all that much more he can get now—but also any chance that I could escape the way I meant to before, to warn the men I love of all the things they don’t know. I’d be abandoning them to a curse their enemy conjured and a war they don’t even know is on the horizon.
For several minutes, I grapple with myself. I bring the bronze edge to my throat to see how the pressure feels. My heart lurches, and I lower my hands again.
Something stronger than my panic rises up from deep inside me.
I’ve gotten through so much. I’ve faced so much and refused to give in. And part of me still believes that I can do more by staying in this world than leaving it, as much as I might want to flee the horror of what Orion’s done to me.
I close my eyes for a moment, and the resolve solidifies. I’ll get back to my home and my mates one way or another. The Murk won’t break me.
I’ll just have to fight even harder in the few ways I know how.
Heart help me, let it work.
