Chained Soul by Eva Chase
9
Talia
Idon’t remember much of the hustle back to the castle, most of it in Whitt’s arms. The pain washes through my nerves in waves, always sharpest in my chest. In the moments between waves, I feel utterly weak, my muscles refusing to move, my limbs gone slack. And through it all courses a deepening fear.
I haven’t escaped Orion’s curse after all. It just took its time kicking in. And this is only the beginning. Who knows how horrible it might get from here when it was dreamt up in the mind of that brutal tyrant?
After a while, I can hardly think at all. I’m vaguely aware of being settled onto soft sheets in the amber light of my bedroom’s glow orb. Words are murmured over me, but all they do is numb the barest edges off the pain. Whatever spells are being cast on me, they can’t quite reach into the center of me where the attack seems to be coming from.
For I don’t know how long, I’m lost in a daze. Then gradually the agony eases back. When it’s dulled to the point that it’s only a constant but faint prickling behind my breastbone, I open my eyes and look around.
All four of my mates are in the bedroom with me now. Sylas, Whitt, and Corwin are standing in quiet, anxious conversation off in the corner. August paces by the foot of my bed. Corwin turns with a flicker of relief through our bond at the realization that I’m more aware now, but August speaks before my soul-twined mate can say anything.
“I don’t know how—it couldn’t have been more than an hour beforehand that I checked her. There wasn’t even a hint that anything was wrong. I don’t see how I could have missed it… but I must have.”
“The Murk appear to specialize in magic that catches us off-guard,” Whitt says. He and Sylas follow Corwin around the bed.
Corwin grasps my hand. “I’m glad to feel you in a more comfortable state now, my soul. We’re going to do everything we can to stop any future fits.” He glances at Whitt, his jaw tightening. “What exactly did the rat say to her before the pain came over her?”
Whitt opens his mouth, but I get there first, my voice croaking a bit as I push the words from my throat. “It wasn’t Madoc. He didn’t do anything to me.”
Corwin frowns. “You can’t be sure of it. You were near him when this curse or whatever it is hit you. He could be the trigger.”
I push myself into a sitting position, ignoring August’s noise of consternation. “I was near him for just as long yesterday night, and nothing happened then. I was walking away from him when it happened. I don’t think we have any reason to blame him.”
Whitt clears his throat. “I’m not saying we should remove the rat from all suspicion, but to my eyes he appeared very honestly distressed by Talia’s collapse.”
“If he is some kind of trigger, he may not even know it himself,” Sylas says. “His king may have used him without him knowing.”
“But how would Orion even be sure that Madoc would be able to get close enough to me to trigger anything, if that’s what was needed?” I ask. “Even when he kidnapped me after the mating ceremony, he didn’t dare come too close to the celebration, and that was before we were quite as guarded against the Murk. He obviously couldn’t count on going undetected. I don’t think that makes any sense either.”
Sylas exhales roughly. “That may well be true, my love. And it’s true that you suffered no ill effects from being in his presence earlier. Still, I think we need to proceed even more cautiously than before. He didn’t agree to the conditions you offered him. He clearly thinks we’re more the enemy than his king is.”
I don’t think there’s anything else I can say—and to be honest, I wouldn’t put it past Orion to have come up with some cruel scheme that would punish both Madoc and me. I just can’t imagine him leaving a task that important so much to chance: the chances of Madoc getting so close without being caught, the chances that if he was caught, the fae who had him wouldn’t kill him outright or refuse to let me anywhere near him.
The Murk king never believed the other fae really respected my opinions on anything. He certainly didn’t when push came to shove. Even if he realized I’d want to defend Madoc, he’d have trouble imagining my mates allowing me to.
I pull my knees up under the sheets and tuck my arms around them. “So what happens now? I do feel reasonably all right.” I glance at August. “Did that ‘fit’ do any actual damage to me?”
August’s mouth twists. “I can pick up on a few traces of very minor internal injuries to your lungs and heart. Not so much that they wouldn’t heal on their own given time, but if you continue to suffer from spells like that—if they get worse…”
“There has to be a way to tackle it,” Whitt says firmly, though his eyes are dark with worry. “No magic exists that doesn’t have a counter spell. It’s only a matter of finding it. We can call in the best healers in both realms—and there’s always places like the Serene Springs too.”
But we’ve gone this long without finding a real cure to the other curses plaguing the fae of the Mists. I bite my lip.
The unexpected knock on the door makes all of us startle. Sylas goes over to answer it.
One of his staff stands outside. “My lord, Arch-Lord Celia has come to speak with you. She has news about the prisoner.”
I tense on the bed. She hasn’t decided Madoc was responsible for my curse activating and taken matters into her own hands, has she?
“Tell her to come up,” Sylas says. “My mate will want to hear whatever she has to say and to have the chance to weigh in too.”
The woman hesitates as if she’s afraid of Celia’s reaction to that order, but only for a second. Then she darts off down the hall.
I pull back the sheets and slide to the edge of the bed, though I’m not in any hurry to try standing up. My mates look ready to spring to stop me if I did. I’m still wearing the same dress from before, so I’ll look reasonably put together in front of the other arch-lord, even if I am technically now an invalid.
A shiver runs through me. I push my worries about the future away. The one thing I do know for sure is that the men around me will stop at nothing to protect me from this and every other threat I might face.
Celia arrives at the doorway looking typically stern but a little puzzled as well. She takes in the five of us and offers me a small dip of her head in acknowledgment. “It’s good to see you somewhat recovered, Lady Talia.”
I’m not sure what prompted that gesture of respect—maybe her thoughts about what her people would face if I didn’t recover—but I’ll take it.
“What’s the urgent news?” Sylas asks.
Celia turns to him, her jaw working for a second as if she doesn’t totally want to tell him. “The rat shifter. Madoc, or whatever his name is. He’s agreed to the deal.”
My heart skips a beat. Whitt raises his eyebrows. “Just like that?”
Celia smiles thinly at him and then me. “I believe we may owe the credit to your mate. Not only did she pitch the terms to him well enough, but he seems motivated to see what else he might be able to find out from his king about her ailment. If he’s to be believed.”
A swell of tender emotion momentarily numbs the lingering prickle of discomfort in my chest. Madoc is willing to put his future safety in the hands of the people he hates so that he can help me yet again.
“We still need his proof,” August says, flexing his shoulders as if he thinks he’ll need to march over and demand it right now. “We can’t assume—”
“He’s already given it,” Celia interrupts. “I wouldn’t have come to report his decision to you unless it was firm. I arranged a clay tablet for him to mark, and he’s done so. I only wanted to speak with you before I tell my guards to actually release him.”
There’s a pause between my mates. I suspect now that they’re faced with the reality of letting a rat shifter loose, they can’t help being unsettled, no matter how much this one has proven himself. I’m preparing to speak up in Madoc’s favor again when Corwin slips his arm around my shoulders.
“The deal was made with the Seelie, so I can’t speak to that. I don’t object to him going free if he’s committed to terms you feel will ensure he sticks to that deal. But before he leaves for however long he may be back with his kin for, I think we should speak to him about Talia’s curse now that it’s started to act on her. Perhaps he’ll be able to observe something about it that we wouldn’t, since he’s much more familiar with the new magic of the Murk, or to suggest treatments we wouldn’t normally make use of.”
Whitt nods, a faint grin crossing his face. “Lord Bird is no feather-brain.”
Celia considers the suggestion with a tilt of her head. “You’d let him get close enough to Lady Talia to examine her?”
Sylas hums. “We could start at more of a distance. We are putting a lot of trust in him as it is. I say we should extend that trust at least somewhat to this urgent situation. Show him that we’ll keep our end of the deal before we ask more of him.” He looks at Celia. “Can you have your guards escort him to the field just outside the summer entrance to this castle?”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“We won’t throw caution utterly to the wind. If he can offer any insight, it’ll be worth the attempt.”
Corwin supports me as I rise onto my feet. I test my balance with a couple of typically uneven steps and find I can walk like normal, no additional pain waking up inside me and no weakness gripping me. I squeeze his arm. “I think I’m okay for now.”
My mates all stay within easy reach as we head down to the summer-side entrance. Corwin is monitoring my internal state so closely I can practically feel his attention brushing through me.
We’ll get through this, I tell him. We’ve gotten through so much else. One little curse isn’t going to stop me now.
But for the first time since I started reassuring myself that way in the face of the various threats I’ve encountered among the fae, I don’t know that I totally believe it myself.
Sylas leads us to a spot about halfway between the border castle and the pack village of Hearth-by-the-Heart, as if he doesn’t want Madoc getting too close to either of those sites. He and Whitt quickly conjure a narrow wooden table and chairs, so it’ll even feel like a proper meeting—although from the words they continue to murmur around the furniture afterward, I suspect they’re also building in protections against whatever they’re worried the Murk man might do.
They arrange it so that there are five seats along one side, with our backs to the castle, and one chair on the other. The setup gives the sense of an interrogation, but it’s a big step for them to accept Madoc this near our homes to begin with, so I don’t complain.
Sylas has me sit at the far right of the table. He sits in the middle where he’ll be most directly facing the rat shifter, with August between him and me, Corwin at his other side, and Whitt at the far end.
We’ve only just sorted that out when a cluster of figures comes into view, emerging from the path that leads into the nearest stretch of forest. Five of Celia’s guards stand in a ring several feet wide with Madoc in the center, swords in their hands, a shimmer in the air that suggests they’ve brought some of the holding cell’s barrier with them.
Madoc looks uneasy, but when his gaze veers from us to the pulsing glow of the Heart just down the border, something in his face softens. I can see even at a distance that the source of magic he either rejected or lost so long ago still stirs awe in him.
When they reach us, Sylas motions to the guards. “You can leave him in our care. He’s soon to be completely released regardless.”
The guards stiffen a bit at that order, but they bow and remove the magical barrier around Madoc before shifting into wolf form to lope back to their own domain. Madoc stands tensed with his hands braced against the back of the chair, taking us all in.
His gaze stops on me. “You’re all right,” he says, relief and horror warring in his tone. “I was afraid—it came on you so quickly—”
“I get the impression that your king enjoys drawing out his torments rather than seeing them to the end immediately,” Whitt remarks dryly from the other end of the table.
Madoc’s mouth tightens. “He does indeed.”
Sylas inclines his head toward the chair. “I hope you’ll take a seat. I understand you’ve accepted our terms and confirmed our deal through Arch-Lord Celia. We were only hoping to have a short discussion before you’re on your way—since you seem concerned about our mate’s wellbeing.”
Madoc’s stance relaxes just a bit. I can’t tell whether it’s because Sylas has confirmed that he’s being released or because of the realization that this meeting is about me. He tugs back the chair and sinks into it, keeping a careful pose as if he might need to leap away quickly. I guess he can’t help his instinctive guardedness.
“If there’s any way I can help you ensure Talia’s safety, I’d be happy to do it,” he says. “That was the only reason I came here in the first place. I won’t be able to question Orion too insistently or he’ll get suspicious, but I’m sure I can find out more about what the curse entails, maybe even some hint about curing it.”
“There’s one obvious way,” August says. “I know you dismissed this idea before, but it’s more pressing now. If we could get at that false Heart of yours and destroy it, then all the magic that came from it would vanish too.”
“Yes,” Corwin agrees. “And that would end our curses as well. It seems a simple solution.”
I didn’t know they were going to make that argument, but the vibe along my side of the table tells me it was planned. They must have discussed it earlier while I was too out of it to pay attention.
Madoc grimaces. “That depends on what you mean by simple. It took Orion decades to develop the magic to create our Heart and over a century to build its power. I have no idea how you’d destroy it. You’d have a hard enough time getting to it, even if I was willing to show you the way to the Refuge. You’d better believe Orion has sentries all over watching for any sign of Seelie or Unseelie presence through any portal within reasonable traveling distance.”
“If you were willing,” Sylas repeats.
Madoc narrows his stormy eyes at the Seelie arch-lord. “I thought I made it clear that I’m not willing to throw so many of my people to be slaughtered by yours over one ruler who’s taken things a step too far. I swore to report back any information that might protect your people and Talia’s, and if there’s a chance to remove just Orion, I’ll inform you of that. But if we can find a way to end the curses that doesn’t touch the Heart, I’d rather we used that.”
Whitt raises his eyebrows. “Awfully attached to it, are you?”
“You don’t understand.” Madoc’s gaze drifts to the Heart of the Mists again. He jerks it back to my mates. “Most of us can’t reach your Heart anymore. Orion’s is the only source of magic we can draw on. We’ve used it to grow things and heal and all sorts of other purposes that have nothing to do with hurting anything. There’s nothing harmful about the Heart itself.”
“It sounds as if we need to table that possibility for the moment anyway, until we can be sure of getting the upper hand,” Sylas says. “The magic acting on Talia comes from that Heart, from the powers you’re much more familiar with than we are. I know you aren’t aware of any definite cure right now, but we want to hear any ideas you have about healing or dispelling strategies that are common among your kind.”
Madoc studies me. “I’m not sure. We don’t typically curse each other or lift the curses we cast on others. The curser sets the conditions.” He pauses. “We make a lot of use of shielding—to stop bleeding, to section off wounded or sickly parts of the body so they don’t affect the rest… It’s possible something like that would at least slow down the progression.”
I’m tired of sitting here being talked about as if I’m in a coma, unable to contribute. “Can you sense anything about the curse now that it’s active—what it’ll do, how it’ll affect me?”
His gaze becomes more intent. Then he shakes his head. “Not from here.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “You can come closer.”
Sylas coughs. “I’m not certain—”
He cuts himself off, taking in the Murk man’s reaction. Madoc has gone even more tense in his chair, his shoulders rigid. Sylas’s brow furrows. “You don’t want to get closer to her.”
Madoc seems to grapple with his words before he speaks. He doesn’t look at me. “It’s occurred to me that it might not be a coincidence that she got sick right after she spoke to me. I don’t have any awareness of anything in or around me affecting her, but if there’s any risk at all—”
“Oh my God, enough!” I burst out. “Between the bunch of you, you’ll end up missing the cure because you’re too afraid of doing anything.” I push to my feet and limp around the table as forcefully as I can. The men all leap up too, Madoc included. Before he can back away, I snatch his wrist and pull his hand toward me so his palm rests against my dress over my breastbone.
He freezes, not jerking out of my grasp but looking utterly miserable. “Talia, if there’s a chance that I—”
“If there’s any chance that you being near me is going to set off another fit, then we might as well find that out in the early stages, don’t you think?” I fix him with my firmest look and then glance at my mates, who don’t look all that much happier about the situation than Madoc does, but have settled for coming up around us at a short distance in case they need to intervene.
Madoc gradually relaxes again, letting his hand rest against me. The warmth of his palm, a little more potent than the pleasant summer air around us, seeps through the fabric into my skin. He adjusts his fingers a tad and murmurs a few words, his gaze darting briefly to our audience as if worried my mates will pounce on him. A tingle carries through my chest that doesn’t feel particularly different from when August has checked me over.
Madoc’s mouth slants downward. “I can feel the spell. I can feel Orion’s influence in it.” He closes his eyes and intones a couple more syllables.
Nothing changes inside me except that brief tingling sensation. The prickling patch between my lungs remains, but it doesn’t expand or intensify. That only makes me surer that Madoc wasn’t the trigger.
If we let paranoia like that interfere with how much we trust each other—or ourselves—then Orion will have already won.
“I’ve never encountered anything quite like that,” Madoc says after a moment. “I don’t know—the barrier suggestion I made earlier would be difficult to attempt even at this stage, with the lingering energy of it being so close to her vital organs. But maybe, now that I have a clearer sense of the curse, I’ll come across something that would point me in the right direction once I’m home.”
He opens his eyes, moving to withdraw his hand. I release his wrist. As his fingers and their warmth leave my chest, his gaze catches mine from where he’s standing over me, just a couple of feet away. His fleeting touch brings me back to the brief brush of his lips against mine just before I left the Refuge—and stirs up a sudden curiosity about how it would feel to have him claim my mouth more thoroughly.
My cheeks flush. I step back toward my chair, willing away those thoughts as fast as I can.
He didn’t hurt you, my soul? Corwin asks through our bond, with no sign that he’s noticed the odd direction my emotions momentarily veered in.
No, I feel perfectly fine. “Madoc didn’t have anything to do with setting off the curse,” I say out loud. “So let’s stop worrying about that and focus on finding a real solution.”
Whitt chuckles. “You are adept as always at putting us in our places, mighty one.”
“I suppose I should go and see what I can learn, then?” Madoc says with a doubtful note in his voice. Is he still waiting for the other fae to reveal this was all a ploy and he can’t leave after all?
Sylas nods. “Yes. Report back with anything you hear that it’d benefit us to know as soon as you can.”
“It’s likely that Orion will send me back here of his own accord once I make my report to him. But I can’t promise I’ll have come across anything all that useful in the meantime.” Madoc turns from them to focus on me again. “I’ll do as much as I can. If there’s any way I can help you, I will.”
“I know,” I say quietly, still grappling with the unexpected feelings stirred up by his nearness. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” he says. “For being willing to believe in us despite what the man ruling us has done to you.”
Without hesitation now, he nods to my mates and walks away toward the forest. One moment he’s a man, striding along, and the next he’s vanished—or almost. All that’s left is a small, pale-furred shape darting through the grass.
Back to his home and to the king who’ll destroy us all if he has his way.
