AS IF IN UNISON, EVERY SINGLE MEMBER IS YELLING.
“Your Majesty, the Dark Army doesn’t exist!”
“Are you insane? Lady Isobel hasn’t even answered for her attempt to betray us to Faelen!”
The old, wrinkly-eyed man, General Naran, who’d been silenced, speaks up. “Going to war is one thing. But this is inviting war to our very doorstep! These things—these monsters—have no sense of morality! Rumor has it they’ve already laid waste to the western border.”
“Not just laid waste!” someone in the crowd yells. “They’ve invoked a bleeding plague! First on the livestock, then on our nomads! It’s the same thing that wiped out our forces on Faelen’s island cairns—it wasn’t the Faelen army, but the plagues and monsters!”
The anger, the fear in here—it’s humming around me, and my nerves are soaking it up.
Feeding off of it.
This is what Draewulf had planned?
The king raises his hand for silence, and I peer up at Sir Gowon. Now does he believe me about Eogan?
“I assure you the Dark Army does in fact exist,” Draewulf says. “Is it dangerous? Yes. But a dangerous army is exactly what’s needed, and if one has already been developed by a country under our subjugation, I see no reason not to utilize it to the full extent of our purposes.”
General Cronin stands, his silver hair glinting beneath the lights. “You knew about them and yet kept that fact from us once you arrived yesterday?”
Draewulf flips around. “Treasonous words considering every top general here heard news of such an army months ago—and a week ago you received evidence confirming it.”
“We kept it quiet until the rumors were verified,” General Naran says. “We saw no need to worry our people until we sent soldiers to investigate.”
“And what did they find?”
“Half . . . half of them didn’t come back.”
“Because of the plagues,” someone calls out from the crowd.
General Cronin pounds the table. “Because the Dark Army is a menace which she”—he points at Lady Isobel—“is controlling!”
I glance at Lady Isobel who sits watching, then my gaze falls to Rasha. Her expression is complete horror. This is what she was seeing on Lady Isobel’s face a moment ago. The army. The plagues. I recall my ride through Litchfell Forest where the plagues had struck just before Bron attacked. The treetop houses reeked of death and disease. Even the bolcranes had left the bodies alone.
She peers over at me. What have we done by keeping him alive?
“Your Highness,” one of the generals protests. “Odion never would’ve approved this decision. Isobel approached him months ago offering her services, and he turned the Dark Army down out of understanding of what it would cost Bron.” He hesitates. The flash in his eye says there’s more—there’s something else he’s not saying.
General Naran puts his hand out as if to calm his colleague. “Your Highness, allowing Lady Isobel here for questioning is one thing. But allowing this may likely start a civil war. Yes, we want to pursue what we need from Tulla, but allow us to do it with our own people in a time of better choosing. Not with a rabid army we know nothing about who is a threat to our very existence.”
“You disagree with my tactics?” Draewulf snarls and his tone feels like a stone being sharpened.
“I think you unintentionally have conveyed disregard for our people, our generals, and our way of li—”
His voice cuts off so smooth that General Cronin picks up speaking for him, unaware of Draewulf’s hand stretched out. “What is it—four years you’ve been gone? Perhaps it’s time for new leadership the Bron people can trust to hold their best interest.”
Rasha rises.
Isobel’s hand flashes out and slips between the man’s shoulder blades so fast, General Cronin doesn’t even have time to wince. Nor to notice the cracking of his colleague’s neck beneath Draewulf’s fingers.
The silver-haired general’s face has already paled and suddenly the only sound emerging from his lips is a gasp for air followed by a gurgle before he slumps chin-first onto the table, dead like his wrinkly cohort, blood oozing from both their mouths.
Lady Isobel steps back, and every face in the room is riveted on her and Eogan-who-is-Draewulf.
I pull out both knives and am preparing to toss them low when Eogan’s hand flicks and an unseen force flips my blades down, impaling the knives into the ground at my feet. Without batting an eye, he twitches his hand again, and this time, that invisible force is pressing me against my seat.
I try to lift a fist as the darkness slides along my veins like a raw hunger stirring. Why the members here aren’t alarmed at Eogan using powers his real self isn’t capable of is beyond me. Or perhaps he’s been away so many years, they no longer know what exactly he is capable of anymore.
Abruptly that cold in me is coiling with this whole scene. My skin is cooling rapidly and my heartpulse is speeding up, but when I try to focus on it, to see if I can funnel it toward Draewulf or his daughter, nothing happens beyond the chill fusing deeper to my bones.
A vision of the spider biting, numbing, working her poison through my blood materializes, and the thought erupts again that the abilities are not expanded enough to work here, not now, on real people.
On the people I want to kill.
And I do want to kill them.
For the first time since I can ever remember, instead of guilt following a murderous craving like that, my hatred just grows stronger.
“Anyone else want to question my judgment?” Draewulf challenges. “Excellent,” he says without waiting for a response. “Then allow me to introduce you to your new war general—the Lady Isobel.” He smiles. “If you have any concerns as to her assignment, I’m sure she’d be pleased to persuade you.”
He turns in a semicircle, as if to make eye contact with everyone in the room, and the way Isobel leans in, it’s like she’s hoping someone will.
“Now, let’s see, where were we? Ah yes, preparing to take over Tulla.” He tips his head to his daughter.
She snaps her fingers and signals her personal Mortisfaire guards—three of them along the wall on either side of us, their faces masked and hair flowing out. They walk to the end of the room and throw the doors open.
I smell them before I see them. The scent of moist earth and bone-dust and decay, swirling its fingers, stirring the room with rank suffocation just like in the alleyway last night. It’s the scent of bodies long dead.
It’s the breath of plague that is not of this world.
The smell saturates until some of the Assembly and delegates are coughing as the Mortisfaire step back to expose two thin, eerily tall forms draped from head to foot in ratty gray robes. Silent. Gray. Like something from the grave, except they’re walking.
As they get closer I realize they’re hissing, and it’s only when they stop ten paces from the table to stare at us beneath those icy gray cloaks that I get a full look at their faces.
Princess Rasha and Lady Gwen’s uttered cries match Lord Wellimton’s, as do those of much of the Assembly.
They are animals morphed with long-dead humans. And they reek of unnatural magic.
I will my face straight, will my eyes not to give any reaction as the horror dawns, slow and nauseating. This is what Draewulf can do. It’s what he’s been doing for years.
But where did he get the dead bodies?
A sickening feeling creeps into my gut.
A noise from beyond the doors overpowers the outcry from the Assembly.
“What in litches’ name?” Lord Wellimton mutters just as I careen my head to see behind them. And then they’re jostling, writhing, spilling into the room—an entire hissing horde of them.
The wraiths cover the space in a horrific wave until they’re surrounding the Assembly and filling up the center aisle behind the first two who entered. Around me, the delegates’ faces mimic the revulsion plastered on those of the Assembly’s, and Lord Percival seems to be making some type of gagging noise with his throat. Lord Wellimton’s red face is swelling up so heatedly, he looks in danger of popping.
Eogan-who-is-Draewulf extends a hand. “My friends, my countrymen. Just as Odion brought Bron into the future with technological advancements, so I carry us even further. This Dark Army is the key to your future. Cooperate with me, and together we will take what we need from Tulla. Choose not to cooperate with me and . . .” He nods toward the two wraith-things facing us, who immediately let out a hiss. “We will advance without you.”
The way he says it, I’ve no doubt we all know what he’s just implied. He spells it out anyway. “The Dark Army is currently moving through Bron toward us. Even now, many are camped outside the city, ready to . . . lend assistance as we prepare.”
“What about the rest of our negotiations?” Lord Wellimton’s face is five shades of insulted. “Surely Your Highness doesn’t think we delegates, nor Faelen’s treaty—”
“From here on out you will continue to consider yourselves my guests. It is not your country we are going to war against. However—”
Lord Wellimton actually stomps his foot. “I demand—” “
You’ll demand nothing. Interfere with our plans and you and your kingdom will be considered enemies of this Assembly, Bron, and the Dark Army itself.”
With that, Draewulf waves his hand and our Bron guards, accompanied by three of the terrifying wraiths, appear to escort us and the Faelen bodyguards to our quarters.