Chained Soul by Eva Chase
25
Talia
Ithink it’s the click of the door that rouses me from my daze. What I’ve been doing for the past day can’t really be called sleeping. Not that I’ve really been awake either. I seem to fade in and out of semi-alertness, never totally present nor totally gone.
Either I’ve adjusted to the pain so much that I’m not noticing it, or my body has gone numb in its increasingly weakened state. There’s just a dull throbbing all through my torso and limbs, with an occasional sharper jab or twisting. My breath has stayed shallow, my skin hot with the fever that washes through me in waves, seeming to drain more energy out of me each time.
One or another of my men has been with me each time I’ve been aware enough to notice—until now. Whoever was watching over me last must have stepped away while I dozed again. They’re making their plans, gathering an army of fae in the arch-lords’ domains—I’ve caught flashes of the preparations through Corwin’s eyes in moments where the wall he’s holding up slips.
I don’t know how soon they intend to march on the Refuge now that they’ve narrowed down its location, but there’s a rising urgency in the air that I can sense even from here. I suspect it’s only a matter of hours now.
I don’t know if I’m going to make it long enough to see them return. I don’t know if they will return. I tried to tell Sylas the last time he was here, with stumbling words and my hand clamped around his wrist, that they shouldn’t rush in for me. That they should wait until they’re fully prepared. I’d rather have them with me when I die than die alone, knowing they might die too because they ignored the danger in their attempt to save me.
He told me not to worry, that they’ll be ready for whatever comes. That they will all come see me before they leave, and that they intend to see me well when they return. That I’m never alone, because their hearts are always with me.
So why is my heart aching?
I’ve had trouble stringing more than a few words together in the past few hours, though. What voice I have comes out ragged. I don’t know what arguments I can make that they’d listen to.
I’m not sure I’d listen if our positions were reversed.
I wet my lips. My stomach pinches with a trace of hunger that’s quickly swallowed by a swell of nausea. My body sinks even deeper into the bed as my muscles give up more strength.
And then a soft point of pressure touches my wrist.
I twitch, not capable of a full flinch in my current state. Slowly, I manage to tilt my head to peer down at my arm where it’s lying on top of the covers. We’ve kept them half over me, half off, draped across my abdomen, for some kind of balance between the fever’s flares of heat and the occasional chills.
There’s nothing on the bed beside me. I blink a few times in case my vision is faltering, but while the details are a bit fuzzy, I’m definitely not seeing anything except my arm and the deep blue bedspread. Maybe it was just a tic of my nerves.
But then, even as I watch, I feel it again. A more deliberate nudge, still soft, with a tickling sensation and then a larger patch of gentle pressure, as if a furry body the length of my forearm has rested against it.
My pulse hiccups, and even though I still can’t see anything at all, a picture forms in my mind’s eye—a pointed nose, quivering whiskers, and the long, sleek shape of a rat’s body, crouched beside my arm.
Madoc’s voice comes back to me from weeks ago as he guided me through the paths away from the Refuge. My illusions can stop them from seeing and hearing us, but it won’t let them walk right through us.
He’s here, hidden from my sight but not my sense of touch with his magic. It has to be him, right? What other Murk knows the fae of the Mists and the working of illusions well enough to have managed to sneak right into the border castle undetected?
What other would come to me so tentatively, waiting to see how I’ll respond?
A lump fills my throat. He came back, even after—even after everything. He must know how the other fae would react if they knew. He probably has no idea how I’ll react. But if I had even the slightest doubt about whether he intended our foray to the fringes to go wrong, his presence here right now would dispel it.
He could be out there spying on the war preparations—or sabotaging them. Instead, he’s come to me, offering whatever gesture of comfort he can.
I turn my hand, tracing the shape of him. The bumps of his shoulders and the curve of his haunches stay perfectly still as my fingers glide over his fur. I tuck my hand next to him, stroking my thumb over his side, hoping he understands what I’m trying to show him—that I’m glad he’s here, that I’m not angry with him or scared of him.
He leans his head against my fingers with another tickle of his whiskers, and I manage to find my voice. “Thank you,” I whisper roughly. “I know it was a big risk… coming to me. I won’t… I won’t let…”
My vocal cords tremor, and I lose my momentum. Madoc presses his nose against my hand as if to say it’s all right. Then he moves away from me. A jolt of loss hits me in the moment before I understand why.
Abruptly, he’s sitting on the edge of the bed as a man, gazing down at me. His blond hair lies in disarray, his gray eyes not so much stormy as overcast with pain. His mouth tightens. “He should never have brought you this low,” he murmurs. “This isn’t how you’re meant to be at all.”
I swallow hard, loosening my throat. “I—I’m sorry.”
Madoc’s gaze turns into a stare. “What the hell do you have to be sorry for?”
All the hopeful futures I imagined flit through my head. “I wanted… to help bring the Murk home… to make the other fae see… to help you…” My voice wavers, and my thoughts scatter. It’s so hard to focus.
Madoc’s jaw flexes as he clenches it. “Even now, when you’re— I’m not sure we deserve you.” He shakes his head and closes his eyes for a second before meeting my gaze again. His voice comes out even more ragged than mine. “You’re a light that could brighten even the Murk. And you’ll have that chance, if you still want to take it when all this is over. You’ll have your mates and your child and—”
A sob lurches out of me. “No child.”
Madoc goes rigid. “What?”
I squeeze my eyes shut against the renewed surge of grief. “I got… so sick… It’s gone.”
The Murk man hisses through his teeth and swears under his breath. “I’m so sorry. If I’d known—if I’d found out sooner—damn him.” He pushes to his feet. “I have to be fast. I wish I could do more, but I can give you this. And may my people deserve you after all.”
As my eyelids flutter open again, Madoc draws a small, thin knife from his pocket. I only have a second to register it, to wonder what in the world he’s talking about, when the door bangs open and a blur of furious Seelie hurtles straight at the rat shifter.
“Get your filthy paws away from her,” August snarls, slamming Madoc to the ground.
Astrid and a couple of the castle guards race in after him. The knife goes skittering across the floor; Astrid snatches it up and reduces it to a blob of metal with a hastily snapped true name. August raises his hand, claws flashing from his fingertips, to slash at the man pinned beneath him, and my heart nearly bursts with panic.
The words wrench out of me. “No! Don’t hurt him!”
August’s arm is already swinging, but at my voice, he catches it with a jerk. His claws must still slice Madoc’s skin, because I hear a pained noise from beyond my view, but it isn’t the fatal blow my mate meant it to be.
“I was only trying to—” Madoc sputters, but August moves to clamp his hand over the rat shifter’s mouth. My mate peers over the side of the bed at me, his eyes wild with a mix of fury and bewilderment.
“He was going to kill you,” he says. “He snuck in here—the knife— We can’t give him another chance. I’ll tear out his throat right now.”
I know how the situation must look, especially when August blames Madoc for the ambush as well. But not one particle of my body can believe that Madoc meant to use that knife on me, not in any way that would harm me.
Why would he have been talking about the chances I’d have, about getting to be with my mates and my child, if he meant to end my life right now? Why would he have offered any comfort at all instead of stabbing the blade into me the first moment I was alone?
I don’t totally understand what he was going to do, but I know it’s not that. I know I don’t want him dead because he risked everything to help me.
“He wasn’t— You can’t—”
But my words won’t come together quickly enough, and August is tensing to deliver another blow. He isn’t listening to me.
Horror sears all through my body, and with a gasp, I launch myself forward. I fling myself upright and toward the edge of the bed, toward August, with a surge of effort that tears at my lungs and floods me with agony. But I manage to sit up, swaying and dizzy but holding off a collapse.
August’s head jerks toward me. Astrid rushes to my side, but when she tries to help me lie back down, I shake my head as firmly as I can. My breath comes out in broken pants.
“No,” I say, holding August’s golden gaze, not daring to break that connection to even glance at Madoc beneath him. I summon every shred of strength left in me from every dark crevice in my being, propelling it all up my throat to move my tongue. “He hasn’t betrayed us—he never did. He’s been trying to help all along. He came back—he came back even knowing you’d react like this—”
“Trying to finish what he started,” August says with a growl, but he hasn’t moved to strike Madoc again, not yet. I have his attention now. I have this one chance, maybe my last chance, to set one more thing right before I’m gone.
My fingers clench at the sheet. “What he started was a bond between the fae of the Mists and the Murk. A way to stop the worst of the fighting, a way to— You have to let him— You don’t trust him, so trust me. I’ve seen him; I know him. Whatever he was going to do here, it was to save us, not to hurt us. Give him a chance to talk. Listen to him. Believe what he says. Please. For me. Believe me.”
As those last words fall from my lips, a deeper tremor shakes my body. All the breath goes out of me. I try to clutch at the covers, but my fingers won’t move.
I’ve used up all the energy I had left, and now my limbs are crumpling, my spine sagging.
Astrid inhales sharply and leaps to slow my fall. My head sinks into the pillow, the room spins, and then my mind goes totally blank.
