Chained Soul by Eva Chase
26
August
All the color drains from Talia’s face as she collapses on the bed. My muscles pang with the urge to spring to her side, but that would mean releasing the villain beneath me, the rat that stood over her failing body with a knife in his hand—
Astrid is closer anyway. She slips her arms around my mate just in time to guide her more gently onto her side. Talia’s eyes roll back, and her limbs go slack. Her eyelids twitch and close.
My heart stops. “Is she—”
“She’s still alive,” Astrid says quickly, leaning over Talia. “But her pulse is very weak.” She glances at me with worried eyes. I’ve rarely seen the seasoned warrior show fear.
The man beneath me tenses and flexes his muscles, but I’ve pinned him too firmly for him to have any hope of escape. I hold my clawed hand up, imagining how easily I could slice through his jugular. How satisfying it’d be to watch this treacherous creature’s life spill out of him. Even now, he glowers at me, not even pretending to make a show of peace.
But Talia’s words linger in my head. The words she pushed herself so hard to speak. He was worth that much to her, worth expending the little strength she had left to defend him…
The guards gather closer around me, ready to assist. I close my eyes, struggling between anger and reason. I want so badly to destroy the man who represents everything that’s hurt the woman I love…
I know my mate, though. Talia is sweetness personified, kind-hearted and compassionate, but she isn’t stupid. She’s never softened to the fae who’ve mistreated her—if anything, she’s gotten more confident in standing up to the scornful arch-lords and the enemies of her past.
She wouldn’t forgive Madoc—no, talk as if there was nothing to forgive him for in the first place—unless she understood something I didn’t.
She asked me to listen to him. Heart help me, she begged me to trust her. What kind of mate would I be to her if I refused what might be the last request she ever makes of me?
I drag in a breath and glare down at the rat again. I wish we’d kept that iron-core collar Celia used on Corwin all those months ago. If Madoc still has the use of his magic, how can I be sure he won’t shift and flee our grasp?
I’d rather have brought him before my brothers and Corwin for them to interrogate him. Warring with words is more their area than mine. But if I don’t have the choice, I’ll question him myself, right here, with my claws inches from his throat and my fangs ready to chomp on a fleeing rat.
His only way out would be the door. I jerk my head toward the others. “Shut the door and guard it. Don’t stray from it until I give the command. Two of you, let out your wolves. Stay ready in case he tries to dash for it.”
One of the guards gapes at me. “You’re not going to kill him?”
I give him a stern look. “I’m going to find out if there’s anything useful he can tell us before I kill him. It doesn’t work so well the other way around. If there are more rats already on the way—or already here—we need to know.”
That isn’t the main reason I’m sparing him for the next few minutes, and maybe they realize that, but it’s an explanation the warriors can accept. They step back in formation by the door, two standing directly in front of it and the other two dropping onto all fours to flank them, their wolfish eyes gleaming.
Astrid remains on the bed next to Talia. She murmurs a few words I recognize as an invigorating spell, designed to encourage the flow of blood and the rhythm of the lungs. I can’t tell whether it helps.
Time is ticking away from us. I keep my legs planted over Madoc’s, my forearm locking his crossed wrists to his chest, but ease my hand down just enough to rest my claws against his neck instead of covering his mouth. “She asked me to listen,” I say with an edge of a snarl. “I can’t promise how long I’ll listen for. So talk fast.”
The rat shifter swallows audibly and opens his mouth, but Astrid speaks before he can, her tone urgent. “August, she’s fading. I don’t know—nothing I’m doing is keeping her with us.”
My lips pull back from my teeth as my gaze snaps back to Madoc. “You did hurt her—you did something to her without even needing that knife—”
“I was trying to save her!” he rasps out, twitching under me again in a futile effort to shake me off. “For fuck’s sake—I know how to cure the curse.”
The blood roaring in my ears seems to still. He—what? “You found out—” I start, but the details of how it happened don’t matter. All that matters is— “How? What do we have to do?”
Madoc grimaces. “I have to show you. You need to let me get closer to her.”
I bare my fangs again with a rush of suspicion. “I’m not letting you get anywhere near her ever again. Just tell me what she needs.”
“That won’t do any good,” the rat shifter snaps. “You can’t do it. None of you can do it. Are you going to let me save her, or are you going to watch her die because you’re too much of a stubborn prick to give me the chance? Why the hell would I have come all the way back here to kill her when she’s already dying, you idiot?”
He might have a point, but his insults aren’t exactly increasing my faith in his good intentions. “Why in the lands should I trust you if you won’t tell me what this cure is?”
Talia shivers on the bed. A series of spasms run through her limbs. I can sense without even looking right at her that the last sparks of life are spilling out of her.
Astrid tugs the covers back from my mate’s body. She presses her hands to Talia’s legs, her stomach, her chest, and then her head, gasping desperate words, but I can tell nothing’s bringing Talia back.
Madoc’s eyes widen at the sounds from above. “You won’t believe me,” he says, struggling again. “Or you will, and you’ll do something stupid. There isn’t time to argue about it. I don’t even know if I believe I can do it, but I’m the only one who can. Let me try, please!”
A groan of frustration catches at the base of my throat. He sounds like he means it, but he’s a master of illusions. What do I know about deciphering lies? This is Whitt’s domain.
But I was by far the closest when the spell we set all through the castle to alert us to Murk presence sounded the alarm. The others will be coming, but I don’t know if they’ll be here fast enough.
A thin whine carries from Talia’s parted lips, and Madoc winces, his expression taut with apparent agony. “I’ll—I’ll give you my true name,” he spits out. “You can order me not to hurt her. Just hurry up and let me get to her.”
I can’t help staring at him for a second as his offer sinks in. Our true names are something tied to our souls. The Murk might have lost their ability to wield magic when they shunned the Heart of the Mists—until they made that false Heart of their own—but that hasn’t changed anyone’s ability to wield magic on them. He’s offering up utter control over his mind and body.
Talia shudders again, and I make my decision. “Tell me then,” I growl, leaning close.
Madoc drops his voice for my ears only, the softest of whispers. “May-dim-goss.”
The tingle that races through my mind with the syllables speaks to the power in those syllables. He isn’t lying about this. “May-dim-goss,” I repeat under my breath, and add, louder, with magic crackling through my voice, “You will not take any action that would harm Talia.”
“I won’t,” Madoc agrees, with a wince as my intent latches onto his mind.
“You won’t attempt to harm any of the rest of us either,” I add, willing the strands of the true name’s control to lace even tighter between us.
“Of course not. I just want to save her life. Now let me up!”
As I pull back, footsteps thump in the hall outside. Madoc scrambles up, spinning toward Talia.
“Wait!” I say, panic shooting through me, and he stops in his tracks with a hiss of frustration. His true name’s power holds him in place.
At Sylas’s command from outside, the guards move from the doorway. He, Whitt, and Corwin burst into the room, their expressions fierce and frantic.
Whitt glances from me to Madoc and then Talia and sputters, “Heart save us, what are you—”
Sylas is already lunging forward. I throw out my arm, only managing to hold him back because he catches himself at the gesture.
“He says he knows how to cure the curse,” I babble. “He’s given me his true name—I made him swear not to hurt her or us. But I—” I swivel back toward the rat. “Before you do it, tell us what the cure is.”
My use of his true name is still fresh enough that I drag the answer out of him even as I can see the defiance in his stance. “Someone who loves her needs to offer up his life’s blood by his own hand and cover her in it.”
I feel my brothers and Corwin freeze as I do, horror rippling through me from head to toe. My first instinct is to throw myself at the bed where Astrid is still murmuring frantic spell words over Talia’s failing body, to cut myself open from chin to gut if that’s what it’d take. But even as my legs itch to propel me forward, I know I can’t.
The Heart won’t let me make that sacrifice. The men behind me know that as well as I do.
I turn toward Sylas, my heart thumping painfully fast. “If you did it—I’d offer myself—”
Madoc cuts me off with a short, humorless laugh. “That’s what Orion wanted. That’s what he imagined when he cast the curse—all of you falling over yourselves to prove your devotion in a way your Heart will never let you, maybe even slaughtering each other—but that won’t work. You don’t think he thought of that? By your own hand, I said. You have to do it yourself, and you can’t. So that leaves me.”
It takes a moment for those last words to sink in, and by then he’s already leapt onto the bed. Corwin lets out a sound of warning, I spring forward—
And Madoc slashes the narrow claw he’s extended from his fingertip right across his throat, as deep as it’ll go.
Blood sprays from the mortal wound, raining down over Talia and the bed around her. In an instant, red stains every inch of her uncovered skin, soaking into her hair, her nightgown, and the sheets she’s lying on.
Madoc’s dying body crumples over her, more and more of the scarlet fluid gushing out. Astrid flinches backward and then reaches for him, stopping with her hands hovering over his shoulders, her own face splashed red. Her gaze darts to us. She doesn’t know whether it’s safe to move him.
I don’t know either.
How—why— He couldn’t possibly—
The blood coating Talia’s skin starts to fade. It’s seeping into her, I realize with a rush of horrified fascination. Her body seems to be absorbing the ruddy liquid everywhere it touched her directly.
In a matter of seconds, every speck of it has vanished from her flesh, leaving only her clothes and her hair drenched with the stuff. I take a cautious step to the side of the bed.
Then Talia’s chest heaves with a rush of breath deeper than any I’ve heard her take in days.
