The Black King (Book 7) (19 page)

Matt gasped. The doll reached for him, then pointed at the vials. Coulter set the doll down. It reached again, opened its mouth, and froze in that position. Slowly, the color leached out of the glass and the movement ceased. The eyes were the last thing to disappear.

“It cursed you,” Matt said.

Coulter’s hands were shaking. He couldn’t pick them all up to move them, searching for an empty doll. He couldn’t bear to refuse them all, and he didn’t dare release them, not knowing why they were imprisoned.

“Can you see which one of these are empty and which ones are full?” Coulter’s voice wasn’t as steady as he wanted it to be. He wiped his hands on his breeches. He could still feel the glass beneath his palm, warming to his touch.

“I can see the ones in front,” Matt said. “They’re all full.”

“What about behind?”

Matt shook his head. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the doll that moved. Its face had frozen in a different position, in the position of the curse.

Coulter sighed. He hated to waste magick on small tasks, but he saw no other choice. He wasn’t going to touch any more of those things. He pointed a finger at the dolls and lifted them one by one, moving them to an empty spot in the wall.

Matt watched as Coulter moved the dolls. Apparently his magickal touch didn’t create the same response as his non-magickal one. The dolls clinked as he moved them, and he was careful not to hit them too hard. That glass, smooth as it was, felt fragile. The last thing he wanted to do was break one of them. He didn’t know if that would release the spirit or destroy it.

Finally Matt said, “Stop.”

Coulter clenched his fist. The last doll he moved leaned against the rest. There were still five in their original positions.

“I think those are empty,” Matt said.

“I don’t want to pick one up and have it move on me.”

“It won’t.” Matt said.

Coulter took a deep breath, then reached forward. He grabbed the nearest doll. The glass was just as smooth as the first, but that was the only similarity. The doll was lighter, and it did not move, even though the glass warmed beneath his touch.

Coulter swallowed hard. He had been more nervous than he had thought. He handed the doll to Matt.

“This is yours,” Coulter said. “You’ll need to take it with you to Jahn.”

Matt held it as if it were an undersized baby. He stared at it for a moment.

“Would you like more than one, just in case?”

Matt shook his head. “I can always make another,” he said absently. Then he gasped and looked at Coulter as if Coulter had caught him in a lie.

Coulter didn’t speak for a moment. Then he asked, keeping his voice calm, “Is making one of these easy?”

Matt flushed. “I didn’t know I could until I touched it. Honest. I wouldn’t have come here otherwise.”

His eyes were tear-lined again, as if he were afraid Coulter was going to punish him for the omission. Yet Coulter believed Matt’s last statement. Magick didn’t work in a linear manner. Just because Matt had absorbed knowledge didn’t mean that he had gone through it all.

“Well?” Coulter asked.

“No, it’s hard,” Matt said. “I need to use a special recipe for the glass, then I have to find someone who can blow it smooth.”

Coulter reached forward and grabbed another doll. “Just in case. Keep them separate from each other.”

Matt nodded.

“You’re probably going to have to carry one of them at all times. You’ll have to make it invisible. It’ll be a drain on your magick.”

“I’d already thought of that. I thought I wouldn’t hide it until I got inside of Jahn.”

“Maybe even inside the palace,” Coulter said.

Matt sighed. He glanced at the vials of blood. “How much of that should I bring?”

“I don’t know. Tell me how to use these things.”

Matt stared at the one he held. “You take off the head. Then you put some of the Roca’s blood inside. Two drops is enough to lure a loose soul.”

“All right.” Coulter couldn’t resist a glance at the full Repositories. “Take as many as you can carry just in case Rugad proves more difficult.”

“All right.” Matt’s finger traced the doll’s features. “There’s no way you can come with me?”

“Rugad knows me. He saw me when we fought for Arianna. He’d know right away who I am.”

Matt nodded. He didn’t look happy.

“You’re going to have to set up a block inside your mind,” Coulter said. “You can’t let him look inside you.”

“Can he?”

“I don’t know. He was a Visionary, although that Vision is gone now, so I’m not sure he can do anything. But we should always prepare for him to be smarter than we give him credit for.”

Matt wrapped his hand around the doll and brought it close to his chest. “How powerful can one man be?”

“Your father killed him once,” Coulter said. “And Rugad was prepared for that. He was prepared for his death by leaving part of himself in Arianna’s mind. His voice was in Sebastian, and that could have brought him back. He might have even left a bit in Gift’s mind as well.”

“You mean, even if I destroy him, this isn’t over?”

“It’s over if we find a way to warn Gift,” Coulter said.

“And if we don’t?”

Coulter glanced at the three remaining empty dolls. “We’ll have to do this again.”

FOURTEEN

LYNDRED STOOD at her windows as she had since dawn. Something drew her out of her bed. She had grabbed a fleece robe for warmth, wrapped it around her, and pushed the windows open.

The garden below was barren. The tree branches, empty of their leaves, reached to the sky. The magnificent flowers that she had seen when she first arrived were long gone, their stems brown and dead, the hedges on which some of them grew mere sticks jutting out of patches of dying grass. The rich smell of decay reached her on the cold morning breeze.

But that wasn’t what caught her attention. What drew her from her warm bed to the window was a disquiet, as if something had gone horribly wrong.

She had awakened from a dream in which a Fey man with blue eyes—a man who looked like a male version of Arianna—was standing before her. She touched his face. His skin was warm. He leaned back, trying to move away from her fingers, but she put a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place. He seemed uncomfortable with her, as if he didn’t trust her. As if he never would. She stepped closer to him, and then she heard her name being called. She turned—

And woke up.

The dream had the clarity of a Vision. She had to go to the window, and as she did, she had a sense of blood.

It was that feeling that had her standing at the window long after the sensation had left. Her hands were numb from the cold, her feet chilled. The skin on her face was icy, and she was sniffling. But she hadn’t moved.

For the briefest of instants, she thought the Cardidas was covered in blood.

A movement in the corner of the garden caught her eye. A gull swooped, then landed on the gate, its body partially obscured by a thick tree branch. Gulls were rare in the garden. They usually ventured away from the river only when they were certain of food, and since they were scavengers, they rarely killed their own. This gull looked like it was here for a purpose.

The gull hopped onto the nearby branch and she gasped. A Fey man rode on its back. A Gull Rider. Lyndred leaned out the window farther, and the Rider’s Fey head turned toward her.

Ace.

It took a moment for her to realize she had said his name out loud. He hopped closer, the gull’s head tilted. Then he flew toward her. She moved away from the open window, and he landed on the floor inside. He shifted to his Fey form, his legs appearing first, then the gull’s head receding into his body. Finally he stood before her, naked.

She had forgotten how tall he was, how trim and muscular. But she hadn’t forgotten the feeling of his skin against her fingers, how rough it was, almost like scales, and the fineness of his feather-like black hair.

Somehow she had always imagined that, when she saw him again, she would run into his arms and hold him, but his eyes held her back. They seemed as cold as the bird’s.

“How did you get here?” she asked. “My father sent you on a mission.”

“I completed it.” His voice was deeper than she remembered, and very familiar. “I see you’re comfortable.”

She shrugged. He was beautiful. This time, he didn’t try to hide his nakedness, and she didn’t pretend that she had never seen a naked man before. But the flirtatiousness that had been between them was gone.

“Is there something wrong with that?” she asked. “You knew that’s where we were headed.”

“You’ve been here a long time.”

“Things are not quite as we expected.”

He studied her for a moment, then he reached out and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger. His nails were long, almost like talons, and could have scratched her, but his touch was gentle. The way he studied her reminded her of her dream, of the blue-eyed Fey whom she had held in just the same way.

Then he brought his lips to hers. In all their flirting, he had never kissed her. His lips were soft like other men’s, but the slight brush they gave hers sent a warmth through her and made her realize how long it had been since anyone had held her.

He started to move back, but she followed him, parting her lips and catching his, deepening the kiss. His hand on her chin kept them apart. It was almost as if he couldn’t help himself, almost as if he had a compulsion to kiss her, a compulsion he wanted to deny.

She tried to step closer, but his fingers dug into her skin, exerting a mild force to hold her back. He broke the kiss and lifted his head. His eyes were hot, passionate, the opposite of what they had been a moment before. He was as aroused as she was. She grabbed the ties of her robe to open it, but he caught her hands with one of his own.

“No,” he said.

She pulled her chin from his grasp, but let him continue to hold her hands. “You want to. I want to. What’s wrong with that?”

His fingers brushed the hair behind her ear.

“I missed you,” she said.

For a moment, he stared at her, and she could see the longing on his face. Then he let her go, whirled, and grabbed a blanket off her bed. He wrapped it around himself.

“We can’t,” he said.

“My father already knows I’m an adult.” She untied her robe and let it fall open as she walked toward him. “He might be upset, but he’s no one to be afraid of.”

Ace grabbed the ties on her robe and fastened them, pulling it tighter than she would have. “It’s not your father that has me worried.”

Lyndred waited. Something had happened. Something much more significant than the passage of six months.

She ran a hand through her hair and turned away from him, walking back to the window. The river of blood. The dream that had been like a Vision. And now Ace. Then there was all of the turmoil of the day before. Arianna and her Blindness. Lyndred’s father and his foolishness. And the decisions Lyndred had made about the Throne itself.

The passion she had felt a moment ago had disappeared. The cold wind felt good against her skin. “How did you get here?”

“To your room or to the palace?”

“Onto the Isle.”

He didn’t answer.

The river glinted in the thin sunlight. She could see only bits of it through the buildings on the bank.

“The last time I saw you, you were headed toward Galinas. What brought you to Blue Isle? Your loyalty to my father?”

He swallowed so hard that she heard it. “The mission I took was to find Gift. But you knew that.”

There it was again, that thread of accusation. She wasn’t sure she had heard it the first time, when he had said,
I see you’re comfortable.
But this time she recognized it for what it was. He blamed her for something she didn’t yet understand.

“Of course I knew,” she said. “Why else would anyone send a Gull Rider across the Infrin Sea?”

She turned then. A frown appeared on his forehead and disappeared just as quickly. That hurt expression in his eyes grew. He knew she had lied to him. Her father had told her about the mission—or at least, what he had guessed about it.

“But why would you come to Blue Isle?” She put her hands on the sill, then leaned on it. “For some reason, I can’t believe you came here because of me.”

He flushed and came toward her, his face open and very vulnerable. “I missed you too, Lyndred. I just didn’t expect to see you. I thought maybe you’d be gone already.”

This time she was the one to step away from him. “I’m still here.”

“I know.”

“You sound like that’s a problem.”

He glanced out the window, almost as if he were looking for someone. “Aren’t you cold?”

“No.” She crossed her arms. “What are you doing here, Ace? And who did you come with?”

She already knew. He had come with Gift. And he was doing recognizance for Gift. Was Gift more interested in the Black Throne than he was in his sister? Had Arianna been right?

“How’s Arianna?” Ace asked.

He wasn’t answering her questions. “Fine.”

“So what are you still doing here?”

Lyndred had had enough. She walked toward him and put her hand in the middle of his chest, shoving him back toward the bed. “I’m done answering your questions. Now you get to answer mine.”

The force of her hand made him trip on the edge of the blanket. He caught himself too late, and fell into a sitting position. He let the blanket drop, thinking, apparently, that she was going to try to seduce him. But she was too angry for that now.

“Are you traveling with Gift?”

Ace took a deep breath, glanced at the window again, and then said, “Someone tried to kill him when he came through the Stone Guardians. There were Islander assassins waiting for him.”

“Maybe he’s not well liked on the Isle.”

“Maybe. But we found a Doppelgänger living among the Islanders. He said that he was to report back to the palace.”

Like the Hawk Rider. So Arianna
was
trying to kill her brother. She was going to allow the Islanders to do it, and when they succeeded, she wanted one of her people to report.