“Your Highness,” one of the generals protests. “Odion never would’ve approved this decision. Isobel approached him months ago offering her services, and he turned the Dark Army down out of understanding of what it would cost Bron.” He hesitates. The flash in his eye says there’s more—there’s something else he’s not saying.
General Naran puts his hand out as if to calm his colleague. “Your Highness, allowing Lady Isobel here for questioning is one thing. But allowing this may likely start a civil war. Yes, we want to pursue what we need from Tulla, but allow us to do it with our own people in a time of better choosing. Not with a rabid army we know nothing about who is a threat to our very existence.”
“You disagree with my tactics?” Draewulf snarls and his tone feels like a stone being sharpened.
“I think you unintentionally have conveyed disregard for our people, our generals, and our way of li—”
His voice cuts off so smooth that General Cronin picks up speaking for him, unaware of Draewulf’s hand stretched out. “What is it—four years you’ve been gone? Perhaps it’s time for new leadership the Bron people can trust to hold their best interest.”
Rasha rises.
Isobel’s hand flashes out and slips between the man’s shoulder blades so fast, General Cronin doesn’t even have time to wince. Nor to notice the cracking of his colleague’s neck beneath Draewulf’s fingers.
The silver-haired general’s face has already paled and suddenly the only sound emerging from his lips is a gasp for air followed by a gurgle before he slumps chin-first onto the table, dead like his wrinkly cohort, blood oozing from both their mouths.
Lady Isobel steps back, and every face in the room is riveted on her and Eogan-who-is-Draewulf.
I pull out both knives and am preparing to toss them low when Eogan’s hand flicks and an unseen force flips my blades down, impaling the knives into the ground at my feet. Without batting an eye, he twitches his hand again, and this time, that invisible force is pressing me against my seat.
I try to lift a fist as the darkness slides along my veins like a raw hunger stirring. Why the members here aren’t alarmed at Eogan using powers his real self isn’t capable of is beyond me. Or perhaps he’s been away so many years, they no longer know what exactly he is capable of anymore.
Abruptly that cold in me is coiling with this whole scene. My skin is cooling rapidly and my heartpulse is speeding up, but when I try to focus on it, to see if I can funnel it toward Draewulf or his daughter, nothing happens beyond the chill fusing deeper to my bones.
A vision of the spider biting, numbing, working her poison through my blood materializes, and the thought erupts again that the abilities are not expanded enough to work here, not now, on real people.
On the people I want to kill.
And I do want to kill them.
For the first time since I can ever remember, instead of guilt following a murderous craving like that, my hatred just grows stronger.
“Anyone else want to question my judgment?” Draewulf challenges. “Excellent,” he says without waiting for a response. “Then allow me to introduce you to your new war general—the Lady Isobel.” He smiles. “If you have any concerns as to her assignment, I’m sure she’d be pleased to persuade you.”
He turns in a semicircle, as if to make eye contact with everyone in the room, and the way Isobel leans in, it’s like she’s hoping someone will.
“Now, let’s see, where were we? Ah yes, preparing to take over Tulla.” He tips his head to his daughter.
She snaps her fingers and signals her personal Mortisfaire guards—three of them along the wall on either side of us, their faces masked and hair flowing out. They walk to the end of the room and throw the doors open.
I smell them before I see them. The scent of moist earth and bone-dust and decay, swirling its fingers, stirring the room with rank suffocation just like in the alleyway last night. It’s the scent of bodies long dead.
It’s the breath of plague that is not of this world.
The smell saturates until some of the Assembly and delegates are coughing as the Mortisfaire step back to expose two thin, eerily tall forms draped from head to foot in ratty gray robes. Silent. Gray. Like something from the grave, except they’re walking.
As they get closer I realize they’re hissing, and it’s only when they stop ten paces from the table to stare at us beneath those icy gray cloaks that I get a full look at their faces.
Princess Rasha and Lady Gwen’s uttered cries match Lord Wellimton’s, as do those of much of the Assembly.
They are animals morphed with long-dead humans. And they reek of unnatural magic.
I will my face straight, will my eyes not to give any reaction as the horror dawns, slow and nauseating. This is what Draewulf can do. It’s what he’s been doing for years.
But where did he get the dead bodies?
A sickening feeling creeps into my gut.
A noise from beyond the doors overpowers the outcry from the Assembly.