Siren's Fury (21 page)

I scoff. “I wish it were that simple, but you didn’t see how scared Eogan was for everyone. How he looked at me and begged me to
kill
him yesterday.”

“If you were that concerned, maybe you should’ve done what he asked.”

The cold warping my bones flares. Is she jesting? How could she say that? “Is that what you think? That I should’ve let everything go without even trying?” I wrap my hands around my arms. “You’ve lived in luxury with friends who’ve trained and honored your ability your whole life, but I haven’t. And that . . .
animal
”—I jerk my head toward Draewulf—“just stole what few things I call mine, not to mention he’s about to steal a lot more lives. So before you judge me, consider the fact that in my situation, you would’ve done the same.”

She snorts. “No, I wouldn’t. And if you think that, then you don’t know the Luminescent race very well.”

“I know them well enough to know that while for the past hundred years Faelen’s been fighting a war they didn’t start and my Elemental people have been slaughtered, the Luminescents stood by caring about little else but themselves.”

The second it exits my mouth I wish I could take it back.

Oh hulls—that came out wrong. “Rasha, I didn’t mean . . .”

“Yes, you did.” She looks around at the delegates reseating themselves. “We’ll discuss this later. The meeting’s starting.”

I look at her and watch her expression turn stony, as if I don’t exist.

You’re blasted right we will.

Because I can’t leave it like this. I can’t lose her too.

When I look up, I find Eogan watching me again, but it’s with black wolf eyes rather than the emerald ones I’d give anything to see again. I sharpen my glare at him and will him to read my mind:
I’ve no idea what you need to achieve through me, or what the hulls that even means . . . but I
will
stop you.

I will not break first.

Sir Gowon wastes no time in calling the meeting back to order, and it occurs to me that in the three-minute intermission, there’s been a shift in the air. Not merely between Rasha and me, but between the hundred Assembly members facing the table of Faelen delegates and Bron generals. Although, as far as I can tell, the only physical difference is that Lady Isobel has seated herself right next to Eogan this time.

If she feels me staring, she doesn’t let on. Her condescending interest is on the generals as Sir Gowon waves the water servers from the room. When the last doors have shut, the old man folds his hands behind his back and steps up behind Draewulf.

“His Majesty has the floor.”

“Delegates and Assembly,” Draewulf announces smoothly. “I see no point in drawing this meeting out with endless negotiations. We have made a treaty and will therefore stand by it and will not replenish our storehouses through Faelen. I expect you to support this decision as subordinates who are to obey. Especially as, I believe, you’ll find what comes next will silence further arguments from here on out.”

When he takes his seat, Lord Wellimton’s sigh of relief is so heavy I can almost feel his wet breath slather across the table just as unease twists in my stomach. I glance at Princess Rasha, but she’s studying Lady Isobel. The part of her face I can see is narrowing and there’s a small red glimmer.

The silver-haired General Cronin rises and gives a long, slow clap of his hands. “Bold speech, my lord, but will the majority here support you? Especially those who feel they are owed more by a
man
seeking
to establish himself as king? You would deny them replenishment of their very livelihoods?”

The wolfish black in Draewulf’s glare thickens until the whites of his eyes are nearly hidden. He stands enough to lean down the table toward the general. “I never said I wouldn’t reclaim what is owed Bron. I simply said we won’t do it through Faelen.”

He looks at the whole Assembly. “I will give you the war you’ve been thwarted from—a war that will supply your storehouses with food and minerals and natural resources deprived you far too long.” He rocks back on his heels and suddenly smiles, and it’s more unnerving than his threatening gaze when he lifts a hand and lets his voice boom.

“I set forth the motion that we prepare for war against Tulla, the land we have easier access to thanks to my treaty with Faelen.”

I freeze as a visceral gasp rocks the room.

He wants to go after Tulla?

That’s Colin and Breck’s homeland.

The delegates shift in their seats, making them squeak, the sound only diluted by Myles’s mutter of, “You’ve got to be bleeding jesting.”

The words sink past the chill in my skin and pull the cold back down to the marrow of my bones as I watch Sir Gowon’s expression turn as stunned as the rest of ours. His gaze focuses in on Eogan’s face.

Between Lord Wellimton, Percival, and Gwen whispering to each other, I can barely hear the silver-haired general stuttering. Like a little boy trying to cover his embarrassment for a game he’s losing. He looks over at me for a second. I don’t know if he reads my horror or my flinch as the iced poison bleeds deeper into my veins.

I clench my teeth and will it to recede, but it doesn’t. It just settles like a low vibration in my blood.

General Cronin is back to glaring at the king. “A positive step, King Eogan.” Except his tone is as challenging as the sneer on his face. “But may I ask when and how you propose we do so?”

Draewulf slides a paper in front of him. “Your report stated thirty-five airships are still battle sure. It also states you have enough men to operate them.”

“Enough engineers, yes,” the old, wrinkled general chimes in. “But many of our soldiers are still out of commission. Practically speaking, we can be ready in six months, but—”

“Good, General Naran,” Draewulf cuts him off. “Then we won’t need to wait.” He stands again and splays his palms to the room. “I plan to move on Tulla immediately. To give—”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but I don’t see how that’s possible,” General Naran interrupts. “Our warboats—”

Draewulf’s expression turns lethal. As quick as a lightning crack, he lifts a hand and touches it to the older man’s arm. The general doesn’t wince, but his voice cuts off even while his mouth continues forming words. It takes him a second to notice and fumble to a silent halt as confusion forms around his wrinkled eyes.

Sir Gowon looks sharply from Draewulf to me. I look at Princess Rasha.

She’s still studying Lady Isobel, who peers up and says in a tone so low that I swear it rattles the floor beneath my feet, “We only need the airships and a few waterboats.”

The silver-haired general stirs from staring at the silenced man. He scoffs. “
Only?
And what, may I ask, do you know of this? How do you propose we provide the soldier-power?”

Draewulf holds out his hand to Lady Isobel in an invitation to stand. She rises beside him and stares at the Assembly with disgust.

That chill in my bones shifts. Until it’s rattling, spiking, warning that something is off.

Draewulf’s teeth poke out through Eogan’s lips as he announces, “Lady Isobel’s Dark Army will provide the soldier-power.”

CHAPTER 23

A
S IF IN UNISON, EVERY SINGLE MEMBER IS YELLING.

“Your Majesty, the Dark Army doesn’t exist!”

“Are you insane? Lady Isobel hasn’t even answered for her attempt to betray us to Faelen!”

The old, wrinkly-eyed man, General Naran, who’d been silenced, speaks up. “Going to war is one thing. But this is inviting war to our very doorstep! These things—these monsters—have no sense of morality! Rumor has it they’ve already laid waste to the western border.”

“Not just laid waste!” someone in the crowd yells. “They’ve invoked a bleeding plague! First on the livestock, then on our nomads! It’s the same thing that wiped out our forces on Faelen’s island cairns—it wasn’t the Faelen army, but the plagues and monsters!”

The anger, the fear in here—it’s humming around me, and my nerves are soaking it up.

Feeding off of it.

This is what Draewulf had planned?

The king raises his hand for silence, and I peer up at Sir Gowon.
Now does he believe me about Eogan?

“I assure you the Dark Army does in fact exist,” Draewulf says. “Is it dangerous? Yes. But a dangerous army is exactly what’s needed, and if one has already been developed by a country under our subjugation, I see no reason not to utilize it to the full extent of our purposes.”

General Cronin stands, his silver hair glinting beneath the lights. “You knew about them and yet kept that fact from us once you arrived yesterday?”

Draewulf flips around. “Treasonous words considering every top general here heard news of such an army months ago—and a week ago you received evidence confirming it.”

“We kept it quiet until the rumors were verified,” General Naran says. “We saw no need to worry our people until we sent soldiers to investigate.”

“And what did they find?”

“Half . . . half of them didn’t come back.”

“Because of the plagues,” someone calls out from the crowd.

General Cronin pounds the table. “Because the Dark Army is a menace which
she
”—he points at Lady Isobel—“is controlling!”

I glance at Lady Isobel who sits watching, then my gaze falls to Rasha. Her expression is complete horror. This is what she was seeing on Lady Isobel’s face a moment ago. The army. The plagues. I recall my ride through Litchfell Forest where the plagues had struck just before Bron attacked. The treetop houses reeked of death and disease. Even the bolcranes had left the bodies alone.

She peers over at me.
What have we done by keeping him alive?

“Your Highness,” one of the generals protests. “Odion never
would’ve approved this decision. Isobel approached him months ago offering her services, and he turned the Dark Army down out of understanding of what it would cost Bron.” He hesitates. The flash in his eye says there’s more—there’s something else he’s not saying.

General Naran puts his hand out as if to calm his colleague. “Your Highness, allowing Lady Isobel here for questioning is one thing. But allowing
this
may likely start a civil war. Yes, we want to pursue what we need from Tulla, but allow us to do it with our own people in a time of better choosing. Not with a rabid army we know nothing about who is a threat to our very existence.”

“You disagree with my tactics?” Draewulf snarls and his tone feels like a stone being sharpened.

“I think you unintentionally have conveyed disregard for our people, our generals, and our way of li—”

His voice cuts off so smooth that General Cronin picks up speaking for him, unaware of Draewulf’s hand stretched out. “What is it—four years you’ve been gone? Perhaps it’s time for new leadership the Bron people can trust to hold their best interest.”

Rasha rises.

Isobel’s hand flashes out and slips between the man’s shoulder blades so fast, General Cronin doesn’t even have time to wince. Nor to notice the cracking of his colleague’s neck beneath Draewulf’s fingers.

The silver-haired general’s face has already paled and suddenly the only sound emerging from his lips is a gasp for air followed by a gurgle before he slumps chin-first onto the table, dead like his wrinkly cohort, blood oozing from both their mouths.

Lady Isobel steps back, and every face in the room is riveted on her and Eogan-who-is-Draewulf.

I pull out both knives and am preparing to toss them low when Eogan’s hand flicks and an unseen force flips my blades down, impaling the knives into the ground at my feet. Without batting an eye, he twitches his hand again, and this time, that invisible force is pressing me against my seat.

I try to lift a fist as the darkness slides along my veins like a raw hunger stirring. Why the members here aren’t alarmed at Eogan using powers his real self isn’t capable of is beyond me. Or perhaps he’s been away so many years, they no longer know what exactly he
is
capable of anymore.

Abruptly that cold in me is coiling with this whole scene. My skin is cooling rapidly and my heartpulse is speeding up, but when I try to focus on it, to see if I can funnel it toward Draewulf or his daughter, nothing happens beyond the chill fusing deeper to my bones.

A vision of the spider biting, numbing, working her poison through my blood materializes, and the thought erupts again that the abilities are not expanded enough to work here, not now, on real people.

On the people I want to kill.

And I
do
want to kill them.

For the first time since I can ever remember, instead of guilt following a murderous craving like that, my hatred just grows stronger.

“Anyone else want to question my judgment?” Draewulf challenges. “Excellent,” he says without waiting for a response. “Then allow me to introduce you to your new war general—the Lady Isobel.” He smiles. “If you have any concerns as to her assignment, I’m sure she’d be pleased to persuade you.”

He turns in a semicircle, as if to make eye contact with
everyone in the room, and the way Isobel leans in, it’s like she’s hoping someone will.

“Now, let’s see, where were we? Ah yes, preparing to take over Tulla.” He tips his head to his daughter.

She snaps her fingers and signals her personal Mortisfaire guards—three of them along the wall on either side of us, their faces masked and hair flowing out. They walk to the end of the room and throw the doors open.

I smell them before I see them. The scent of moist earth and bone-dust and decay, swirling its fingers, stirring the room with rank suffocation just like in the alleyway last night. It’s the scent of bodies long dead.

It’s the breath of plague that is not of this world.

The smell saturates until some of the Assembly and delegates are coughing as the Mortisfaire step back to expose two thin, eerily tall forms draped from head to foot in ratty gray robes. Silent. Gray. Like something from the grave, except they’re walking.

As they get closer I realize they’re hissing, and it’s only when they stop ten paces from the table to stare at us beneath those icy gray cloaks that I get a full look at their faces.