Chained Soul by Eva Chase
6
Talia
When the thumping on my bedroom door jolts me out of sleep the following night, the darkness outside my window shows that it’s barely morning yet. As I roll over next to Sylas, who stayed with me in the border castle tonight, the voice of one of the castle’s many guards on duty filters through.
“My lord, there’s news from Tumble-by-the-Heart that I think you should hear right away.”
Tumble-by-the-Heart is Celia’s domain. Sylas sits up immediately. “Just a moment.” He brushes a quick kiss to my lips before grabbing his clothes. “You go back to sleep,” he murmurs to me.
I’m feeling that extra weight of exhaustion again, so I let my head sink back into the pillow, but my mind has started buzzing too much for me to drift off. I try until after Sylas has strode out into the hall and finally grab my thin robe to pull over my nightgown and pad over to the door. I’ll feel better if I know what’s going on.
I’ve just eased the door open when my own name reaches my ears. My pulse stutters. I hurry out. At the sight of me, Sylas and the guard fall silent where they were talking farther down the hall.
“What about me?” I ask. “What’s happened?”
Sylas opens his mouth and closes it again with a pained expression. He obviously doesn’t want to get me involved. But then he sighs. He knows me well enough to realize I’m not going to let go of the subject until he explains.
“One of Celia’s patrols caught a Murk man not far from her domain,” he says. “He’s saying he only came to pass on a message… to you.”
My heart outright stops for a second. I limp over, hugging myself. “They didn’t kill him, did they? It could be Madoc—he might really want to help us.” I hate to think what the Murk man who arranged my escape would have had to find out that was bad enough for him to risk coming here to tell me about it. Somehow I can’t imagine he’s bringing news that Orion’s agreed to negotiate a peace treaty.
No, whatever it is, it’s almost definitely awful.
The guard gives me an odd look, but says, “He’s still alive, as far as I know. Arch-Lord Celia is holding him at the base of the hill on her side, like we did with the woman we captured.” He turns back to Sylas. “She wants to know how you’d like to proceed.”
I draw my posture up straight and firm before Sylas can answer. “I’ll go see what he wants to tell me, of course.”
Sylas frowns. “We don’t know for sure it is the Murk who came to your aid before—and even if it is, we can’t be sure of his intentions now. I don’t want you coming within range of their magic. If he has something to say, he can pass the message on through me.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I think it’s a little late to be worrying about me getting affected by Murk magic. If he was willing to pass on the message to anyone other than me, he’d probably have done it already. Madoc doesn’t exactly trust the rest of you—I’m not sure how much he even trusts me.” Enough to think I deserved not to be tortured, but that’s a pretty low bar.
“That’s assuming it’s even him,” Sylas reminds me. “A lot of Murk are aware of your name and the fact that you’ve come back to us, I’d imagine. This could be one of their tricks to lure you into a more vulnerable position.”
I let out my breath in a huff, but he’s right. We need to be careful. “Fine. I’ll describe him to you and give you a couple of questions to ask that only Madoc should be able to answer. If you’re convinced that it’s him, then we have less to worry about.” I pause. “But even if it isn’t, I think we should give whoever it is some chance to show what they came for.”
Sylas lets out a disconcerted growl, but he doesn’t outright refuse. “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.” His gaze skims over my nightclothes. “Why don’t you get yourself dressed, and I’ll see who else I can rouse at this hour to accompany us? I’m going to take every precaution.”
As I limp back to my bedroom, Corwin’s voice emerges through our bond, slightly groggy with interrupted sleep. What’s all this commotion so early in the morning, my soul? Are you all right?
Yes, other than a little tired, as you’d expect, I answer as I tug the first dress my hands fall on out of my wardrobe. I’m sorry I woke you up. It seems one of the Murk has been captured near Celia’s domain, and he claims he has a message to pass on to me. It might be Madoc. We’re going to go confirm.
My sense of my soul-twined mate snaps into sharper alertness in an instant. I can be there too, if the Seelie won’t object.
I don’t see what reason they’d have to complain. It’d probably be good for someone from the winter realm to witness what happens too.
I shed my nightclothes and pull on the dress, which is simple enough that it doesn’t require much fussing to get it lying right but significantly more ladylike than my nightie. I am going to be presenting myself in front of a bunch of Celia’s pack-kin and maybe the arch-lord herself as well as fae I’m more comfortable around.
And possibly this rat shifter, whoever he is.
By the time I make it downstairs to the summer entrance to the palace, Corwin has already joined Sylas there—and so has Sylas’s entire cadre, though Whitt looks a bit bleary-eyed. August is already tensed in a defensive stance, and Astrid has her short sword in her hand. She muffles a yawn and then shakes herself.
“I don’t think you all need to be there just to protect me,” I say with a twinge of guilt at the thought of them being tugged out of their beds.
Whitt shoots me a breezy grin. “Who says it’s for you?” he teases. “I want to hear what the rat has to say.” He stretches his arms over his head, no longer favoring his injuries from Tristan’s attack on Hearth-by-the-Heart weeks ago. “And more eyes and ears never hurt anyone. He won’t touch one hair on your head.”
I suspect if I wasn’t coming with them, they’d have shifted to take the relatively short trip at a wolfish lope. Instead, we step out into the warm night air to a carriage that’s already been conjured. I settle onto one of the benches, restraining a yawn of my own, and consider what Sylas could ask the Murk man. Something only Madoc and I would know.
“If he says he’s Madoc, and he looks right”—I glance at Corwin—“you should be able to recognize him from my memories, although I guess it could be an illusion. Ask him about the three scenes I watched in the vault of memories. There was the burning house, the man who was caught by the Unseelie while he was looking for food for his mate, and… and the kids in the orphanage.”
I’ve told my mates about what I saw before, and their faces all turn somber at the reminder. “Is there anything else we could check?” Sylas asks gently.
I can’t think of why Madoc would have mentioned all three of those memories from the vault to anyone else, but just in case… “You could ask him what he needed to reassure me about—a lie Orion told me—when we were leaving the Refuge. I thought Orion might have been able to read my thoughts, but Madoc said he was only pretending to.”
Will he even remember that? I hope so. But if he doesn’t, he can simply say so and I’ll have to think of some other proof.
The carriage glides across the open plains around the Heart and between the smaller stands of trees. As we reach Celia’s castle, a sentry is waiting there. He waves his arm to us and motions for us to follow him into the thicker forest on the slope of the hill.
I figure we’re about halfway down when Sylas draws the carriage to a halt. “You’ll wait here with Astrid and August,” he tells me. “Corwin, Whitt, and I will see to the captive. We’ll return as soon as we have a better idea who he is.”
They spring out of the carriage, the Seelie men immediately taking on their wolf forms and Corwin soaring after them as a raven. The Unseelie arch-lord raises his mental barriers again, with a tendril of apology. He doesn’t want me being disturbed by what the Murk man might say or do when we’re still so unsure of what we’re dealing with.
August tucks his arm around me, and I lean against him, letting my eyes slide shut for a little while. I’m too wound up to have any hope of sleeping deeply right now, but I do doze a bit.
The next thing I know, Whitt is standing at the side of the carriage with a wary expression.
“It’s your man, as far as we can tell,” he says. “This Madoc. He answered everything to our satisfaction. Celia has a dozen guards staked out maintaining the holding cell—apparently they were pretty concerned by the fact that he managed to get this close to the Heart before anyone caught him, so they suspect he’s rather powerful. Which tracks with what you learned about his skill with illusions too.”
“How did they catch him?” I ask as August helps me out of the carriage.
The corner of the spymaster’s mouth quirks upward. “It was one of the blood trackers you helped me make. It seems the Murk haven’t learned how to avoid them completely, or else this one didn’t hear the news.”
The thought that I was responsible in a roundabout way for bringing about Madoc’s capture makes my stomach twist, but it’s done now. I need to find out why he’s come—and make sure Celia’s guards don’t hurt him.
August and Astrid flank me for the last short tramp through the thicker woods, where it’d have been difficult to navigate a carriage anyway. We emerge into a large clearing. A few magical globes cast an amber glow over the space. Sylas and Corwin are poised by the edge of the ring of trees. The guards Whitt mentioned stand at attention all around them.
And in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by a translucent wall of light that shifts and whirls like oil in water—
“Madoc!” His name jolts from my lips, and I’m darting forward before I can really think about it.
My impulse is to run right to him, to check him over and make sure he’s okay, but August sweeps me up before I can make it even to the glowing barrier around him.
“Careful still, Sweetness,” he murmurs.
I stare at the man within the shimmering cage. Madoc has straightened up from the crouched posture he had before, his heavy-lidded eyes fixed on me, the amber light turning his straight, straw-pale hair faintly orange. My gaze darts lower, automatically looking for the long, thinly furred tail I got used to seeing on him. It’s strange to find it missing, even though I know the fae tend not to show their animal aspects unnecessarily. It was only a quirk of the way Orion ran the Refuge that he wanted everyone to display theirs.
An angry bruise marks Madoc’s left cheekbone, and a cut that runs from his right temple almost to his jaw is still seeping blood. Now that he’s moving, I notice that he’s favoring one side, as if he’s got some other, unseen injury as well. My gut lurches.
“What did you do to him?” I demand as August’s grip loosens enough to put me back on my feet, though he keeps his hands on my shoulders. I glare around the clearing at the guards. “You didn’t need to attack him.”
The one who must be the squadron leader scowls at me. “It wasn’t us. He arrived like this. And the patrol wouldn’t have known how hard they needed to come down on him when they spotted him. Why would we give the vermin a chance to get the upper hand?”
I guess that makes sense, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling sick. I yank my attention back to Madoc, who offers me a tight smile.
“I’ll survive,” he says in the lightly hoarse voice that guided me through so many of the horrors I faced in the Refuge. “You could say it’s my fault for getting caught. I meant to pass on my message in some way not quite so hands-on, but I’ll take what I can get. I’m glad to see your defiant spirit hasn’t gone anywhere just because you found your freedom.”
An ache forms around my heart that he’s taking this setback so calmly, unshaken even with fae who wouldn’t hesitate to kill him all around. As if all that matters is seeing through his mission. But that’s how he’s always been, isn’t it? Dedicated and determined, sometimes to the point that it frustrated me.
The fact that he’s here at all is proof that he’s capable of adjusting his resolve, though. I doubt Orion approved of him reaching out to me like this. He hasn’t let his commitment to his people blot out every other consideration of what’s right.
“Of course it hasn’t,” I say to his remark about my spirit. “I’ll have them bring a healer.” I spin toward Sylas. “You can get Celia to agree to that, can’t you?”
Sylas inclines his head, but his gaze remains on Madoc. “First I’d like to know what brought our unexpected visitor here at all. What’s the message? What did you want to tell Talia?”
Madoc’s eyes narrow as he takes in the fae men around me. Then he focuses on me instead of Sylas. “Your mates are very careful about ensuring your protection, I’ll give you that. Let’s hope they can continue to be.”
“Is that a threat?” August growls before the Murk man can go on.
Madoc’s gaze hardens into a glower. “No,” he snaps. “It’s a warning, one I risked a lot to come here to deliver, so maybe you can give me a chance to actually tell you.” He drags in a breath and meets my eyes again. “With all the magic Orion cast on you, there was one spell lying dormant that he was keeping in reserve as a backup plan. From what I understand, he sent someone into the Mists to trigger it about two days ago.”
Two days ago? A chill washes over my skin. I don’t remember anything unusual happening then. It’s been a bit of a blur since we realized I was pregnant, but that was almost a week ago.
My hand rises to my belly instinctively. Orion’s spell doesn’t have anything to do with that, does it?
“What exactly did he trigger?” I ask, hardly wanting the answer but knowing I need to hear it.
Madoc grimaces. “From what he told me, it’s a curse on you. It’ll start by simply weakening you and causing you some pain. But it’ll get increasingly worse within a matter of days, until—until it kills you.”
