Page 47 of The Realm That Falls to Her

I need to get one step ahead of them, and to do that I need to know what they’re thinking.

I can’t let them get too far ahead. My magic might currently be able to connect with the buckle, but it’s too small and impersonal for me to be able to find it over a great distance—I need to stay close to it, while keeping just enough distance that Turis doesn’t realize he’s being followed.

I use the beacon of the buckle to tell me to turn right, up an alley back towards the entrance to the passageways that lead deeper under the mountain. I run into a few fae who want to congratulate me on my playing today, and I have to extricate myself from them as graciously as I can, afraid they’ll delay me to the point that I’ll lose track of Turis. I follow the buckle’s signal into the complex under the mountain, where most of the court seems to live. Eventually, I can tell he’s stopped off somewhere nearby. There’s only two voices, making me think the group has split up.

I tuck myself into an alcove and concentrate. I’ve done this before—eavesdropped via a bit of metal positioned near two people having a conversation—but then it was accidental. Now, it’s deliberate…and difficult.

At first, I catch only the vague shapes of words. But Turis is definitely still with Climent, I can hear the nasal tone of his voice if not the actual words.

I’m just wondering whether to give up on my half-baked plan when the conversation starts to become more heated, and the pair raise their voices enough that their murmurings become clear sentences.

“I don’t understand this stubbornness. Why not let him murder his mother? She needs to be put down, and once the ball’s in motion, war will be inevitable. You’re overcomplicating things.”

“Don’t patronize me, Climent. I was playing this game since before you were born. Let this court fight side by side with that mutt and it will be harder than ever to turn the others against him. These blood traitors are nothing if not loyal to their naïve ideals. It’s why Lucan’s death worked so well. He’s slaughtered and suddenly everyone is reminded that we’re supposed to hate the Seelie Court. I won’t pretend I liked the way they fawned over the memory of their weak, pathetic, ‘peace-keeping’ prince, but it served the purpose. I could tolerate them loving Lucan if it meant hating the Seelie.” I can hear the sneer in Turis’s voice at Ruskin’s father’s name.

“So we just wait?” Climent asks, still sounding frustrated.

“Yes. Often enough the pieces will fall into place without you needing to move them. Pay attention to what we’ve heard. The Seelie queen wants her fugitives back badly, and I doubt she’ll wait too long to do something about it. With a bit of luck, she’ll butcher her way through this kingdom looking for them, and then Lisinder will have no choice but to go to war. Wait for her to make life difficult, continue to undermine the mutt, and the last thing this court will do is see him as a hero to be helped.”

“He’ll be a problem to be stamped out,” Climent says, more calmly now, convinced by Turis’s reasoning.

I try to listen on, but with their disagreement resolved, their voices drop back down to murmurs that I once again struggle to make out.

As I walk back to my room, I turn over the conversation in my mind. While I haven’t learned anything new about their motivations, I do think it was helpful to hear what they’d say when they thought no one else could hear. Their prejudice goes deeper than I realized—and it has a malevolent edge. It sounded like their campaign against Ruskin is well underway. What do they mean by continuing to undermine him? Attacking me in the bastet game and taunting me in the tavern could both have been considered indirect attacks against him, but they seem a little tame—and anyway, they didn’t really do anything to undermine him or his position. But we’ve been targeted in other ways here.

Lisinder said they haven’t identified who was actually behind the mountain attack—who ordered the moon orb to be made and recruited Kasgill to deploy it. Turis was the one who alluded to it in the tavern, and wouldn’t it fit into the plan of undermining Ruskin? It made him look like an enemy to the Unseelie, like someone who couldn’t be trusted. They’re not brave enough to attempt to assassinate Ruskin outright—it could backfire on them in more ways than one, but making him look like the bad guy is a different matter.

And the way they talk about Lucan still nags at me. Turis said he’d been playing this game a long time, that Lucan’s death was ‘effective’—as if it was a well-timed bastet maneuver and not a tragic mystery.

I feel a weight lift a little from my shoulders as I return to our rooms. I don’t have to work this out alone; I can talk it over with Ruskin, and together we’ll decide what to do.

But when I open the door I’m greeted by a fog of shadow. It swirls around the room, growing thickest at the center. I only have to glance at the book sitting open on a side table to understand what’s happening. It’s the same tome Maidar was reading from before, only there’s no sign of the old tutor now. I realize with a jolt that Ruskin must have attempted the experiment alone. The magic writhes and thickens in front of me, and a shock of fear and anguish claws its way across our bond. Ruskin is somewhere in that haze, I can feel it—and he’s suffering.

I don’t hang back this time, throwing myself into the shadows, letting them swallow me up. The world darkens around me as I push through the magic. It doesn’t lash out to harm me, but it’s like wading through mud. Every step is a battle. I shout out, but the shadows steal the noise, whipping Ruskin’s name away from me as soon as I’ve spoken it. Still, I can feel him ahead of me, and I push onwards, until the shape of him looms out from the darkness.

He’s the same as before, his pupils narrowed to shards of black, his teeth bared in a permanent snarl. As I approach him I can see his movements are wild, animal-like, as the shadows drag him deeper into his Unseelie side.

“Ruskin!” I shout.

This time my voice reaches him, and he jerks towards me, eyes brightening as they fall on me like a predator finally spotting its prey. But we’ve been here before too, and I’m not afraid he’ll hurt me. I fight forward, wanting to make sure he’s in earshot.

“Solskir—” I begin, but before I can get another word out, he growls, grabbing hold of me. His grip tightens around my arm, his fingers like vises, as he pulls me against him. I’m reminded of how strong Ruskin is—how much power he keeps leashed each moment. Power he uses now to cage me in his arms. I look up into his face and see still the wild impulse of his Unseelie side there. And underneath that, fear. The truest part of himself is still there, fighting to get back to me. And I’m more than willing to fight, too.

On instinct—even though I should know it’s useless, even though I’ve never been able to break his grip before—I twist in his arms. He’s strong, but I feel strangely strong too, an odd certainty flooding through me.

“No,” I say, my voice firm and steady, and then I throw out my hands, shoving Ruskin backwards.

He stumbles across the room, propelled by the force of my push.

I gape, and surprise flashes across his face too, wiping away the snarl. His pupils bloom into their normal size as the magic around us stutters and then begins to fade. Among the shreds of its shadows Ruskin’s Unseelie features melt away. But even as the chaos around him dissipates, something is overtaking me: a wave of sensation that started with the building pressure in my muscles, giving me the force to push Ruskin away. Now it’s reached my senses. The room brightens around me and suddenly the precise texture of every piece of furniture and clothing stands out to my eye, crisp and sharp. Sound invades my ears, expanding out from Ruskin’s heavy breathing to the noise of the servants down the corridor, their footsteps loud as slamming doors. The hair on my arms stands on end, picking up every waft of air, and I’m aware of the individual dust motes that dance on the currents close to my skin.

It's too much all at once, and my panic rises until my breaths come short and sharp. My heart thuds at a breakneck pace, desperate for me to run from this attack on my senses. But I can’t escape it. I’m more trapped than I ever was in Ruskin’s arms.

“Eleanor.” His voice comes to me through the storm. “What is it? Tell me what’s wrong.” The animal edge to his voice has disappeared, replaced with urgency and protectiveness.

“Ruskin,” I gasp, still not quite able to fill my lungs properly. “I can hear everything. I can see everything. Help me.” I reach out for the hands I pushed away a moment before, searching for something to anchor me. He’s done it before, in the mountains, when I reached out for metal and my mind filled up with too much information to function. I desperately hope he can help me again now.

He guides me against him, so I can feel every curve and trough of his body, playing havoc with my overly sensitive skin. But he’s so gentle, and I press myself against him, into him, in the hopes of distracting myself from feeling that my skull might burst open.

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