Onika’s shoulders pressed back, the only discernible sign that he had even heard the Deacon. After a long moment, in which Sorcha decided which rune she might need if those around them pulled out knives, the Prince’s head suddenly flicked around like a viper’s and stared at her.
“Everyone, leave me to talk with the Deacons.” The tone was deep, powerful and suggested imminent pain if it was disobeyed. The courtiers and the guards recognized that too—scattering to the rear of the chamber.
“Your Highness,” Yohari began, “I do not think that these Vermillion Deacons can quite understand the uniqueness of our position—”
“Enough!” Onika held up one hand and cut the Abbot off. “I charged you with watching your Deacons just as I charged all your predecessors. You failed me, Abbot Yohari.”
Sorcha’s brow furrowed. Just how old was the Prince? Along the Bond, Merrick was unsurprised. The feeling that her younger partner knew something she did not was rather frustrating.
“As for you,” Onika began, and Sorcha’s hands clenched on each other, “I expected you to find the killer in our midst—and instead one of my daughters is murdered. Explain yourself.”
His tone now was so flat and dreadful that even though he did not have the resources he once had, Sorcha was sure Onika could still find a way to make her dead. She would have defended herself, tried to find the best words to say, but Merrick stepped between them.
“You should take my word on this, Onika—Sorcha did not kill your child.” That was the way of Sensitives—they saw so clearly that they could dance around the truth so much more easily. Sorcha knew she might not have killed Jaskia, but she had contributed to the situation that had led to it. Deacons often did.
The word of a member of the Order, least of all one so young, should not have had any sway with this imperious and mysterious monarch, yet he let out a breath that suggested beyond the shimmering veil he might actually be crying. “Merrick—you don’t know what else has happened.” Even without seeing his face, Sorcha observed the set of his shoulders, the weariness in every muscle—it was as if a great weight was pressing down on him.
“Onika?” Merrick took a step forward and actually grasped the Prince’s elbow. Such a breach of protocol could have resulted in a challenge to a duel or at least a reprimand, but the monarch did not move. Sorcha grew more confused by the minute, especially when the next words came out of the Prince’s mouth.
“It is your mother.” There was no mistaking the tone; there was grief in his voice. “They have taken her.”
Her partner’s face went white, and a surge of fear suddenly rose above the other emotions muddled in the Bond. Sorcha could no longer stand still and let these strange events unroll around her.
“Mother?” Her eyes widened. “By the Bones—who is he talking about, Merrick?”
When he turned around, his eyes were wide but his jaw set. He looked younger than his twenty and five years—almost like a frightened child stepping toward anger. His voice was flat as he told her, “You’ve already met her—she’s pregnant with his child.”
She recalled the woman, beautiful and heavy with pregnancy and curiously devoted to the Prince. Suddenly the similarity between her and Merrick smacked his partner between the eyes. She almost laughed—there were plenty of good reasons she had never been considered as a Sensitive.
Sorcha hadn’t heard much from Merrick about his family—but then neither had she told him anything about hers. Most of the Deacons were trained from childhood, many orphaned or sent into the Order by impoverished parents. It was so common that it was taken as the rule. But Sorcha knew from what she had heard in the harem that the royal concubines and wives were no commoners. They were proud of it.
So, if the woman she had seen was Merrick’s mother, then that meant by consequence that he was no common orphan picked up off the street.
“We have no secrets from each other,” Onika stated, “and she was so happy to fiou.”
Sorcha, please. Through their connection she could taste Merrick’s panic. Her partner. He was her partner, and he, unlike her, had family. That had to mean something.
When this situation is sorted out, she replied, we will talk about this.
Just help me find her. It was the voice of a son, traced through with love and fear. Some part of her yearned to have that loving connection with kin and was jealous that she did not.
Sorcha, who had never known her own mother, had however loved the Presbyter of the Young deeply. Merrick was her partner now, and his family was her family. “Where was she last seen this . . . ”
“Japhne,” Onika broke in. “Her name is Japhne, and she was in her bed. The baby was tiring her, so she went to her room early this afternoon to rest. This was before Hatipai’s madness infiltrated the palace.”
“Perhaps she is simply hiding from the rioters?” Sorcha glanced across at Merrick.
He was opening his Center, spreading it farther than she had ever felt him do before—the effort traveled through his body like a vibration and humming along the Bond.
“Nothing,” he gasped and reached for the Strop. Only the last two runes of Sight required the Strop, and she knew he meant to use the sixth one, Mennyt. Without questioning him, she drew her Gauntlets out from her belt and slipped their comforting weight over her hands.
Mennyt meant looking into the Otherside, and sometimes the Otherside could look back. She would protect her Sensitive. “Stand back, please, Your Highness.” The beaded curtain swayed before Onika, but he took several steps until he was against the wall of the audience chamber.
Merrick strapped the wide leather around his head, hiding his brown eyes behind the Runes of Sight carved into the Strop. Then he slid the round of obsidian, with his own personal sigil hammered into it, up on its brass loop to sit in a spot between his eyebrows. Sorcha was not sure if the Third Eye that it was meant to be covering was just some strange Sensitive myth, but she knew when it was brought into play, things were serious.
In the Bond everything went still as Merrick’s concentration sharpened to knifelike intensity, and his partner was once again reminded how powerful the young Deacon was. The brightest star of the novitiate. Despite a rocky start to their partnership, she was proud of him and the strength of what they had.
Still, looking into the Otherside was nothing to be taken lightly. Careful, Merrick, don’t look too deep.
The image of his mother, young, beautiful and laughing, bending down to kiss the top of his head, flashed through the Bond along with a surge of powerful emotion.
I have to know if she is there.
Merrick opened his Sight to the Otherside. The winds raged, and Sorcha swallowed panic. The view of the palace was different when seen through Mennyt; it was a wild place of dark shadows and whispering voices from unseen people.
Every building that had ever housed humans bore some echo of them after they were gone, but in places like palaces, where great and dreadful events played out, a geist could snatch away a human soul and leave the shattered remains to wander. Those who had been murdered were especially easy targets for the unliving—and this was what Merrick was looking for.
Now his Sight spread through the palace, looking for a familiar shape and yet terrified to find it. Some isolated survivors lingered in distant rooms, and some broken souls ripped from bodies still floated through the corridors.
Yet Merrick still cast about, delving deeper. Shadows grew darker, and the distance between the human world and the Otherside grew thinner, like someone rubbing at a painting with a piece of cloth. Now he was boring down until his blood called to her blood. Deep in the tunnels a few tiny drops called to him.