The Soulstoy Inheritance (25 page)

“Alright, where’s the damn piece of treasure, or whatever we’re looking for?” I asked, turning back to Hazen.

He shook his head. “You know I can’t participate in this thing, I knew where it was yesterday.”

“Hence why I’m asking you.” I emphasised each word as though I were talking to a child.

He shook his head again, though he looked amused now.

An hour later, we ended up on the rooftop of the building that the medallion was hidden in. It was supposed to be some sort of enchanted medallion, like the token I wore about my wrist, though I didn’t in fact know what my own token was supposed to do. We sat with our backs to the building’s attic window, which was how we had managed to get up there in the first place, and had a perfect view of those who passed underneath. A few had come close to the building, but nobody had yet entered it.

“What do you think they have planned for tomorrow?” I asked him.

“Something that they thought would please you.”

“Oh? They’re going to put my advisors through the Throne Test they planned for me?”

He laughed. “No, they’re having an arena challenge. Everyone will be given the chance to fight.”

“What will the prize be?”

“Well… you might not like that part so much.”

I groaned. “Tell me it isn’t my hand in marriage.”

He snorted. “No, they’re still saving that for me.”

“What is it then?”

“I don’t know.”

I scowled at him, seeing right through his ridiculously innocent expression. He held his hands out. “Whoa, you know you can’t wrestle me on the roof, or you’ll kill us both. Save it for tomorrow!”

“Will you be fighting?”

For some reason, this made him pause.

“I don’t think I should, it would only encourage this union they have gotten into their heads.”

“Speaking of unions, how are things with Kaylee?”

“I stopped seeing her before the coronation ceremony. I don’t have the luxury of casual romantic entanglements anymore.”

“So? You could have made it less casual.”

“Turn her into my mistress? I’ll not take one, Bea. Whether I’m married or not.”

“Because of Rose and Miriam? What your father did to them?”

“Among other reasons, yes.”

“Why did Harbringer’s wife go mad?”

He seemed to go rigid, and I stared at my hands, chewing the inside of my cheek and trying to ignore his eyes on me.

“I honestly don’t know.” He didn’t question my sudden change of topic. “People generally aren’t aware of her, and Harbringer has built up a fairly good shield around his thoughts of her.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Some motivations are more complicated than others. He’s drawn to you, we all are…”

He trailed off, grabbing my chin. “What? What did I say?”

I looked down at his hand, and then blinked away my sudden tears.

“I… it’s an ability, I think. Leif told me about it. My mother had it.”

He fell back. “Wow…”

“Yeah.” I scrubbed at my face, and then ran my hands through my hair, drawing in a breath to try and calm myself. “I feel terrible.”

“Christ. It wasn’t your fault, power or no. He should have known better. It’s not like you compelled him, Bea, you might be…” he shook his head. “You might draw people in, but it’s not so powerful that we can’t think for ourselves.”

“Cale tried to kiss me, back when we first met.”

“I know.”

“Do you remember what you said to me, after Nareon compelled me to feed from Cale?” I asked suddenly, turning to peer at him.

He considered me, his gaze as shielded as ever, and I wondered if he were seeing the memory in my mind, reliving it just as I was.

If you still want me to kiss you when all of this is over tomorrow,
then
you can look at me like that. Not now. Not like this…

“I remember.”

“Was that because of my compulsion?”

He didn’t answer me straight away, but I found that I couldn’t avert my eyes. There was something about his stillness that held me momentarily entrapped, a feeling that something important was on the precipice of being decided. My palms felt sweaty.

“It was because you had just kissed Cale, and I was still in his mind at the time. I might have better self-control than Harbringer, but I’m still human.”

His answer was a relief, which of course made no sense to me.

“Do you know what I liked about Harbringer?” I asked, switching topics again without warning as I wiped my hands on my tights.

“He grounded you. You didn’t feel so lost when you were with him.”

“To be with him, I would have to break someone’s rule. And it felt good to be deciding something for myself. There was no reason, no ulterior motive for me to kiss him. He wasn’t compelling me, or tricking me…” I shrugged. “I just felt like I was forging that path for myself.”

I sucked in a breath, sliding him a sideways look. “But the evidence of what he was doing was always there, plain for me to see.”

One of his raven brows inched up. “It was?”

“He called me Siren. I thought it was because of this thing that I had written back at the Academy, but it wasn’t.”

He reached over and took my hand. “His weaknesses aren’t your fault, Bea, and I think you know that. You’re strong. Much stronger than you were a month ago, and miles stronger than you were a month before that. I can’t even tell you how incredible you were during your trial and I would have given anything to see your Throne Test with my own eyes… I can barley keep up with you now. You’ve been forging your own path for months, and you can only enchant people as much as they let themselves be enchanted.”

I smiled and kissed the back of his hand. “You’re a good friend.”

He didn’t reply, but something shimmered in the blackness of his regard. As with any emotion of Hazen’s, its intensity completely seized me before he smoothed the mask back into place and we both turned from each other.

It was late afternoon before someone finally busted into the house below us, and I awoke with a start, having dosed off on Hazen’s shoulder.

“Who was it?” I asked, sliding a little further down the roof and trying to peer over the edge.

“Louis.”

“
Louis
?”

“Why does that surprise you?”

“He doesn’t seem the sort to be playing games.”

“Vampires have an innate drive to hunt. This game was perfect for him.”

We waited until Louis left the house and a shout rose up from a few streets over, declaring the hunt finished. We slid down from the roof and walked back to the castle, trying to beat the rush of people that were now congregating in the center of the city.

Cale and Rose caught up to us in the courtyard, acting oddly quiet. I flicked a glance at them, and then to Hazen, who had his forehead creased in confusion. We were halfway across the fountain room before he finally seemed to break through whatever mental barriers they had been putting up, and then he stopped walking, clutched his head and swore loudly.

Cale coloured and Rose groaned, slipping up the stairs, not sparing us a glance as she quickly disappeared.

“Hazen…” Cale stepped forward, looking obscenely guilty.

“That’s my
sister,
Cale!” Hazen yelled.

I felt an almost overwhelming urge to laugh, but knew that now certainly wasn’t the time. I grabbed Hazen’s arm, and threw Cale what I hoped was an apologetic look.

Hazen
, I thought,
talk to me here, just get out of your head for a little bit
.

He looked down at me, but it wasn’t long before Cale recaptured his attention.

“God dammit!” He groaned, slamming his fist against his forehead as if he could knock the thought, or the memory, or whatever it was, out of his head.

Cale shot him one last cringe and then moved toward the stairs as well. I supposed that getting out of Hazen’s immediate vicinity was probably a good idea. I tightened my hold on Hazen’s arm and started to drag him out of the room, toward the back of the castle, and finally out to my crossbow garden. I had to leave him there for a moment, so that I could run back inside and grab a few lanterns, which I set beneath the hanging targets. When I returned to him, he was still clutching his head. I pulled his hands free and handed him the crossbow.

He looked from it, to me, to the lighted targets in the distance, and then whipped it up and fired. One of the lamps exploded. I thought it might have been an accident, but then he fired the second and third shots, and the next two lamps exploded. When he released his fourth arrow, I sent a blast of wind at it, to knock it off course, and it
thwacked
into a nearby tree. He turned to frown at me, and threw the crossbow to the ground, leaving me very glad that it hadn’t been loaded.

“It’s not working,” he growled, and then to my surprise, he grabbed me. “Drop your glamor,” he demanded.

“I’m not sure—“

“Just drop it.”

I braced myself, steadily increased the amount of Force moving about me, and then carefully drew away my glamor. It still hit me pretty hard, and I winced at the hunger that seized me, but it wasn’t hard to pull myself back. I opened my eyes once I was sure that I had a good handle on myself, and found that Hazen’s grip had slackened a little. He was examining me.

“Why this?” I asked, as he touched the skin of my neck.

“It’s a nice distraction.” It was said in an offhand way, but I still felt my eyebrows arch.

“Is it hard for you right now?” he asked.

“It’s not so bad. I’m surprised, actually. I thought it would be worse.”

“I’m impressed.” His hand ran down my braid, catching the end.

I examined the strands as he did, deciding that the golden-tinted red was a vast improvement on my usual colour.

“I disagree,” Hazen answered my thought in a way that had me wondering if he even realised that I hadn’t said it out loud. “I love your hair.”

I felt something twist deep inside me, and he dropped my braid, peering into my eyes. “I love your eyes too, the gold only hides them from me.”

He picked up the crossbow then, and aimed it at the last target. I let out the breath I had been holding and tried to surreptitiously lean against the weapon stand behind me. I was concentrating on pulling my glamor back into place when the last lantern exploded.

“Hazen!”

He chuckled. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you ready to go back inside?”

“No.”

“But you just destroyed all the lamps.”

“Afraid of the dark, Beatrice Harrow?”

Chapter Eighteen

How the Tainted are Sated

I awoke the next morning feeling sick. Quick had happened across Hazen and I in the crossbow garden, and we had ended up back in the tower, playing cards again. I groaned and rolled out of bed, accidently kicking Rose, who had been perched on the edge, reading a book.

It flew from her hands and she yelped.

“Oops.” I laughed, and then groaned again, clutching my head. “I can’t believe you kissed Cale.”

She blushed. “Hey, it just happened.”

“I’m not criticising you, I’m saying I’m surprised. I can’t think of two people who would deserve each other more though. I love you both, you know that, right?”

“I know.” She smiled, and then it trembled a little. “How bad was it last night?”

“I had to get drunk and do a lot of embarrassing things. But it cheered him up.”

She laughed. “What kind of embarrassing things?”

“I impersonated a crow, danced on a table while Quick sang some truly horrible song, raced a rat across the wall and almost cut my hair off, but Hazen interrupted that one.”

“Thank god. Do you know what your advisors have planned for today?”

“An arena challenge. I’m hoping the prize isn’t my hand in marriage.”

She sniggered, and then continued to list the possible prizes while I bathed and changed. Once I came out of the bath chamber, I noticed Miriam standing in my dressing room, laughing quietly to herself. They both eyed my tights, and I released a melodramatic sigh.

“Go ahead.” I flung my arms out. “Do your worst, you fiends!”

Miriam threw her head back and laughed, the sound like tinkling bells, and Rose waltzed past me, tapping me on the nose before joining her mother in the dressing room. Gretal came into the room a few minutes later, and froze, registering that the Queen and Princess of the human kingdom were in my room, laughing and sorting through clothes like prepubescent girls.

“Hello, Gretal.” Rose smiled at her, and she stammered a response.

Miriam managed to rope her into helping them, which I thought was a bit of an overkill, as I was only one person, and perfectly capable of dressing myself. Almost an hour later, however, they finally declared me ready, and walked me to the mirror.

They had dressed me like a Queen.

“Wow…” I managed, trailing my eyes over the toga-style gown.

It gathered in two sections from my waist up, looping over my shoulders and then twisting together down the center of my back. It left most of my skin bare, and yet there was something regal about it all the same. Perhaps it was the flowing fabric, which trailed a small way behind me, or perhaps it was the braided hair-crown that Gretal had given me again.

“I really need to meet this Flora,” I decided.

“Yes, she is amazing.” Rose sighed, throwing my dressing room a wistful look.

“If you saw something you liked, why aren’t you wearing it?” I demanded.

She grinned and slipped back into the dressing room, alighting again mere moments later with a pale blue dress draped over her arm. I insisted Miriam take one too, and then found that I actually liked fussing over them as much as they did over me. I brushed out Rose’s hair, and tried to style it in different ways until Gretal finally bumped me out of the way and took over. I looked down at myself several times, fingering the pale yellow material of my gown.

Once we were all dressed—Miriam in a beautiful court dress and Rose in another toga-styled gown, which was cut-off at the knees—we moved down to the courtyard, where Quick waited.