Those Who Fear the Darkness (BloodRunes: Book 2) (24 page)

“Would you be so kind as to please relay this
message to the Lady Aria?” she forced herself to ask the girl, as
if she had any choice but to do as commanded.

The woman took the letter daintily, careful
to not brush her fingers against Jezebel’s which was fortunate as
she wasn’t sure she’d be able to not flinch away from the unwanted
contact. The girl scurried away and Jezebel sat back to await
Aria’s arrival. She knew the woman would accept her invitation for
tea, she had had Devon make sure that there was nothing in her
schedule to prevent her and protocol required it of her as the late
baron’s daughter.

Lady Aria was disheveled, her puffy and
bloodshot eyes told of nights of crying. Jezebel plastered a look
of sympathy on her face. ‘Thank you for accepting my invitation,
Lady Aria, I know this must be a difficult time for you.”

Aria just nodded listlessly. Jezebel feigned
embarrassment, looking away from the woman as she continued, “I
hate to even bring this up to you, I feel so awful, like putting
salt in your wounds, but I thought it was only fair to tell you as
you’ve been so kind to me…” she trailed off as if she was really
hesitant to tell her the news. She peeked over at the girl and
barely held back a smile in time that the girl’s forehead was
creased in curious concern, and her dull eyes had turned to
actually look at Jezebel for the first time. Jezebel stole a moment
to pity the fact that the girl had let herself go as she had.
Granted her father had been murdered and all, but no reason to not
make yourself presentable to those that had to be around you.

“What do you mean?” she asked, and Jezebel
bit her lip to control her expression.

“Well,” she started and then forced herself
to pause again before spilling out the rest. “I heard Layna talking
about how your father was ignoring all her complaints against me
and how she couldn’t allow him to convince the rest of the
council…I don’t want to get anyone in trouble…but I think…”

“Yes?”

“I think she may have had something to do
with, you know,” she bobbed her head a bit as if searching for a
polite way to mention the murder, “the incident.”

Aria’s brow was outright furrowed now. “Layna
wouldn’t…” she began, but Jezebel saw the doubt behind her eyes,
the tiny waver in her voice that betrayed the lack of conviction
behind the words. Jezebel jumped at her chance.

“I’m not making any accusations,” she hurried
to point out, holding out her hands in front of her in an open
gesture, “but, wasn’t she with you the afternoon that it happened?
Was there not a time that you left her alone, with direct access to
your father’s office? Again, I don’t want to accuse anyone of
anything, but…” she moved her outstretched hands into a more
questioning pose and shrugged her shoulders before letting them
fall, “she’s a very righteous girl. If she thought it was for the
greater good…”

Aria was giving her a hard look, her lips
drawn tightly together. At least the flush of emotion was bringing
some color back into her cheeks, it was some improvement to look
at. “I didn’t want to get her in undue trouble by bringing my
concerns to the council, but he was your father, you should know
the truth. I know how I felt when I heard the news about my
father,” she added for effect, “if he had been murdered, I would
have gone to great lengths to find out by whom.” She pretended to
look thoughtful, as if just coming up with this next part. “She
really wasn’t very social while she was here, I believe that you
were the only one she spent any time with outside of those she
traveled here with. It’s curious that you were the only one among
all of the fine ladies here that she would befriend, unless she was
trying to use you to get to someone else…”

Tears were welling up in Aria’s eyes and
threatening to start rolling down her face so Jezebel quickly
wrapped it up before the little thing couldn’t hold herself
together any longer.

“Oh, I’m so sorry dear, I’ve upset you,” she
laid a hand on Aria’s clenched ones in her lap. The girl’s eyes
followed her movement. Jezebel patted the hands and withdrew her
own. Then she leaned in as if sharing something she didn’t want
overheard.

“I’m not saying you should, but my attendant
said that he noticed in his observations that there’s a man in town
next to the butcher who claims to sell potions, and who will also
sell you truth serum for the right price.” She leaned back.
“Normally I wouldn’t condone any kind of coerced information
gathering,” Jezebel laughed inwardly, “but in this case…” She sat
for a moment in silence and poured the tea that she had left
forgotten in her excitement to carry out this part of the plan.

She handed a cup to Aria who barely took it,
Jezebel was afraid it might slip right through her limp fingers.
“Well, anyway there it is. I’m sorry for even mentioning it, we
should definitely leave it in the capable hands of the palace
investigators. I’m sure that even without truth serum he can bring
your father’s murderer to justice. Cake?” She held out a piece
towards her.

Aria turned her now glassy eyes towards her
and shook her head negatively. “I’m sorry Lady Jezebel, I-“

“Shh,” Jezebel shushed her, “I understand,
go.”

Aria gave her a small curtsy and left. Devon
emerged from the adjoining room and nodded to Jezebel before
following the girl out.

Jezebel got up and started pacing the room,
impatient to hear the results of this scheme. She hoped that Aria
would take the bait. She had a little surprise for her if she
did.

She wandered to the desk looking for
something to distract her to help the time go by faster while she
waited. She picked up a letter from the King and reread it again.
Since the night he’d left her abruptly after waking her in the
middle of the night, he hadn’t asked for any more reports through
the mirror, but she’d just gotten a letter that had been sent on
horseback. It gave no indication of why he was no longer using
their previous mode of communication, and the note sounded -
different. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it didn’t
sound like the same arrogant man she was used to.

She pondered this for a while, but coming up
with no solution soon grew bored with it. Instead she poured
herself a glass of wine and sat back to fantasize about how the
girl Layna might die.

*

The King sat patiently while the two men
debated his fate. The outcome of their discussion was no longer of
any concern for him ever since that delightful creature Katya had
freed him.

He had a momentary twinge of regret for
having let her out of his sight after she had so fortuitously
stumbled upon him, but it was necessary. After performing the spell
with her to rid him of the collar, he found it likely that he’d be
able to find her again no matter where she was. He felt an even
greater connection to her now that they had met in the flesh. She
surely was meant to be his.

The info he’d been able to gather about his
captors was sparse, but disturbing. His earlier conclusions about
the Order had obviously been far too shallow. The parts of the
organization that he’d witnessed only scratched the surface of the
real power behind their actions. The rest was hidden beneath the
murky waters of closed-door politics.

Nathair let his mage sight wash over the two
men. One of them shrugged a shoulder as if dislodging a nuisance
fly, but other than this neither gave any outward sign that they
noticed his probe. He’d found that when he concentrated very hard,
and knew where they were, he could detect the slightest whisper of
their presence. Not much, but it gave Nathair thrills of joy to
have broken through and determine that they were after all mere
men. They seemed to be partially impervious to magic, though their
actual talents were substantially less than he would have expected
- at least he thought they were - but he was still wary of any who
had managed to get the better of him, and supposed that this could
be misleading as well.

They kept talking about a ‘she’ -
I should
have known there’d be a woman behind this
- and no sooner than
this thought had entered his mind, she mysteriously appeared.

Nathair quickly retreated behind his
carefully erected barriers and refortified his layers of thoughts
to mask his more lucid presence.

“Is it true then?” she asked, her voice heavy
with an accent Nathair couldn’t place.

She strode over to him from the place she had
appeared out of thin air. She stood before him in three steps and
reached down to draw aside his robe. She probed at the stone
embedded in his chest.

“We’ve tried everything to get it out,”
supplied one of the men.

“Believe me, they mean everything,” Nathair
commented a trifle bitterly.

The woman looked at him as if realizing he
was there for the first time. Her lack of interest in him led him
to a bolder statement.

“You do know I’m the King? You won’t get away
with this.”

“Get away with what, my dear?”

“Kidnapping the King,” he clipped short an
irritated response.

“Why, I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” she said sweetly, “the King is safely on his throne
carrying on business as usual.”

“Or perhaps better than usual,” added one of
the men, snickering to himself.

Nathair felt a flare of anger within him at
the slight and he bit it down. The woman was watching him, and he
quickly clamped down on the emotion. She narrowed her eyes.

Nathair felt the bonds around him tighten,
but his own spells deflected them easily, and he decided against
further prodding. Besides, that one statement had told him much.
So, they had an imposter in his place. And obviously he as a person
was not valuable to them, but rather their only interest in him lay
in the stone embedded in his chest. He wondered how long it would
take them to decide that it would be easier to have him dead.

“Why don’t we just kill him?” asked one of
the men, mirroring his own thought, “It would be a lot less
effort.”

The woman barely acknowledged the question,
but she did answer, and negatively which further boosted Nathair’s
mood. Not that he believed that they could succeed in killing him,
but he didn’t feel like wasting the energy it would take to stop
them. And they had surprised him once after all -
yes, it’s
better that they want me alive
.

Nathair’s keeper did not look nearly as
pleased by this answer as he himself was.
Too bad.
Perhaps I’ll have to extend him the same sympathy when I
leave.

“No,” the woman was murmuring as she leaned
so close to Nathair that he could feel her breath on his chest. She
narrowed her eyes at the stone and poked at it with a dainty
finger. Nathair smiled and was about to comment that he hadn’t
realized they were on such good terms when she continued. “He’s
already chosen this host. If we kill it, there’s no telling what
he’ll do. He’s already stirring. At least at the moment he’s bound
by this host’s limited abilities. We don’t want him to wake before
we are ready. We need to find the one strong enough to harness
it.”

Again Nathair bristled at yet another stab at
his dignity. Although speaking of his abilities in such terms did
speak volumes about what the stone was capable of. And as soon as
he accessed it, what he would be capable of. This further fueled
his resolve to find a way to wake the powers within it and make
them his own. These people may fear the stone - he could
practically taste it on them, but he knew there was nothing he
could not control. He had the blood of a god running through his
veins after all. And look how easily he had reversed the roles
here. Who was using whom now?

*

Katya fell easily into her new disguise,
carefully adjusting her accent to match those of the people around
her. She had arrived in Endlyfta several days earlier, and spent a
great deal of time observing their ways before deciding that she
was safe to enter their midst. She had decided on the guise of a
serving girl rather than a noble as it would be easier to contrive
excuses to be skulking around. Coming up with the required
documents to get into the palace was harder, but once there she was
pretty well free to come and go as she pleased.

The staff was much better treated here than
in Gelendan, and though Katya approved of this fact, it did make it
much harder to go unnoticed when the nobles treated you like a
person and not a piece of furniture. She found herself doing a lot
of running around, but even in this she was able to gather a lot of
information. Apparently, one of their council members - and even
worse, one of the Triumvirate - had recently been murdered. As far
as Katya could ascertain, no suspects had been named yet, but of
course with the border newly opened, it was causing concern among
the courtiers.

That snake of a woman Jezebel was busy
spreading rumors about Layna and Gryffon secretly plotting together
to take over the council’s opinion by killing off the opposition,
but Katya could see that most of the people she spoke to were just
as suspicious of her. As was Katya. No doubt she was indeed behind
this somehow. She hadn’t figured out what she would have gained
from it yet, but she was acting much too smug to have things not
going her way.

As for Layna, Katya’s assumption that the two
of them would show up in the capital to report their intelligence
was correct and she spent a fair amount of time observing her.
During her long trek here, Katya had spent countless hours on the
project of trying to uncover the secret of the package which had
been entrusted her to give to this girl. Gerald hadn’t told her not
to look at it herself, and Katya didn’t see how making the girl
wait a few extra days while she figured it out was going to hurt
anything. Not to mention that in giving it to her, Katya would also
have to deliver the news that her parents were dead. And quite
possibly because of Katya. Though the woman’s last comment had been
unnerving…