Yew Queen Trilogy, стр. 14
“And last time, it was your brother Francesco.”
Lucus nodded, his eyes going dead. “Francesco drew the shortest straw and left the castle, giving himself up for us. Every day, I regret allowing him to walk through that door. His ashes spooled into the night like ink in water, so dark, so final.”
I almost wanted to reach across the table and touch his hand, to comfort him, but of course, I held myself back. He was a monster, and nothing about this required me feeling anything kind toward him.
My throat felt dry, so I downed a quick swallow of water. “I have more questions. First, what is a casting room?”
“A chamber designed to help a mage perform spells.”
I gripped the edge of the table. “So like spell casting?”
“Yes.”
I swallowed. Of course. Because magic was real. “Are you a mage?”
His gaze burned. “I am a fae lord.”
“You can’t be both?” I held out my hands and accidentally knocked over the syrup. “You did all that vine magic—”
“No. We are enemies, the mages and the fae.”
Righting the syrup bottle, I shoved the rest of the napkins at him so he could clean up. “Where do shifters and vampires fit in?”
“Shifters keep to themselves.”
“So they’re Switzerland?” He looked confused, so I explained, “Neutral in the politics of war.”
“Yes. As for vampires…The mages hire them as mercenaries.” Lucus said the word vampires like it was a curse in and of itself.
It was bizarre to see him doing something as basic as wiping a spill. “Kaippa is stuck with you all, and he is your sworn enemy?”
“Yes.”
I frowned. “Why did he get thrown in with you all and your castle of curses or whatever?”
Lucus ran a hand roughly through his hair. The emerald streaks weren’t as noticeable under his glamour. “The Mage Duke cast the curse. It is his castle. Enemy territory. My brothers and I infiltrated at night to kill the Mage Duke. He fooled us, trapped us, and cast the curse. Kaippa was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Why did you hate the Mage Duke? What’s that guy’s story?”
The muscles in Lucus’s jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth. “He killed hundreds of my kind in revenge for one fae’s wild behavior.”
Hundreds of his kind. A slaughter. I rubbed my hands together to warm them. “What did the fae do to the Mage to make him so angry?”
“He murdered the Mage Duke’s eldest daughter.”
“Why?”
Lucus’s chest moved with a deep sigh, and he crossed the room, heading toward the front window. “I didn’t intend to kill her.”
Chapter 11
My body broke out in a sweat, my shirt sticking to my back. “Wait. You were the one who started this feud between your kind and the Mage Duke?”
“It was the only time I have killed when feeding. I was young. An adolescent. I didn’t understand my power at the time. The act of taking the victim’s aura activated my alpha status.”
It was undeniable now. I pushed away from the table, then stood behind my chair. “What did you do when you realized you’d killed her?”
“I took her body to the Mage.”
“Without anyone to back you up? You went by yourself?”
Lucus looked at me, his face gaunt and his eyes filled with pain. “I will show you. You deserve to know since you have been pulled into my life.”
Before I could say a word, his wings appeared, and the tiny vine from the outer edge shot through the room, speeding across the carpet, then up the leg of my chair before curling around my arm and pressing against a spot behind my ear. I mentally scrambled to figure out what was going on. This was what he’d done to find my house. This was—
The world fizzled away, and a new one shimmered into view.
With my heart completely freaking out, I stood, frozen with fear, in a forest where massive oaks threw dappled shadows across ferns and narrow animal trails. The air smelled fresh and cleaner than any I’d ever breathed. Where in the hell…
A figure moved in the distance—a woman about Ami’s age with long limbs and a sheaf of bright red hair. She wore a dress, lifting its hem as she bent to pick something from the ground. Mushrooms, I thought. A basket swung from her arm, and she hummed quietly as she worked. She was a beauty.
Was I really here? How was I seeing this? It had to be related to the vine Lucus had called up. I touched the spot where it pressed against my skin, but there was nothing. No vine. No Lucus anywhere. He’d said he would show me what had happened that day, the day he’d killed the Mage Duke’s eldest daughter. Did that mean I was somehow witnessing his memory? But it wasn’t from his point of view, was it? I held up my hands, and the world spun in a circle around me. I fell to the ground.
My hands, my body, my clothing—I was nearly transparent.
Was I inside Lucus’s body here? I didn’t see anything that indicated that. Oh, shit. I didn’t want to be inhabiting his body when he murdered that woman. Because that had to be her, the one collecting mushrooms…
Beyond a rise in the forest floor, a tall fern shuffled, shaking sparkling dew from its green fingers. A hand slid between the leaves.
I sprang to my feet and squinted. Could it be?
A young Lucus emerged from the fern. Rawboned like any eighteen-year-old, he walked toward the redhead. He wore a loose shirt that appeared to be made of wide, pale green leaves from a plant I had no name for. His trousers were a dark brown, like a walnut tree’s trunk, and his boots were similar to the ones he wore as an adult, with a flap at the knee and as black as the tires of my motorcycle.
The sunlight drifting through the branches