Osha stared at Wynn, and Chap saw a frown begin to crease the young elf’s brow. Unlike Magiere and Leesil, his expression turned sad. Leanâlhâm’s eyes kept flicking back and forth between everyone in startled confusion.
Chap did not want an open fight to play out in front of either of the young ones, but this matter was getting worse by the moment, and Wynn’s reasoning was in serious question.
“Who is this Chane?” Brot’an cut in, clearly unsettled by the turn this night had taken.
Leesil jerked the scarf from his neck, unraveling its folds around his head.
“A killer,” he snarled. “A so-called Noble Dead ... a vampire.”
“Not anymore,” Wynn said.
“Could he be the one that Chap sensed while he searched for the other majay-hì?” Brot’an asked.
At that, Chap lost track of all else.
Where is my daughter? Why is she not with you?
Wynn turned her head slightly. “She’s with him.”
Chap lost hold of his own anger.
You put my daughter in the company of that ... thing?
“Who is with who?” Magiere demanded.
“Shade ... is with Chane,” Wynn answered quietly. “He’s been helping her to protect me since last autumn.”
Osha now looked almost as unhappy as Leesil.
“Chane ... he is ... ?” Osha began, but faltered, perhaps not knowing the right words in Belaskian. With an exasperated exhale, he continued in Old Elvish. “Was he the tall one in the castle? The one attacking us with those mad monks?”
Neither Leesil nor Magiere would understand him, but Chap did, as well as Wynn. She didn’t look at Osha or answer him. She didn’t need to.
Magiere took a step toward Wynn. “There’s an undead loose in the city, and you didn’t tell us.”
“I didn’t have time,” Wynn answered, standing to face her. “And I told him to stay away from you.”
“You told him ... ?” Magiere choked on her words.
Chap saw her irises enlarge, turning black, and he glanced at Leesil with a huff of warning.
Leesil put a hand on Magiere’s shoulder and whispered, “Easy.”
The room fell silent.
Chap did not know what to think. It seemed Chane had been with Wynn—and Shade—for nearly half a year, so he must have gone to ...
He was with you in that lost dwarven stronghold.
“Yes,” Wynn answered aloud.
Chap saw hints of the old Wynn in her face—lonely, lost, and uncertain.
“I had to find the next orb,” she continued, still facing Magiere. “I couldn’t travel alone, and Shade wasn’t enough protection. Chane is ... He is more than ... He is nothing like what you remember.”
This was the wrong thing to say to Magiere. Even Chap suddenly lost his anger as Magiere wrenched free of Leesil’s grasp.
“Nothing like?” she said right into Wynn’s face. “No more killing to feed ... or just for the pleasure of it?” Her voice lowered to a threatening growl. “And what do you think it took for him to reach you again? How many died along the way for him to cross an ocean and a whole continent alone? How many men, women ... even children—”
“No.” Wynn shook her head.
“You couldn’t count them for that distance! You couldn’t even imagine it.”
Wynn shrank back, looking into Magiere’s suddenly glistening face. Chap stood poised to lunge into Magiere, who was visibly shuddering before Wynn.
“This time I’ll see his ashes,” Magiere whispered, “after I take his head a second time.”
“Enough!” Leesil shouted, and he grabbed Magiere, wrenching her away.
Magiere spun away, unable to look at Wynn anymore. She bit down, clamping her jaws hard against the hunger that her rage called up. Of all the things Wynn had done, of the foolish choices she’d ever made, harboring that monster was too much. Magiere stood facing the wall, trying to hold on to reason.
“Get it under control,” Leesil whispered in her ear. “Now!”
She was trying, but all she could think of was that undead—that thing called Chane—who had come at her and those she loved more than once. Now he was here ... again because of Wynn. She couldn’t stop shaking, even as she tried to focus on breathing and nothing more. And as she half turned from the wall, she saw large, slanted green eyes in a young, frightened, tanned face.
Leanâlhâm stood only a few steps to Magiere’s left, and the girl was watching only her. The girl didn’t belong in the middle of all this. After what she’d likely seen in Brot’an’s company, what she’d seen earlier this night ...
Magiere shriveled inside at the way Leanâlhâm looked at her. She turned away and buried her face in the crook of Leesil’s neck. She had to stop this, to find any way to let go of all the anger Wynn caused. She felt Leesil’s hands grip her upper arms, holding her there. His grip suddenly tightened, and she heard him whisper.
“Leanâlhâm ... no, don’t!”
Magiere stiffened and flinched at another touch upon her back.
“Is the wound ... not truly healed?” Leanâlhâm asked softly.
There was no way the girl could think that what she’d seen was caused by a wound. Not even a scar remained on Magiere’s thigh for how it had been willfully closed. And that small hand on Magiere’s back pressed flat and firm.
“Are you ... ill ... again?” Leanâlhâm asked.
The lie in the girl’s question, so blindly forgiving, was too much to bear. Magiere still couldn’t look at Leanâlhâm, though her hunger vanished.
“She’s all right.... She’ll be fine,” Leesil lied, as well.
“No matter what you think,” Wynn suddenly said, “I had to reach the orb. You, of all of us, should understand that, Magiere.”
Leanâlhâm’s hand remained as Magiere turned her head to look at Wynn.
Chap could not guess what Wynn had been through and that still needed to be uncovered. But it changed little where an undead was concerned.
“That’s all that matters now—gaining the rest of them,” Wynn continued, “before the Enemy’s minions do so. And if not for Shade—and Chane—I would’ve been dead ... more than twice.”
“How could you accept protection from him?” Magiere returned.
“Because you weren’t there!” Wynn answered, her voice quavering slightly, and she looked at Leesil and then Chap. “None of you. You left me, and I had to reach the next orb once I discovered there was more than one.”
In spite of Wynn’s accusation, Chap’s anger did not fade.
Chane had murdered countless people to sustain himself ... or, as Magiere said, for the pleasure of the kill. He had helped Welstiel slaughter a remote outpost of healer monks, turning some of them into feral vampires. He had helped burn to death a ship of the elves, and perhaps was the one responsible for throwing a female an’Cróan hostage over the side as a diversion. He had tracked Magiere to the Pock Peaks and fought at Welstiel’s side, even if he had betrayed Welstiel in the end.
Now Wynn had induced Chap’s daughter to accept the company of that sadistic undead.
Chap would not allow this.
There was no excuse, no reason, that Wynn could give that would keep Chap from finishing Chane the instant the chance came. But his anger over these transgressions was cut cold by one question.
“What next ... orb?” Brot’an asked quietly.
Chap’s fear of discussing anything in front of these elves doubled. Brot’an knew only what Wynn had foolishly written in a journal that she’d sent off with Osha on the young elf’s return to his homeland. Oh yes, Chap knew of that journal, though by what he had gleaned from Wynn’s memories, it had not been specific regarding what they had found. There was only a reference to an “artifact.”