Spellbinder
Page 15

On the bed in the quiet London flat, Morgan stirred restlessly.
Kill them, he tried to say to the much younger man he had once been, a young man who had come to the height of his own Power just as his young king had come to the height of his. They are predators looking at the king’s courtiers like so many sheep. Kill them before they grow too strong. Kill them while you can.
But as much as he had tried to find a way over the centuries, he had never discovered how to conquer time so that his younger self could hear when he called out.
And Modred had become the Light Fae ambassador to the king’s court while Isabeau laid her plans for Morgan like a spider patiently spinning its web.
He woke in a sweat and lay looking at the shadowed ceiling until he could feel the early morning light grow outside, and the unquiet memories settled into the ancient past where they belonged.
Only then did he stir. To his own sensitive nose, he stank, smelling of chemicals and blood, so he eased himself carefully off the bed and took the metal stand with the IV into the bathroom, where he washed up.
Something, some small noise, made him turn off the faucets abruptly. Holding his breath, he tilted his head to one side and listened intently, but whatever he had heard was gone.
Still, he pulled out the IV needle from his wrist and moved to the bedside table where he had set his Beretta. Then he prowled through the empty flat, checking out windows and opening the front door to look down the length of the mews.
A newspaper lay on the front doorstep. Everything looked quiet and peaceful, just as an early morning should, but when he drew a breath, he recognized a familiar scent—the scent of a creature that had disappeared from Isabeau’s court weeks ago.
Someone she had wanted back badly enough that she had sent Morgan to hunt him down and bring back to her. That task had led Morgan to the confrontation with the knights from Oberon’s Dark Court, and it had resulted in the injuries that had ultimately set him free.
He had not been as successful as he had thought in hiding his trail. The puck Robin had found him.
The geas shifted uneasily, like the coils of a python sliding around a man’s body. Tensing, he waited to see what would happen. Would it force him to obey Isabeau’s earlier order to hunt Robin down and bring him back to her? Or would her latest words bear the greater weight?
When the geas subsided, he knew. Her last words to him were the ones that carried the most weight. He was still free, for now.
With a sharp gaze, he studied every detail of the scene—along the rooftop, the shadowed doorway of the shop across the street at the end of the mews—but there was no sign of the puck and no sign or scent of anyone else.
Then he noticed another thing. None of the other flats in the mews had received a folded newspaper. Bending with care, his gun held at the ready, he knocked the paper open. Despite what he had expected, there was nothing tucked inside.
Instead, a black-and-white photo of Sidonie Martel leaped out at him from the front page. Underneath her photo, the headline said FAMOUS MUSICIAN MISSING AFTER CAR CRASH.
A sprawling message had been written in black ink across the paper.
The Queen has her.
The words kicked him in the teeth. Morgan’s breathing stopped, then fury roared up in response.
The puck had not just found him. Robin had studied him carefully and struck a calculated blow.
Gathering up the newspaper, he carried it inside and flung it across the sitting room with such force it hit the opposite wall with a crack like a whip. He stalked through the small flat then back again.
No, he thought. By gods, no. I WILL NOT BE MANIPULATED LIKE THIS!
After centuries—centuries—he had just won a tenuous measure of freedom for himself, and he had no idea how long he might keep it. If he was going to have any hope of striking a blow against Isabeau and Modred, it was vitally important he continue to follow every avenue of research on the Athame’s geas that he could. He could not risk throwing all that away for a stranger.
Unbidden, an image of Sidonie Martel came to mind, along with her joyous, passionate music. She was so beautiful, so toweringly talented.
For those very two things alone, Isabeau would be cruel to her. Robin had known that.
Breathing hard, Morgan ran his fingers through his hair as conflicting impulses tore at him.
Sidonie Martel means nothing to me, he thought harshly. I enjoy her music, that’s all. I don’t owe her a thing. Not a blasted thing.
Silence was all the flat gave him in response. After tensely listening to the quiet emptiness for a long while, he strode to the bedroom, pulled out his knapsack, and began to pack.
* * *
Once the wagon train had made its way down the winding road to the castle, it disbanded like segments of a giant centipede falling apart, as various components went off in different directions.
Sid had jumped out of the wagon along with her fellow travelers, but when she would have followed them, a sharp whistle brought her up short.
They didn’t put her with the young Light Fae they had collected along the road. Instead, they put her with a large pile of barrels and wooden boxes they stacked in the stables, shackling one of her wrists with a chain to a metal ring that was bolted to a wooden beam.
She was there to be counted as part of the trolls’ tribute, she assumed.
Then they forgot to feed her.
As the light of day passed into darkness, then blossomed into the new morning, she drifted beyond fear and simple anger into a kind of incensed exhaustion.
She had enough room on the chain to reach a bucket that had been set nearby. It was partially full of water that was none too clean, and probably laced with horse spit, but after a certain point she became too thirsty to care. When the water was gone, she used the bucket to relieve herself.
The sound of voices roused her, and stiffly she uncurled from a thin layer of straw that had been her bed. There were three voices, all male, one sounding clearly in command, asking questions while the other two answered. They appeared to be tallying a long list of items.
“Hey,” Sid called out, her voice hoarse from disuse. She stood, yanking irritably at the chain attached to her wrist. “Hey! What is wrong with you people?!”
Silence greeted her shout. Then came the sound of approaching footsteps, and the nearby doors were pulled open. As bright sunlight spilled in she had to squint and turn her face away.
Three men strode in, led by one tall figure. He stopped in front of her and asked in a cultured, pleasant voice, “What is this?”