Chained Soul by Eva Chase
22
Sylas
I’m not sure how many hours we’ve all been gathered around Talia’s bedside when I notice that Corwin has left us. I raise my head from where I’ve been gazing down at my unconscious mate and realize only my brothers remain around me.
My hand stills where I’ve been stroking her hair continuously, as if the gesture will eventually summon her back to us. “Where did Corwin go?”
Whitt shrugs where he’s sitting at Talia’s other side, caressing her hand. “I can’t say I was paying that much attention to Lord Bird.”
There’s no hostility in the nickname, but he can’t give it any humor either. I suspect he feels just as broken as I do, watching Talia lie there, unable to rouse her from this new stage of the curse. Not knowing if we’ve only lost the child we expected to welcome or our mate as well.
This is exactly what the Murk king wanted: all of us struggling with terror for her and a sense of impending mourning. Distracted from whatever plans he’s shaping. I can’t let him accomplish the rest of his evil ends, but I couldn’t walk away from my mate right after the tragedy. My fellow arch-lords are capable of handling the security of the realms for a short while.
The soft, erratic patter of Talia’s pulse that my wolfish ears can pick up only reassures me slightly. She’s still alive for now, but the curse hasn’t stopped its horrible progression. If there’s more ahead while she’s still living, I have no doubt it’ll be even worse, as hard as that is to imagine.
August stirs where he’s been massaging one of Talia’s feet, looking as if he’s trying to coax wellness into her with the press of his thumbs. His lips pull back with one of the fits of fierceness that come over him whenever he glances at Talia’s face, probably thinking of the vermin who did this to her. He manages to retract his fangs before answering. “He didn’t say where he was going, just walked out.”
The knowledge sits uncomfortably with me. Corwin has been most affected out of all of us. He’s barely spoken in the hours since we returned to the border castle. I haven’t seen him drink so much as a sip of water, let alone eat. Once I glanced at him and my deadened eye picked up a faded image of a raven’s head imposed over his own, thrown back with its beak open in a wrenching cry.
The Unseelie arch-lord holds his emotions close. He started to shut down when Talia was missing too. I don’t want to leave our mate even now, but I do have other responsibilities that will protect her and her happiness as well as the rest of the fae world.
I don’t think she’d want me to ignore her soul-twined mate’s distress.
“I’ll find him and speak to him,” I say. “And we’ll need to regroup and put all the energy we can into finding the Refuge and destroying the Murk’s false Heart.”
I don’t care about Madoc’s warnings about the foolhardiness of attempting to challenge Orion in his home so far from our own. That rat was as treacherous as the rest of them, leading us into an ambush so his people could overwhelm us. We barely made it out alive. Several of our warriors fell to give the rest of us a clear path back to the carriages. There were too many of the rats—we might have all fallen if we hadn’t decided we needed to run for it as quickly as we did.
I hate having fled in the wake of an enemy, but I’d hate to have seen my brothers, my mate, and all the rest of my men carved up by rat claws even more.
Whitt nods. “Call for us if you need us, and we’ll send word if anything changes with her.”
I stalk out of the bedroom, my heart so heavy it seems to have sunk to my gut, and sniff out the raven’s scent in the air. He’s gone downstairs, into the winter side of the palace…
When I hear voices down the hall, I pause and walk the rest of the way on silent, stealthy feet, keeping close to the wall. Corwin is standing in the entrance room with the woman from his coterie whom Talia’s become friendly with—Zelpha. It’s obvious from her voice that she’s upset.
“I shouldn’t be the one giving those orders to the flock and everyone else,” she says. “They’ll want to hear it from you. They’re already at a loss, knowing the state Talia’s in, knowing—” She cuts herself off before her voice gets more ragged.
“I have other things to deal with,” Corwin says, more sharply than I’ve ever heard him talk to his inner circle. “Between you, Olander, and Verik, you should be able to keep things in order for a little while. Meriol and Domhnall will be returning soon if you need extra support.”
Something about his words sends a prickle of apprehension down my back, and Zelpha looks as if they’ve struck her the same way. She narrows her eyes. “How long exactly are you planning on being busy with ‘other things’? What’s going on, Corwin? I know that with Talia so—”
“We aren’t talking about this,” Corwin interrupts. “Please go carry out the orders you’ve been given.”
I get the impression Zelpha might want to say more, but she shuts her mouth and turns on her heel, her expression in the glimpse I catch of it not at all happy.
Corwin shakes himself in a gesture that reminds me of a bird setting its feathers smooth, and my apprehension grows. I step out into the entrance room—and at the same moment his older coterie man, Verik, comes hustling in.
The gray-haired man bobs his head lower than usual at the sight of Corwin. “I’m sorry to interrupt you. A small party has arrived from Brambledown. Their lord’s chief warrior has come down with the curse.”
Corwin closes his eyes for a moment, looking as if there are a few curses he’d like to put into words. As I walk over to him and Verik, his stance turns even more rigid. “You’ll need to inform them of my mate’s current condition. Tell them we’re doing everything we can to see her well again, but she’s incapable of carrying out her healing ritual for the time being. And offer my deepest apologies.”
Verik’s mouth twists, but he bobs his head again and heads back out. Corwin lets out a long sigh and looks at me. I catch the briefest flicker of hope before he takes in my expression and it dies. He must be able to tell I haven’t come with good news.
“She hasn’t even woken, has she?” he says.
“No. But Whitt and August will alert us right away if she does.” I glance toward the doorway. “Word hasn’t spread all the way through the winter realm yet?” We’ve had several representatives from other domains arrive at Hearth-by-the-Heart and the summer side of the border castle already to express their condolences.
“I’d imagine most know by now that she’s been faltering, but this latest— Brambledown is one of the more distant domains. It won’t take long after this.” He rubs his forehead. “Did you need something?”
“I was surprised that you left without speaking to any of us,” I say. “And I’m more surprised to overhear that you apparently have business you’re attending to that you haven’t mentioned. We need to move against the Murk quickly and decisively—and that means planning our strategy together.”
In that instant, there’s a light in Corwin’s eyes so furious and yet wounded it reminds me of a tuskcat caught in a snare. “My soul-twined mate is hovering on the verge of death after days of agony,” he says in the same curt voice he used with Zelpha. “She’s lost the child I’d have considered mine regardless of its exact parentage. If I need to take some time to myself, I think I’m owed it.”
He spins on his heel as if he thinks that’ll be the end of the discussion, and not just apprehension but alarm clangs through me with a creeping suspicion. He’s only taken two steps toward the doorway before I spring into his path, blocking him.
“You can have all the moments to yourself that you need,” I say in a low voice, “but I ask you for Talia’s sake to tell me where you’re going.”
Corwin outright glares at me with a fury I’ve never seen cross his face before, even when he was telling off his colleagues for disrespecting Talia. “I’m doing what has to be done. Get out of my way.”
He tries to step around me, but I side-step and snatch at his arm. Corwin jerks back before my fingers can catch hold and shifts in a blink, but I manage to grab one of his raven feet before he’s flown high enough to escape my reach. With a furious squawk, he pecks at my hand and then shifts again, shoving me backward with the hands of his man.
I sprawl on the floor but whip around in time to knock his feet out from under him with my heel. Sputtering, Corwin thumps on the ground and rolls over. The next second, I’ve pounced on him. I stare down at him in wolf form, my lips curled back. But no growl fills my throat, only a dull ache of grief.
Before he can fight me any more, I shift again so I can speak, letting my greater weight hold him in place. “You are not going to go off there and try to take on the blasted Murk king all by yourself.”
The flicker of Corwin’s gaze tells me I’m right. “Who said anything about taking on the king?” he asks haughtily, but it’s too late for him to dissemble.
I glower at him. “Do you think I don’t want to as well? Every time I think of those wretched rats I—” I cut off that sentence with a gnash of my teeth, anger surging through my chest alongside my grief. “Maybe I don’t feel it quite the same way you do with your bond, but I understand enough. And I know that neither of us has a hope of destroying the threat on our own. We’re going to have a hard enough time with the full force of our warriors behind us.”
“But that will take time,” Corwin says, giving up on any pretense. “He won’t be expecting anything yet—he won’t be expecting a single raven. I could get to him and slash out his throat before he even realizes he’s under attack. I know where to go—approximately. I saw which portal one of the vermin we injured darted back through.”
My heart leaps at the thought that we’re that close to finding the Refuge, but anguish for the man beneath me washes through the rest of me. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe that part would work. But killing him won’t end the curse. You need to destroy this Heart he’s made. You have your raven’s logic—you can’t tell me you honestly believe you’ll be able to banish that all by yourself with all of his supporters shrieking for your blood.”
Corwin grits his teeth, but then he sags against the floor, the fight going completely out of him. “I don’t know. I thought… maybe if I worked the right magic to tie it to him somehow… It wasn’t a solid plan. I meant to figure it out on the way there. And if it didn’t work, then at least I’d send the Murk into disarray with their king’s death while our larger force moved in to finish the job I started.”
“And while you’d die starting it,” I have to point out. “You can’t for one moment believe that’s what Talia would want. And if you didn’t even make it to Orion, then it’d all be for nothing. Worse than nothing, because then they’ll know we’ve located them and we’ll lose any other element of surprise.”
“But she— If I lose her too…”
He sounds so hopeless I pull back—warily, in case he was waiting for an opening. But Corwin just sits up, rubbing his shoulder with a vaguely abashed expression. He doesn’t quite meet my eyes. “I can see my idea might have been foolhardy, but I have to do something. I can’t just leave her lying there like that—who knows what she might be going through that I can’t even feel—” His breath rasps with unspoken emotion.
“I understand,” I say. “And we aren’t letting them get away with this. Starting with the traitor who led us into that trap.”
Corwin’s eyes flash. “Have your colleagues already sent the proof to turn his king against him? I’d like to see how much he likes the reward he’ll get in return for his loyalty.”
I shake my head, a weightier anger settling in my gut. “Not yet. I told them to wait until I’d had a chance to think on it. And what I think is this: we use it the same way Orion has meant to use Talia against us. We prepare as quickly as we can to strike, and the moment we’re ready, we send the message on. Let him be distracted by the double-crosser in his ranks just when we descend on him.”
Corwin smiles thinly. “I dislike borrowing a rat’s tactics, but I do appreciate the poetic justice—and the strength of the strategy. Perhaps it’ll be what turns the tide for us.”
He pushes himself to his feet and looks down the hall toward Talia’s room, then toward the entrance he meant to leave through on his suicidal quest. He squares his shoulders. “They are going to pay,” he says in a quiet voice so laced with menace I’m sure I’d never want to be on this man’s bad side. “Both the king and the traitor. There could still be a chance…”
He stops, swipes his hand across his eyes, and takes a deep breath. “But you’re right. It isn’t much of a chance, and our mate deserves more than a half-cocked effort that might do as much damage to us as it does to them. I’d have shown our hand too early. I—I apologize for my carelessness.”
I cuff him lightly on the shoulder. “I admire your dedication to our mate. Knowing you’d go to such lengths to defend her only makes me more glad to stand by your side. You ravens spend so much time focused on staying even-handed and balanced in your reactions that it’s no wonder you fly right off the handle when you give your emotions free rein. Let’s put all our strengths together with our colleagues’ and come up with the surest way of crushing those vermin so thoroughly they never see the light of day again.”
And—Heart help us all, especially Talia—let it work.
