Breath of Winter, A (22 page)

“What have you done?” I growled. “Answer me.”

“To him…nothing much.” She shook the empty pitcher. “You on the other hand… Fynn.” She rested her elbow on the bars. “Restrain your sister.”

I was too caught off-guard to evade him. Fynn grasped my chair’s handles and spun me around.

“What are you doing?” I pried up his fingers.

Lailah clapped her hands. “Do tell her.”

His answer was a scowl, which gave me hope he retained a shred of control if he could fight her order to speak. His lips whitened from him smashing them closed. His jaw bulged from grinding.

“Males, they can be so difficult to train.” Her dramatic sigh made Braden flinch. “Not that one. He came to me sweetly.” She gestured toward Henri. “But that one refuses to obey even the simplest commands. I had such high hopes for him. He would have made such a fine vassal for our monarch.” Her lips twisted. “I suppose that means precious Idra must fend for herself. How sad that is for her.”

“What are you talking about?” I stared at her. “Have I gone mad? What am I missing here?”

Cold sweat poured down my back when I realized Henri wasn’t talking back. He was barely breathing. His gaze was locked on Lailah, eyes heavy, lips trembling with words that wouldn’t form.

“You are so confused.” She leaned in my direction, stroking the bars of her cage seductively.

That made me very, very nervous. “Why don’t you clarify the finer points for me, then?”

“You saw in me what my son told you to see.” A dimple shined in her cheek when I paled.

“Hishima knew?” If that were true, his entire agenda had been a ruse.

“Oh, he knew.” Her dainty mouth curved. “How do you think I became this way?”

The best guess I had was the obvious one. “You were infected by the plague?”

“Yes and no.” She waved her hand, dismissing the topic. “All that matters is
he
had me made.”

“Why would he do that to—” I bit off the insult I had been ready to sling, “—his own mother?”

“I was dying.” She began pacing, which made Braden twitch. “He saw an opportunity. You see, the Necrita approached the Segestriidae. They offered us an alliance.” She waved her fingers at Henri. “The Araneidae wanted answers, and they had the gold to purchase them. How precious Maven Lourdes is, pursuing her cure, determined to find the missing dead, those missing males.”

“The Necrita approached the Segestriidae for their gold?” I sounded doubtful.

“We approached the second most powerful clan in the Araneae Nation, one that was content to let the plague lie, one that was desperate to eclipse their northland neighbors, and one that was in desperate need.” Lailah ran her fingers across the bars as she went. “What the Segestriidae don’t know is their greatest resource—their only resource—is but a few years from running dry. They have mined their crystal caverns to their deaths, and only Hishima and I knew that.”

The Necrita must have known too. What other leverage could they have used against Hishima?

“I hate to state the obvious, but why not force Hishima to marry into a wealthy clan?”

“I tried. He loved Kaidi, obsessively, a nasty familial trait I’m afraid. He refused to break their betrothal and wed a more suitable female.” Her steps slowed. “Pascale of the Araneidae was my choice. Her scandalous reputation would have been cleansed by a good marriage to an upstanding male, to a paladin no less. What a perfect match they would have made.” She sighed. “But his hatred of the Araneidae made the pairing an impossibility.”

Now Hishima’s willingness to sacrifice his mother made more sense.

“He had to choose,” I said, working it out. “Either he gave the Necrita his future wife, Kaidi, cementing his political ties to their people. Or…he gave them the clan’s matriarch and the ruling maven. He chose to give them his reclusive mother, who he had all but stripped of her powers.”

Metal groaned as the bars—enforced with Araneidae silk—bent in her hands.

“He threw me to them. I was old and feeble, sick and dying. Instead of caring for me, he let me pay the price for his future happiness.” Yellow tears sprang to her eyes. “They made me this way, turned me into this…thing.” Her voice dripped with ice. “He made me a monster. But I am a monster who will survive the changes coming to this pathetic world. If you join with me, you can be spared.”

The one thing scarier than Lailah making conversation was Lailah making recruiting offers.

“Join you?” The idea boggled my mind. “Become like you?”

“This existence is a gift.” She reached behind her to trace a wing with her fingertip. “It took me a while to understand that, but Idra opened my eyes. She showed me the strength of this new form, all its possibilities.” She curled her finger, and Braden went meekly to her. “Males are chains around our ankles, anchoring us to the ground when we were born to fly, born to rule this miserable world.”

“Braden.” I reached helplessly for him. “Don’t go to her.”

“He can’t help it, can he?” she baby-talked him. “He has to do whatever I say.” She grasped his collar. “You could wield this power.” She cradled his jaw. “The power of life and death.” Wrenching his head to the left, she snapped his neck. “Death is easier.” She let his body drop, dusting her hands.

Fury curved my fingers around my wheels. “Why kill him?”

“I kill because I am bored, because I am hungry, because I can.” She snapped her fingers. “I tire of this game. I have done as the monarch asked of me, and I am ready to return to my covey with or without you, Zuri.” Her fingers snapped again. “Be a dear and open the door, Henri.” When he held his ground, glaring at her, she screamed, “Open the door or so help me, I will kill her. Do it. Now.”

“Don’t listen to her.” I shoved Fynn away from me. “Think about what you’re doing.”

“I am,” Henri managed through clenched teeth. Defeat bowed his shoulders as he opened her cage.

Lailah tapped the end of his nose. “Males. So predictable.”

“Why invite me to join you?” I stalled for time, hoping inspiration would strike, but without Henri or the key, I was trapped. We all were. He was the only means of escaping the bastille or the laboratory.

“I won’t bore us both by listing your attributes, but you are an ideal candidate.” A fond sigh. “We work very well together, you and I. You played your role up until this point to perfection.”

“My role,” I said, temper flaring as I began to grasp what she meant. “You planned this.”

Her eyes glittered. “Did you really think you could have captured me otherwise?”

“How did you know I would bring you to Erania?” Even I hadn’t expected to come here.

“Simple. When Kaidi arrived in Titania with Mimetidae warriors at her back, I knew an alliance had been forged. When I overheard what she planned—to study me—a prime opportunity presented itself, and I allowed you to catch me.”

I snorted. “You were too busy eating your son’s face to notice.”

“Perhaps,” she said softly, as if the memory was a fond one.

While she reflected, I asked, “Why did you burn Titania?”

There was no obvious answer as to why the city itself had to be so thoroughly destroyed. Kaidi had talked of nothing else until her curiosity was burned into my brain.

“It seems wasteful, doesn’t it?” Lailah hummed to herself. “Our monarch is not what I am or was. She was never Araneaean. Love is a concept she doesn’t understand, and she never will. I tried to explain to her once why I loved a place as much as I had ever loved a person. She dismissed me as being sentimental for my mortal life. My attachment to my son, she understood. She herself is fond of her created daughters, in her way, and that is why Idra assigned value to Hishima’s life.”

“She ruined the city to…what?” I couldn’t grasp what she meant. “Teach you a lesson?”

“With my
gift
, I could have saved Titania. I could have restored the city to its former glory, but Idra saw my devotion to Titania as a weakness, as a sickness of the mind in need of purging. She set my city ablaze, then she watched it burn to cinders before finding me in the caverns to inform me of what she had done for my benefit. She was generous, she said, in sparing the people’s lives.”

“How did she think that would help further her agenda against the Araneidae?” I asked.

“Idra was of the opinion that if Hishima lost his precious clan home, he would become more eager to rally our clan and lead an attack on the Araneidae to seize their nest as his own. And if I no longer feared what might happen to my city, I would become a better ambassador for the Necrita.”

“She ruined your city, so you killed her champion.” Revenge I could understand. That part was easy.

“Yes.” She studied her claws. “It was shortsighted of me, I know.”

Shortsighted. That was one word for it. “You aren’t…sorry…for killing your only child?”

“I regret the necessity of his death.” She clacked her fingertips together. “My son had grown to fear that which he helped create. Oh, he visited me most days. He fed me well, kept me in fine clothes, left me pretty guards to entertain me. I could have forgiven him the rest, if his obsession with Kaidi hadn’t cost me my city. That I could not forgive. When I saw she had come in search of me with a new male, one she had an obvious attachment to, I knew Hishima’s hopes to wed her were as the ashes of my city. His death served a greater purpose. It convinced you of my insanity.”

If this conversation was meant to convince me of her sanity, Lailah had a ways left to go.

I speculated, “That’s when you decided to use me to hitch a ride to Erania.”

“Cathis lacks the resources to accomplish what Kaidi had in mind. With Titania destroyed, it was a safe bet to assume Paladin Vaughn would assess the situation and determine the best place to keep me hidden was below the earth in his brother’s new clan home. It accomplished two feats. It kept his clan out of harm’s way and gave his sister-in-law that which she desired, a source, an origin, for the plague.”

“I understand why he sent you.” He was protecting his clan. “Why did you want to come?”

“The Araneidae must fall.” She tapped a fingernail against her bottom lip. “Think of it. When their clan is destroyed, so will their allies be. There will be chaos as trade routes close and alliances collapse. They are the linchpin. Remove them, and the other Araneaean clans will wobble. One shove from the right hand,
our
hand, and they will collapse. That is when we will strike.”

“Even after all Idra did to you,” I said, “to your city, your people, you continue to serve her.”

Lailah swept her hair atop her head and turned so that I saw a pair of metallic wasps set into the skin of her nape. “I am Necrita.” She continued turning until we faced one another again. “In this life, Idra is Mother and I am her first daughter. I am but one rebellious youth to the eternal mother.”

In a blink, her situation became clear to me. “You have no choice.”

“There is always a choice.” She flitted close to me. “I made mine. For your service to me, I will let you make the decision I was never given.” She stroked my cheek with a claw. “Will you become one of us, a harbinger of the new age of the Second World, or…” the razor edge bit into my skin, slicing my throat, “…will you die underground without the sun kissing your face one last time?”

I barely dared to move my lips. “You realize that isn’t much of a choice?”

“You are splitting hairs with an ax.” Lailah reached behind her and, with a pained gasp, she held out her bloody hand to me. “You would be my first spawn, and I have always wanted a daughter.”

On her palm perched one of the metallic insects I had seen burrowed into her skin.

I forced out the words. “If I say yes?”

“Then I mark you with my sigil and bring you before Idra so she can witness your conversion.” She brushed her fingers through my choppy hair. “That was the purpose of the pitcher, after all, to allow you to ingest as much of my venom as possible in preparation for what comes next. Fynn was such a darling for lacing the rim each night. Thanks to him, your body is primed for transformation.”

Great, well, that explained my reaction to her song. It was a trial run. One I must have passed.

While she fussed over my appearance, I sneaked a glimpse of a hazy-eyed Henri. “What then?”

“Do you think I came here for the scenery?” She laughed. “I came to seize the nest in the name of our monarch. All that remains to be seen is whether you accept my offer…or you die.” Her head tilted to one side. “Don’t think too hard, dear. There are but two ways out of this room, and you will survive only one of them. I do hate to pressure you for your answer, but my army grows restless, and the effect of my song is temporary on the living, even those I’ve marked. Unless…” She ran her fingers down Henri’s side. “Did you mean for me to kill him?”

“
No.
” My vehemence startled her.

“No need to yell.” She rubbed her ears. “I am standing right here.”

Stall her, Zuri. There has to be a way out.
“How long does the, um, transformation require?”

“I can’t say.” Her lips pursed. “I was Idra’s once she laid her hands on me. I was told by my sisters who have already spawned that some of their children’s conversions lasted for days while others held out mere hours. It is a difficult thing to estimate when so much depends on the will of the person and the power of their maker.” She patted my cheek fondly. “You may agree to accept my mark and then choose to fight your transformation. In fact, I might prefer it. Yes. I think that I would. Fight it. Your surrender will be made all the sweeter for it, and Idra will praise me when my feisty warrioress succumbs. It will speak highly of my strength, and therefore of hers.”