Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (27 page)

Every black-cloaked figure in the room froze and then collapsed. Sound, taste, sight, and smell rushed back in, and her mind retreated. She looked away from the broken puppets and stared into Dalton’s empty, glazed eyes. A blade protruded from his throat, blood bubbling from the wound, and a second pushed out from his chest, the soaked blade tip just an inch from her breastbone.

Dalton’s blood dripped down her face.

The violent trembling ripped through her body, and a wail tore free from her throat.

The silence echoed in Jacob’s ears. The black-cloaked figures collapsed as one. Cutting the chord on the marionettes left them in lifeless piles of bone and skin. Cassie’s wail behind him struck an instant before a swamping wave of grief.

Whirling, his mind identified three things. The first, irreverent, laid-back Dalton was dead. The second, the others were alive. They were battered, bruised, and bloody, but alive. The third was Vanagan dragging Cassie away from the body, hands on both her arms.

Jacob sensed more than saw Helcyon shift position. He dragged a figure with him, but he took Jacob’s stance in the semicircle. Vanagan’s silvery, pupilless eyes met his with regret. Jacob nodded once, acknowledging the other Wizard’s contribution.

Vanagan released his grip on Cassie’s lax arms and Jacob scooped her up, uncaring of the blood and gore spattering her once cream-and-gold suit. Her pupils were the size of saucers amidst the field of gold in her eyes. Blood speckled her pale face.

“She’s in shock,” Vanagan murmured, putting a hand on Jacob’s arm and carefully not touching her.

“What happened?” It kicked him in the gut to see the soundless scream on her face. Her pretty pink lips turned a bloodless white.

Around him, the Wizards still on their feet turned to help their fallen brothers. Miller closed in on Paul, jamming a heavy cloth against the younger Wizard’s bloody side.

“Dalton linked with her long enough to give her the target on that portal. She shattered it.” Vanagan’s measured words offered no comfort. “They were swarming, though, and he caught two blades.”

Banding an arm around Cassie, Jacob pulled her close. He heard what Vanagan didn’t say. Dalton took the two blades meant for her. Behind the dead Wizard lay two reptilian figures, wholly clothed in black. Their red, stony faces cracked and chipped in death. Cassie trembled from head to toe, shaking in reaction.

“Stand aside, Lord Helcyon.” Elijah’s voice penetrated the throng. Jacob rubbed Cassie’s shoulders, long, even strokes. He needed to get her out of here. Turning, he met his
Domovoi’s
gaze.

“Helcyon is my ally,
Domovoi
, pass in peace or pass not at all.” Grief and worry made his voice harsh.

“I have no argument with Lord Helcyon nor with you, Jacob, but if you do not let me pass I will.” The old man’s flinty gaze brooked no arguments, and Helcyon flicked a look at Jacob. It stunned him to realize the Elf trusted his decision in this. He nodded once, and Hels jerked his prisoner back one step and gave the elder Wizard room.

Elijah’s robes dragged through the blood on the floor, but he paid it no attention. “May I?”

Jacob frowned, but his
Domovoi
didn’t wait for an answer as he touched his hand to the back of Cassie’s hair. Carefully, he urged her face away from Jacob’s chest and stooped to meet her gaze.

“Gold eyes.” Elijah sighed.

Shaking his head once at Helcyon, Jacob was aware of Vanagan’s shifting stance. He positioned himself close enough to the elder to react. He wasn’t quite sure why or even for how long the Wizard of the Rose Cross was on their side, but he’d take it. He’d felt Vanagan’s shields as they’d closed around Cassie, witnessed his defense of her during the battle, and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that in this moment, Vanagan would kill to keep her alive.

That was good enough for him.

“They turned gold a few weeks ago, they were hazel before that. It happened after a blinding spell.”

“But after you bedded her.” Elijah’s bluntness held no mark of a question.

“Yes, sir.” In any other circumstance the question might have made him uncomfortable. But Elijah knew something, something he was confirming by looking at Cassie’s eyes.

“She is the one. I’ll be damned.” Then he stroked his hand over her hair, the gesture an intimate kindness, much as one would a small child.

“Councilor Elijah, we have the inquisitor general in custody.” This from a newly arrived Wizard, clean of any trace of battle but dressed in Elijah’s colors. Jacob knew the Wizard’s face but not his name.

“Bring him in. Clear me a space.” Elijah touched Cassie’s hair once more as he turned to face the bloodied room.

Two Wizards dressed in archaic, yet formal, battle dress shimmered into the center of the room. Between them they dragged the struggling inquisitor general. Sliding an arm under Cassie’s knees, Jacob picked up her too-slender, too-light form. DuPois appeared at his side, shifting with Vanagan to a
V
formation behind Elijah, with Jacob and Cassie at the rear of the diamond.

The Wizards deposited Gustav on the stone floor. The change in the inquisitor general’s demeanor sent a ripple of shock through the already troubled throng, at least those who remained standing. The man’s robes were stained with blood, dirt, and soot. His aged features seemed to have wizened further during the course of the conflict.

Despite his haggard appearance, his malicious eyes filled with cold hatred when he lifted them to meet Elijah’s gaze.

“You opened a portal to the darkest underbelly of Underhill. You provided succor to an enemy that slaughtered your brethren, Inquisitor General. Speak your defense now, because this is your trial.”

Fury fisted in Jacob’s belly. Shock didn’t begin to address the anger shivering his spine. The inquisitor general served as the de facto leader of all Wizards. The Council advised, but he administrated. It fell to him to guard their futures.

They trusted him.

“I opened nothing,” Gustav spit out. “And I do not answer to you, Elijah.”

“Actually, Gustav, with half the Council dead, you’re lucky I don’t just execute you on the spot. That portal opened directly behind your dais. So explain your participation.”

“Why don’t you ask your precious Wizard Book and his pet Fae. He brought the Elf here against express orders, disguising him with a glamour. I charge them with this crime.”

Even Jacob heard the desperation in those words. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, Helcyon said nothing. The Elf’s remote expression shuttered his thoughts. Below him, his black-cloaked prisoner groaned. The being was held fast by both Helcyon’s hand on his shoulder and the blade perched precariously against the thing’s throat.

Miller helped Paul over to the wall, and the injured Wizard nodded his gratitude. Turning away from them, Miller strode over to Elijah and Gustav. “If I may?” He aimed the question at Jacob’s
Domovoi
.

The Wizard nodded. Miller knelt and jerked Gustav’s shirt wide. Black ink slithered over the man’s chest. Sigils scrawled in ancient script quivered and reshaped.

Jacob tightened his arms around Cassie. She was too silent and too still. He wanted to set her down and see if he could reach her elsewise. Better, he wanted to get her the hell out of here.

“He’s sworn to the Danae.” The words detonated through the room, flinging the shrapnel of disbelief, horror, and fury.

Helcyon moved then, shoving his still-living prisoner with a hard boot and slamming him into the inquisitor general. The hood slipped free, and the Elven face it revealed filled with haughty disdain explained why. In nearly every aspect, he was identical to Helcyon, from the dark length of hair to the faint curve of his eyebrows to the shape of his features, save one. His crooked and still-blackened nose. A full-blooded Elf like Helcyon wouldn’t need the portal to anchor in this world, not like all the other lesser creatures he’d led.

“Son of a bitch,” Jacob breathed. He knew that fucking Elf.

“Echyo.” Cassie’s voice whispered up, rousing from that faraway place she seemed to have flung herself. Jacob tipped his head down. Her cheek pressed against his chest, her fingers curling into his shirt.

“May I present the Lord Echyo, my cousin and current captain of the Danae’s guard.” Helcyon’s disgust wrinkled through his words.

“You are a blood traitor,” Echyo spit upward, ignoring the others. “You will pay for your crimes against our people this day.”

Helcyon rolled his head, the sound of the vertebrae popping crackling through the horrific silence. Some of the Wizards in the room, Jacob among them, were too young to remember the Fae wars. Older Wizards like Vanagan, Elijah, and Miller wore blank expressions.

Everything relied on this moment. The pressure in Jacob’s chest expanded. Where they were going. How they would achieve a future. It began now. He’d thought Cassie ignited the conflagration when she went public. But that pendulum swung so much earlier.

One by one, the puzzle pieces snapped into place. The sick clarity offered more horror.

“Why?” Cassie asked, her whispery-thin voice carrying across the distance. Her gaze locked on the old man, because that was what Gustav was. The closer he looked, the more Jacob saw. The Wizard was a mere shadow of himself. He had no magic save for the writing rippled over him.

“Because I believed your mother was the one.”

“Shut up.” Echyo twisted, seizing Gustav, but he was never able to complete the action. His own head flew off before Helcyon’s sword completed the arc.

Cassie shoved her hands against her mouth, smothering a scream, and Jacob barely got her head turned away. The Elf’s headless body slumped over, spilling more blood on the stone.

Gustav shuddered away from the blood soaking his legs, but the mutiny in his expression never wavered. “You might as well kill me, too.”

“Answer the girl’s question.” If Elijah was moved at all by the violence, he said nothing.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. I was a fool. I believed the Danae when I shouldn’t have. A man of my years has only his experience and his wisdom to rely on, and I failed in both. Just kill me and get it over with.”

Vanagan abandoned his post to close in on their broken leader. “What you believed matters because there are more than fifty dead men here you are accountable for, and the gods only know how many others. What did she tell you?”

“Jacob,” Cassie’s voice whispered against his chest. Tilting his head down he met her luminous gaze. Her pupils were still far too large. “I have to know why. Make him say why.”

“We will, sweetheart.” He brushed a kiss to her forehead.

“Sixty years ago, you entered the court of the Danae. You charged a Fae with Wizard consortium.” Helcyon’s sword dripped blood from the point. “What did the Danae offer you?”

“A fool’s errand.” Gustav turned his head. “But you weren’t there. So how would you know?”

“Because she charged me with the execution of Ashurian. It was by my hand he died. Like another, he pled for the life of his son. The son you wanted to sever his ties with.” Regret flickered in the Elf’s cool tones.

“Wizard Wentworth would not abandon his Fae father, despite repeated warnings and entreaties from the Council. One hundred years ago, he was given to Gustav for discipline. But you weren’t successful despite your protestations to the contrary.” Elijah sounded weary, a weariness that echoed in Jacob’s bones.

“That’s why Michael hated me. Because she had his father killed and I exist. The hypocrisy of it.” Cassie said it for all of them, and Jacob rubbed his chin gently against her hair.

“Yes.” The pieces all made sense, scrambled and diluted by time, but they still fit. “His father maintained contact, and the Wizards wanted it severed. Gustav brokered a deal with the Danae when Michael refused. To what end? You covered up their incursions, she killed his father? I am assuming that Michael had no idea of what you’d done.” It was all speculation and it made a twisted kind of sense in this long game of manipulation. But the illness in the man made Jacob sick.

“It is unlikely,” Elijah agreed before Gustav could say anything. “His loyalty to the inquisitor general was absolute in these last decades. We believed it for a good cause, but you used his father’s execution against him.”

“Like I said, it hardly matters. The Wizard is dead. The attempt failed. And it’s too late to do anything about it. So spare me this farce and end it already.”

“Why is he so eager to die?” Cassie shifted in his arms. Reluctantly, Jacob obeyed her cues to let her stand. He kept a hand on her arm, mindful of her balance as she took one unsteady step forward. “Why my mother? What did you learn that you risked everything? That you would betray the people you were supposed to protect?”

“I did it for my people.” Gustav spit the words, scrabbling to his feet, but he made no progress before Vanagan seized him and Helcyon’s sword sliced through the air, hovering dangerously close to his throat.

“You may answer her questions, but you will never get near her again,” Helcyon warned.

Elijah, to his credit, barely reacted to the action. “Peace, old friend, he has no magic left in him.”