Chained Soul by Eva Chase
13
Talia
Istop outside the cabin hidden away in the woods just beyond Hearth-by-the-Heart’s castle, not sure whether to be more grateful to see that Madoc’s living quarters here are significantly more private and comfortable than the holding cell he was stuck in last time, or unsettled by the guards and the hum of magic that still hold him captive. I understand Sylas’s need for caution, but how long will my mates continue treating Madoc like an intruder rather than an ally?
August speaks to one of the guards, who at least does Madoc the courtesy of knocking on the door before opening it. “You’ve got visitors,” she says gruffly. “You can come out.”
The Murk man appears in the doorway with the wary expression that’s his primary mode around the fae of the Mists, but when he finds me there, it relaxes a little with the start of a smile. “I wasn’t sure they were actually going to let you come see me.”
“My lord keeps his word,” August says with a hint of a growl.
Madoc holds up his hands. “No criticism intended. You’re protecting your mate from the disreputable rats. It’s very admirable.” His tone walks the line between sympathy and sarcasm.
August frowns as if he’s not sure which way to take the remark and seems to decide he’ll just ignore it altogether. He sets his hand on the small of my back as if I need reassurance. “She’s here. If there’s anything you want to say to her, you can now.”
Madoc’s stormy gaze takes me in, and his voice gentles. “They said you’ve been mostly all right other than a couple more short spells of the curse.”
It isn’t exactly a question, but I hear the need for confirmation in it. “That’s right,” I said. “I feel pretty much fine most of the time. Just every now and then…” I shrug as if it’s no big deal, as if my stomach doesn’t clench up with the worry about when another attack might hit me, how it’ll be if they intensify or start coming closer together—or both.
Madoc’s mouth twists. “I suppose they’ve told you that I haven’t been able to bring much news. Orion likes to keep his cards close to his chest.”
“I know. I’d rather you stayed cautious than made him suspicious of you. Whitt did say that the two of you have come up with a possible plan.”
He lets out a rough chuckle. “We’ll see how that goes. He’s supposed to come around later to work out the rest of the details. After he’s consulted with his colleagues who aren’t rats, I guess, to make sure I’m not leading you all astray.”
I fix him with a firm look that I hope conveys as much confidence as I want it to. “It’ll take some time, but they’ll see that you really do want to help. It isn’t as if you’re all that happy to be working with them either.”
“Fair point.” He exhales in a rush, and I notice the shift of his weight on his feet, from one side to the other and back again. He’s been stuck in the little cabin for hours.
“Do you want to take a walk while we talk more?” I ask with a twinge of concern. “Stretch your legs, enjoy the fresh air…?”
Something flickers in Madoc’s eyes before his small smile returns. “I’d like that very much if my keepers will agree.”
I glance at August, who knits his brow and then motions to the guards. “We’ll give you some space,” he says, “but I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Madoc says before I need to reply. He studies the guards as if making sure this isn’t some kind of trick and then steps over the threshold.
It’s still odd seeing him walk around without his tail, as if he’s missing an essential limb. But having it out would definitely draw the wrong kind of attention around here. I wonder if it bothers him to hide it away after spending so much time with it out in the open in the Refuge. But then, he must be used to sticking to his purely man form when he’s on his missions to the Mists.
The thought of all the times he spied on us in the past with nothing but hostility in his heart makes my gut knot. But he didn’t know me then, just as we didn’t know him. A lot can change in not much time at all.
I let him direct our path, and he ambles through the trees in the general direction of Hearth-by-the-Heart’s castle. August and the guards follow several paces behind us. I can’t see her, but I know Astrid is standing guard somewhere nearby too. Corwin is a constant presence inside me, watching through my eyes.
“No one’s been too hard on you since you came back, have they?” I ask, not knowing if Madoc would even admit it to me if they had been. Whatever the fae of the Mists might say about the Murk, they do have their pride.
“No,” Madoc says, in a tone that’s bemused enough that I believe him. “Your pack has been downright gracious compared to my reception last time.” He sucks in a deep breath, and his eyelids dip for a moment as if he’s savoring the warm forest air with its tang of pine and spruce. Then his gaze veers to me again. “If you don’t mind talking about it, what exactly are you feeling from the curse? I got my own sense of it, but knowing the ‘symptoms’ might help.”
My hand rises to my chest automatically, settling on the spot right over my breastbone where I guided his hand a few days ago. “Most of the time it’s just a faint sort of prickling sensation that feels like it’s right between my lungs. When it’s bad, it’s like that spot… bursts, with no warning at all, into a bunch of knives jabbing into me from the inside.” I wince at the memories. “Sharp pain, and a lot of it. It’s hard for me to think or really pay attention to anything more specific than that while it’s happening.”
Madoc’s jaw has tightened. “But it doesn’t last very long?”
I shake my head. “About a half hour, I think, all three times so far.” Will it affect me longer the next time? I’m probably going to have another fit sometime today… I swallow hard and push that thought away. “I’m managing. It could definitely be worse.”
“There’s nothing very surprising about your description,” Madoc says grimly. “Orion does like to be unpredictable and keep his enemies on their toes. I wish he hadn’t decided you counted among those enemies.”
“Well, the alternative was becoming his ally, and I definitely wasn’t going to do that.”
“I know.” Madoc falls silent. As we emerge from the trees into the sunlight, he tips his face to the brighter warmth. An odd hunger crosses his expression, and it occurs to me that while he might have gotten plenty of fresh air during his missions into the Mists, he probably spent most of that time staying concealed in the darkness.
He glances toward my feet as if checking whether my limp has worsened and slows just slightly, heading across the fields at an angle that’ll give both the castle and the pack village a wide berth, which is probably wise. Those little gestures—the recognition of where both I and my pack are vulnerable and the consideration to those factors—bring an ache into my chest that has nothing to do with the curse.
My mates have to see that this man has no interest in harming us. All he wants is to be treated as an equal, his ideas and goals worthy of consideration.
I can relate to that struggle on a bone-deep level. I’m still fighting to get all of the arch-lords to give my opinions their due. In some ways, as a human, I have more in common with the Murk than the rest of the fae. And I know how set in their ways they can be.
But I’ve made progress. I have to make sure Madoc can too. He’s definitely determined enough, as long as he doesn’t give up on the fae of the Mists completely.
He might have no intention of hurting us, but he’s under threat himself because of his deal with the Seelie. I swallow hard and then ask, “You don’t think Orion suspects anything at all, do you? He hasn’t shown any sign that he’s skeptical of your reports or whatever?”
Madoc shakes his head. “No, not that I’ve noticed. I don’t think he trusts anyone completely, but he’s mentioned things in my presence that I can’t imagine him saying if he thought I might pass them on. It just may become increasingly difficult keeping his suspicions off me as I get more involved.”
I have the urge to take his hand and squeeze it, but I’m not sure if he’d appreciate the gesture. “If you feel like you’re no longer safe with him—or he shows that you’re not—you can come here. You don’t have to face it alone.”
Madoc gives a raw laugh, maybe thinking about the irony of turning for protection to the fae he was recently planning war against—and still might wage war against if the fledgling alliance between him and the Seelie arch-lords falls apart. Then he looks ahead of us, to the glowing mass of the Heart of the Mists that’s just come into view.
That’s where he’s been headed this whole time, I realize. He’s taken us on a course almost straight toward it. The soft pulse of its energy over my skin is so familiar to me now that I only notice it when I focus on it, but he won’t have been quite this close to it… maybe in all his time before he was captured the other day.
“Do you feel any connection to it at all?” I ask quietly.
Madoc’s gaze jerks to me, startled and then sheepish. He turns back toward the Heart, which looms a little higher with every step we take toward it and the haze of the border. “No,” he says, the admission sounding as if it wrenches at something deep inside him. “I—no.”
And yet he wants it so badly. He wants to bring all of his people back here where they can be embraced by that light again, whether they can make use of its energies or not. Whatever you could say about the means he was willing to resort to, there aren’t many dreams more noble than that.
I hesitate before saying anything else, afraid I might offend him by bringing up the tragedy he went through in the Mists so long ago. “You said when you lived with your parents on the fringes of the summer realm that they could use the Heart’s magic a little.”
Madoc comes to a stop about fifty feet away from the Heart, still facing it. We’re close enough now that the glow touches him, bringing a warmer tone to his pale skin and turning his straw-blond hair into gold. He looks like he’s wavering between crossing the short distance to walk right up to it and staying here where it can’t wash over him quite so intensely.
“They could,” he says. “Not very well, but they had a small connection. I could feel it a little myself then, but I hadn’t learned any magic I could actually cast. But—when any of us start drawing on the Heart Orion made, it fills in all the places where that old connection would have been if we’d kept closer to the Heart of the Mists all along. Whatever shreds of a connection I had left, it overwhelmed them.”
He shakes himself and swivels toward me with a crooked smile. “But it’s worth it. I can do much more with our Heart than I’d ever have been able to with the feeble scraps that one would still allow us. It dismissed us ages ago.”
I’m not sure the dismissal was so one-sided. From what my mates have said, certain actions—lying, unjustified killing—weaken the connection to the Heart for any kind of fae. At least some of the Murk in the past choose to separate themselves from its power so that they had more freedom to carry out their schemes.
It doesn’t seem fair that their decisions carried on to their offspring, though. How many generations made their own decisions that dwindled the magic of the Mists in their family line before Madoc was born with the choice between barely any magic and magic from a different source?
“I know you have a lot of reasons to hate the fae of the Mists,” I say, “but I don’t think the Heart is that vindictive. Maybe you could find your way back to it if you opened yourself up to it. The Murk haven’t really had the chance to try to get closer to it in a long time, and that’s something we should change.”
Madoc’s next smile is bittersweet. “Of course you would say that. It isn’t that easy, Talia. Believe me, the Heart doesn’t want anything to do with me or anyone else among the Murk.”
“It hasn’t turned me away,” I argue. “Even though I’m only here because of Orion. Even though I’ve got Murk magic all twisted up inside me, and I’m tied to the curse that’s been draining its strength.”
“Well, it isn’t going to shove you through a portal. But what has it done for you?”
A sudden resolve swells inside me. He needs to see—he needs to know. He deserves it, to know that he could bring an even better future to his people than he’s been able to imagine.
Corwin, sensing my decision even from out of view, extends a waft of concern. Talia, we still don’t know if he might tell his king—
It’s okay, I insist before he can finish his protest. I know Madoc. I think he needs to hear this. And even if he did tell Orion, it wouldn’t change much now.
Holding Madoc’s gaze, I lift my hands with a little space cupped between them. “The powers Orion gave me—it’s just the ability to heal the curse on the fae of the Mists and the soul-twined bond with Corwin, right?”
Madoc peers at me, obviously puzzled. “Yes, which is plenty. Why?”
“Then it’s the Heart of the Mists that gave me this.” I draw in a breath, think back to the joy of being snuggled between Sylas and Whitt yesterday after the passion we shared, and say the true name for light. “Sole-un-straw.”
A glowing ball flares into being between my palms. Madoc blinks, staring and then staring harder. “You—how did you—?”
I dismiss the glow with a flick of my fingers and reach for my new bracelet. “How do you think I was working on the bolts on the air vent? No one gave me a tool. I made it. Orion just didn’t believe me.” I grasp the warm bronze, remembering the panic of the moment when the Murk sentry caught me in the act, and murmur the first true name I ever learned. “Fee-doom-ace-own.”
The bracelet splits and straightens into a wrench in my hand. Madoc’s eyes widen even more.
“That power didn’t come from Orion or his Heart, did it?” I say, clutching the wrench. “He had no idea.”
“He didn’t,” Madoc says faintly. “But—”
I point to the Heart of the Mists with a rush of affection for the presence that has been on my side for so long without me even knowing it. “That Heart decided I deserved a little magic of my own. Even though I was a tool for someone who wants to destroy everything in the Mists. If it could see something worthy in me, then there’s no reason you or any of the other Murk should give up on it. It hasn’t given up on you.”
Madoc’s throat bobs. He looks from me to the Heart and back again. So many emotions are warring on his face that I can’t pick them apart, but I don’t think I’m mistaking the flare of hope that shows briefly. It’s followed by something warmer that seems to send a wash of heat straight from his gaze over my skin.
Before he can say anything else, a guard comes loping over from the castle, breaking the moment we were sharing.
“Whitt is ready to speak with you,” he tells Madoc. “He’d like you to come right away.”
“Of course he would,” Madoc mutters, but there’s a lot less edge in his voice than there might have been earlier. He shoots me one last bewildered glance and follows the man toward the castle. Whitt has appeared in the doorway, waiting.
The guards from the cabin fall into step behind Madoc. I limp over to August, feeling abruptly drained, even though I didn’t cast all that much magic. With a quick murmur, I fix the bronze back in its bracelet form around my wrist.
August slips his arm around my shoulders, ruffling my hair. He looks down at the bracelet. “Are you sure that was a good idea, Sweetness?”
I watch Madoc disappear into the castle. Another ache twines through my chest, thinking of how hard it was for him to accept what I was telling him, to believe he could ever draw on the Heart of the Mists again, even when he’s shown more honor than a whole lot of the summer and winter fae I’ve encountered in my time here.
Am I sure? Maybe not one hundred percent. But—
“At some point,” I say, “we have to open our arms like the Heart did for me. I’d rather take the risk than not.”
