“Nobody would take my case anyway,” Griff said, but an icy fist twisted in his gut. The nasty vision of him in that chair was coming true. The mages would chain him to the obsidian seat of justice with councilors probing his mind. He would either break and betray his friends, or hold, and have his brain scrambled.
He wouldn’t betray his friends.
“Guess they see no reason to bother with procedure since I’m already convicted.”
Stefan snorted. “If the three chicken-shit abstainers had voted our way, you would have your chance.”
“Not a surprise. They’re politicians.” But a tiny corner of Griff’s soul could still feel the sting of disappointment, of disillusionment, that the organization he’d served failed to live up to its principles. “Thanks for trying, though.”
“Had to take a shot.”
“What happened to the portal, to the people it ensnared?”
“Missy and Todd are safe at home. The captive souls have been liberated to pass to the next plane.” Stefan shook his head. “Tragic for them.”
“What about the people summoned for the dark of the moon?”
Stefan shrugged. “Gerry Armitage thinks destroying the orb kills the summons. Either way, we’ll know soon enough. There’s a guard there now, but the people in that circle escaped. The mages were too busy with you to catch them. They’re not a current threat. For now, Griff, your situation is priority. Lorelei’s here. Will and the rest are inbound. Val says she loves you and you’re to hang on. She has a plan.”
Valeria. Griff’s heart jumped, and his throat closed. To see her one more time, to touch her, but no use wishing for that. “Tell everyone to stand down. It’s too dangerous for them to be here, especially if I crack under questioning.”
Stefan raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure they’ll pay as much attention to that advice as you always have.”
“Bite me.” Griff smiled as he said it. He’d been damned lucky to have Stefan and the others as friends. “Seriously, no stupid chances.”
“No stupid people involved.” Along with the healing energy, Stefan fed him power. “Out of your hands, bro. Park the control freak and trust us to be smart. Will says to tell you, if Val’s plan fails, he and Tasha have a backup.”
“Magic can’t even dent these walls.”
“Will says C-4 might.” Stefan raised his voice to add, “All done here.”
“Thanks.” Griff tugged the coverall shut. “Stefan,” he murmured, “you have to stop them. When I’m gone, they’re the only hope—”
“Dr. Harper, what are you doing?” Gene Blake, chief councilor of the Collegium, glared through the door ward’s blue sheen.
Griff’s fists balled. He’d like to pound Blake for the pain he’d caused Valeria.
“I’m tending my patient.” Stefan gave Blake a cold stare.
“We need him for questioning,” Blake said. “You’re making him better able to resist.”
Stefan shrugged. “Under the
Caudex Magi
, only those fit in mind and body can undergo ritual questioning.”
“This is Griffin Dare, for God’s sake, a cold-blooded killer. Nobody gives a damn. They want him dead.”
“Very likely.” His voice hard, Stefan rose. “They may not give a damn about him, but they care about us. About who we are. If we throw away the rules because they’re inconvenient, what protection do any of us have?”
“Bullshit.”
Gerry Armitage stepped into view. “Ease up, Blake.”
“Properly healing even minor wounds requires rest to complete.” Stefan spoke to Gerry, not to Blake.
“Too damned bad,” Blake snapped. “We’re taking him now.” The ward dropped. Mitch Jacobs, Corin’s brother, and three other burly deputy reeves stalked through the portal.
Stefan stepped in front of Griff. “I won’t certify—”
“Doc. It’s okay.” Griff tugged him aside. He had to protect Stefan, keep him safe to carry on the fight. “Now or later makes no difference to me.”
At least he had a fresh infusion of power. That should help him hold, protect his friends. Go with his head high.
He turned a level, cold look on Blake. “We all know where this train stops. No sense prolonging the journey. I waive any right I have to a delay on medical grounds.”
“So you consent?” Blake’s eyes gleamed as the guards moved in with their shackles.
“I don’t consent, but I know it doesn’t matter since I’m already condemned. We may as well get this part done.” While the power infusion from Stefan was fresh.
The guards drew his hands behind his back, snapped the shackles on his wrists. Another traded the wall shackle for a hobble, but with a chain long enough for shuffling steps.
I love you
, he thought, even knowing Valeria wouldn’t hear it through all the Collegium’s wards.
The guards pushed him out, and he held on to the image of her. She was a gift beyond measure, a reason all by herself for him to stand firm. And he would. He would protect her.
No matter what it cost him.
S
tanding room only, Griff noted as the guards chained his arms behind the ritual grotto’s ancient obsidian seat. How many of the two hundred or so watchers had come to have their hatred confirmed? How many might actually have open minds? He would probably never know.
The ceiling was fifty feet over his head. On three sides around him rose tiers of granite benches, all full now, with the doors behind the highest row. Below the ceiling, a mural ran around the chamber, depicting the heroic deeds of ancient mages. He’d been in this room for his ritual fledging, his acceptance as a full mage. For his appointments as a deputy reeve and then, five years later, as shire reeve.
Tonight he’d be back here to die. Unless they decided to roll right into that.
Dread rolled ice down his back. He forced himself to breathe. As a distraction, he surveyed the room. Torches in a chandelier overhead provided the only light and cast eerie shadows over the spectators’ faces.
Down the wall at his back trickled a waterfall. Earth, air, fire, and water, the four base elements, made up all the room’s furnishings. No synthetics here. He planted his bare feet on the chair’s base and reached into the earth to ground himself as best he could with the shackles stifling his power.
Most of the Council filed into the first row, six feet above the dirt floor. Stefan looked grim, Loremaster Gerry Armitage solemn, a few others neutral. Healey gave Griff a hard stare. The rest of the Council looked at him with undisguised hatred.
If only he knew which of them was the real traitor. Blake and Otto Larkin walked down to the earth floor and stood facing the assembly. “We’re met for the ritual questioning of condemned murderer and traitor Griffin Rhys Dare. As is our law, I, as chief councilor, will be one of the questioners. High Councilor Larkin was chosen by lot to be the other.”
The two men walked to obsidian squares set on either side of Griff’s seat.
Griff’s heart hammered in his chest. He fixed his eyes on a point at the back of the chamber. Control was everything. He had to keep it or Valeria and his friends were doomed, and there would be no one to expose the ghouls’ ally.
He drew a deep, slow breath, blanking his thoughts, in the instant before Blake and Larkin each gripped one of his shoulders. Their two minds pushed at his. He let them past the first barrier. No point wasting his strength on the outer shell. Instead, he drew what earth power he could, summoned fog in his mind, and spun it into a wall around his thoughts.
The councilors didn’t dillydally with questions but went straight to probing. They wanted his team. His friends. He let them find the innocents, the town, the ones they wouldn’t hurt. Not Marc.
As though sensing a weak spot, Larkin pressed.
He’s holding back. Someone in that town knows something.
Griff focused on the wall of fog.
Valeria
, Larkin snapped.
Griff couldn’t help it, couldn’t block it fast enough. A flash of her face, of his love for her, slipped out.
Shit.
Blake and Larkin attacked that slippage.
Griff slammed his walls up. The questioners’ power built until his skull felt too full, pressure making the bones throb. Their hands tightened on his shoulder.
Sweat trickled down the side of his face. They already figured he and Valeria were lovers, but he wouldn’t give them anything else. Maybe they hadn’t caught her love for him. Or their bond.
Something there
, Larkin sent.
Something more
.
Nothing
, Griff thought. Blank. All blank. He fixed his eyes on the wall, his mind on the image of Merlin over the door. Tried to steady his breathing.
He has helpers
, Blake thought.
We have to root them out.
The pressure in Griff’s head spread down his neck and into his chest. His heart spasmed.
I’m no traitor.
He pushed the thought at them, hurled it against their attack with all the certainty he could muster.
A councilor is.
At least they had to feel his belief, not just hear his words. Larkin paused. A ripple of surprise, almost belief, leaked out of him.
Bullshit
, Blake snapped. His fingers bit into Griff’s shoulder.
Blake slammed his mind against Griff’s, and Griff’s failing power faltered. Desperate, he tried to draw more.
No go. Shackles blocked it.
He tasted sweat on his upper lip, ammonia on his tongue. So much for that power infusion.
Don’t let him con you, Otto. We have to break this murdering bastard.
There was a flash of something in Blake’s mind—ghouls, in a meeting with him—then suddenly, fear and guilt flared as Blake shielded his mind. So Blake was the fucking traitor, but Griff couldn’t focus on that. If he dropped his walls, tried to reach Larkin, the questioners would rip into his mind and find everything. Hellfire and damnation—
Remember those he killed
, Blake urged, and Larkin’s resolve firmed.
Power like a sledgehammer crashed against Griff’s mental walls. A wave of agonizing pain rolled through his head. He choked, barely held, his body arching in his tormentors’ hold. His blood roared like floodwaters in his ears, trickled from his nose.
The pain increased. Blinding. Lancing through his body. Cramping his shoulders, his legs, his feet. He gritted his teeth. His fists clenched on the chains as he put everything he had, everything he was, into his mental walls.
He could feel his fate now. This was the end.
At least the pain would end, too. And he would win. They would break his mind, not his will.
His friends, his love, would be safe.
Valeria’s face jumped into his mind. She would be his last sane thought. With his love for her bracing him, he waited.
Gradually, he realized he could still think. Still had his walls up. Could hear and recognize his ragged breathing, his pounding heartbeat.
From far away came Blake’s voice, “What do you mean, you let his lawyer in? He’s not entitled—”
“It was that or the Glynn County Sheriff’s Department.” Payne’s voice. “And the
Savannah Crier
. And the Wayfarer
Oracle
. They had a report we kidnapped this bastard. Damn it, Gene, listen. We let the lawyer in or half the Mundane world pries into our business. And the lawyer’s threatening to go to the All-Shires Council.”
“The murdering son of a bitch isn’t entitled to a goddamned lawyer,” Blake roared.
“Yes, he is.” A man’s cold, hard voice came from the room’s upper reaches. “Under the
Caudex Magi
, he is, just as he was six years ago, and that’s the last time you insult my wife.”
Insult his wife?
It couldn’t be.
Panting, Griff forced his eyes open. Sweat trickled into them. It stung, blurring his vision. Six years had carved new lines in the tall man’s face, but Griff couldn’t mistake the strong, clean-cut features so like his own or the gray eyes looking coolly down at him.
In the doorway behind the uppermost seats stood Stuart Dare, attorney at law in both the mage and Mundane worlds. Griff’s father.
Maybe they’d scrambled his brain after all, Griff thought, and he was hallucinating. He couldn’t be walking through the Collegium hallways with his father, who seemed as oblivious to the six-person squad of reeves escorting them as he did to Griff’s shackles.
Gerry Armitage had asked Griff if he accepted his father’s representation. Griff’s need to protect his family had given way before the plea in Stuart’s usually stern eyes. Griff had said yes, so here they were.
In a charcoal-gray suit, white shirt, and navy blue silk power tie, with his bland, semibored courtroom face on, Stuart might’ve been pacing the halls of the U.S. District Court in Atlanta instead of walking beside his condemned son.
There was more gray in the black at his temples now, and Griff got no vibe from him at all. But he’d come. He’d calmly handed Griff a linen handkerchief, just like the ones he’d always carried, to wipe the blood from his nose and made the guards leave Griff’s hands free until he finished.
Griff’s throat felt suspiciously tight. He cleared it. “Dad, what are you doing here?”
“I’ve warded a room so you can meet with your legal team in privacy. Best not to talk until then.”
Legal team?
How had he acquired a legal team? Hettie was a lawyer, but she didn’t know his dad or know about the Collegium. Or hadn’t, anyway. This must be Valeria’s doing, the plan Stefan mentioned.
Thank you, love
, he thought, trying not to send her the thought. Why bother, with wards between them? At least she’d stayed away. It was far safer here for his dad than for her.
They rounded a corner into a short hallway, and Hettie—looking very lawyerly in a navy-blue pantsuit and carrying a tan leather briefcase—rose from her seat by a doorway at the corridor’s end. When she stood, he could see the slender, dark-haired woman sitting by her. Smiling a welcome even though she couldn’t see him, his sister, Caro, also stood.
Griff’s heart took a weird leap that managed to be happy and painful at the same time. He grinned at Caro and Hettie.
His father caught his arm. “Easy, son. Almost there.”
Only then did Griff realize he’d been about to break into a run that would’ve sent him straight to the ground because of the shackles.
“I believe you know Ms. Telfair,” his dad continued. “Caroline is our legal assistant.”
Valeria had given him one hell of a gift. He hadn’t thought he’d see his family again, but here were Dad and Caro.
The group surrounding him reached the doorway. Hettie eyed the nearest reeve, a short, muscular young woman, with disfavor. “You’re blocking me from my client, Officer. Move it.”
“Take those shackles off,” his father ordered. “I need his hands free so he can write.”
And hug his sister, Griff thought. And Hettie. And, if his dad would permit it, his chief counsel.
“Leg ones stay on.” A tall reeve behind him freed his hands.
“If they must,” Stuart said.
The circle of reeves opened a path to the doorway, and Hettie eased Caro in front of her.
“Hey, sis.” Griff relished the words.
With a gasp, she flung herself at him. He caught her, lifting to bring her head to his shoulder, and held her as her arms locked around his neck.
“Hey, Goofball,” she said into his collar.
As he laughed, she ran her hands over his face, “seeing” him. “You need a shave.” She kissed his cheek, hard, anyway.
He planted an equally emphatic kiss on her forehead. “You cut your hair. I like it.”
She smelled of roses. She’d always smelled of roses. The memory threatened to fracture his control. He held her tightly before he set her down, keeping an arm around her.
Hettie kissed his other cheek. “Let’s go in, boy, and get started while your daddy tends to some procedural issues.”
“What procedural issues?”
Stuart raised a jet eyebrow. “The sort you used to call ‘lawyer crap.’ I’ve got this, Griffin. You go do your part.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied, but he couldn’t help grinning. Nobody was better than his dad. Maybe, just maybe, he had a chance to live through this.
Waiting in the conference room, praying Griffin’s father succeeded in stopping the Council’s torture, Val tried to steady her breathing. Griffin would be furious that she had come.
Tough.
She drew a painful breath. They were mind-bonded lovers. That made them mates under mage law if they both acknowledged the bond, according to what his dad had told her earlier. If Griffin expected her to bail when he was in trouble, he really didn’t understand her at all. She couldn’t live with hanging back when his life was in danger.
The door swung open. He stepped inside, and love flooded her. His shock at seeing her reverberated in the bond as she forgot everything but how glad she was to see him alive and sane. She sprang into his arms.
I love you
, she told him as their mouths fused and their bodies strained together. Now that they were both inside the Collegium wards, nothing blocked their bond.
I love you, too.
He lifted his head abruptly, stepping back even though he kept his grip on her arms.
Their bond vibrated with shared desire, with his longing to lay her down on the table and seal the words they’d said. But he frowned at her. “You shouldn’t be here.”
So they were down to it already. But she couldn’t hold back her grin at seeing him. Touching him. She finger-combed his damp hair from his face. “Miss Hettie, didn’t I tell you he would say that?”
“I believe you did.” Hettie gave him one of her decisive nods. “Val came to me first, knowing I’d want to help you, no matter what your father decided. When she told me the truth about you, it really wasn’t much of a shock. More like ‘Oh, of course.’”
Smiling, she added, “Val orchestrated this whole thing, including the media nuisance.”
“I stayed behind when your dad went to get you,” Val said, “because I knew you would kick up dust about my being here. I didn’t want us dealing with that out there.”
“Kick up dust”? Try a fucking mountain.
His eyes narrowed. He shot her a steely look she met with a level, unyielding one.
If you thought I’d desert you
, she told him,
you’re nuts.
“I like her, Griff,” Caro volunteered before he could reply. “So do Dad and Rick. Mom’s in L.A. for a gallery show of her sculptures, but she ditched that and is grabbing the first plane back. She sends you her love.”
“This isn’t a family reunion. This is serious.”
“We all get how serious this is,” Val said. “That doesn’t make us any less happy to see you, especially since you’re still alive.”
“You think I’m not glad?” Despite his scowl he pulled her against him, running his hands down her arms in a caress. “I would’ve given anything to hold you just once more, but I didn’t flash you out of that circle so you could walk into a damned cage.”
“I’m not walking into one. Any guilt I have is dependent on yours, on my ‘aiding and abetting’ you, as your dad expressed it. If you aren’t guilty, my love, I’m not either. And we both know you’re not.”