Chapter 6 - sections 1 & 2

I bypassed a few servants on my way through the kitchen, barely acknowledging them as they nodded and respectfully backed out of my way. I turned through the cozy passage that led to the stairway on the opposite side of the large pantry and started up the curving stone steps. My nerves were jangling although I heard nobody following after, nor murmur of greetings from the servants to anyone else as I sped past. My leather shoes made little noise on the plush padding of carpet on the stone, but my skirts shushed noisily to my wary ears.

At the top of the stairs, I took a sharp turn and without knocking, shoved Vicky’s sitting room door open and entered without care for her possible desire of privacy. If she was there, she had a lot of explaining to do to me. Concern mingled with my general irritation over her antics. Most of this mess could be directly attributed to her. On the other hand, Garrett sounded like he was gunning for her and however Vicky managed to upset me, she was still my full blooded sister and ally.

My head swiveled as I scoured the room. Signs of her occupancy were strewn everywhere: partial outfits in decadent fabric had been tossed across the chairs and loveseat. I stepped over a silk sash balled up on the ground and frowned. In spite of the whirlwind of her passing, nobody was here. I paused only long enough to listen – no noise. The silence was deafening.

Quiet in a room that ought to have someone present is ten times more oppressive than silence has any right to be. There was no sense of peace or calm in this silence. It assaulted my eardrums like a gong pounding just beyond the normal realm of hearing, causing my already frayed nerves to scream at the wrongness. I strode through my foreboding to the bedroom door which was closed but not secured, only cracked open.

I stormed through the door in a burst, breath drawn ready to bellow, but halted, the air in my lungs escaping in a horrified gasping rush of noiseless choking. Vicky had been in the bed: the covers were rumpled and flung back underneath the congealing coating they had acquired. Breathless, the room spinning, I reached out to pry the slender jeweled dagger from the spreading puddle of sticky warm blood that was seeping into the fine weave of her sheets. The sight of the individual crossed strands on the edges slowly soaking up the liquid, swelling with dark color and fading into the next was a vision that was burning into my mind as harshly as the lack of air was branding my lungs. So much blood. And no Vicky. There was no sign of life in the room beyond the mess on the bed.

Gasping in air, I circled the bed to check behind it. Fortunately the verification was futile. There was no body. There was nobody. My gaze dropped to the filigreed handle, sticky in my hand. The hilt was intricately designed into the form of coupling dragons, white and black, intertwined and studded with emeralds and rubies for eyes. As if from a great distance, I could hear someone screaming. It was only as I backed towards the door, my stomach heaving at the heady metallic scent of blood that I retched and the noise stopped. I realized the screaming must have been my own.

I stumbled out of the room and more or less fell into a chair, gagging as I tried to suck in fresh air and calm my treacherous stomach. I couldn’t look away from the dagger that had pierced my sister’s flesh, her blood vivid on my skin. I don’t know how long I sat there, shaking and waiting for our siblings to arrive.

I didn’t have long to wait. Yves charged in first and his grey eyes grew wide as he saw me, the dagger and the blood all at once. He stopped short, looking me over in assessment, his eyes growing dark. “Are you all right?” he queried as his gaze darted towards the still open bedroom door. “Who did this? Where?”

His voice grew more strident and angry as he demanded the questions of me, but I could barely speak. “Vicky,” I croaked in response and waved towards the door, stricken. Without another word, Yves followed my direction and crossed into the bedroom to see for himself what had passed.

Some distant and still logical part of my mind felt a tinge of relief as I realized that Yves simply wasn’t this good an actor. He was honestly surprised and upset. He even seemed angry through his apparent fear. They couldn’t have done this. Or if they had, it was Garrett alone. It wasn’t Yves or Eva; a small relief when Vicky’s status was completely unknown, but it was something. That part of me that wasn’t shaking and trying to cope with the recognition of the violence afforded my sister clung to the realization with an iron grip.

If it wasn’t them, though, who could it have been? Someone may have been here all along. Maybe she had truly been abducted before and her assailant accompanied her here, seeking entrance to the castle? My mind hummed with the scenarios, each more outlandish than the last. It was better than thinking about the blood which I still saw, no matter where my eyes landed.

Yves returned just as Garrett, Eva and Rhynn arrived. Eva’s pretty brow was creased with worry, but Garrett looked as cool and calculating as ever. Garret shot Yves a silent look of query. His knuckles as white as his face where he gripped his sleeve, Yves shook his head in response, apparently as shaken as I. We had all seen blood in our lives, but this sort of unexpected violence to one of our own, it was daunting.

Speaking over each other, Rhynn looked from Yves to me, querying why I had screamed while Yves answered Garrett’s look. “She’s gone and there’s blood everywhere. I don’t know if she could survive it.”

With some sudden half-formed notion of trying to track Vicky down and help her, I tried to push up from my chair. The movement caused a sharp pain to shoot from the center of my ribcage to my neck and I groaned, sat back and dropped the weapon from my hand. The metal hit the carpet with a dull thud. Blood smeared, staining a blue flower to rust on the floor.

Eva’s eyes locked onto the blade as Rhynn reached to try to help me, concerned. Horror colored Eva’s silvery whisper as she fearfully queried, “Tara, what did you do?”

I blinked in disbelief at Eva. It had never once occurred to me that any one of them might think to blame me for this. I opened my mouth to respond and no words came to my tongue as I looked from Eva to the others and saw all of them staring at me: Yves with confused anger, Rhynn with concern, Garrett with cold appraisal. Silence reigned.

“Me?” I finally managed to gulp out. “I overheard – I thought that one of you might try something – I came to warn her. But this. I didn’t expect this. Not this.” I shook my head. I felt trapped in some kind of ridiculous nightmare. How could anyone believe this of me? I had been attacked and hurt. Vicky had been attacked and hurt, maybe killed. And now my siblings were blaming me? Where was Dad? Why hadn’t he put a halt to all of this? He was the one who usually protected us, who understood and stopped these things from going too far.

I frowned, a sudden realization striking me as I took a second look around the occupants of the room. My three half-siblings, Rhynn, all of the family who were usually here were present, except for one.

“Where is Dad?”

Garrett and Rhynn stole glances at each other. The first looked adamant, the second swallowed nervously at my question. Yves glanced at Garrett and looked quickly away from all of us. Eva avoided eye contact from everyone, taking a sudden interest in the sitting room windows. The silence renewed itself with a vengeance, filling the room to stand between us all; an unwelcome and volatile guest who none were comfortable addressing.

Yves fidgeted with his sleeves and Rhynn hesitantly cleared his throat, although that did nothing to clear the malevolent discomfort filling the room. Garrett glared at Rhynn who faltered into silence again. I continued to wait, anger starting to push through my shock. Let them feel uncomfortable. Something was wrong and they were all trying to keep it from me.

Under my gimlet stare, Rhynn finally reluctantly offered in a quavering voice, braving Garrett’s open disapproval; “It’s the reason for the meeting. I was going to explain, once you felt well enough. I called you…”

I cut off Rhynn’s wavering explanation as my ire fired up to take control, shuttering off fear and horror into a mental compartment where they could jibber and quake until later. “Vicky might be dead. I’ve been injured. Where the hell is Dad?” I rose from my seat accusingly, the pain in my shoulder a small thing compared to the fury brewing in my gut.

Rhynn looked alarmed as I stood and took a step back and away. I followed, stepping over the dagger to advance upon him. Looking tired and old as he fell back under my insistent glare he weakly offered, “That’s just it, Tara, it all happened so fast.”

I grated out each word, the danger of each one penned into individual sentences, lest the weight of them all together create an attack so devastating that they would destroy a response before it came to my ears. “Where.”

With each word I strode another determined and insistent step. “Is.”

Control. I had to control myself lest I harm anyone unduly. I needed to know. This was important. This was more important than the assassin. This was more important than Vicky’s assailant. I had to know. “Dad?”

My determination had even Garrett looking nervous and he stepped into the remaining space between Rhynn and me, protecting the old man’s body with his bulky shield of flesh. Garrett’s baritone was still calm, in spite of the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. “We don’t know. We think he may be dead.” He raised his large hands as if to head me off, but my reaction wasn’t what he anticipated.

I sagged in place, feeling quite literally like a rug had been pulled out from under me. I was off-balanced and could barely remain upright. Dead. Dad was dead? How could I not have known? Shouldn’t I have felt it or somehow known? What good was being part fey if you couldn’t figure these things out on your own? I wanted to burst into tears and scream and collapse all at once, but I managed to remain upright, if barely. I turned away from the pair, shaking my head.

Dad was our protection in so many ways. How could he be gone? I swayed in place, my fire quenched as quickly as it had come and I looked around at the others, emptiness threatening to consume me as quickly as it had extinguished my flame in the unending vacuum of misery. All of them looked uncomfortable, except for Garrett and only he met my bewildered and searching gaze.

“How? Why aren’t you certain?” I demanded flatly.

Hearing my voice, Rhynn realized that the danger had passed and he rounded Garrett to try to guide me back to a seat. I shook him off. He had betrayed me by omission. I didn’t want his help. “A letter was found,” Rhynn explained. His concern didn’t mask the grim set to his craggy features.

“The Shadow Demesnes. A request for a duel. I tried to get him to take a host, but he laughed at me, the way he would when I gave foolish strategy,” Garrett interjected. “You know how Dad was when he had a plan.”

I scowled, trying to think straight. The Shadow Demesnes are another world, not exactly like the Mistlands, but similar. There are connections. I never was keen on the politics or histories of the two. The only thing I knew for certain was that there had long been a rivalry. Those of the Shadows had a tendency to be more predatory and I knew that they had more than once sought to conquer Dad’s realm within the Mistlands. Always we had beaten them back, under Dad’s guidance.

“It isn’t like him to go without precautions, without a plan. It’s too obvious a trap. He went alone? How long ago?” I queried.

Garrett nodded grimly in response to my first question, but it was Yves who answered the latter, his tenor low and soft. “Eleven months ago. An attempt at searching was made, but they caught Garrett and overwhelmed him.”

“They laughed when I asked about Dad and suggested we start readying the castle for them,” Garrett spat out, grimacing at the memory of his failure.

I closed my eyes, pained. None of this was making sense. Vicky. Dad. I shook my head, trying to sift through my emotions in search of logical reasoning. At the sound of a quiet murmuring, I opened my eyes to see Rhynn at the door of the sitting room, speaking to a servant about mustering the guards to search the castle for Vicky or any intruder. I almost spoke up to mention Tristam’s appearance before, but I stopped myself before speaking. I don’t know why I wanted to trust him, but I did. Maybe because everything else was falling apart and I felt like I had to trust someone.

Instead, I turned to Garrrett and asked, “What does this mean for the realm?” I hadn’t heard anything about Dad declaring an heir, but if the Shadow Demesnes were intending a full scale war, someone would have to lead the Mistlands in the fight. And just because I hadn’t heard anything didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. It just meant that I wasn’t the one he had chosen. At least, that was the assumption I was operating under.

Tradition dictates that fey thrones pass by right of conquest, not blood heredity alone, but although Dad permitted sibling rivalry he was unusually progressive and understanding of human ways. He had always drawn the line at seeing his children killing one another off and although the fights between Garrett and Cullen particularly had been violent episodes, they had never been more than our strength and recuperation could handle.

Yet again, however, I had asked the wrong question, for a void of discomfort was the only response I received until Rhynn had concluded his hushed conference with the servant. Yves and Garrett seemed to be communicating silently, staring at each other, but not at me. Eva turned from the window and slowly made her way to the dagger on the floor, looking down at it, her delicate jaw clenched and taut. I could see the muscles in her throat and shoulders drawn tightly in tension.

As Rhynn turned back into the room, Garrett commanded of him, “Tell her.”

An expression of pure misery slowly swept across Rhynn’s worn features. His voice was low and gravelly as he spoke, watery eyes upon me. “Among your father’s effects, no heir has been named, but an edict provides for the course of action should he have fallen or been taken captive and absent for a year’s time. It follows the old traditions. The first living child who finds and possesses the Bloodsword shall have the strength to hold the throne against all foes, be they siblings or other. The power it brings will secure the kingdom.”

My jaw must have dropped because I snapped it closed. “This is ridiculous! It pits us all against each other. First living child – it encourages us to kill one another!” I slowly looked at my siblings. Yves frowned guiltily. Eva looked up to meet my gaze beseechingly in silence.

Garrett, however, stepped forward with a condescending reassurance. “Don’t be so melodramatic. It’s tradition. So long as you bow to the strongest, I see no reason to kill you all.”