Page 83 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

“Do you love him?” I asked.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, looking down into her mug of blood. “No,” she said. “He’s an ally. Someone that I would, under some circumstances, consider a friend.” God, she made Gabriel look like the world’s most emotionally open man. “Our partnership has never been about love. I know some in our situation have found that, over time, their arranged marriage turned into one of deep and abiding affection, but I’ve known Gabriel for centuries. If we were going to fall madly in love, it would have happened when we were young and reckless two-hundred-somethings.”

“Why let it happen, then?” I asked. “You seem like someone who’s pretty damn good at playing the game. If you don’t want to marry him, why haven’t you found a way to end things?”

Gwendoline blinked, looking at me like I was a sweet but slightly stupid child who’d just proudly shown her some crayon scribbles. “I never said I don’t want to marry him,” she said mildly. “I said that I don’t love him. That’s completely unrelated.”

I clenched my jaw again, feeling the beginnings of a headache crawling up to my temples.

“The simple fact of the matter is that I’m exactly what Gabriel needs,” Gwendoline said breezily. “I cover his blind spots. He’s emotional and has absolutely no head for politics. He needs someone who can keep a level head and navigate the complexities of running an entire governing body. Someone who has experience with the game of politics. Someone who can win over the older generations who think he’s a bleeding heart.”

I had come in third place in my middle school class president election, after Stacy W (which hadn’t been a surprise) and Bart Giblet (which had been). I could keep up a poker face for twenty minutes at the absolute most, and I’d never been more aware of how terrible I was at hiding my feelings. Gwendoline was all regal poise, so put-together that if I wasn’t in the same room as her, I’d have insisted she was photoshopped. I’d never felt so grubby and awkward in my life, even when I was faced with Stacy W and her posse of friends who could all apply concealer better than me.

My hair was escaping from its bun, and my eyes prickled.

“I think we’re done here,” I said, trying to keep my tone brisk.

“I’m so glad you agree,” she said, rising to her feet and flashing me a frigid smile. “It’s been fun, Evangeline.”

27

EVANGELINE

Later that night, we were all gathered in the least formal of Gabriel’s multiple living rooms. Marcus had showed up with a large bag of takeout from the place below my apartment, and Isabella had arrived a few minutes later, her hands tucked into the pockets of her bulky leather jacket. Although I had been desperately grateful to see my friends, introductions had been a little awkward—Marcus tended to be off-putting around new people.

Luckily, Lissa had stepped in and smoothed things over, greeting Isabella like she was an old friend and doing her best to put everyone at ease. Weirdly, Theo also stepped up, offering to take Isabella’s jacket, muttering quiet compliments about her taste in patches and pins. Gwendoline had watched from where she lounged on one of the sofas, not bothering to hide the fact that she was eyeing up the newcomers.

I still wasn’t able to shake the sour feeling that rose up in the back of my throat every time I thought about just how different Gwendoline and I were. Hell. I’d even considered getting changed, trying to make myself look more put-together, but I had decided against it. The thought of her knowing she’d gotten to me that much was enough of a deterrent, but there was also the stinging worry that even if I tried to tidy myself up, I’d fail and somehow wind up more potion-spattered than before.

Luckily, I’d managed to get nearly a full hour to myself before the others arrived. I wasn’t relaxed, exactly, but I wasn’t wound tightly enough to snap any more. Now, we were settled in with cooling bowls of half-eaten noodles for the witches and mugs of synth-blood for the vampires. Gabriel was the only one standing, looking especially lean and grim as the light of the small fire burning merrily in the grate danced over him.

“We located the third piece last night,” Gabriel was saying. “It was in my father’s possession. We have to assume that we can’t trust anyone who’s working with him. Some of his servants may still be willing to slip me information, but every bit of that will need to be taken with a grain of salt. In terms of courtly gossip, Gwendoline, that’s where you come in. If you hear about anything suspicious, any power struggles that might put my father off balance, anything more damning than someone wearing an unflattering outfit to a minor gala, I want you to notify us immediately.”

“Would your mother be able to give us information about what Roland’s up to?” Lissa asked.

“No,” Gabriel said shortly. “My mother is no longer a member of that household.”

Most of the other vampires looked worried but not all that surprised. I glanced at Gwendoline, who was watching Gabriel with an unreadable expression. Gabriel didn’t make eye contact with any of them and stared into the fire instead.

“Iskra has been playing this game longer than any of us have been alive,” Gwendoline said. She spoke with the sort of calm certainty that made you expect the world to bend back on itself to make whatever she said come true. “She’s sharp, ruthless, and extremely capable. Your father doesn’t have a chance of finding her. Especially,” she added, checking her nails in the firelight, “if a series of conflicting rumors were to start circulating throughout his circles as to where she might be hiding.”

“You’d do that?” Gabriel asked softly.

Gwendoline gave him a sharp, beautiful smile over the top of her glass. “It’s been ages since I got to organize a proper whisper campaign. It’ll be fun.”

I sort of wished I hadn’t gotten so fluent in reading Gabriel’s facial expressions. The sheer gratitude on his face was hard to watch.

“We already have a lead on the fourth piece of the array,” I blurted out. Every pair of eyes in the room swiveled to me. Every pair, that is, except Gabriel’s. “With every piece of the ascendancy array we’ve found, I’ve gotten more and more powerful,” I said. “And I’ve gotten a stronger connection to the other pieces. With the first piece, I had to be pretty much right on top of it, and, well, I can already feel the final piece out there somewhere. It’s kind of, like… somewhere over that way.” I gestured vaguely in the direction where I could feel the faint pull of the artifact coming from.

“Have you connected any of the fragments?” Marcus asked. He had his vape in his hand, but he hadn’t turned it on, just raised it to his lips occasionally to worry it with his teeth. He wasn’t usually a nervous fidgeter. If he’d been a suspect I was trying to get intel out of, I would’ve taken that as a sign that he was about to crack and give me what I was looking for.

I shook my head. “While the ascendancy array is still in pieces, it’s more of a known entity. I don’t know what’ll happen when they’re put together, and I figured it made the most sense to put the whole thing together at once. Plus, we know we’re not the only ones after this thing, and I get the feeling that combining the pieces is going to be pretty hard to ignore for anyone who can feel magic nearby. I don’t want to send off a flare saying, ‘Hey, we’re right here. Please come rob us.’”

Marcus nodded thoughtfully. The firelight reflected off the lenses of his glasses, hiding his eyes.

“Touching it is…” I trailed off, shaking my head. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt. It feels like I’m sticking my hands directly into a massive well of energy, and all that magic is flowing through me. It’s amazing, but honestly, it’s also scary as hell. It’s completely overwhelming, I’ve barely been able to channel it. If someone else got their hands on that…”

“Evangeline, I think perhaps we should take a moment to talk in private,” Marcus said. His whole quirky uncle routine had fallen away completely, leaving him sounding serious and impossibly old. Instead of the man who cracked silly jokes and pretended he didn’t understand how technology worked, I was suddenly faced with a man who had lost countless loved ones, and seen empires rise and fall over the course of his life.

---