Page 108 of Serpent and Shadow

Once again, he managed to make me feel like a complete moron with a single, penetrating stare.

“Ah, good!” Forsooth said, when he saw me and Blackstone at his door. “I was about to summon you both. There is something you need to see, I think,” the mage said seriously. “We only just got this, from our source inside Dark Cathedral…”

I felt my stomach sink.

I could already feel this probably wasn’t something I wanted to see.

It didn’t help that I was sore all over, and desperately wanted a soak in the bath, preferably after dumping a few handfuls of one of Bones’s salt and magic concoctions in the hot water. I had no idea how he made those, or what was in them other than the salt, but they worked better than anything I’d ever tried in the human world. They worked better than most pain-relieving potions I’d been giving in the campus hospital, too.

I’d spent most of my morning running into walls at top speed, trying to phase, preferably without putting my actual life at risk.

So far, it hadn’t worked.

“You’ve stopped using the monocerus,” Forsooth remarked, clearing his throat. He could have been inquiring about the weather. “Is there a particular reason?”

I glanced over at him.

I felt that tightness in my throat worsen.

The last thing I wanted to talk about then was my monocerus primal, which, oddly, perhaps, I actually missed. I’d grown accustomed to its grumpy ways, its pawing hooves and tossing head with the long, sharp, black horn. I missed its strange dance with Alaric’s centaur, and how annoyed it used to get with Miranda’s corgi.

I didn’t answer at first, but followed him and Blackstone over to the fire.

“They’ve been using your husband to go after the royal families,” Forsooth said next, forcing me to turn. “Were you aware?”

I took a deep breath, and shook my head. “No.”

Without looking at either of them, I walked over to the green chair, which had somehow become mine, and sat. Blackstone took the red chair, which also seemed to be his. Forsooth sat in the middle, his chair gold this time.

Blackstone’s fingers stroked the chair arms where he sat, a strangely mesmerizing and distracting habit that didn’t usually annoy me this much.

“They went after the Aurielle family last night,” Blackstone added, while I ground my teeth and stared at his ring-clad hands. “Most of the families young Mr. Bones has been dispatched to ‘deal with’ had children disappear in the second half of last year. Which sheds some light on how Malefic chose the specific mages and witches used as Resurrection bodies. It seems they specifically targeted royals who defied Malefic.”

He paused, drumming his fingers lightly.

“…Your husband is now forcing the issue,” he added drily.

I winced, biting my tongue, but made myself look away from his face.

I knew he called Bones that in part to get a reaction out of me.

It was crude, but infuriatingly effective.

“Or maybe I just want you to face reality,” Blackstone suggested, a faint irritation reaching his voice. “Did you hear any of the rest of what I said just now?”

I bit my tongue, considered answering him, then didn’t.

I knew he wanted me to admit Bones was fully in the fold now. Or at the very least, that the ritual we’d witnessed meant he could no longer defy his father. Did he think I wasn’t aware of that? That I had deluded myself on that point?

“If you think your husband can simply leave his father’s house with you, when you show up in a corridor one night, then clearly you have,” Blackstone remarked coldly.

“Corvid,” Forsooth rebuked mildly. “She understands.”

“Then perhaps she could start acting like it, and stop pretending that it will be enough to simply break into the Black Tower repeatedly until she wears him down.” Blackstone let out a faint scoff. “It is absurd. Her feminine powers of persuasion, however beguiling, won’t be enough to dissolve an ancient curse forged of generations of blood and dark magic. The sooner she faces up to that, and the fact that he is lost to us, the better.”

My face grew hot, but I didn’t answer him that time, either.

I looked at Forsooth.