Chapter Eight (Part 1)

Thanks to Midnight-Reader for your support!!

***

There were too many people in my palace.

Aside from the time Idris had brought his retinue of guards over when we were investigating the poisoning of the Dawn river, this was the most people I’d ever had over.

I didn’t like it. I bristled like a cat seeing a rival cat, but unfortunately, they were my allies, so I couldn’t hiss and scratch at them like I wanted to.

And I would be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised that some of them were actually my allies.

Gabriel, for example. While he didn’t hate me, at least not anymore, he was unquestionably loyal to Idris. It was hard to imagine him doing anything that went against his king’s orders, but here he was, doing something that Idris definitely would not approve of. Ren was in the same boat.

And Gabriel had brought along his little ducklings, who had all been hired in by Idris. I was also certain that they all liked Idris way more than they liked me, but maybe they were just following Gabriel’s lead on this one.

Samir was also incredibly loyal to Idris, but now that he was married to Peace, it seemed that his husband’s wants were winning out over loyalty to his creator.

Although, maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising that they were all on my side on this. Idris was, without a doubt, acting kind of batshit, so it was probably less that they were loyal to me, and more that they wanted to get Idris back to normal as soon as possible.

I couldn’t blame them. That’s all I really wanted too.

“So,” Ana started, once everyone had gotten situated in the red and black designed sitting room on the first floor. “Anyone know why Idris is being an insane dick right now?”

I wanted to snort, but considering that I knew why Idris was acting like this, I didn’t actually find it very funny. I slumped further into one of the red velvet couches despondently. Wisdom and Peace both shot me worried glances.

Ana raised an eyebrow when only silence answered her and then focused her stare on me. “Rook? Anything you want to say?”

“Not really,” I muttered. Ana started to scowl and I sighed, rolling my eyes. “I don’t…I don’t know, okay?”

That came out more defensively than I wanted it to, and everyone noticed, judging by the curious stares thrown my way. Should I have just come out and said that he was acting like this because of me? Probably. But my throat closed up when I thought about actually saying those words, so I kept it to myself.

A little voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like Wisdom whispered that I couldn’t know for sure if I was causing Idris’s illness. No point in jumping to conclusions right away.

The larger part of me was silent and sick with a certainty that just my separation from Idris now was probably already helping him.

My stomach felt like a blender on high, nausea making the back of my throat burn with acid. Sitting next to me on the sofa, Wisdom grabbed my hand to comfort me. I squeezed back gratefully.

“O-kaayy,” Ana continued after an awkward pause. “Great. Then I’m going to assume that someone is enchanting or poisoning him somehow. Probably whoever sent that deer to attack you, Rook. Which means we have to figure out how to cure him, or at least isolate him, so that whoever it is can’t do anything worse to him while we’re away.”

My stomach sank in further, a cold hand wrapping around my heart at those words.

Here I was, trying to get as far away from Idris as possible, not even fucking thinking for a second that I was leaving him vulnerable.

Gods.

Gods.

“Rook,” Wisdom murmured, tugging the back of my shirt. It was then that I noticed that I had stood up unconsciously, like I was about to charge right back to the place I’d just taken great pains to escape from. As if there was anything I was going to be able to do except get myself locked up again.

But he needs me, I thought faintly.

Does he, though?

Was I helping him by leaving, or giving someone an opening to hurt him?

I didn’t know.

I slowly sank back into my seat with Wisdom’s hand still tightly knotted in my shirt. Oddly, it reminded me of when she was a child. She used to do the same thing whenever she didn’t want to let me out of her sight, keeping a tight grip on my shirt or my belt.

Peace cleared his throat awkwardly, shooting a worried look at me. “Do we have any more information on who sent the deer, then? If we’re assuming they’re connected, then that’s where we should start, right?”

“That makes sense…unfortunately, we don’t have any leads regarding the deer,” Gabriel spoke up, sheepishly rubbing his chin. “All we know is that whoever made it definitely took parts from a person and then surgically attached them to the deer. We couldn’t trace the magic on it to anyone. We interrogated all the realm’s doctors, assuming that someone with some level of surgical knowledge did it, but we couldn’t get anyone to fess up, and searches of their homes and offices came up with nothing. So either they cleaned up really well, or it’s not a doctor.”

Wisdom hummed, slowly releasing my shirt as she sat forward. “What about medical students? Many of them have sufficient surgical knowledge to do it.”

Gabriel’s eyes brightened and he nodded. “That’s a good idea. So we’ll search the students next.” He suddenly deflated a little, a small pout appearing on his lips. “But, uh…I no longer have access to a full guard, so it’ll take quite some time to interrogate that many people, especially without drawing Idris’s attention.”

“Speaking of Idris,” Ana stepped forward again and cast a disdainful glance around the sitting room, clearly not approving of my design choices. Her nose got particularly wrinkled at the sight of my coffee table with the legs carved to look like hissing snakes, “he’s going to show up here sooner rather than later. He knows this is the first place you’d run to, Rook, and the damage I caused is only going to distract him for so long. We should only stay here the night, then move elsewhere, at least long enough to come up with a plan to capture him.”

“Where?” One of the little guards asked. What was her name again? Uhhh…Bela? Or was she Mykala? She was the really coiffed, pretty one.

Ana frowned. “We can’t go to my place, unfortunately. He’ll look there if he doesn’t find us here. Who else can we trust to hide us for a while?”

Ren scratched his head. He was all coiled up in one of the armchairs, legs drawn up so his knees were at his chin. “I mean, we could go to my place, but he’ll probably look there too, right? I guess it depends on how long we need to set up a trap for him. I could probably stall him for a while if he does show up.”

Ana nodded slowly. “That could work. He’ll check Doveri eventually, but he’ll still have to check here and my kingdom thoroughly first. He doesn’t know you’re involved with this, Ren, so that’ll buy us some time. If he does come around before we’re ready to try to trap him, I’ll see if Amani or Hari can house us for a while.”

There were nods around the room in acceptance of this plan. A beat of silence followed where some of them were looking at me, waiting for me to nod, and others were trying so hard not to look at me that it was painfully obvious what had their attention. I stayed quiet, partially because I’d been holding back the urge to vomit for a while now, and also because I had suddenly thought of something.

“Gabriel,” I said faintly, and he sat ramrod straight like I’d barked for him to stand to attention, “did you ever find out whose body was used to hybridize the deer?”

He frowned curiously. “We did send some samples with Ameen to see if he could match any of their characteristics with a missing person, but he was still working on it last I checked. He might have found something by now, but he lives at the palace in Esen. How are we going to contact him?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “I can get a note to him the same way I did Ana. But he might not have the power to get a response back to me.”

Ameen was a half-immortal, and while some older half-immortals were pretty powerful, they had to work very diligently to get to a level where things like sending notes across kingdoms was possible. They could teleport themselves, but other objects were another matter entirely.

Wisdom shifted slightly in her seat. “I…can contact him. It may take a day or so.”

Everyone turned to look at her.

And to my shock and horror, she blushed under the attention.

Oh no. No fucking way. I already did this shit with Peace.

My eyes narrowed. “Oh, can you? How?”

The blush deepened, and I felt my fangs ache with the urge to rip Ameen’s throat open.

That’s my fucking baby.

“Not important,” she said quickly, and I subconsciously bared my teeth, causing her to give me a warning look. “Anyway, I can find out if he’s found a match, and if we find that person, we may be able to find the killer. After all, it’s unlikely that they would have killed someone random just for that, right? It seems more like a crime of intense hatred to me, if the killer went to all that trouble to fuse their victim with the deer.”

“Or they’re just a psychopath, and the victim has no importance to the investigation whatsoever,” Ana said in a monotone. What an optimist.

“It’s worth looking into regardless,” Wisdom said. “It also brings me to another thing that I’ve been considering, in light of recent events.”

I was absolutely going to corner her after this to interrogate her about all this blushing business, but she was damn good at changing the topic, and I was briefly distracted. “What’s that?”

“There are a lot of rather odd things going on, to say the least. First there was the deer, then Idris locking you up, Rook, and most recently, I heard that spirits were breaking their daze in Chrysos?” Wisdom said, casting a glance at Ana, who nodded.

I tilted my head. “So that wasn’t just you making shit up to distract Idris?” I couldn’t hide my disappointment. Ana scowled.

“No. That was all true, and even after investigating the souls, I’m still not fully sure what happened. When I looked at their memories, all I saw was that they were daydreaming about the thing they were most obsessed with in life right before they broke the daze. One was madly in love with his wife while alive, and he tried to break out to find her, another was a lover of music, and he was dreaming about going to see the local orchestra, and so on.”

Well that was fucking weird. It would be fine if it was one really passionate soul, but several? What the fuck happened?

“I personally think it’s odd for all these things to happen at the same time,” Wisdom continued, a thoughtful gleam in her stormy gray eyes. She tapped a couple fingers on her lower lip. “So I had this theory…it’s kind of strange, but it could explain some things.”

“And that theory is?” Ren said. He was clearly enjoying the drama and tension in the room, watching everything while idly chewing his thumbnail, looking like he was watching his favorite tv show. I’m glad someone was having a good time.

“What if there’s a new god?”