Chained Soul by Eva Chase
1
Talia
The Unseelie woman stands stooped in front of me, her stance rigid and her skin tinged blue. She’s the seventh winter fae I’ve healed in the week and a half since I escaped the Murk and made it back to the Mists, but somehow the process still feels different.
Not every part of that difference is necessarily bad. My tears well up faster these days, taking almost no effort at all. But that’s because I can’t help thinking about the several cursed fae I couldn’t save while I was trapped by the rat shifters in the human world. The Unseelie men and women who waited, hoping for my return, while the curse’s icy claws gripped them tighter and tighter until their bodies shut down completely.
As I brush my tear-damp fingers over the woman’s cheek, her wan face lights up with relief. I wish I could feel the same thing. Even knowing that I’m saving her life, that no more lives need to be lost right now, I can’t help remembering the worst of the things I learned while the Murk held me.
This curse is their doing. Their king, Orion, has managed to infect all of the Mists with the horrible magic of the false Heart he created. And every bit of the fear and distress his curse provokes has been flowing out of the Mists to add to the Murk Heart’s power. The thought of its erratic orange glow sends a shudder down my spine.
I know how I’m connected to the curse and the Murk now. I escaped them in some ways, but in others, I’m still tied to Orion and his magic. I can’t let the curse overcome the fae around me—that would only add to the distress that fuels his Heart—but with every healing I carry out, they rely on me more. Which means if Orion manages to tear me away from them again, they’d hurt even more.
The woman beams at me, the frost fading from her hair, and I manage to smile back at her. I can’t think about all those things now. Orion won’t tear me away from my home again—my mates are taking every step to ensure that’s not possible.
Whether he brings his Murk forces here to attempt to tear all of us to pieces is a totally different consideration.
Which is why, when I step back from the woman and her mate helps her walk back to their carriage with the few flock folk who came along to witness the healing, I have to brace myself for a different sort of confrontation. When the cursed woman arrived, we’d already been preparing for a meeting of all the arch-lords in the border castle that’s become my real home between the winter and summer realms.
They’ll have delayed, waiting for me to return, but I’m not looking forward to another of these conversations that involve at least as much arguing as planning.
Corwin and a couple of his coterie members accompanied me to the spot by the Heart of the Mists where I always offer my cure. They stand poised in a half-circle around me like a protective detail. It seems unlikely that the Murk would spring at me right here, with the rhythmic pulse of the Heart’s energy washing over me from just a few feet away, but the rat shifters did kidnap me from one of the domains by the Heart before. No one’s taking the slightest chance with my safety now.
I turn to face the Heart for a moment, soaking in the brilliant glow that feels like the warmest beams of sunlight. My hand reaches automatically to my opposite arm, where a new bronze bracelet grips my wrist. August tied the magic in it to the matching bracelet he gave my brother when we made a quick trip to check in on him after my return. Jamie’s okay. I’m okay. How can I ask for more?
I made it through Orion’s cruel treatment. I have the tools to defend myself as well as I can. And the true Heart shines on me in ways he never guessed. Weirdly, I feel closer to it now that I know it didn’t give me all my powers.
The bits of magic I can wield used to seem like they might be random chance, a fluke of nature. But really, Orion arranged for my power to cure and my ability to form a soul-twined bond. And even though I have the Murk’s horrible influence twisted all through me, the Heart of the Mists welcomed me and offered me some of its own power. Without the true names I can call on in some small way, I might not have made it this far.
When I set off for the castle, Corwin comes up beside me, Zelpha and Olander keeping their positions ahead and behind us. My soul-twined mate slips his hand around mine.
It will get easier again, he says through our inner connection. Healing the curse, I mean. You’re still recovering.
My mouth twists. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop thinking about how the Murk have used me until the threat is over and the curse is ended. At least your colleagues decided to trust me enough to let me keep curing people instead of leaving them to die.
That was one of the earlier arguments after I got back, out of concern that the Murk might have worked some surreptitious evil into the cure itself. But the winter arch-lords quickly decided that some unknown harm was less of a problem than their people literally dying in front of them.
I suspect their decision was helped along by the fact that the arch-lord who’s been most opposed to my involvement with her people, Laoni, is going to need a second cure herself any day now.
As we come up on the winter entrance to the castle, a wave of weariness sweeps through me. I stop for a moment to gather myself and restrain a yawn.
Are you all right, my soul?Corwin asks, worry furrowing his brow. You’ve seemed more tired than usual today. Was your sleep interrupted?
A little, I admit. I rarely have dreams of my initial captivity among the summer fae anymore, but since my return, images of the things I saw among the Murk have haunted my sleep. The steel cage Orion tossed me into. The pain that seared through my mind when he forced me to respond to his interrogation.
And also violence dealt to the Murk by the fae I consider my own. Every few nights, I find myself back in the sewer orphanage, watching several wolfish warriors tear apart Murk toddlers like bloody dolls.
Not all the crimes committed have been on the Murk’s side.
I have been feeling especially worn down the past few days, for no reason I can point to. Maybe it’s just taken some time for the weight of everything I’ve discovered to catch up with me after the initial relief of being home. I’ve hidden it from Corwin’s awareness of me as well as I can because he has enough other things to worry about, and me being a bit tired is hardly comparable to an impending war. Today I just want to crawl back into bed and sleep for the rest of the day, though.
I’ll take a nap after this meeting, I tell Corwin, rolling my shoulders to gather my strength, and limp on into our castle.
The rest of the arch-lords, both the four others of winter and the three of summer, are already gathered around the long meeting table in a room in the center of the castle. Several cadre and coterie members stand poised along the walls. I take a seat with Corwin at my left at the head of the table and Sylas at my right. Whitt, who’s poised with August behind his lord, reaches to give my hair a playfully affectionate tug, as if just to remind me that they’re all here for me.
“All right,” Laoni says briskly, as if she’s more in charge here than anyone else. “Now we can get on with things. The first order of business…” She fixes her piercing gaze on me. “Have you sensed any sign of the Murk’s influence acting on you since our last meeting?”
Of course that’s her first priority. “No,” I say, keeping my voice even. “If I had, you’d already know about it.”
Celia, the most senior of the summer arch-lords, clears her throat. “Well, then, let’s discuss the progress we’ve made in our efforts at locating this ‘refuge’ where their king is hiding as well as the other Murk colonies. The scouting parties under my cadre’s supervision haven’t discovered any larger habitations of the vermin yet, although they did come across a building in Oslo that appeared recently vacated of rats. What about the rest of you?”
I’m tired enough that I can’t stop my mind from drifting as the other arch-lords give their reports, snapping back to attention when one or another asks for my opinion on a specific observation they’ve made. That’s why I’m joining this meeting at all when no one else’s mates are present—I’m the only one with direct knowledge of the Murk’s current status and habits. But no one seems to have encountered much of the enemy at all.
“They must realize that I’ll have told you everything I learned as soon as I got back to you,” I say after all of the arch-lords are finished. “They’re laying low because they know how thoroughly you’ll be searching.” But that doesn’t mean the Murk aren’t working just as hard on their war efforts as before. Orion’s people were accomplishing plenty just within their underground home of abandoned subway stations.
“They’re still attempting to spy on us,” Uzziah mutters. The dour winter arch-lord scowls. “One of the patrols reporting to me caught a rat near the fringes last night and dealt with it as appropriate.”
He means they killed it. My stomach knots, and I sit up in my chair a little straighter. My mind darts to the story Madoc told me about his parents, brutally slaughtered simply for daring to try to make a life for themselves and their son on the fringes of the Unseelie realm.
A protest rises in my throat, but I’m not sure what to say. I’ve already appealed to the fae around me that they shouldn’t assume every rat shifter they come across is out to harm us, but at the first suggestion that I had sympathy for any of the Murk, even my mates tensed. Laoni accused me of being brainwashed by them.
It took another few days and several spells and conversations before they let me rejoin the meetings afterward, and even now, only Corwin and Sylas seem to understand my concerns. If I’m going to get the agreement of enough of the others to swing the balance toward a different policy, I know I have to approach it from a more practical rather than emotional angle.
Madoc, the Murk man who helped me escape his king, hoped that by helping me he’d give me the opportunity to push back against the fae of the seasons’ hatred of the Murk, to encourage them to open some kind of dialogue so that the conflict might not come to outright war. So far, I’ve failed in that. But then, even Madoc made it clear he knew it was a long shot.
Mostly he helped me escape because he believed saving me from a fate worse than death was more important than his loyalty to his king. And that right there is how I know not all the Murk are spiteful villains.
“Did the patrol try to question the Murk they found?” I ask.
Uzziah turns his scowl toward me. “What do you mean?”
“What I said. Did they try to question the Murk and see if they could find out anything about what the rats are planning now, or did they go straight to killing? We need to learn everything we can, don’t we? And they’ll know more about what their own people are up to than anyone here does, including me.”
Uzziah’s scowl deepens. He probably suspects I’m concerned about more than just uncovering the Murk’s schemes, but he can suspect all he wants. He can’t argue with what I’ve actually said.
Not much, anyway. Celia gives it a shot. “We’ve already seen how quick the Murk are to end their own lives rather than risk giving anything away—and how much magic they can wield if they’re given a chance to. When it isn’t likely we’d get anything out of them anyway, it seems safer to simply dispose of them before they have a chance to attack our own people.”
“Everyone should be prepared for their magic now,” I say. “And when it’s a patrol of several of you against one or two of them, I can’t see how they’d get away with much. When we’re not having much success with our own searches, shouldn’t we at least try to get some information from them?”
Or to make sure they’re even part of the enemy forces and not just random fae passing by, I think but don’t say.
Sylas leans forward. “I agree with Talia. It’s worth the risk for the chance that they’ll give away something useful. We can’t win a war by avoiding all danger to ourselves.”
“Even if they told us something, we couldn’t trust it to be true,” Laoni says. “That false Heart of theirs obviously doesn’t take issue with lying.”
“Then we discuss what they do say and decide for ourselves how to proceed,” Donovan speaks up. “We can’t discuss it at all if we don’t have the information.”
Corwin nods. “Agreed. I’ve already instructed my own patrols to question any intruders as well as they can.”
Terisse, who seems to have come around to Corwin’s side somewhat after long supporting Laoni, inclines her head too. “I think that’s reasonable. We’ve been acting in anger, wanting to destroy them, when we must keep our heads cool and handle the problem rationally. They’ve been counting on manipulating us through our emotions all along.”
“All right,” Laoni grumbles, and Uzziah sighs but nods. Celia grimaces a bit but offers her own acceptance.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the orders they give still encourage the patrols under their watch to switch to violence with little provocation, but maybe I’ve managed to soften the viciousness a little.
The rest of the conversation doesn’t have much to do with me. When we all get up at the end of the meeting, I have to suppress another yawn. I definitely need that nap. But first I hang back with my mates as our guests head out of the room in the directions of their own realms.
August tugs me against him from behind and presses a kiss to the top of my head. “You spoke well,” he says.
“Only because I didn’t say half of what I wanted to,” I mutter, and pause. “Do you think there’s any real chance that we could work toward finding some sort of common ground with the Murk?”
I catch a flicker of skepticism through my bond with Corwin that echoes the expressions on my other mates’ faces.
“I’m still not convinced there is much of a common ground to be found,” Whitt says, leaning against the table. “Yes, that one rat helped you get free, but there was plenty of self-interest in that gesture in the grand scheme of things. He’s expecting you to help the Murk in return—as you are.”
“He knew it might not work, and he was risking his life going against Orion,” I protest.
Corwin rests his hand on my shoulder. “What I’ve seen in your mind of your interactions with Madoc appear genuine, but he’s an admitted expert at illusions. I don’t think it’s wise to trust any of the Murk without further proof, especially when we have plenty of proof that so many of them want to destroy us all.”
My mind feels too bleary for me to come up with a coherent argument to that point. Maybe there isn’t one; maybe he’s right. I just can’t shake off the horror of the scenes I saw, the ways the Seelie and Unseelie have fanned the flames of the Murk’s hatred by treating them like, well, vermin.
“We’ll attempt to talk rather than do battle where we can,” Sylas says in his reassuringly steady baritone. “We simply have to be more wary than ever of the threat they pose.”
“I know.” I exhale slowly, and a yawn finally stretches my jaw before I can hold it back.
August nudges me toward the doorway. “Get some rest. You’ve been spreading yourself thin.”
“I’m all right,” I say, but as I take the first few uneven steps past the table, a rush of dizziness washes over me. I sway, snatching at the nearest chair for balance, and my stomach flips over with a twinge of queasiness.
Corwin is at my side in an instant. As he peers into my eyes, a quiver of anxiety pierces my heart. What if I’m not just tired—what if something’s wrong with me?
But he leans a little closer with an intake of breath, and when he pulls back so I can see his face clearly again, the smile that’s appeared there is nothing short of dazzling.
“My soul,” he says in a voice soft with awe, “it’s no wonder you’re feeling out of sorts. It must have only just taken root—you’re with child.”
