Lies of Murk by Eva Chase
22
Whitt
Talia’s voice quavers through my mind, splintering and fading in and out despite my best efforts to hold it in focus. —trying to find— —no clues about where— Be careful. —a heart. They have so much—
And then she’s gone, with a jolt of agony that radiates from her into me, lingering even after I’ve lost any hint of her.
My fingers clench against the map I’d spread on my desk as if I can catch her and pull her back to me. An even deeper anguish digs into my gut.
So much urgency and turmoil reached me even in that brief, frail connection. She was upset, maybe even desperate. And I don’t even know what it is she was trying to tell me.
I slam both my fists down on the desk, my frustration cracking the outward nonchalance I’ve gotten so adept at putting on. In the privacy of my study, it hardly matters, although I’d have teased August about such a show of temper. My fangs have leapt from my gums, as if there’s anything in front of me I can tear apart to save my mate.
All I have are the same books and scrolls and other bits of aged paper I had before.
I glare down at the specific piece of aged paper spread out in front of me, the map I was studying when Talia called on my true name. It isn’t giving me answers anywhere near quickly enough.
With a combination of magic and ink, the map holds as accurate a record as we can maintain of the main portals to the human world from the Mists. Of course, those portals do move around some and so need frequent updating, and minor ones regularly emerge into being or vanish. It’s a partial picture at best.
Still, I’ve been making note of the most longstanding portals in the area where Corwin and Sylas found consistent traces of Murk presence along the fringes and comparing them to our sentries’ observations from the human lands on the other side to see if any place jumps out as a hotbed of rat activity. The pests are likely to be less careful in the human world, where most of those around them can be easily deceived.
So far I haven’t found any evidence from past reports that would make one spot or another seem like a particularly good target to focus on, though.
We have other sentries investigating every portal currently there in the meantime, not to mention stalking through those distant woods hoping to catch one of the vermin on their way through. We’ve worked out traps that should be sprung by the magic they’re typically using. But there’s no way of knowing if it’ll be enough.
And Talia may be running out of time. What are the blasted vermin putting her through?
I scan several more pages of old notes and then shove back my chair with a sigh and the start of a headache prickling at my temples.
Is there something better I could be doing with my time? The part of me most aware of my role as Sylas’s cadre-chosen nags that I should be making more plans for how we’ll deal with the curse when the full moon arrives in less than a week’s time, but to the rest of me, that feels like defeat. Like acknowledging that there’s no way we’ll have brought Talia home before then.
How can the mangy rats have gotten the better of us so thoroughly?
I’m about to go out so I can meet the most recent sentries as soon as they return from the fringelands when one of the castle attendants knocks on my study door. When I open it, he cringes a bit, and I school my expression into something less fierce. It won’t do any good going around looking as if everyone I encounter is a rat I’m planning to eviscerate.
“My apologies for interrupting,” the attendant says quickly. “One of Lord Tristan’s cadre-chosen wishes to speak with you. She’s waiting outside.”
She is, is she? My senses automatically go on high alert. Tristan only has one female cadre-chosen, that woman named Jax, and I haven’t been happy about their odd but not explicitly imposing activities near our domain either. What does she want with me specifically, and why now?
“Thank you,” I say with a brisk nod, and go down to find out.
Jax is indeed standing several paces from the castle’s front door, her toned frame clothed in a casual but form-fitting dress that seems more appropriate for a revel than a business call. She flicks her black hair over her shoulder and fixes her heavy-lidded eyes on me with a small, sly smile that raises my hackles.
Why is she looking at me as if we’re in on some kind of secret together when I’ve barely spoken to her before today?
“Whitt,” she says smoothly. “I’m glad you were able to meet with me on such short notice.”
“If there’s trouble or a new development involving the Murk, I’d want to hear about it at once,” I say, keeping my tone coolly polite. “What is this about?”
“Walk with me, and I’ll explain.”
I’d rather she spit it out right here, but I do have to maintain more decorum than saying as much. She’s probably enjoying the thought that she’ll irritate me by drawing out her report. So I’ll just have to irritate her right back by showing as little annoyance as possible.
She walks toward the woods that lead to the edge of the hill—toward the small outpost she and a few of her pack-kin have set up on the unclaimed land beyond Hearth-by-the-Heart. She doesn’t expect me to go all the way down there with her just to find out what she wants, does she?
I keep pace with her, taking no pleasure from the bright mid-morning sun. “Feel free to begin explaining at any time.”
“To be honest,” she says, “I’m mostly concerned about you. You’ve been running yourself ragged over these past several days, haven’t you?”
As we step into the shadows of the forest, I shoot her a puzzled look. “Of course I’ve been working hard. My mate has been stolen by the blasted Murk, who pose who knows how many other threats to the rest of us as well. It’d hardly make sense for me to be taking it easy.”
One corner of her lips curls upward as if she finds my statement amusing. Abruptly, I find I would like to eviscerate her, rat or not.
She speaks smoothly but lightly. “And is your lord working himself quite as hard as you, or is he leaning on you to do the heavy lifting, as lords so often do? Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.”
Her wry tone implies the opposite. Is she suggesting she’s unhappy with Tristan’s leadership? Perhaps this unexpected overture will be useful to us after all, if she’s going to reveal something that he wouldn’t want us knowing.
I’m not going to besmirch Sylas to draw her out, though. “I’m quite satisfied with my pack’s leadership,” I say evenly. “But I’m sure such situations do arise in other packs more often than is ideal.”
“I’m glad to hear you haven’t encountered that problem yourself. I’ve often thought it must be difficult for you, being so close to true-blooded and yet reduced to little more than a servant simply because of a younger brother’s birth.” She tsks her tongue.
It takes a concentrated effort to hold in my wince at her words. The rancor I’ve felt in the past toward Sylas has faded a great deal since we’ve gotten any misunderstandings and missteps between us out in the open, but she isn’t wrong to have guessed at it. I suppose it isn’t difficult to guess, though. Most fae in the same position would probably have resented it more than I did, considering I have very little interest in taking on Sylas’s responsibilities anyway.
I shrug. “It leaves me more time for revelling and requires less stern adherence to duty, which suits me just fine. I’d hate to see what chaos any pack I ran would end up falling into.”
Jax lets out a soft laugh and pats my arm, her hand lingering by my elbow just long enough for a renewed sense of uneasiness to wash over me. She isn’t trying to lead up to any confession about her own feelings with this line of conversation—her family isn’t high enough that she could ever have had a lordship in her sights. I can see how far she is from true-blooded in the shell of her ears, only slightly more pointed than August’s human-like ones.
“I suspect you sell yourself short,” she says. “I’ve seen how well your pack responds to you. They’re at least as much yours as Sylas’s.”
I don’t like the direction she’s heading in at all now. “Is that all you brought me out here for?” I ask. “To compliment my rapport with my pack-kin?”
Jax stops in a small clearing, turning toward me as I stop with her. She touches my arm again, letting her fingers rest on my wrist as she peers up at me through her eyelashes. “I came to speak to you out of a fellow cadre-chosen’s concern and the respect I’ve formed for you across our dealings with your pack. I didn’t think you’d want to admit to any difficulties with your pack-kin around, but we all need our chances to shed the pressures on us and enjoy a little escape.”
She reaches into the folds of her skirt and draws out a small bottle. “I gather you’re a particular fan of absinthe. We got quite a fine vintage brought in not long ago—consider it a gift and a recognition of your worth.”
As I stare at the bottle in her hand, I can’t stop my spine from going rigid. Bile has risen in my throat. Images of another woman in a different forest crash through my thoughts, scattering every impulse but the urge to destroy the threat in front of me as quickly and thoroughly as I can.
It isn’t my worth or respect she’s focused on. The scheming woman is trying to seduce me. Like Isleen, with the flirty touches and the wine—is it only absinthe in that bottle or did Jax think she could blot out my self-control just like that snake of a—
My claws and fangs have already sprung free before I get a hold of myself enough to realize how I’m reacting. I catch myself just shy of lunging for Jax’s throat—and not with a love bite. The only lust her overtures have stirred up is a desire to see her dead and strewn across the forest floor.
That can’t be the reaction she was hoping to provoke, I realize. I cough and step back, trying to cover the rage that’s still searing through my veins. She can’t have any idea what happened between Isleen and me, let alone how the encounter ate at me and nearly destroyed my relationship with both my brothers and the woman I love. She’s simply using common tactics toward a goal she doesn’t know has already been accomplished in a much more dire way.
That may very well be only regular absinthe in that bottle. She may simply have hoped to shatter my faithfulness to my mate.
But the shame and fury over that encounter with Isleen haven’t totally healed, I can see now. I’m still itching to gut the woman in front of me for even suggesting I betray Talia like that. I drag in a breath, forcing more of the vitriol in me down.
Lashing out at Jax might not have been the response she was expecting, but it could have harmed me and my pack even more than if I’d succumbed to her advances. The cadre-chosen of an arch-lord’s pack savaging that of another lord over offering him a beverage? Imagine all the concerns about my stability and unfairly hostile intentions toward Tristan’s pack he could raise.
She has no idea how close she came to unraveling me in entirely the wrong way.
“I appreciate your offer,” I say, managing to clear all but a little gruffness from my voice. “I’m afraid I can’t indulge right now, as I’m keeping my head as clear as possible given the current threat.”
Jax peers at me, no doubt picking up on some trace of my intense reaction and puzzling over it. She twirls the bottle between her fingers. “Well, it’s a gift for whenever you’d want to enjoy it. Take it with you, and I hope you’ll find yourself a moment to relax before too long.”
She hands the bottle to me, so I take it. Then she taps my chest. “If you should feel you’d like to talk to someone with no ties to your own pack, I’ll be just down the hill tonight.”
I doubt she imagines I’m likely to take her up on that offer after the way I just recoiled, but perhaps she feels she has to make the attempt just in case. I give her a brief nod, and she saunters away with a sway of her hips designed to draw the eye.
As I head back toward the castle, the last shreds of my horrified rage subsiding, a deeper discomfort wraps around my gut.
Why did she come to me and make this proposition now? Is it random, or is there something in particular she’d be aiming to achieve with the timing?
Sylas and August are home at the moment, getting fae from our pack and others organized for another search effort, but both of them planned to make excursions later in the day that would take them away from the domain until well into tomorrow. Astrid has already gone to supervise our sentries traveling around and out of the fringelands. Tonight, for the first time since Talia’s disappearance, I’d be the only member of the cadre present at Hearth-by-the-Heart.
How interesting that Tristan’s cadre-chosen seemed intent on distracting me at this precise moment.
Even as my stomach twists uneasily, my thoughts sharpen at the sense of a scheme. I spring forward into wolf form and lope off to inform my lord of this ominous development while we still have time to respond.
