A Veil of Secrets (3 page)

Asher’s gait was the rolling swagger of a male who thought much of himself. His black hair was parted with a comb rather than his fingers and was cropped shorter at his nape and longer on the top. His eyes were black as river rock and just as cold. The saving grace of his countenance might be the contour of his lips. The thinness of the upper and the plumpness of the lower made his smile lopsided.

I flushed when his sharp glare pinned me to the ground, and I glanced away.

The report of his disapproval was deafening, though he hadn’t spoken another word.

I must have imagined seeing him smile, because I was quite sure now I had never witnessed it.

“I will lead my ursus through first.” Edan clasped my shoulder. “I want to be certain there are no surprises waiting on the other side. Then I want Marne sent through with her mount.”

Asher flicked his gaze at me then back to Edan. “I’m not sure it’s wise to separate you.”

Edan palmed the hilt of his sword. “Are you telling me you can’t protect her for a half hour?”

“I have done all I can to slow the risers. The ones we slaughtered ought to buy us time while the others fight over the corpses. But I’m sure you can imagine how the guards view Marne now that—”

“She saved my life. For all they know, she saved theirs too. Harbingers play with their food, so I would counsel my guards to be grateful they have survived up to this point.” Edan lowered his voice. “Tell me now whether you can and will protect her. I would rather risk the crossing together than her be harmed, if they dared. I think you and your guards have witnessed her ability to protect herself.”

“There’s no doubt of that.” Asher was studying me again. “I’ll protect her as best I can.”

“If you can keep your guards clear of me and the risers too,” I said, “I can handle myself.”

“Don’t take risks.” Edan bent to kiss my temple. “We must be quick about this.”

With a wink, he set off for his ursus, grabbing her reins and leading her toward the wavering air curtain that was the veil. The folds parted for him to enter, shutting on his heels, blurring his outline until he vanished from sight. Though he walked less than twelve feet from me, I saw nothing of him.

My hand rose to my throat, my fingers tracing the mounds of scar tissue where Edan had ripped Idra’s sigil from me. My fingers trembled, my chest constricting the farther he eased away from me.

“You don’t have to be afraid.” Asher stared after Edan too. “I won’t let them harm you.”

“Thank you.” As Edan had said, I worried more that I might harm them. I was so very hungry.

“You must have done this before.” His assumption hung between us. “At least once.”

“I was violently ill during the journey. I don’t remember much of it at all.”

In many ways, it was as if I had gone to sleep among the other fledgling harbingers then woke to Edan’s face hovering over me as we sheltered in the trunk of a tree while ice storms howled outside.

The rest of our journey was colored by my delirium, my fevered attempts to return to Idra as her outrage at my escape made my ears bleed. I was ashamed that I had begged Edan to end my torment, but I could not have endured her belligerence one more day. That was when he had gripped her sigil in his hand, told me he loved me, pleaded for the gods’ mercy and ripped the vicious thing from me.

Edan had been convinced the sigil was at the root of my sickness. He had been half right, but his brutal cure almost killed me. If Paladin Rhys hadn’t found Edan stumbling with me in the cold while he and his guards were out hunting, and if Paladin Rhys hadn’t welcomed us to his home or if Henri hadn’t been such an accomplished healer, then I might have perished from an infection or blood loss.

Edan would have followed me. He was too overbearing to allow for the possibility of letting me entertain myself in the spiritlands while I waited for his natural life to end. What did that say for us?

Perhaps our relationship was closer than it ought to have been otherwise. Or perhaps after being slaves to another’s desires for so long, we required fulfillment of another’s wishes to taste happiness.

I feared we were bound to each other now as surely as if we still wore the master’s collars.

I shook free of the past in time to notice Asher’s preoccupation with the flowers on my chemise.

Grasping the halves of my coat, I tugged it tighter around me. “Will you stay with me?”

He spared a measuring look for his comrades. “It would be safer for you if I didn’t.”

I brushed fluttering strands of platinum hair from my eyes. “Do they think I can beguile you?”

His breath caught as if a terrible realization had seized him. “Can you?”

Idra could. Lailah could too. In fact, she had. If I was a full-blooded harbinger, I could lure him.

“Rest easily,” I assured him. “I don’t have that power.”

“I almost wish you hadn’t told me.” He exhaled. “It was easier when I could blame you.”

I had to stop myself from reaching for him. “What was easier?”

“You are the loveliest female I have ever seen,” he said softly. “I can see why your husband has fought against such odds to keep you by his side, even though he must realize it will end badly. How cruel the gods are to allow such a creature to wear your beauty when all you touch withers and dies.”

Struck mute by his callous words, I could only watch him return to his comrades.

When his greeting elicited whooping laughter from the other guards, I turned and buried my hot cheeks against my mount’s coarse fur. Though my eyes were dry, I wiped my hands beneath them. I had only a few minutes to prepare myself. I wouldn’t waste them on Asher and his petty rudeness. It would have been difficult enough to cross with a serene mind knowing the risers were so near, but it seemed now I also had to contend with the stinging humiliation of being mocked by my own guards.

Lore said the veil consumed the weak, sickly and injured. I would give it no cause to taste me.

Chapter Three

With a final bark of laughter, Asher separated himself from the others. It shamed me to realize I had been watching him this whole time, waiting for the moment when he would speak to me again. I readied insults to hurl at him if he mocked me to my face, but his mirth drained once he turned aside.

I tracked his progress eagerly as though I relished pain wrought by his hand.

He smoothed his hair upon noticing my intense stare. “Are you ready to cross?”

“I am.” I took my mount’s reins and brushed past him. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Watch yourself.” Asher grabbed my arm, his grip soft despite his tone. “Call if you need me.”

I stared at his hand until he slid it down to cup my elbow. “Would you come if I did?”

“I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise.” He dropped his hand. “I’ll be listening for you.”

“You spoke to me earlier of persons acting beyond their control.” I forced out the words while I dared. “Did you consider me in your estimation? Or only yourself? Am I no longer a person to you?”

His lips mashed together.

Asher had a talent for saying what he thought without uttering a word.

I pitied him. “How you must despise yourself if you’re so eager to take your hate out on me.”

I sidestepped him and let the pulsating warmth of the veil descend around me. Heat caressed my cheeks and sent tendrils of my hair fluttering into my eyes. The air sat heavier in my lungs, and what I assumed would be a straight path branched in several directions. There was the road where I stood. Then there were six separate paths forking from the main one and leading deeper inside the veil.

“Lovely.” I rubbed a hand down my face. “No one told me there were different paths.”

“There is but one path for mortals.”

Cold sweat drenched my back as Idra’s voice filled my ears. Her voice. My ears. She was here.

I spun around to face a slender female wrapped in a gossamer gown. Her pale hair was bound in a complex knot atop her head. Her lips were lush and red. Her citrine eyes glittered when she smiled, and her teeth were serrated and pink as if I had interrupted her meal by wandering in this place.

“Which is the way out?” As though I expected a scrap of honesty from her.

Her laughter stung. “Why would I tell you the one thing guaranteed to take you from me?”

“Please, let me go.”

Her eyelids fluttered shut. “Your pleas are as sweet to the ears as I remembered them to be.”

I bumped into my ursus in my haste to put distance between us. “What do you want?”

“What have I always wanted?” She grinned. “You. It’s always been you.”

The beast spooked at the sight of Idra and ripped its reins from my hand. I slapped its flank hard and sent it running, I hoped, toward Edan or Asher. When it arrived riderless, surely help must come.

“Why me?” All the times I had asked, she had hummed to me until I forgot the question.

“Want is reflexive. There is no reason. It’s the desire you experience when you see something of rare beauty or intrigue and you must possess it, as if in the having of it, you too will be made better.”

“There are other pretty females—” I clamped my mouth shut. Who was I to condemn another?

“But none retained their spark. None clung to free will after their metamorphosis was complete.”

She owed Edan for that. Her sigil would have washed away my identity. Its removal saved me.

“Now, dear one, let us not quarrel over such petty matters.” She opened her arms, and I recoiled. “You are a lovely creature, Marne. You make males weep as they run for your arms to their deaths.”

Hadn’t Asher said as much? That my touch was poison and my love ruin?

I wet my lips. “I won’t kill again.”

Her gaze latched on to my fingernails. “You already have.”

I tightened my hands into fists. “You sent a harbinger for my brother.”

“You have no brother,” she snarled. “You have a mother, and you have sisters. That is all.”

“My mother is dead to me. My brother is all the family I have.”

She nodded with acceptance. “Then you understand why he must die.”

My shoulder blades began twitching, the skin there tingling as blood rushed into my wings. I gritted out from between my teeth, “If you lay a hand on him, I will kill you.”

“Would you consider a trade?” She studied her own nails. “His life for yours?”

My mouth opened in instant agreement.

But if I went missing, Edan would track me down the same as before. He would find Idra, as he had before. And he would realize she owned me again, a thing which he could not bear, and then my brother would kill her or die trying. What scared me most was, if I went with her, if I became what it was she wanted me to be, then I might help her. Or gods forbid, in my rage, I might end him myself.

“I can’t.” My voice was a hoarse whisper.

“I know.” She sighed. “Your misguided loyalty is part of your charm.”

Charm was an interesting name for it.

I studied the foreign landscape sprawling around us. The longer we stood in this spot, the more I saw. Where there had been only the branching of phantom roads, storefronts loomed. Sounds carried I identified as laughter, but the pitch rang too sharp in my ears and I winced. Other noise carried too.

I put my hands to either side of my head to block the racket. “What is this place?”

She lifted her hand as if hailing some apparition in town. “This is the crossroads.”

I touched the rough stone front of a building solidifying beside me. “Who lives here?”

“We do, of course.”

“This is where Necrita come from?” I startled. “Inside the veil?”

Her eyes narrowed past my shoulder, and a hiss rattled her chest.

Doubtful anything worse than Idra could stand behind me, I kept my attention on her.

“They dare tread this sacred ground,” she growled. “I will not have it.”

My confusion must have shown. “People cross through the veil all the time.”

“They pass when I let them pass.” Her wings extended. “You are not fully Necrita and therefore not mine to call. To hold you here is to anchor this place in the mortal world. To allow you to linger is to let them walk streets no mortal’s feet have ever touched without invitation. It is not to be born.”

My spirit was buoyant. “You have to let me go.”

“Do I?” A cruel smile twisted her lips. “You underestimate the lengths I’m willing to go to keep you. Armies I can raise. Corpses are plentiful, and the Yellow Death spreads easily. Strategists, those are much harder to find. You have an agile mind and the heart of a warrior. You belong here with us. The time will soon arrive when we march across this land to reclaim it in the name of the old gods.”

Her words chilled me to the bone.

“Whose cause will you champion?” she cried. “Ours? Or theirs?”

“I will not help you slaughter innocents.”

“When your final tie to their world is cut, then we will see how noble you truly are.”

“Marne?”

Asher came into focus as he neared us. His sword was drawn, and his shirt was in tatters.

I strained to make out his expression. “Where are the others?”

He pointed the tip of his sword at Idra. “Ask her.”

Dread flashed hot over my skin. Idra stood so smug and haughty my heart sank.

“You killed them.”

The person she hailed in the mist… Had I mistaken Idra’s gesture as a greeting when it had been an order? The guards would have given me that half hour to clear the veil before they set foot inside. They would have fended off a tide of risers before their fear allowed them to share passage with me.

How long had she detained me? A half hour? An hour? It seemed to me we had talked for a few minutes, but time must move slower here. How else could I explain Asher’s dishevelment or the fact he had arrived moments after me? The severity of his injuries couldn’t have been inflicted so swiftly.

“Contrary to what you believe, I do not make a habit of killing within the mist.” Her eye ticked. “We are not the most dangerous things prowling the crossroads. Consider that on your next journey.”

I lifted my chin. “I have no intentions of ever seeing this place—or you—again.”

“Bold words.” Her eyes twinkled. “You will live to regret them.”

“Come with me.” Asher had crept up beside me and taken my arm. “We must leave.”

“You’re different.” She sniffed at him. “There’s something of my daughter Lailah in you.”

His fingers bit into my skin. “There is nothing of her in me.”

Idra clicked her tongue. “Such insolent children she begat.”

My arm was throbbing in his hold. I shrugged free of him. “Ignore her.”

Idra threw back her head. “Ignore me?
Me?
He could no sooner resist his next breath.”

Tingles swept over my skin. A low song sparked in my head, so soft I might have imagined it.

Asher’s jaw flexed, and sweat beaded on his forehead. “I am my own person.”

The melody rose, threatening to sweep me into oblivion. Only concern for Asher grounded me.

“Stop this.” I stepped between them. “Let him go.”

I had seen the other fledglings practice their charms on unwitting victims. I wish I had honed my skills rather than deny them. I lacked the strength and mastery Idra had. I could not shatter her spell.

He shook his head and stumbled forward, sword arm drooping. “Do you hear that?”

I strained my ears to pick up the notes as Idra began humming them under her breath. Her song was a subtle lure I had small chance of trumping. Her method, her pitch, was perfection. I dug in my heels and wound my arms tighter around him. For a few awkward steps, he dragged me behind him.

I chanted, “Please don’t go, please don’t go, please don’t go.”

Asher’s entire body jerked. He swung his head toward me and froze with his attention riveted on my lips.

Had I ensnared him by accident? No time to fret the details now. He could hate me later.

Oh wait, he already did.

“Interesting,” Idra murmured.

Something interesting was happening, but I was unsure if we meant the same thing. The longer I held on to Asher, the more the cityscape faded. The town swirled and vanished, leaving Idra standing at a fork in a road I now had difficulty seeing. Even she had begun to lose substance. I could see rays of light shining through the fabric of her gown. Beyond her, the path was straight and narrow. It was all an illusion, all bent light and menace. Was any of it real? Parts of it must be because Idra said the Necrita fed here. Had their hunting grounds birthed the legends of the gods and the story of creation?

All this time, had Araneaeans been paying homage—not to the two gods, but to the Necrita?

“Marne.”

The boom of Edan’s voice sliced through the fog of Idra’s enchantment.

“Dear gods no,” I murmured.

He had been safe on the other side. Now he was here, in Idra’s realm, within her reach.

“Hello, Edan.” Her wings fluttered. “I have wanted to meet you for a very long time.”

As his silhouette grew defined, his fury became apparent. Idra breathed it in with a sigh.

Edan rode his ursus, and its wild eyes mirrored the terror in my heart. A shove from behind sent me stumbling into their path. I glanced back at Asher doubled over, panting through his heavy sweat.

“Take her.” Asher’s words slurred. “Leave me.”

My brother took him at his word, running at me, scooping me into his arms and onto his mount.

I clung to his waist to keep from falling. “We can’t leave him.”

“He made his choice.” Edan kicked the ursus harder. “I saw her, the harbinger.”

“Idra,” I said.

“She will not take you,” he snarled. “Not again.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Idra’s singsong voice washed over us. “I would dearly love a matched set.”

Laughing, Idra swooped closer and swiped her claw so near his cheek, his skin should have split from the pressure. As if reading my thoughts, and perhaps she had been, her form solidified in a way that left me gaping. The scent of rotten meat washed over me. My gut churned, unsure if I was sick or if I was tempted. The stench hit Edan, and his upper body turned, putting him face-to-face with Idra.

She clacked the razor ends of her nails together then grasped his ear and pierced it with a talon.

He punched her in the face, and she dropped from the sky.

After a flick of his gaze over me, he faced forward and worked our ursus into a lather.

The temperature grew colder, until ahead of me I saw a wall of wavering white.

It struck me then how Idra had been mist inside the veil. Now that we readied to pass through it, she was as solid as she had ever been. Sinister forces were at work here. I hesitated to call it magic, but what else could it be? The veil itself was celestial. Whosever’s hand had forged it—the two gods or not—they were not Araneaean.

Snarling at our retreat, I turned as Idra dug her toes into the ground and leapt onto my back.

Her iron grip around my throat strangled my warning to Edan, but as solid as Idra was now, the impact had jostled him. He twisted in the saddle with a fist raised, waiting for an opportunity, but Idra used me as her shield. As the static crackle of the curtain’s edge descended, Idra kicked off the ursus. She slammed me flat onto the ground, knocking the wind out of me and crunching my wings painfully.

“You have what you want.” I pushed myself upright. “Let him go.”

The vicious smile she cast over her shoulder chilled the marrow in my bones.

Faster than my eyes could track, she hovered over Edan. One of her sickly yellow talons pierced the skin of the ursus, and it bellowed. It bucked and sent Edan sailing over its head. He didn’t get up. Idra lit beside him and stabbed him in the neck with the same tainted fingernail. When he still failed to rouse, she gathered him against her breast. His head lolled. Blood covered his face.

“Are you happy?” She pushed up his eyelids. “He’s broken and of no use to either of us now.”

“Give him to me. Please,” I begged her. “Grant me that much.”

“No.” She cupped his cheek. “He’s still warm. No use letting good meat sour.”