Syphon's Song (25 page)

The stone house rose in front of her. A grand, black car sat in the curve of the driveway. Apparently more people than the Rallises were attending this meeting. She slowed.

Vincent honked loud and long behind her as he sped his truck around her Volvo, forcing her to brake. He cut her off, screeching to a halt in front of her and blocking her from going farther. Her heart pounding, she put it in
Park
.

She jumped out of her car. “What was that? I told you I’d come straight here.”

He stepped right up to her, swung her around to his left, slammed her car door shut and hustled her up the steps.

“What are you doing, Vincent?”

“Just please get into the house.” He moved to swoop her up, but she sidestepped away.

“My shoes are still in the—” She looked back and saw for herself.

Her mother waited at the bottom of the steps. Her father stepped out of the dark chauffeured sedan. She hadn’t seen them in thirteen years.

A hard knot rose in Bronte’s throat. Hate. She swallowed it back down. It would only end up hurting her. She knew this from experience. Though she was tired, and it had been a terrible morning, she wouldn’t turn it into an excuse to wallow in lazy emotions that would smother her soul.

Ten stairs separated them.

Her mother looked the same—trim figure, smooth face, and sleek, dark hair. Her pale gray suit fit appropriately for a Mayflower matriarch. Pearls adorned her ears, visible with her hair pulled back into a bun. By comparison, her father’s hair was pure gray. The wrinkles around his eyes were deep enough that his eyelids drooped slightly. Time had not been as friendly to him.

Phyllis Casteel looked her daughter up and down. Bronte knew what she saw—a disheveled mess wearing a man’s undershirt. Her bare feet were the icing on a cake turned upside down.

She didn’t care.

Vincent leaned down to her ear. “Don’t stop for anything. Remember? I thought we agreed to the plan.”

“We did,” she whispered back, not taking her eyes from the pair in front of her. “But this is such a remarkable sight I had to change the plan.”

“A remarkable sight, indeed,” Phyllis sniffed. Her mother’s hearing outshone that of any mage Bronte had ever met. “You look quite the worse for the wear compared to the last time I saw you.”

Bronte put a hand on Vincent’s arm, a silent message to keep quiet.

He growled in resignation.

She tilted her head at them. “It’s a surprise to see you after all this time, Mother.”

“Don’t call me that.”

The past leaped through thirteen years and landed on Bronte in one fell swoop. But she wasn’t sixteen anymore. She looked up at Vincent. She’d stared at him then, too…behind that garden shed…as her mother yanked her away. Phyllis had screeched a bushel of insults on her for daring to tryst with a noble son. Bronte remembered her own confusion. She’d thought the boy she’d held hands with, the boy she’d kissed and cradled in her lap as he slept…she’d thought he was an overworked, disrespected servant. Not a firstborn son.

How could she ever make that mistake?

Regardless, her mother couldn’t yank her away this time.

Phyllis climbed the steps. Her husband followed. “You still haven’t learned to keep your head down, have you? Too late now. But don’t worry. You won’t have long for regrets.” Her smug smile glowed in the early morning light.

“Dear.” Her father rubbed his hand against Phyllis’s back. “Now is not the time.”

“Of course. It will wait until after this pointless sponsorship hearing.” Phyllis gave an evil, satisfied smile. “But we all know what we’re really here for.”

“This isn’t a judge’s chamber, Mother.”

Phyllis laughed sharply. “I see the Rallises have kept you properly ignorant. Well, good for them. It’s highly inappropriate to keep one such as you in the family’s circle.” She gestured gracefully to Rallis Hall. “The Rallises have kindly offered to host the hearing in their home.” She sidled closer to Bronte until they could have reached out and touched. With a sneer at her daughter, she spoke. “Husband, your ancestors must have greatly displeased the goddess somewhere down the family tree to have produced such defected daughters.” She lifted her hand.

Bronte froze, every muscle flexed hard, a worthless shield against the coming spell.

Vincent’s energy spiked with a rush into her syphon.

Her mother jumped back.

“Ahh!” Phyllis looked down at her hand as if she expected to see damage. From the energy pouring into her, Bronte expected to see smoke rising from scorched skin, but her mother was unmarred.

“You dare to spell me?” Anger morphed her mother’s face into a dark cloud of hate, but Vincent’s fury outmatched hers by a dozen of the bombs he deflected.

“Watch where you step, lady.” His soft tone was the minor chord before the booming crescendo unleashed its destruction. “Those who encroach upon a Rallis do not live to do so again.”

Though Bronte could never be the target of his energy, chills ran along the back of her neck from the prickle of his menacing warning.

Her mother was wise enough to retreat. Phyllis clutched at her injured hand and swallowed down her retaliation, cowed in the face of a superior mage. It was a temporary defeat. Her mother never gave up. Behind her mother, the future senator of Casteel scrambled down three stairs before he seemed to reign in his fear of the famous colonel.

Vincent wrapped his arm low on Bronte’s back and guided them up the steps, steering her in front of him. His power hovered at the forefront, ready, yet contained.

The door opened. Jasper stood on the other side. “Miss Casteel.” A genuine smile lit his face. “We are so relieved the colonel found you. Welcome back.” He bowed slightly.

“Thank you, Jasper.” She sounded like she’d claimed the role of lady.

Jasper looked down the steps, curling his lip at her mother.

It was good to have allies.

Safe inside the walls of Rallis, she contemplated her mother’s words as they walked through the grand foyer of Rallis Hall. “It’s not going to be a sponsorship hearing.”

“No.”

“She wants me dead.”

“Never going to happen.” He reached for her hand as they sauntered along. “Your mother is no one. Not compared to Wilen. Not even Masset. And you’ve survived both.” He lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “So what’s your plan for this?”

Bronte took a breath. “Well, I don’t have a plan, to be honest. Do you?”

He smiled, the first smile she’d seen on his face since…since she lay in his bed, a few short hours ago. Hours that had tumbled her life to pieces.

He chuckled. It had a wicked edge. “I have an army at my disposal.”

She gasped. Her bare feet squeaked against the shiny floor as she came to a complete stop. She put her hands on his chest to hold him back. “You would go to war over this? Vincent, no. You can’t do that.” She could envision the blood of the bounder mages, the borders guards loyal to one family, spilling into the land as her parents refused to surrender. The bounders were simple farmers nowadays. The last territory dispute had been over a hundred years ago. They no longer even trained for battle. They didn’t deserve an army descending on them. Even if her parents did.

“I’d like to.”

“But you’ll use a different tactic instead?

He sighed as if she were taking away his favorite toy. “For now. I’d request a hearing with a wise judge instead. You know, if I were coming up with a plan.” He placed his hands over hers where they rested against his chest.

“A judge who would rule in favor of a syphon?”

Vincent nodded. “A judge who would rule in favor of what is best for her people and their society.”

Bronte slowed her pace as the office doors opened, stunned at Vincent’s words. A syphon’s power benefiting society—she’d never thought of it like that.

14

Bronte entered the senator’s office. This time she walked into a circle of allies instead of feared enemies. They knew all her secrets. She had nothing to hide. A sense of hope—for a different, brighter future—floated around her like a wispy cloud. But it was too ethereal to grasp.

She took her seat in front of the senator’s imposing desk, terribly underdressed for a meeting with the Republic’s most powerful family. She straightened her oversize t-shirt and tucked her bare feet under her chair. The grateful smiles on Helen’s and Edmund’s faces at her return, and their lack of admonition, set her at ease.

As before, the senator sat behind his desk, Edmund to his left. Lord Rallis, Vincent and Edmund’s father, was next in the circle. Beside him, Helen’s proper posture hid her ruthless streak. Allison sat slightly behind them, as if she knew she wasn’t part of the family’s inner circle. Vincent took his seat next to Bronte, his chair touching hers.

“My parents are here.” She made the announcement to the entire room.

“We know, dear.” The lift to the senator’s brow softened his stern expression.

“Yes, sir, but my mother has superior hearing. It won’t matter where she is in the house, she’ll be able to hear what you say.”

The senator flung his hand with a quick snap of his wrist. Pressure squeezed at Bronte’s eardrums.

“Sound spell. Standard procedure for all official matters of family and state.”

Her ears strained to pop. She resisted the temptation to pinch her nose shut and blow to try to relieve the sensation.

“We weren’t expecting them until this afternoon.” Helen pinched her lips into a frown. “They spelled a message through the gates requesting to search through the gyre for the medallion on their own. I could hear it from my study even though Jasper refused to let it past the front door. We refused, of course.”

“I don’t think I’d have let them in if I were you.” No sense of guilt trickled through her at denouncement of her parents.

“Keep your enemies close, Bronte. Better they’re here than consorting with the mages of Rallis Territory and contaminating our people.” Helen’s explanation was a reminder of the difference between Bronte’s life and the political elite’s sophistication. To live on her own terms among such savvy would require a cunning mind. She had to adapt.

Vincent’s anger pulled her attention, bubbling against her, as if the longer he’d sat in silence, the hotter the emotion boiled. Though it wasn’t directed toward her, his agitated energy pressed against her. She put a hand on his arm.

“Allison,” he said. Here was the source of his anger. “From here on, you are barred from the gatehouse. You are not permitted to open the gates to anyone who wants in or out, other than yourself.”

The younger woman squeezed her face to hold back the tears that surely flooded behind her closed eyes.

Helen twisted around to her niece. “We have no idea what Masset would have done to Bronte,” she scolded. “Nothing pleasant, that’s for sure.”

“Allison was trying to help me.” Bronte could not let the girl be scolded over something that wasn’t her fault. “She thought I was coming back.”

Vincent whipped his head toward her, their faces inches apart. “Allison knew better, and now, so do you.” He sliced her open, hurt pouring like blood.

She staunched it quickly, packing the cut with her own anger. “I am not a prisoner here, Vincent. Remember?”

“You
were
a prisoner! Wilen’s. You almost ended up as Masset’s prisoner.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Bronte, I thought Masset had you. You would have been an outlet for his hatred toward Nons. And what if he’d managed to find out what you are? Who knows what he would have done to you then? You walked right into his hands.

“As things stand now, you cannot leave here. Not with the truth about your power floating around. Please tell me you see the wisdom in that. You can blame me if you want. Or you can blame Claude for getting you mixed up with Double-Wide. Or blame your parents for making you deliver their message. It doesn’t matter. The only place you are safe right now is within the gates of this estate, and they will remain closed to anyone without prior permission to cross them.”

Her eyes were so dry they hurt. She wrenched them away from Vincent and stared out the towering window with a stubborn anger.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life.” His rough words scraped against her with their anguish. “I wish you wanted to stay.”