The door had barely shut behind Darcy’s ill-favored brother and his packmate when the Silvers turned their tempers on one another.
“What were you thinking, letting him up here?” snapped Charles, hands curling into fists as he rounded on the mage. “He should not have made it past the docks. Unless I’m to infer your strength is slipping? If the time has come to bolster our defenses, Darcy, you should have said so.”
But the other’s expression settled into a grim sort of smile. She signed something with her left hand, and the whirling sword—hovering midair not far above their heads—streaked away and out of sight.
“Zacharias has a big a mouth,” said Darcy. “Soon, everyone on the mountain and in the valley will know there’s truth to the rumors. They’ll know we have a Fox, but no idea we’re actively trying to get rid of her. They’ll assume she has power, but they’ll know better than to ask about it directly. And, soon, they’ll come calling. There will be no need for us to parade her about at assemblies or balls. There’s no time for that, in any case. But this way, prospects will come to us, and quickly.”
Get rid of her. Get rid her. It twisted at Beatrice’s insides to hear such words from Darcy’s lips, and that in turn was distressing, though it came as no surprise. I’ve been chosen by the most capricious of spirits. Beatrice reminded herself. Of course I would find myself Called to such a horrid, strict, angry, beautiful, magnificent…oh, curse it.
Even her thoughts were out of her control.
“Admit it, Darcy. You just craved another chance to knock the bastard off his feet.”
She shrugged. “That, dear Charles, is merely the cherry atop the cake.”
The other scoffed. “If you’ve ever eaten cake, I’ll eat my own foot.”
A silent observer since the moment he’d caught sight of Beatrice—Jemison shifted where he stood, a hand flying up to cover his mouth even as his eyes flashed up at her.
He can’t speak so long as I’m here. Remembering what Charles had said about his Tiger packmate, Beatrice retreated to the lift with the Suit clanking after her. Her own unasked questions were driving her near wild with impatience, and she could well imagine how Jemison might feel in his forced silence. And so, she resolved, until she could corner Charles with her queries, she’d return to her upstairs suites. There she’d seek what answers might lie hidden in its dusty shelves and wardrobes.
There was a flustered flapping of wings from behind her as the crow flew after Beatrice and her guardian, landing to perch atop the Suit’s left shoulder even as it pulled the door shut. They began to glide upward, rain pattering the glass. Beatrice met and held the bird’s beady gaze, cocking her head in imitation.
“Are you to guard me now too, Sir Gray?”
Why she’d decided it was not only a him but a Sir, she could not be sure. But the idea of a knight that was a crow made her smile.
The bird blinked, cocked his head, and cawed.
“I shan’t complain. I think you might be the most amicable company to be found in all of Highreach,” replied Beatrice, strangely comforted by the mock conversation. “I wonder whose you are? Perhaps one of the mysterious Wolves I’ve yet to see?”
One blink, two caws.
The lift came to a stop and both Suit and crow followed her out as Beatrice continued to think out loud.
“So, these rooms were Alice’s, then, weren’t they? They must have been.”
Looking about, she took in her surroundings as if through a new light, her drive to know turned inward. The walls on this floor were all of muted pastels in daubs of varying color. And as for the ceilings, billowing clouds had been painted on the plaster between the wooden beams that held them up. It was the celestial realm to Darcy’s underworld of dark stone and Charles’ earthen domain of greenery and glass.
Beatrice frowned as she padded down the hall, wondering why it hadn’t occurred to her before to look closely at the paintings that lined it. One depicted a mountain of storm clouds piling over a rolling field of flowers, the edges of a forest encroaching from either side.
“Was Alice a coyote shifter?” she asked, still studying the painting. The crow squawked.
“Whatever happened to her?”
To that, the bird had no reply.
It was a shame, for an urgent need to learn everything she possibly could about the missing packmate had overcome her, and it demanded immediate satisfaction. I must understand the woman who captured Darcy’s love. Whose absence so wounded the pack. If she could only do that, she thought, she could better understand all of them.
Beatrice continued down the hall, stopping to study a painting of a four-legged apparition of glowing mist roaming the moors. Moors. Was she from Arinvale, too? Moving on, she turned into the small study to scour the bookshelves, hoping to find a diary or something like it.
It’s not terrible to read a dead person’s private thoughts, Beatrice assured herself. Or is it? But her moral quandary mattered not, for the shelves held no such bounty. Instead, they were home to volumes on war tactics and strategy, swordsmanship and archery, and one entitled “Victory by Storm: A New Guide to the Offensive Applications of Sky Magic.”
Beatrice bit into her lip as she slid that one back into place.
There were pamphlets of sheet music, too, several well-thumbed romance novels, and some collections concerning history and the visual arts with covers stained and worn. And, best of all…
“Forsythe’s Fairy Tales,” breathed Beatrice, holding the tome with trembling reverence. “Second Edition.” She’d never cared what anyone said, the second was best—with its more organic, vivid illustration style and lyrical translation.
Clutching the book to her chest, she forgot everything else in the study and carried it with her to the bedroom. Her twin shadows, the Suit and crow, clanked and cawed after her. As she opened the door to the balcony, the bird screeched.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t let it get damp.”
Sitting crosslegged on the stone just outside the door, she opened the book in her lap. The rain that dripped beyond the roof and rails made for a lovely backdrop as she sank into the stories she most loved.
Her distraction, however, was short-lived. A song had begun to thread its way down the mountain, sung by the very same voice that had so enchanted her earlier that day. Beatrice closed the book and looked up. There were lights glowing through the trees and tumbled stone. But they were far up and away, some three times further than she’d run in fox form.
“Is that…is that one of the Wolves? Or both?” She turned to look at the crow, who cawed and ruffled his feathers. “Do they not live here in the main house?”
Sir Gray blinked and then cawed again.
“But why not?”
Flying over to the balcony rail, the crow proceeded to void its bowels over the edge. Beatrice wrinkled her nose—and a heartbeat later, a forceful gust of wind swept the mountainside. It drove the rain past the balcony rail so that it almost reached the hems of her skirts.
Snapping her treasure shut, Beatrice clasped it to her chest with one hand and grasped the door handle with the other as she hauled herself up. But just as she was turning to take the book inside, a new scent overtook her. A shifter scent. A scent like rain on mountain stone and lavender and leather. A scent that was deeply sensuous, caressing her whole being in a way that made her gut clench with want and froze her to the spot.
The Call. Again. Though she wanted to snarl and whimper and weep all at once, Beatrice did none of those things…because she could not. She had become an effigy of need, overwhelmed completely in a way that was both reminiscent of and yet totally different than the Call she’d felt for Darcy.
But there was a special pain in feeling it for the first time toward someone who was not standing before her, or even within sight. Someone who was horribly, unacceptably out of reach. It made her want to scream. And though still she could not move or speak, that desperate need exploded outward from her in a sudden wave of power.
Beatrice broke her silence with a shriek, stumbling backward as something began to take form in the air before her.
