The sword suddenly in the fae lord’s hand was a thing of glamor and Power, not steel or silver—but it may as well have been of the shifter’s ancient bane. With a single slash of the shimmering blade he conjured from nowhere, Oberis cleaved through Darius Fontaine. The big shifter’s charge ended with him returning to human form—in pieces that crashed into the ground with tremendous force.
33
CALM AND SILENCE descended on the tent as the remaining Fontaine loyalists surrendered their arms after their Alpha’s death. Seven or eight bodies were slowly removed from the chaos as the crowd of shifters slowly moved away from the area around Talus.
The fae noble looked uninjured, as did Laurie. After a moment, I realized that the slight shimmering around him was a telekinetic barrier—serving the double purpose of containing Laurie and protecting them from bullets.
Talus let the barrier fall and strode forward again, half-pushing, half-leading Laurie with him until he stopped before his uncle.
Oberis had let the glamor-forged sword pass back into nothingness and stepped aside from the fallen body of the Fontaine Alpha, allowing two of the shifters to remove the body to where they were improvising a cover for the bodies from a tablecloth. Despite the lack of sword, he still stood ramrod straight, and every eye in the room could see the power crackle off of him.
“I am afraid,” he said softly, projecting his voice to every corner of the room as he bowed to the Alphas, “that I have stolen justice from you, my lords.”
There was a series of wordless glances and small nods amongst the Alphas, and then Enli spoke for them all.
“You did what was necessary,” he said simply. “You defended one of our daughters from a traitor amongst those who should have defended her. We thank you.”
Oberis bowed, ever so slightly, and started to move toward where Talus was bringing Laurie forward.
“If we may beg a boon, Lord Oberis,” Enli said quietly, “I would ask that we all hear what this woman has to say.”
I held my breath for a moment. If we were right, Laurie’s testimony would break open the whole situation, expose everything and allow us to find the root of the problem. If Oberis insisted on interrogating her in private, we’d get our information, but I wasn’t sure if it would have the same impact.
Oberis was a fae lord, however, and I probably shouldn’t have worried. Melodrama is bred into our species’ bones, after all, and he nodded agreement almost before I’d finished worrying, gesturing Talus to bring his prisoner forward.
“Laurie of the Unseelie,” he said formally, in that same quiet, projected, terrible voice. “You stand accused of treason against the Court and are so stripped of the defenses I gave you against truth Sight.”
I felt the quiet Power that moved with his words. It was a subtle thing, a thing of thought and word, but it tore through barriers I hadn’t even sensed like they were paper, somehow baring Laurie’s soul to the eyes of her erstwhile master.
“What do you have to say?” he asked.
“I see it in your eyes,” she told him hoarsely. “You have condemned me already. What purpose is there for me to speak? I know what the law lays out for my crimes.”
“There are ways to die and ways to die,” Oberis told her gently. “The law prescribes the Cold Death—no warmth, no life, no breath, left Between to die.”
His words hit the air like falling tombstones, and I shivered at my memory of the chill cold when I stood Between with the Queen. To be left there? Without the Gift to walk that path yourself, it was, as Oberis named it, a death sentence. A horrible one.
“Your service has earned you mercy, if not clemency,” Oberis told Laurie, his voice still so terrifyingly soft. “Do me one more service and tell me what was planned here, and I will grant you a gentle death. It is all I can offer.”
“Service,” Laurie spat. “That’s all I ever was to you—a servant, the dirty Unseelie you used when it suited you. Years together, and never a friend, never more.”
“I was always your friend,” Oberis told her, and I was close enough to him to hear the choke in his voice. I don’t think anyone else except maybe Holly and Mary were. “And if I never saw you as a woman, I’m sorry,” he continued, “but I never saw any woman that way. If you never knew that, you were as blind as I was for thirty years to miss how you felt, and I am sorry.”
“And it changes nothing,” she whispered, and the lord shook his head.
“You are responsible for the deaths of two fae I know of,” he said gently but coldly. “I don’t know how many humans or others the vampires killed that can be directly or indirectly laid at your feet. You have betrayed Court and race and Covenant, and I have offered all the mercy I can.
“Tell me everything,” he ordered. Tearfully, kneeling at his feet, Laurie nodded.
“Winters came to me a year ago,” she told Oberis, oblivious to the rest of us now. “He must have been watching for a while, learning who was...discontent. He offered me a place in a plan that would make me Lady in Calgary, and an increase in our heartstone supply to allow me to buy the support of other Courts.
“My initial role was just to keep him in the loop of all of our plans,” she continued. “I helped him bring Madrigal and her vampires into the city—I found Professor Sigridsen and learned of her proclivities as a hunter and her disease. I confirmed that conversion to a vampire would cure her.” Even while describing her crimes, there was pride in her voice at what she’d done.
“After that, my job—and Darius’s,” she added, glancing up at the Alphas, acknowledging someone other Oberis for the first time, “was to allow the vampires to wreak havoc. We were to deflect investigations, warn of raids, and help ratchet up the tensions. We were to point to the Enforcers, whose job it was to stop the vampires.
“It was our job to start the war,” she said simply.
“Tarvers’s death was planned for from the beginning, to allow Darius to seize control of the Clans,” she told Oberis. “We needed that control for when the real plan took place.”
“What real plan?” Oberis demanded.
“By now, MacDonald is restrained,” she explained. “He doesn’t have the power to do anything to Winters anymore—he’s made his Chief Enforcer immune to his own Power. He is bound in silver and iron, unable to wield magic.
“When the war reached an appropriate peak, MacDonald would be murdered,” Laurie said finally. “Winters would have to do the task himself, but he has a gnome-forged warblade to do it with—to lay the blame at the foot of the Court. Darius would then distance himself from the Court, claiming lack of knowledge when the Order sent their Wizards to avenge him.
“With the Court blamed and no way to prove the guilt of a specific member or innocence of us all, the Wizards would be prepared to destroy the entire Court, as is their way,” she said softly. “You would then sacrifice yourself, taking responsibility and allowing the Wizards to destroy you to protect your Court.
“The Wizards would enforce peace but would not stay. Winters would control the Enforcers, now a power in the city in their own right, and establish a new Covenant—including Madrigal and her vampires, under the usual rules for a Covenant-bound cabal. Darius would control the Clans. I would take control of the Court, leaving Talus in Fort McMurray.”
Her spiel finished, Laurie fell silent. Every gaze was on her, all of us shocked. I’d put together most of it myself, but it was still a bit disturbing to hear it all laid out in step-by-step detail.