Hels's Gauntlet [Forbidden Legacy 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (17 page)

Scrolling words? Most Wizard magic, and Fae for that matter, came from inside. They didn’t write spells down or need the wording, save for their tomes of recorded spells for younger Wizards to memorize—not for actual spell work.

“Never heard of it.” Jacob’s mind whirled with the possibilities. Wizards tended to be pretty narrowly focused, but they weren’t completely oblivious to the world around them. His gaze touched on the pockets of humanity surrounding the disaster site.

Humans couldn’t activate magic, even if their lives, like the Fae and the Wizards, generated it on some level. Human magicians were sleight-of-hand masters, mentalists, and even the occasional throwback to some ancient Fae ancestor with their ability to persuade. They didn’t have that kind of power.

“We are going to research it. I’ll send messages to the other members of the Council. But ask Lord Helcyon about it.” Elijah’s directive irritated him. He wasn’t a messenger boy for the Elf.

“Why didn’t you ask him when he was here?”
All damn day, with Cassie, in the cold.
But Jacob left those words unspoken.

“I would have, but we were preoccupied with the search and he was guarding your lady while she soothed the crowds.” The mild rebuke didn’t help Jacob’s temper.

“I’ll ask him. Jude said Kyrian was here. Another Elf. He’s not one of the Danae’s lackeys as far as I know, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lie hidden within a mistruth there somewhere.” Exhaustion weighed down on every muscle. Jacob couldn’t actually remember the last time he slept. The days blurred together. The Council meeting, his reunion with Cassie, Vanagan’s arrival, and Helcyon’s attack—each event seemed to have lasted days, but it couldn’t have been more than two since he arrived home from three days of session.

Elijah frowned and turned in a slow circle, examining their surroundings. “Have a care with that one, Jacob. Lord Helcyon is an honorable one. To my knowledge, he’s never broken his word. He believes in oaths and lives up to expectations. His brother is the dodgy one. When I knew him, he didn’t possess one-tenth of Lord Helcyon’s power or charisma. Resentment ran deep between them, and Lord Helcyon went to war more than once to dig his brother out of trouble.”

Jude stiffened next to him. Jacob wished he could shield him from Elijah’s cold assessment. But the younger Wizard knew, as they all did really, that stories of the Fae were littered with the debris of false promises and bad choices. “Why don’t you call him Lord as you do Helcyon?”

Once upon a time, Jude wouldn’t have interrupted the older Wizards, preferring to remain on the fringes when the true ancients came among them. While Miller and DuPois might be Elijah’s contemporaries, they never acted the part, preferring to live in the present and not as relics of the past.

“Because Kyrian is not a Lord,” Elijah answered with his customary directness. “It is not an inheritable title amongst the Fae, and it’s more than an affectation. To be a Lord is to wield some essence in the fabric of nature.”

A coin appeared in Elijah’s palm, and he twisted his hand, sending the silver piece dancing across his knuckles. The old habit came up whenever he taught. Jacob found the action hypnotic and deliberately tore his gaze away.

Jude stared at Elijah with sober intensity. “So what separated Helcyon and Kyrian?”

“Hypothetically? Magically? Politically? Or emotionally?” The bland words betrayed no personal interest on Elijah’s part, but Jacob knew his
domovoi
too well.

“Kyrian is Jude’s father. We learned the information recently.” It was Jude’s secret and Jacob understood that. But he knew his mentor better than any of the others. Elijah worked better in a framework of absolute honesty. He rarely judged or colored his history with misinformation.

His opinions on the other hand, he dispensed with unequaled candor. It was most often the reason he wasn’t welcome at so many gatherings. The other Wizards preferred polite backstabbing to a direct jab in the face.

“Well, then the first thing you should understand is that we are as much products of our environment as we are our genetics. Vanagan Marcus is a good and honorable Wizard, despite sharing Kyrian for a father. I never liked that Elf. He was always cagey, looking for an angle to increase his power, and envious as hell of Lord Helcyon. Any person, whether he be human, Wizard, or Fae, consumed by a need to best others will make selfish choices. You have great potential in you, Jude Donovan. You are a Wizard because Kyrian is an Elf. You are a trusted lieutenant and student because you are you.”

Jude opened his mouth and then closed it again. Elijah’s answers made response difficult.

“As for you, Jacob, consider that Kyrian may truly be one of the few blind spots Lord Helcyon possesses. Love makes fools of us all, but they were close as youths, growing up with just a year separating their ages. Magic and success seemed to flow into Lord Helcyon’s hands, but he never saw the jealousy and greed in his brother’s eyes. He only ever saw his brother. Do not pit yourself between them, for while you two have struck your accord…you are not his brother.”

“We’ve struck more than an accord. We’re bound.” He hadn’t meant to spit the words out, particularly not in such a place as insecure and lacking in privacy as the disaster zone, but like Jude, he needed counsel.

The others said nothing, but he sensed the weight of their support. Even Paul, with his reservations, and Jude, with his anxieties, closed tighter in a circle around them. His men offered a buffer against the strangers, the cold, and the uncertainty of the situation.

“Truly?” Elijah cocked his head to one side, and the coin hesitated between two fingers, shivering with potential, but not moving.

“Apparently. It began with Cassie, but there is another tie between us. Our oath of allegiance, friendship—brotherhood.”

“He is waking then?” Elijah’s eyebrows rose. A cold wind pushed through the trees to bluster around them, but Jacob ignored the tug of it across his hair.

“More than a little.” Jacob nodded slowly. “It seems that because I am bound, so are my men, through their oaths to me and mine to them.”

“Yes. And no.” Elijah leaned his head back, chin rising as his gaze turned to the sky. The coin began to dance across his knuckles again. “To be fully bound, they must swear an oath to Lord Helcyon and he to them. The act of fealty requires devotion on both sides, as the power it creates and redoubles is shared. As he grows stronger, so shall you. In turn, your men will gain strength from your strength, but not necessarily from him unless the binding is complete.”

Paul exhaled a quiet sigh—whether in relief or frustration, Jacob couldn’t begin to guess.

“Can he really control me through that bond?” Yes, Helcyon gave him his word that he wouldn’t, but Jacob needed more than the promise of words.

Around them, the somber and grieving crowds of rescue workers packed and secured the site. Paul, Miller, DuPois, and Jude waited. The breeze hushed, as though it, too, wanted to hear the answer.

“Yes. To one degree or another, he can. If only because in fealty, only one may truly lead. He may not demand it. He may not enforce it. But at the end of the day, he will retain that ability. The Lords were the most powerful among the Fae, more powerful than their Danae, be he a King or she a Queen. They were her council, her most trusted and most needed advisors, because they kept him or her in power. It mattered not who sat on that throne, because the Lords could take it away.”

“Yeah, I’m not finding a lot of comfort in that answer.” Jacob scrubbed a hand over his face. Regret stung his pride, and he knew it was his pride because his gut didn’t want to question his bond with Helcyon. His gut didn’t actually mind it. His pride, however, didn’t want to bow to the Elf.

The reasons tumbled torrentially within him, like storm clouds of indecision and mixed feelings of guilt. Love shouldn’t be this hard. Were it only Cassie, he would have no reservations. But his loyalties seemed divided, right down the middle.

“Jacob, go home, rest. Speak to your lover and to Lord Helcyon. Figure this out.”

“The world is changing, old man, and changing fast.” Weariness coated the words, but Jacob didn’t bother to disguise it.

“You will learn, should you live as long as I, that this is what the world does. Time perseveres, though it may seem to drag, unchanging for decades nigh onto centuries, and then in the span of a few weeks, it changes entirely and becomes almost unrecognizable. This is one of those times. We knew it when your lady made her announcement that the change would be upon us. It is up to us to adapt or to die.”

“Wow.” Jude punched into the silence following Elijah’s pronouncement. “Remind me never to ask you to make a toast.”

The ancient Wizard grinned. “I can be erudite and pithy when the occasion calls for it.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Jude’s light words sliced through the tension crushing Jacob’s chest.

“Miller, DuPois.” Jacob turned to face the Wizards. “Vanagan took our prisoner back to the Brotherhood. I want you to check on the prisoner and see how far he’s gotten in finding out more information.”

“I’ll do it,” Jude interrupted.

Jacob frowned. Jude was too young to be any kind of a threat to Vanagan, but that meant he couldn’t really exert pressure to keep Marcus in line.

“He’s supposed to be our ally. It shows a lot of trust to send the kid instead of the twin decimators over there.” Jude shrugged. “I’m not going there to pick a fight, right?”

Logic and reason aside, Jacob didn’t want to send him into the lion’s den.
But he’s not a child and I have to stop acting like he is one.
“Okay. You go and check on the prisoner, get a full report, and see where we stand. And while you’re there, let Vanagan know that the Wizarding Council’s physicians aren’t coming anywhere near Cassandra. Clear?”

“Crystal.” Jude’s spine straightened, and he stood a little taller at the assignment. The kid deserved better, but he’d spent too long keeping him safe. It was hard to ask him to go into a situation with too many unknown variables. On the other hand, Vanagan was supposed to be their ally. He tried to ignore the kick in his gut as Jude strolled away, probably to look for a car to “borrow.”

“DuPois, can you look into those symbols you found, and, Miller, how do you feel about hunting for Kyrian? He’s out there. I’d like to know where and doing what.”

“Yep. Can do.” The Wizards nodded and offered a half-salute as they disappeared with a twist of magic.

“Paul?”

“I’m going to stay here. Might be nothing, might be something. But if the spell was constructed, whoever made it may come back to harvest the magic.” Paul didn’t wait for an affirmative, just tucked his hands in the pockets of his jacket and walked away. The “look away” glamour shivered over the retreating Wizard until he vanished into the sea of humans, just another rescue worker and investigator in the crowd.

Sending his Wizards out to handle tasks without him wasn’t new, but assigning them to missions he may not be able to help them see through—that was. He’d led this team for over a century, the world was definitely changing too fast.

“It is hard to let go, Jacob.”

He’d damn near forgotten Elijah was there. “How did you do it?”

“Practice, faith, and a great deal of prayer. You were too stubborn to listen without experiencing failure first hand. Only after you fell were you willing to learn why it happened. Every Wizard is different. You have trained Donovan well, but whether he rises or falls is up to him.”

“He’s a kid.”

“So are you, and despite the vague urgency I feel to tell you what to do, I’m not going to.”

Jacob exhaled a long sigh. “And now I want to know what you are thinking.”

“Of course you do. Just like you wanted my opinion regarding saying ‘no’ to a Council decision.” A deliberate air of mystery filtered through those words. “But this is your choice, son. Your choice to decide whether to stay apart for your men or cleave to Lord Helcyon and your Lady.”

“I made them a promise, Elijah. I don’t take oaths lightly.”

“And you’re not. But things change, and your men see that. Those that are willing will follow. Those that are not…then you let them go their way. That is the power and the strength of the oath. If you try to take their free will or if you place the burden of your choices on their decisions, then you fail them.”

Elijah’s hand came down on his shoulder. Despite his robust appearance, the squeeze seemed curiously light and lacking in substance. Jacob frowned and looked at his mentor, his
domovoi
, and the closest he’d ever come to a father.

“Jacob, you will do what is right because you will follow your instincts. They have served you well in two centuries. I don’t always agree with your methods or your choices, but I know you are a good and honorable Wizard. You care about people. You protect them. You uphold every creed the Wizard is sworn to. This choice must be about you and the world you are creating for yourself. Trust yourself to make the choice and trust your men to make theirs.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Let me know what happens and understand, bound to Lord Helcyon or not, you are still a Wizard and the best I ever trained.” Elijah gaze his shoulder another squeeze, and then he stepped sideways and disappeared. Jacob stood alone as the cold breeze iced his cheeks. He should have asked for a ride, but a low snort of sound told him he didn’t need one.