Chained Soul by Eva Chase
23
Talia
Everything is melting together. I’m walking across the ice fields between the Unseelie arch-lords’ domains, and with one step I’m picking my way through the forests around my pack’s former home of Hearthshire. A reddish haze seeps through everything, thickening and then spinning me around.
I’m lost. I need to get back to—to somewhere. But every part of me aches, and my head keeps spinning. My feet stumble under me. A fever sears through my veins.
I blink, and I’m standing in the hazy woods of the fringelands. Madoc runs up to me and throws his arms around me.
I sink into his embrace automatically, seeking the solid steadiness of his body, the stormy scent that speaks of the fire inside him.
Even though I’m already burning up, I want to absorb that fire. I want to—I want to kiss him, tuck myself against him with no clothing between us, listen to his gently hoarse voice telling me of the grand future he wants to conjure for his people, for us…
No, that’s not right. I can’t—
I spin away from him, and just like that, he vanishes. I trip onto the grass outside the border castle.
This is my home. Where I live with the men I love. I shouldn’t be thinking—I shouldn’t be feeling—
But a different sort of ache has formed in my chest with Madoc’s disappearance. There’s something in him that calls to me, even if it shouldn’t.
I just have to ignore it. Preventing this war, or at least preventing it from destroying my home—that’s what matters. That and my mates—where are they?
A sob fills my throat, and I turn around only to sway and topple right onto my back. The sky spins overhead.
I’ve lost them all. I’ve lost so much. Even—
There’s faint sunlight seeping past a curtain. A gentle hand drifts across my forehead, holding a soft cloth that wipes sweat away. I blink and manage to focus on the face above me, pale with overlarge eyes and framed by sleek, flaxen hair.
“Talia?” Harper says with a sharp intake of breath. Her head jerks around to look at someone else. “She’s awake! At least more than before.”
I wet my lips, still feeling dizzy even though I’m not moving at all. Is the bed spinning under me?
Astrid comes into view, the wizened fae warrior’s face looking more worn than usual. A smile touches her lips when I meet her eyes. “There you are. You’ve been gone a while.”
She doesn’t say that they were worried I wouldn’t come back, but I know they must have been. I was worried, somewhere deep beneath the delirium of fever dreams.
I inhale slowly, testing my lungs. I can only take in a little air before the curse starts to jab at them. The pain echoes all the way down to my feet now.
There’s another burning sensation around my abdomen. My hand goes to my belly, and tears rush to my eyes with a jolt of memory. My throat chokes up so much it takes me a minute to force the words out. “The baby…”
Astrid’s mouth twists, and Harper blinks hard. I already knew—lost, so much I’ve lost—but the grief smacks into me as if I’ve been hit by a car.
I squeeze my eyes shut, taking one shallow breath after another, my fingers curling toward my palms. I want to tear and rip, I want to punch and claw… I can’t even say what. I just want to unleash this horrible wrenching sensation inside me on something else.
“I’ll get your mates,” Astrid says, with a rustle as she moves from the bed. “They wanted to know as soon as you were lucid. They stayed with you for hours, but they couldn’t cure you that way.”
She slips out of the room. Harper grasps my hand, squeezing it.
My mates—they must be making plans for war. The only way they can cure me with Madoc gone and every other avenue exhausted is to destroy the Murk Heart.
But even if they manage that, even if I don’t lose any of them in the attempt, it won’t bring back the life we made together that had only just started to bloom.
A sob hitches out of me. The tears that collected in my eyes spill out. I turn my head to the pillow so it can soak them up, and Harper eases closer, rubbing my shoulder with her other hand.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I know that doesn’t help—I know there’s nothing I can say or do that would help. But if there was, I’d do it. It isn’t fair.”
No, it isn’t. Nothing in my life has been fair, from the moment Orion decided to plant the seed of his magic in my family line, from the moment he stole me away from my parents to unfurl that magic into something that took over my body and soul.
I had this one thing that was only mine, that wasn’t touched by him at all, and he managed to rip it away from me anyway.
The next stabbing pain of the curse is almost a relief because it’s a distraction from the anguish of mourning.
Harper brings a goblet of water to me, but I find I can’t sit up to drink properly. I end up spilling it all over the sheets as I sip sideways while still lying down. My limbs won’t cooperate with me—even the slightest movement brings a wave of fatigue and prickles of pain over me.
I’m dying. Really dying, closer than I’ve ever been before. The thought sinks in and just kind of settles there, as if I can’t fully process it. There’s been too much wrongness for me to take it all in.
There was so much more I wanted to do and see, so much I wanted to accomplish. Who’ll stand up for the humans in the fae world if I die? Who’ll watch over Jamie? Will my mates take up the causes that were important to me, or will they mourn and then move on, with all the centuries they still have ahead of them?
And what about the man I’m not totally sure where I stand with? The fever weaves through my mind again, and for a second I think I see Madoc standing there at the edge of my vision. When I turn my head, he vanishes.
Sylas thought it was a ploy, bringing me to the fringes where the Murk were waiting to ambush us. Is he right, and my mind is too addled for me to see the situation as clearly as he does?
Madoc didn’t feel like an enemy when he held me through my shudders of agony. He didn’t sound like an enemy when he swore to bring me home.
What am I abandoning him to if I don’t make it? Will Orion kill him as horribly as the Murk king once threatened to mutilate me?
I should have said something more to him before… Before everything…
My gaze latches onto Harper again, and I’m jolted by another abrupt shift in my emotions. Resolve grips me. I can’t control anything about what’ll happen with the men in my life when I’m gone, but she—she still has chances—
“There’s a true-blooded fae you’re in love with,” I say, tugging at her hand. “I know you don’t want to admit it, but there is.”
Harper twitches with surprise and then flushes. “You shouldn’t be worrying about my romantic prospects right now. It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“It does,” I say. “It does to me.” In case I never get to talk to her again. She made one misstep with me, but otherwise she’s been here for me so much, done so much for me. If I can help her in one small way before I’m gone… “Why won’t you go after him? Maybe he’d want you too.”
“Talia… I know he won’t. It’s all right.”
I frown at her. “Even if you don’t think there’s hope, you should tell me who it is. Just to get it off your chest, to tell someone.” A rough giggle slips from my throat. “It’s not as if I’m going to have much chance to give away your secret.”
Harper stiffens. “Don’t talk like that,” she chides me. “They’re—they’re going to destroy the Murk and their Heart and then you’ll be fine.”
My fever flares; my thoughts fragment. My eyes flutter shut for several seconds. Then I focus on her again. “We both know that might not be true. Let me do this for you. Let me listen. Maybe you’ll figure some things out if you just say it out loud.”
Harper bites her lip, but my insistence has obviously affected her. She looks down at her hands and back at me. “I don’t need to say it out loud to know there’s no point. He hasn’t met his soul-twined mate yet, but I’ve been around him lots of times now, and it’s definitely not me. And he could have so many other women—why he’d be at all interested in me…”
The way she’s talking reminds me of how I once thought about my Seelie mates, so sure they couldn’t want a serious relationship with a human woman once they’d returned to their former prominent position in fae society. A twinge of suspicion runs through me alongside a fresh lance of pain.
Who would be high enough for Harper to feel so much lower than, when she’s part of an arch-lord’s pack?
“It’s Donovan, isn’t it?” I say quietly, watching her expression. I’ve seen her get a bit flustered in his presence before, haven’t I? But I thought it was just general awkwardness, since she hasn’t gotten to experience much of the fae world until recently, let alone the company of its highest rulers.
Harper’s face flushes darker, and she drops it into her hands. “Don’t tell anyone. He’s never given any indication—I’ve tried to talk to him a few times, and he’s very polite, but he’s not particularly interested either. It’s just… What would you call it? A crush. I’ll get over it and find someone I’d really have a chance with.”
Now that she’s admitted it, I wonder why it didn’t occur to me earlier. They’re suited for each other as far as I can see, though of course I don’t know Donovan especially well. They’ve both got a sort of softness to them, which hides an iron will that can come out when something or someone they care about is threatened. They’re both unsure of themselves but doing their best to find their footing among people more experienced than they are.
That’s not enough to make someone fall in love, but maybe Donovan just hasn’t seen enough of Harper yet.
I squeeze her hand. “Yes, yes, you will.” I don’t know if I should add that maybe the arch-lord will come around and start to admire her. Would that really be for the best if he’s going to be distracted by a soul-twined mate later on?
But then, I don’t love my chosen mates any less than I do Corwin. If I can manage that, then why couldn’t a fae arch-lord?
“And who knows what will happen with Donovan?” I go on. “Things… don’t always work out the way it looks like they will at first. I should know.” I let out another weak laugh.
“That’s right,” Harper says. “We just wait and see and hope for the best.”
I can tell she isn’t talking about Donovan anymore. She keeps holding my hand and starts rubbing my shoulder again, and a sort of calm settles over me. My body still hurts and my heart still aches at the thought of what I’ve lost and how much more I might lose in the days ahead, but at the same time…
I got to have the love of four amazing men for at least a little while. I got to experience what it was like to carry a child inside me, at least the beginning of the process. Who am I to complain when there are others who’ve never gotten any of that at all?
I do want more. I want so much more—I want the rest of the life I thought I’d have. But I’m not going to lay that sorrow on my friends or my mates. I’m not going to make this harder for them as well as me.
If that’s the last gift I can give them, reminding them of how happy they’ve made me rather than how sad I am to leave them, then so be it.
“Thank you,” I say to Harper. It takes an effort to keep my voice audible. “For sitting with me and talking with me. You’ve been a great friend.”
Harper turns her head away for a second to swipe at her eyes. Then she beams at me. “You’ve been an even better one.”
The bedroom door swings open, and all four of my mates burst into the room. As they converge around the bed, Harper gives my fingers one last squeeze and then slips away with a bob of her head to her lord and his cadre.
The men seem to hesitate, braced around me, as if they’re afraid they’ll hurt me if they get any closer. Corwin’s had his walls up against our bond this whole time, but now that he’s close, a trickle of a frantic mix of relief and anxiety seeps through to me despite his best efforts.
I reach out to them, all of them, ignoring the fact that my vision has started to double, making the outlines of their forms waver and multiply. “I want you all with me. I love you so much.”
“And we love you,” Sylas says roughly. They move together, encircling me in a mass of warmth totally different from the burning of my fever. I nestle between them, hugging one and then another, murmuring words of affection until I can no longer string them together.
These are my men, my mates. I’m going to savour every last moment I get with them, even while I’m wishing I’d get more.
