The Play-Toy Of Three Lycan Kings-Chapter 365: Night Talks III

Speaking to it?

The question followed me like a dare, soft and incredulous, and I almost laughed out loud—right there in the dark of my room where the window threw a pale strip of moon across the floorboards.

Darius had said it as if it were obvious, like noticing when a candle went out. Speaking to it. Speaking to someone in my head.

Of course he would suspect.

My first impulse was to tell him to mind his own prophecy-haunted business. My second was to consider, for a heartbeat too long, whether I should tell him the truth.

I snorted at myself in the next second. Why would I ever trust anyone with that—worse, with him?

Yes, there was kinship there, maybe, a mirror of age and weariness that might lure the gullible into confiding; it almost lured me into imagining explanations of what El was, what I possibly was. Almost.

No. I slapped my palms together to crowd out the dangerous softness of the idea. Not now. Not ever. The plan was too close to fruition to be blithely shared.

I had built the pieces for so long, and I would not hand them to an ancient who might, with one casual verdict, burn every string I’d arranged into ash. Who might turn to nothing, all the plans I had put in place to achieve all I ever wanted.

All you’ve ever wanted? El jabbed, almost amused. You are quite shallow, Sage.

I paid the barb no mind. I could—if I wanted—tell her off properly, but I had bigger things than petty retaliations.

The man in the other room had been watching me, waiting, probably gauging how much longer he had to wait for an answer.

Then he exhaled, low, resigned. And that made me laugh.

"Tired already from waiting? You are not a patient man."

He shrugged that slow, ancient shrug, that half-smile that suggested he believed in some patience beyond mine. "You can’t blame me for trying," he said, as if trying were a virtue instead of a trespass.

"I told you I wasn’t going to talk about me, not really... what made you think otherwise?"

He only shrugged again, but said nothing.

At that, a prod—so faint I could have blamed it on my imagination—brushed the edge of my mind. Someone was tapping at my outer wards.

I cocked an eyebrow at the audacity of a man attempting to pick a lock he had no right to touch.

But Darius smirked like a boy caught with hands in a cookie jar and said, bland as anything, "You shouldn’t blame me for trying. You are so stingy with the truth."

I scoffed. The audacity, and the familiarity of it. He had the nerve of old things—he felt entitled to curiosity, to trespass.

"I’m not giving up, Sage. I will keep a dutiful watch on you."

My smile was a sly one. "And how do you plan on doing that, when you are leaving this region in two days?"

He laughed, short and startled, a sound that folded the night. "How can I ever be under a king’s rule as an ancient?" He scoffed. "How can I ever bow to any crown?

The question was rhetorical; the pride inside it ancient and slow.

I inhaled deeply. He was right about this thing: he would not obey the orders of teh triplets and their foolish elders, unless it served his own. That was danger. That was the problem.

Because if the vampires rolled in on schedule and Darius picked wave of them—if he called his brethren—the whole plan would collapse. Darius would not bargain. No. The ancients were sworn enemies of the vampires.

Darius would not play. He would slaughter and cleanse. He would make the land safe in a way that undid the only leverage I had: the vampires themselves.

Outwardly, I let my face stay smooth. I folded my arms across my chest and watched him stand, watchful. Inwardly, I was a storm of possibilities—how to remove the ring from his finger; what wards he might have added, because now that I knew what he was, he would be more careful around me; whether an old, forgotten charm existed to weaken an Ancient; whether a mage or trickerstar had once brought one down and written the method into a book that had yellowed into myth.

There should be. I answered to the last though. Surely, the mage that had almost wiped them off from the face of the earth, had documented this powerful feat somewhere?

I just had to locate it.

"I will be watching you." He said again, and this time it sounded like a threat.

I kept a bland face still, watching as he turned and slipped into the shadows, vanishing as if the night swallowed him whole.

He wasn’t lying. I knew. I felt it in my bones—he would be back. He would put eyes on me the way the world puts eyes on a coin. He would not stop.

I cursed under my breath after he left, a small, furious sound. The room felt suddenly hollow. I tugged at the sleeve of my robe and moved to the shelves. Freda’s books—those I’d borrowed and memorized—sat like a patient army of words. I pulled one down after another, fingers skimming spines, scanning indexes, letting names and runes and old diagrams lift my skin.

Ancients were not well-documented in accessible texts. They were the subject of mythologers and priests, of terrified scribes who wrote only in margins. I found sometimes a sentence, sometimes a stanza, never a clear method: no neat ritual, no set of sigils neatly assembling a death-blow. The ancients were a hole in the books, a blank space scribbled with rumors.

Of course, El sighed in my head. The one thing you want appears in every ancient text as a footnote in a translation that burnt with the author.

"Help if you must, then be quiet," I muttered, annoyed at her sarcastic tone.

You could try burning the books, she said mildly, maintaining the sarcasm.

I ignored her. I kept flipping pages, chasing fragments. A reference here to "binding with salt of the deep", a mention there of "a ring forged with the abstenum".

Abstenum—the name turned in my mouth like a bitter coin. It was the reason I was having this trouble.

I found nothing worthwhile.

The caves, then. I had to return to the caves in the witches community. If there was a method at all, it might have survived in those records. Because Darius had to die.

But the caves belonged to the Queen.

She would ask questions, if I met her for a key, and she would hear answers that would pull other strings. I could not let that happen. This particular plan could not survive being common knowledge.

I would have to be sneaky.

Sighing, I got rid of my night dress, and started toward my wardrobe. This mission had to be conducted tonight. If I had to get rid of Darius, I had to do it while he was still within reach.

I dressed immediately with deliberate slowness, letting each piece of dark cloth fall where it needed to—soft leather that hugged but did not squeak, boots that would swallow sound, a cloak with a lined hood that hid the wig’s edge.

Then I left a note for Isla tucked under her door—out for a while. Don’t wait up.—and I slid out into the night.

The fence was still a pale silhouette under the moon, the pack grounds asleep, the distant lights of the town blinking like careless insects. This mission would take a couple of hours; the most time would be consumed inside the library, considering the time difference there.

But I had the time. And these men in the pack weren’t really the brightest. And there was the fact that I was now a noble fellow in the pack. I couldn’t be questioned like an ordinary citizen or a mere contestant.

I was still smiling at my position in the pack when I got to the fence, readying for the jump over. Once I was done with Darius, the rest of the entire mission would be like a piece of cake.

I looked around me, eyes seeing past the almost darkness around. Most of the contestants had returned to their homes, well those that had survived. Barely half of what had turned up for the contest.

So, at the moment, there was silence. Except for the noises made by night insects and creatures.

Good. I reverted to the fence, shifted on my feet to make the jump, when suddenly I felt a presence behind me, before I heard the familiar voice speak.

"I knew you would come this way...seeking to sneak off again."

Shit! Damn it! I cussed in my mind, angered more by El’s laughter. Had she known that Darius had been around, and had kept mute about it?

"If you won’t be loyal, get out of my head, and back to wherever you had come from!!"

I got no response. Coward.

Commanding magic in my hand, I swiveled swiftly, but before I could touch him, hit him, he had zoomed away, toward the fence, leaving a trail of mocking laughter.

I gritted my teeth, glaring at him. What sort of bother was this?

Meanwhile, Darius stood by the fence post like it had been his own chair, arms folded, expression utterly unbothered.

How long had he been watching me? And what was that about sneaking off again? He had seen me when I had left for home?

What had he seen? Did he follow me to the barren lands?