The Road to Bedlam: Courts of the Feyre, Book 2 (2 page)

    A point pressed against my throat, just hard enough to make breathing difficult.

    "How many times have I told you not to let go of your weapon?" Garvin paused, literally pressing home his point, and then withdrawing it, allowing me to respond.

    "I couldn't hold it."

    "No wonder. You went down like a sack of gravel."

    His form blended and shifted from the indistinct shadowy figure that had decked me into a lean wiry man in a charcoal jacket and turtleneck shirt. The style was austere and it suited him.

    The fluorescent lights flickered on and the circle vanished in their glare.

    I lay on my back, trying to catch my breath. Amber was by the door, switching the lights back on. She showed no indication of being winded after the punch in the midriff, her quiet eyes observing me as she observed everything.

    Tate, the other assailant, grinned at me in the harsh light. Garvin collected my sword from the floor and then walked across the tiles to the wall-mounted rack where the weapons were stored. He checked down the length of each blade carefully before stowing his sword and mine in their appointed places.

    Then he took another practice blade from the rack and paced back towards me. I recognised it immediately and sagged at what the heavier, longer blade meant.

    "Two hundred," he instructed me.

    Sitting up, I took the heavier blade from him. It meant two hundred practice cuts against the car tyre that hung at chest height from a chain in the corner before I could leave for the evening. I sighed deeply, knowing that I could tell him no, but that if I did, he would instruct me no further.

    I nodded and he turned and walked away towards the door. Tate stood, leaning on the end of his sword, his grin widening at my misfortune.

    "It's a sword, not a walking stick, Tate," Garvin reminded him as he came to the door. "Clean and check the weapons."

    The smile vanished from Tate's lips and he lifted the end of the sword from the floor, saluting in acceptance of the rebuke and of the chore that went with it. Though I rated Tate as a fighter, I also knew that he would do whatever Garvin told him, almost without question. It was a matter of leadership. Garvin led and Tate followed.

    I pulled myself to my feet, careful not to use the practice sword for support in case that earned me a further two hundred cuts. A glance towards the door showed that Garvin had left, Amber in tow.

    "He had you clean there, Niall." Tate's rumbling chuckle made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

    "That's true, but a few weeks ago he would never have had the opportunity because either you or Amber would have been there first."

    His smile widened. "You're coming along, sure enough," he said, nodding, acknowledging the progress I had made, "but I could still take you in an even fight."

    I let the wooden sword swing gently back and forth in my hand and looked him over. He was taller than me and heavier. His dark brown hair fell in long waves to his shoulders, adding to the impression of bulk. He was certainly stronger than me and I knew that for all his muscled bulk he could move like quicksilver when he wanted to.

    "With one of these, maybe," I indicated the heavier practice sword, "but with something lighter? I'm not sure that's true anymore, Tate."

    It wasn't a challenge. A challenge implied ego and that had been knocked out of me in the months since I'd started my training as a Warder, at least as far as swords were concerned. But part of mastering a weapon was knowing how good you were, who you could take and who you couldn't. A few weeks ago, I wouldn't have speculated, but now? I really didn't know who would win.

    "Some other time, huh? I've the weapons to check over."

    It was my turn to grin.

    He nodded and turned to the weapons racks to carry out his chore. I knew that he would inspect every blade carefully, rather than have Garvin find one later with a chip out of it or a crack along the grain. Garvin had told him to check them and he would, because that was what Garvin expected.

    I went over to where the tyre hung from its chain. I knew that cutting at the heavy reinforced rubber built strength and stamina, but that didn't make it any easier. In a real fight it wouldn't matter if I was tired, bruised and sore, but this wasn't a real fight.

    My first two cuts set the pace and after that I let my body take over, varying the cuts each time as I'd been taught. Overhead down, left side, inside left, slide and cut, turn and slice. My body followed the rhythm of it, the heavy thwack of the sword against the rubber punctuating the turns and twists, my brain counting down the cuts to zero.

    After fifty strokes I broke the rhythm, preventing my imaginary opponent from guessing the timing. The whistle and thwack of the blade accelerated and slowed, doubled and paused. I tailored my movements, becoming sharp then smooth, elaborate then direct, spurring myself to find new ways of hammering the swinging rubber.

    I missed the time on one, sending shock waves vibrating up my wrist, and reacted by turning and sliding the blade through the centre in a long thrust designed to impale before spinning around, letting the blade whistle out in a flat blur that whacked the tyre into a spin. I spun back to intercept and then let it spin.

    I had reached two hundred.

    The tyre wound down, turning one way then the other, as I went through a series of stretches and stances, letting my muscles recover slowly, using the effort to ease the tension between my shoulders and the tingling in my wrist.

    Tate had waited for me and took the practice sword with a grin. He wiped it over with a cloth and then inspected it for damage before returning it to its place on the rack. We walked in companionable silence through to the changing rooms. I stripped off gingerly and inspected the livid bruises I had accumulated through the day. My fey genes meant that they would be gone by tomorrow, only to be replaced by a fresh set.

    Tate shed his clothes and was already in the shower by the time I had my towel ready, his gravelly voice singing a song I didn't recognise about a fair maid whom he was trying to tempt with a variety of unlikely and sometimes grisly gifts.

    "Did you make that up?" I asked him, stepping under the cascade of hot water.

    He stopped singing. "Mostly not, though some of the verses are mine."

    "It's an unlikely courtship," I suggested. "What kind of girl wants a severed head as a betrothal gift?"

    "It's the head of her enemy, so I suppose it has its attractions." He shrugged.

    "It doesn't seem much like a love token."

    "She's a fey lass, so who knows what she wants?" Tate stepped past me, grinning, grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist.

    I had to admit, he had a point.

    I stayed under the hot water, letting the percussion and warmth ease my muscles while Tate went back into the changing room to get dry. After a few moments, his deeply resonant tone resumed the song.

    I thought of my own fey lass, waiting for me. I didn't think that she would welcome a severed head as a gift, but then she wasn't truly fey anymore than I was. The true fey were altogether more strange.

    Not for the first time I shook my head at the turn my life had taken in the last nine months. My first encounter with the Feyre had been only the previous September when, having had a heart attack on the underground, I had been rescued by an old lady who had woken the fey magic within me to heal my failing heart.

    I shook my head and smiled. The old lady had turned out to be a lot older than she looked, though she had changed now so that she appeared to be in her midtwenties. She had become my guide, my mentor and eventually my lover and I had gambled my life in a trial by ordeal for her safety and that of my daughter.

    My daughter, Alex, had taken to Blackbird. I had hoped that they would get on well enough to bear each other's company, but I had found myself prodded into jealousy by the way they bonded. They would sit on the sofa, heads together, whispering to each other, and when challenged would tell me that it was nothing to concern me.

    When I'd asked Blackbird what they were talking about, I'd been told to mind my own business.

    "She's my daughter," I had protested.

    "All the more reason that you shouldn't ask."

    "Have you told her about me being fey?" I asked her.

    "No. You're her father. When the time is right, you should tell her."

    Blackbird left me with that thought. I'd held off telling Alex about the gifts I'd inherited from our unknown fey ancestor and the possibility that she would also inherit them. I reasoned that it was partly because I didn't really know whether it would happen or not, and partly because I dreaded what it might mean if it did.

    My own gifts came from my affinity with the void, an element that the Feyre believed separated one thing from another, preventing matter from collapsing in on itself. If Alex had inherited that from me then she would inherit the female form of the gift, an ability to become incorporeal, a ghostly shadow of herself, invulnerable to physical harm. She would also inherit darkspore, a corruption that she would be able to spread at will on any surface, allowing her to consume other beings and feed on their flesh.

    It wasn't the best news a father could give his daughter. I imagined her reaction, the curling of her lip in that peculiar way as she elongated '
eww
' into a whine. I smiled at the thought, but it had kept me from telling her.

    It wasn't certain, though. I had also been told that humanity had introduced a random factor into the inheritance. The Feyre had long had problems with fertility. When they did have children they bred true, each to their element, their forms reflecting their differing affinities. When they discovered that the union between fey and human was fertile it caused a rift between those who believed that the union would save the Feyre from extinction and those who saw human-fey hybrids as an abomination, a corruption of their bloodlines. What neither the pure-bred Untainted nor the remaining factions of the Seven Courts had realised was that the human DNA somehow altered the mechanism of inheritance, meaning that there was no way to be sure what fey traits would be inherited. My hope was that maybe Alex would inherit some other gift, possibly fire and air like Blackbird rather than the grisly gifts of the void.

    In any case there was no way to tell. She would either find herself one day gifted with uncanny power, or she wouldn't. If she did, she would live an unnaturally long life. If she didn't, she would live a human lifespan and age and die long before I did, assuming that no one broke my neck with a wooden sword first.

    I dried myself and pulled on my jeans and T-shirt. I was not allowed the charcoal uniform of the Warders. Garvin would decide when I could wear grey and he would make sure that I would not disgrace the reputation of the Warders before he would allow that. His decision was final.

    I looked forward to that day with a degree of trepidation. It would mean that he thought I was worthy of it, which was a huge compliment, but it would also mean that I was available for duty. Being a Warder meant being ready twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The Lords and Ladies could request our assistance or assign duties whenever they felt like it. That was the job.

    In practice, it wasn't an onerous schedule. Mostly the courts kept to themselves, dealing with their own internal issues. It was only when something affected all of them that the Warders were involved. Then the Warders would be called upon to carry out the will of the Seven Courts of the Feyre, which could be anything from delivering a message to carrying out an execution. The will of the courts was absolute, and the Warders were there to ensure it was enacted. I had heard that a job rarely took more than three of them.

    There were six of them and me, one from each of the seven courts. I had bargained for my life by threatening to expose the High Court's weakness. Their solution had been to make me a Warder, ensuring my loyalty and my silence, sworn under an oath bound by magic far more powerful than my own. But I wasn't an active Warder until Garvin said I was. It was his call.

    I clipped my phone to my belt. Amber called it my boy-toy and had told me to drop it down a well. She spurned all the trappings of technology and connected with no one outside the Warders as far as I knew. Even then it was a cold relationship. My phone was my connection with my human life and the means by which other people, human people, could contact me. In truth it had its limitations. If I used power with it near me then the battery would drain, sometimes beyond recharging. It had been through five batteries in its short life, even though I carried it only when I needed it. It wasn't allowed in the practice hall where it could distract me from my training but it meant I could check for messages when lessons were done for the day.

    It beeped twice when I turned it on. That would be Blackbird wanting to know what time I would be home. She had only partially settled into domestic life and felt vulnerable without the magic that her pregnancy denied her. I was assured it was quite natural and that it was to protect the baby from the raw power of fey magic. She accepted it, but she wasn't happy about it. It was the first time she had been without magic for hundreds of years and she felt the loss keenly.

    I grabbed my bag. The phone beeped again. What was the matter now? She knew I couldn't be contacted until the session ended, so what was the point of sending me multiple messages? Or was it simply that she wanted me to get some milk on the way home?

    I unclipped my phone from my belt and pressed the button to read the messages. The phone beeped again as I held it. What was the matter with it?