Chained Soul by Eva Chase
27
Talia
Asickly meaty scent fills my nose. My lips part, and I instinctively suck in the air—tainted with that sour smell but welcome all the same. I drink in more and more of it until my lungs are full.
For the first time in days there’s no pain, no stabbing or throbbing or even that faint prickle that’s been with me so long. The relief hits me so hard my eyes pop open.
I’m lying on my bed in my bedroom still. I have a vague memory of long hours spent here, growing weaker, but none of that exhaustion grips me now.
My mates are standing around me, August helping Astrid move a heavy weight off of my body. Corwin leans close by my head. My soul, he murmurs through our bond, awed and yet anguished for reasons I can’t totally decipher.
Sylas’s dark eye gleams as he comes up beside my soul-twined mate. “How are you feeling?” he asks, strangely careful with the words.
The sensations coming back to my body in the absence of the weakness and agony are so overwhelming it’s taking me a moment to catch up. “I’m… wet,” I say, abruptly aware of the dampness sticking my nightgown to my skin. “What—what happened?”
Even as I ask, I push myself to sit up. Corwin jerks forward as if to stop me, but the movement comes so easily, without the slightest hint of the strain from the last few days, that a laugh tumbles from my mouth.
Then I see the carnage on the bed around me, and the sound dies in my throat. My jaw snaps shut.
The entire middle of my vast bed is drenched with red, all around me and on me—my clothes, my hair slipping wetly across my shoulders. With blood. That’s what the horrible smell is.
And—the weight August and Astrid moved away from me—they’re just easing a limp body off the bed and onto the floor. My gaze snags on the rumpled blond hair, then the gaping gash on the man’s pale neck, and a cry bursts out of me.
“What—what did you do to him? He—”
“He did it to himself,” Whitt breaks in, his voice tight and unreadable. “He did it to bring you back to us.”
I push my hands back over my dripping hair, wincing at the feel of it. My mind scrambles to process my last fragmented memories.
I was in such a daze with the pain and the fever—I’m not totally sure what was a dream and what was real. But I remember Madoc being here, first as a furry body tucked against my hand and then as a man sitting on the edge of the bed. I remember him talking, and August rushing in…
I shake my head as if I can argue the sight in front of me away. “I don’t understand. You have to—you have to save him! Isn’t there some magic you can do to heal him, or…?”
The solemn expressions on all my mates’ faces make my voice falter and my stomach clench up. A different sort of pain radiates through my chest to squeeze around my heart.
No.
“It seems he finally found out the cure for your curse from his king,” Sylas says quietly. “One that was meant to be impossible, to confound and torment us even more. Orion obviously never considered—” He pauses. “You needed to be covered in the life’s blood of someone who loved you, who gave it themselves.”
His words sink in bit by bit. My thoughts dart first to Corwin’s mother, to her frantic, futile attempts to end her own life so she can follow her husband into death. My throat closes up. “None of you could have—the Heart wouldn’t let—” The rest clicks in my mind with a jolt of understanding. “Then he—”
I can’t say the words out loud. Madoc loved me. He loved me enough to give his own life to save me. Maybe he did it for his people as well, for the faith he had that I might prevent a bloodier war, but I have to assume the cure wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t loved me for my own sake too.
My heart squeezes tighter. Tears prick at my eyes. “It isn’t right,” I say raggedly. “Isn’t there anything you can do—any chance—?”
August straightens up from where he’s been crouched on the floor where he and Astrid laid Madoc. I can no longer see the Murk man who’s become so entwined in my emotions—and me in his, apparently—but the image of his lifeless body lingers in the back of my head.
August is frowning. “He’s already gone. No one can bring someone back when the spark has already left them.”
My hands grip the sheets with a sudden flare of hope. “But it hasn’t left him, has it? You do the funeral ceremony for the Seelie who’ve fallen—the energy that makes their soul-stone is still in them. Something’s left. If you could—”
Sylas reaches to grasp my hand. “That part is already disconnected from the body by then. No one’s ever been able to reattach it. Resurrection isn’t a power the Heart grants us, and likely for good reason.”
He’s trying to talk me down, to make me see it’s impossible, but instead my mind latches on to the one piece of his statement that shows me a way forward.
The men around me are some of the most powerful fae in this world, but their magic has a source, something that fuels every shred of their power and all life in both the realms. Something that outshines all of them.
Corwin rubs my shoulder. “We should get you cleaned up, and—”
“No,” I interrupt, propelled by a clang of desperate hope. I push myself to the edge of the bed, ignoring the clinging of my blood-drenched nightgown to my limbs.
Sylas and Corwin move to stop me, but I shove their hands away, my gaze darting to Madoc’s sprawled body. The drained pallor of his face and the gouge through his neck make my stomach turn and only strengthen my determination.
“Bring him to the Heart,” I insist, pointing at him as I get to my feet. My legs hold me without a hint of shakiness. He did that for me; he gave me back the life Orion almost stole from me, and I can’t sit back while there’s still even the slightest chance of repaying him for that sacrifice. “Carry him down there—now. Please, hurry.”
My mates stare at me. “Talia,” August says gently, “I don’t think—”
“You don’t know,” I cut in, my voice rising. “You didn’t think I could use true names or have a soul-twined bond before it turned out I could either. There’s a chance. We have to try. After everything he did for me, I can’t just leave him. Please.”
When they don’t move immediately, I push past Sylas and Whitt toward Madoc’s body. Whitt catches my arm. I whirl toward him, but before I can tell him off and yank myself away, he gives me a quick squeeze and moves to join me. “All right. If you feel there’s a way, then we’ll try. We owe him that much.”
He and August heft Madoc between them, Astrid darting in to fold the Murk man’s arms across his chest so they don’t dangle. August supports the Murk man’s head with his shoulder, but the lifeless loll of it against my mate’s broad frame makes my stomach churn harder.
“Hurry,” I say again, yanking the door wider open.
A few guards are standing in the hall. The ones who came with August when he first charged to my defense, I guess. They stare at me in my bloody nightgown and then at my mates emerging carrying Madoc’s body. I must look like a horror, but I’m not going to waste precious minutes prettying myself up just for appearance’s sake. I have no idea if this will work at all, but everything in me tells me that with each passing second, the chance is farther out of reach.
“Clear the area around the Heart,” Sylas orders the guards. “Keep everyone away until I give another order.”
The guards wrench their gazes to him with bobs of acknowledgment and then hustle down the hall ahead of us. August and Whitt heft Madoc along as quickly as they can, the rest of us keeping pace.
Corwin stays close by my side. “You’re completely well? You don’t feel any lingering effects at all?”
I have no inner walls up—he should be able to sense the painless strength flowing through me nearly as well as I can. But maybe after everything he’s watched me go through, he needs that extra reassurance.
“Nothing hurts,” I tell him. “I’m totally fine. Better than I felt half the time even before—”
Even before the curse. Especially right before it struck, when I was tired and sometimes dizzy or queasy from the pregnancy.
My hand drops to my belly with a fresh jab of loss. For a second, my legs wobble. Corwin grips my shoulder. “If it’s too much—you haven’t really had time to mourn—”
I grit my teeth and shake my head, forcing myself onward. I won’t lose even more than I already have. The baby inside me had barely started to grow. The man I’m trying to save was a fully formed person with a tangled past and dreams for the future—so many dreams…
Now that I’m free of Orion’s curse, there’ll be many more chances to see a baby born into my new family with my mates. There’ll never be another Madoc if I can’t find a way to bring him back right now.
We march out on the summer side of the border and hurry toward the glowing mass of the Heart. Its energy pulses over me with the rhythm that’s like an actual heartbeat. A silent plea starts to reverberate through me before we even reach it.
Please. Please. Please.
Whitt and August hesitate partway across the field around the Heart. I motion them onward. “Right up to it. Lie him down on the grass as close as you can get.”
Without argument, they walk the last several paces to the edge of the border. Following them, the glow becomes so bright it stings my eyes. They set Madoc down and back up a couple of steps, giving me room to kneel beside him.
It’s almost like when I found him lounging on the grass not far from here days ago, soaking up the Heart’s energy the only way he could. Except then his body was full of life, and now it sags into the grass.
Blood from his wound has smeared across his shirt. I don’t shy away from it, resting my hands on his chest. I stare into the pulsing light of the Heart with eyes narrowed to cut down on the glare and switch to begging out loud.
“Please. You have so much power in you. You gave me the ability to use true names even though I’m only a human, even though I was being used as a weapon against the fae of the Mists. You shone brighter for me at my mating ceremony. Can you shine for him too? He doesn’t deserve to die. He did everything he could to help me—to help all of us. He wanted peace. Isn’t that what you want too?”
The Heart simply keeps up its steady, indomitable thrum. The energy tingles into my skin, raising the hairs on my arms, but Madoc doesn’t so much as twitch.
I wet my lips, searching for the right words. “He was the first Murk to find a way to work with the fae of the Mists in centuries. That should count for something. He ended my curse—his help might be the key to ending the other curses on this world. Please bring him back, so he can have a chance to do all the good he could have done. So he doesn’t have to lose everything just so I could live. Please.”
I put all the force I can into that last word. My throat feels raw.
But nothing changes. The Heart beats on, with no more sign that it’s heard me than it’s ever given before. No sign that it makes any difference to it that I’m begging it on my knees in a nightgown drenched in this man’s blood, wrenched back from the edge of death by his sacrifice.
A surge of anger fills me, so swift and sudden it overwhelms everything else.
I push myself to my feet, my hands clenching. I must look absurd in my gruesome clothes and blood-stained hair, but I don’t give a damn. I just want the impenetrable mass of magic in front of me to listen. The words spill out faster and harsher than even I was prepared for.
“How the hell can you call yourself a Heart? Don’t you care about anything? You cared enough to take away the Murk’s magic over something as small as a lie here and there. That was important enough to punish them and their children and their children’s children, but everything Madoc has done isn’t enough to make him worth saving? Maybe we should all turn to the Heart that the Murk made if you’re so vindictive.”
A hand comes to rest on my back. “Talia,” Sylas says softly, and I can feel Corwin monitoring me closely through our bond, grieving with me but anxious for me at the same time.
“No,” I say to them, and turn back to the Heart. “It should hear this. Everyone around here is always talking about ‘the Heart’ this and ‘the Heart’ that as if it’s such a wonderful thing, but it’s been horrible to some of its people too.” I jab my finger at it. “The Murk are your people; you gave them whatever magic they started with and made them fae, and then you took it away, and somehow it’s their fault they got bitter and resentful? I don’t think it’s that simple.”
I drop my hand to motion to Madoc. “This man rose above all that resentment. He saw that things could be better, that his people might be able to live happier lives without having to ruin anyone else’s. All he wanted was a home for himself and the fae like him. You promised them that when you brought them into existence, and it’s about time you did something to help them get it. If you could believe in me, then there’s no reason at all you can’t believe in him too.”
My anger starts to deflate. I swallow hard, staring into the glow again. “He believed in you,” I add, my voice rough now. “Didn’t you see him coming out here just to be near you? He believed in you. He wanted to come back to you. You know he did. That should count for something.”
I sink back to the grass next to Madoc, my head drooping. I lean over him, letting my face come to rest against his motionless chest. My eyes squeeze shut against a renewed burn of tears.
It wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t figure out the right words, the right angle—I couldn’t call on all that power. How could I have thought I would? I must look so pathetic, even deranged…
But I’d do it again. I’d do it over and over if I thought there was any chance it’d work.
That thought has only just crossed my mind when a sharper glow flares through my eyelids. I jerk upright into a wave of light that’s washing over the field and all of us in it. For a few seconds, my vision is only white.
The Heart’s glow contracts in on itself again. I blink away the blotchy afterimages left in my vision—and hear a faint rasp below me.
My gaze snaps to Madoc. To the slight hitch of his chest as if with a breath. To his neck—
The gash in his throat is gone. The pale skin has sealed over as if it was never torn. His eyes have closed and his lips parted.
When I hover my hand over his mouth, a wisp of an exhalation grazes my hand.
My own heart thumps so hard with joy I think it might burst out of my chest. I grip Madoc’s hand and tip my face toward the Heart of the Mists, the tears that prick at my eyes now only grateful. “Thank you.”
My mates gather closer around us. Whitt lets out a low, awed whistle. “You do know how to get things done, don’t you, mighty one?”
Pride flows from Corwin into me, although with a twinge of hesitation.
When I glance at him, puzzled, he crouches down next to me. For a moment, we both consider the still-unconscious Murk man, watching the rise and fall of his miraculous breaths.
“You spoke well for him,” my soul-twined mate says. “For all of the Murk, but especially him.”
“I had to,” I say automatically.
“I know. Because you love him too.”
I twist toward him, my gut lurching. The truth of his words rings through me, but at the same time, I can’t bear that he—that any of my men—would think I’d betray them. “I love you. All of you. I—anything else I feel doesn’t change that at all. You’re my mates, and I’d never let anything threaten our bond.”
“We know you wouldn’t, Sweetness,” August says, resting his hand on the top of my head.
Corwin nods. “I don’t bring it up as an accusation. I—” His mouth twists, and he inhales deeply before going on. “Three rabid wolf shifters once agreed to share their beloved with a chilly raven. How can I accept that kind of generosity and not extend it in return when it’s so earned?”
I blink at him, hardly daring to breathe myself. “What are you saying?”
His affection streams through our connection as he smiles back at me, enveloping me with tender, accepting warmth. “He’s proven his love for you. I can feel how much he matters to you. If there’s room for five in your heart, I won’t ask you to hold back.”
He glances at my Seelie mates, and I follow his gaze, not knowing what to say.
Whitt lets out a chuckle and shakes his head, his expression uncertain but his eyes gleaming when they meet mine. “A rat shifter. I wouldn’t have thought. But then, there was once a stuffy Unseelie who managed to welcome not one but three feral wolves as his soul-twined mate’s paramours, so I’d be an awful hypocrite if I balked, wouldn’t I?”
Corwin’s lips twitch into a wider smile. I catch Sylas’s gaze next. His mismatched eyes contemplate me for a long moment.
“I think we all owe Madoc an apology,” he says. “We thought the worst of him so many times when you saw the truth. I’ve never denied you the right to follow your heart, my love, and I’m not going to start now. We can make it work.”
August brushes aside my damp hair and kisses my temple. “He was willing to die to protect you. I wouldn’t argue with that kind of devotion.”
I thought… I thought I had to carve out that part of my emotions and set it aside. But they see—they understand—
I can’t kid myself that it’s going to be easy. The wariness and the knee-jerk distrust aren’t going to completely vanish in an instant. But they’re willing to embrace Madoc’s role in my life—to welcome him into the makeshift family we’ve been forming.
A smile splits my face, so wide my cheeks ache with it. “I love you,” I say again, choked up, to all of them.
