Taliesin Ascendant (The Children and the Blood) (19 page)

The guards’ eyes widened. They started toward her.

“
What?
” she protested, retreating. “No, you have to arrest these two! They’ve gone feral. They’re killing cripples to make themselves stronger.”

The guards looked between her and Darius, and then the closest held up his hands placatingly. “Please, your highness,” he said, his magic rising around him protectively as he approached. “Just come with us. Everything will be fine.”

Behind his shields, Sebastian smirked.

“No decision needs to be made today, your highness,” Darius persisted. “I’m certain matters will seem clearer once you’ve had some time to think.”

Her gaze darted between them as the guards came closer. Around the room, shields strengthened.

Swiftly, she ripped the magic from the nearest guard and threw it at them all. The blast tossed the soldiers into the walls and sent the councilmen stumbling as it cleared a path to the door.

She raced out of the room.

Metal grating clanked as she ran across the walkway, heading for the stairs. From the factory floor, people stared as she dashed down the steps and into the crowd.

“Stop her!” Darius shouted from the doorway.

Guards rushed from the crowd to block her path. She skidded and then spun only to find more guards emerging from the halls, cutting off any retreat. Bafflement on their faces, they looked between her and Darius as the councilman walked down the stairs.

“Please, your highness,” he called to her. “You cannot surrender to Taliesin! For your people’s sake, listen to reason!”

“Stop lying!” she yelled as gasps rose from the crowd. “I never said that!”

“Please!” Darius pleaded over her words. “I understand what the loss of your family has done to you, but this is not the answer!”

“Stop
lying
!” she shouted again. She looked to the guards. “Get out of my way!”

Warily, the guards tightened their circle around her, tossing uncomfortable glances to one another. She backed up, trying to keep away from them as her gaze darted to the throng beyond the soldiers. Fear and horror were everywhere.

Coming to the edge of the wall of guards, Darius placed a hand on one of their shoulders, motioning the man aside. Worriedly, the soldier hesitated, and then moved enough to allow the councilman to pass.

Her hands burst into flame as Darius came toward her, and he shook his head sorrowfully at the sight.

“Stay away from me,” she warned.

Near-theatrical pity moved through his eyes. Flames licked his defenses as he stopped only inches from her.

“Look around, your highness,” Darius murmured. “Look at the children. See the terror in their eyes. And think, your majesty. I can assuage their concern, tell them the surrender was a misunderstanding. But if you attack me now, or if you burn these innocent guards alive, everything I’ve made them fear of you will be proved true.”

Her stomach clenched as he met her gaze. “What will you choose, your highness? Will you become the monster of these children’s nightmares?”

Barely breathing, she didn’t look away from him. Tears stung her eyes, impotent and furious. She could feel the pressure of the crowd, staring at her in horror.

And she let the flames on her hands grow higher.

His face tightened, suggestions of anger moving beneath the surface. “Then consider this,” he whispered. He bent his head closer to hers and she twitched away. “The cripples we captured are not all dead. But they could be. And if you do not surrender, or if you try to escape, one will die for every day you oppose me.”

She could feel his breath on her cheek. Her hands shook with the desire to let the fire rise. Her gaze slid back to meet his, and caught on Sebastian standing in the crowd.

He winked at her, dark assurance in his eyes.

Trembling, she looked around him. Fear marked so many faces.

But not all.

The air slipped from her.

And she let the flames die.

“Good girl,” Darius said softly.

Motioning to the guards, he stepped aside as they rushed forward. Grabbing her shoulders, they spun her around to guide her back the way she had come. The crowd parted hurriedly before them, clearing a path.

She looked back over her shoulder, meeting Darius’ gaze.

Decorous gratitude on his face, he bowed his head as they led her away.

Inside a storage room in the basement of the factory, she paced.

Cement walls surrounded her, and a cot huddled beside a small utility table in one corner. Outside the metal door, four guards waited. An additional pair flanked the inside, each the size of a linebacker. Clearly discomfited by their duty, they nonetheless sat in unquestioning silence.

Though it was late summer, the basement room was freezing. Worried for her comfort despite the fact her magic and anger were keeping her quite warm, the previous shift of guards had brought extra blankets when they put her here, though Darius had forced them to remove the coverings again.

The queen had already tried to hurt herself once, he reminded them. He’d hate to imagine the guilt they’d suffer if she tried to use the blankets to commit suicide.

With expressions made all the more determined by their uncertainty at their task, the latest pair of guards watched her, the knowledge she could rip their magic from them at any moment clear in their eyes.

“Perhaps you could sit down, your majesty?” one of them offered. As the slightly smaller of the two, his nervousness was easily twice that of his partner, and for the better part of his shift, he’d been watching her like she was a rabid tiger with whom he was sharing a cage. “Maybe rest will do you well?”

Her gaze darted to him as she paused in her pacing, and she could see the man swallow. They’d alternated with variations of the same suggestion throughout the past few hours, though at her glance, the man looked as though he wished he’d skipped his turn. For his part, the larger guard simply locked his gaze on the wall and tried not to breathe.

It’d taken her a bit to recognize the larger man, all these months later, as the driver from the day she arrived. The predatory threat in his eyes was gone, after all, leaving only a sort of paralysis that made him look like he was trying to merge with the wall. From his expression, though, every one of his earlier suspicions of her had been confirmed, and now he just hoped to live long enough to tell his cronies he’d been right.

“Did you know Darius was killing cripples?” she replied.

The smaller guard shifted awkwardly. “Councilman Greyson wouldn’t do that, your highness. Please? You could get some sleep? No one’s going to hurt you. You’re safe with us.”

Pinning him with her gaze a moment longer, she could read the thoughts behind his pacifying expression. She was safe. They weren’t. And they believed every word Darius had said.

“You know,” she told them for what felt like the hundredth time, “I never tried to commit suicide. And I never ordered anyone to surrender. The words never came out of my mouth.”

“Things’ll seem clearer when you’ve had rest, your highness.”

Rolling her eyes, she returned to pacing. Upon delivering her to the cells, Darius briefed the guards on her supposed madness. Through the air vent above the door, she heard him describe the regrettable instability she suffered, and how he and Sebastian, as leaders of the council, had attempted to keep it from view for so long. Her highness became confused about what had been said, and suffered from delusions of persecution from invisible enemies, to the point of even accusing the council of committing crimes against their people. For a time, they’d thought perhaps it was simply stress, but eventually were forced to admit that the horror of seeing her family killed must have damaged her somehow.

They’d tried to play along, hoping the fantasies would work themselves out. But today, alarming news had come to light that changed everything. In her confusion, the queen had begun taking counsel from cripples who, they learned, were secretly allied to Taliesin. This led to her compulsion to surrender, owing to her trust in cripples above her own kind. After all, the cripples had been the first to find her, wandering the streets after her family had died. In retrospect, it only made sense that she would have fixated on them.

The queen commanded Darius and Sebastian to stand down the Merlin forces and surrender to the superior might of Taliesin. Shocked, the men refused and, in her deranged state, the queen attempted suicide right in front of them, nearly succeeding despite their efforts to stop her.

He was determined to find a treatment, Darius assured them. Now that the truth was out, he was going to speak with Katherine about what could be done for the queen. In the meantime, he trusted them to keep her safe – from herself most of all.

“How can you just believe him so blindly?”

She tossed the question to the guards reflexively.

“Councilman Greyson is a good man, your highness,” the smaller guard said. “He’s led our people for years. I mean, not led. No more than yourself, that is. Or the Children. I mean…”

His gaze twitched nervously to his colleague as he trailed off.

She eyed him briefly, and then shook her head, resuming her pacing. And that was the point right there. Councilman Greyson led them. He had all along. The council ruled the people.

While the Merlin’s Children stayed locked in the library.

She should have realized it, months ago when she first came to the factory. The shock of Carter’s death and discovering she was some kind of magical wizard queen had blocked everything but the immediate from her notice, but she should’ve picked up on it nonetheless. He’d motioned her away from her own ‘presentation to the people’ – a grace at the time, but suspect anyway. His words ended council meetings. His words started them.

For that matter, she hadn’t been to a council meeting in months. At the time, she hadn’t cared. It wasn’t like she wanted to be queen.

Cursing herself silently, she shook her head again. So blind. So myopic. She’d been so focused on finding Merlin’s spell, she hadn’t seen the problem right in front of her. And with his constant status reports on the ‘war’ against the Blood, Darius had left her no reason to think of the world outside.

Just like it’d probably been with her father.

Anger boiled at the thought of Darius deceiving her dad the same way. He’d stayed in the library day and night, Cornelius had told her. Did he ever wonder what was going on elsewhere?

Or had Darius kept him ‘updated’ too?

Her hands clenched, the desire to release even a trace of fire almost overwhelming. From the corner of her eye, she saw the guards shift and, trembling, she forced her fists to relax.

Darius didn’t need her help in convincing anyone she was insane.

Grimacing darkly, she kept striding across the six paces of the cell. Early on, she’d thought about taking down the door, Darius’ threats be damned. With the training Cornelius and Elias had given her, she was fairly certain she could buy herself a few minutes before Darius realized she was gone, though there was little she could do for the cripples still in his possession during that time. But the stairs would just dump her into the midst of the Merlin, and even if she used a portal to bypass that issue, she’d still have to find a way past the magical barriers securing the factory property. And she’d have to hurt the guards. Stupidly obedient they might be, but they were just doing their job.

She glanced at them again, her jaw muscles jumping. Of course, right now their job was getting people killed.

The thought brought with it images of her friends, and brutally, she shoved the memories aside. She couldn’t think about them. About what might’ve happened. She’d fall apart if she did and she couldn’t afford that right now. Elias or Cornelius would come soon and she’d get out of here. She’d make Darius and Sebastian pay for what they’d done and she’d save the people they were holding captive.

Then she’d worry about Spider, Bus and the others.

If they were still alive.

The guards tensed as she came to a stop, fighting to keep from shattering as her nails dug into her palms.

Pounding sounded against the door. She looked up, the immediacy of the noise driving the emotions back. With a cautious glance to his smaller compatriot, the larger guard rose as the men on the other side unbolted the door.

Cornelius strode into the room. Coldly, his gaze took in the two guards, and then he motioned sharply for them to leave.

“Sir, it isn’t safe–”

“Get out.”

Hesitating briefly, the guards nodded and then left, tugging the door shut behind them. Glancing to the vent, Cornelius sent a small amount of magic up to the grate, blocking all sound.

“Are you alright?” he asked without turning her way.

“They’re killing cripples, Cornelius. No, I’m not alright. When can I get out of here?”

He paused, not answering for a moment. “What happened?”

Her brow furrowed. He wasn’t looking at her. It was starting to make her nervous.

“I saw Sebastian kill two teenagers. I tried to tell Darius and the bastard turned out to be a feral who’d orchestrated the whole thing.”

Silent, he studied the ground. Her heart began pounding harder.

“Cornelius…”

“They were Taliesin spies,” he said with difficulty.

“No, they weren’t! Or if they were, who gives a damn? Sebastian killed those kids and he enjoyed it!”

“Your majesty…”

“What? Spies or not, don’t you people have trials for something like that?”

“Yes, but–”

“But what?”

“It’s not the point.”

She stared at him, flabbergasted.

“This situation is… bad, your highness,” he said quietly, floundering for a moment before settling on the generic term. “The people are frightened. They are uncertain what to believe. The soldiers do not know for whom they’ve been fighting and they’re worried now that Darius’ accusations are true. For the monarchy to betray us like this–”

“You can’t seriously believe I ordered a surrender to Taliesin!”

“No, but my beliefs are not the ones that matter at the moment,” he said pointedly. “We have to fix this. Quickly. I do not know what was said; what perhaps Darius misunderstood. But our people cannot afford to doubt their leaders. Not now.”