Season notes: violence, death, attempted murder, accusation of sexual assault
Jahlene paced her rooms, trying to clear her thoughts. She felt better—clearer—than she had in weeks. The manor fizzed with life. She would have preferred a different flavor to her home than tension, upset, fear, and distress, but the past months had taken their toll. Still, being able to taste anything was a vast improvement. She had no doubt she’d be hearing from Brit, at great length, about her foolishness.
“I don’t like this. I agree there are some… worrisome coincidences here, but nothing is going to go horribly wrong if we wait until daylight to ask Marta about them.” Parlen’s pained words pulled her out of her thoughts and back to the present.
Cook snorted, “I wish I agreed. We don’t know. We can’t know until we ask her. And we can’t find her to ask.”
Parlen had been roused during the search for Marta and had been protesting ever since. Jahlene was grateful Cook stayed to argue with her secretary, so she didn’t have to. The old half-fae witnessed nearly a half-century of politics growing up at court. He knew what Parlen didn’t: if Marta was working for Oeloff, then she allied with him willingly. No glamour could compel her over such a distance or for so long. And when human and fae allied, it usually meant the human was not only capable of forcing a fae into a bargain but shared that fae’s… lifestyle. Which made Mattin’s disappearance worrying. Very worrying.
Brit burst into the room pulling one of the guards after him. “They’re at the cabin.”
The guard, Kethrie, said, “Mattin left a turn of the glass back, Mistress. Said if anyone was looking for him, he would be at the hunting cabin. Marta left after him, but didn’t say where she was going.”
Jahlene started stripping off her overdress. “I’m going after them. I want a squad of guards with me. We’ll go on foot. The cabin’s close enough we can be halfway there before the horses are saddled.”
When she left the manor with Brit a few minutes later, she found Anral waiting with the guards at his back. “Whatever this is, I don’t think it’s planned,” she told him, “But keep a double watch just in case.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Brit knew the way best, so he took the lead. Jahlene and the guards followed.
Marta hopped down off the table and went rummaging. “Is there anything to eat around here? I missed dinner.”
Mattin’s jaw fell open. Was she really…
“Oh good. I can work with this. Would you like some bread and cheese, Mattin? No reason for you to go hungry.”
After a moment he managed to choke out, “I’ve lost my appetite, for some reason.”
She came back to the table and sat across from him, eating as daintily as she always had back home at the inn. Mattin’s shoes made wet noises as he shifted his feet in the slowly spreading pool of blood. It took every bit of restraint he’d learned at Brit’s hands, all the endurance he’d dredged up serving in the glamourhame to hold back the scream pushing against his teeth. But he wouldn’t scream. He wouldn’t give Marta the satisfaction—and it wasn’t like anyone would hear….
“Salty.” Marta licked a bit of cheese off her lip. “I wish I’d found out how they make the cheese here.”
Salty. No one to hear. Salty. No one to hear. Salty.
The words whirled in his head, making no sense…
Until suddenly they did.
A memory flashed through his mind. Cook, explaining the “tastes” of glamour.
“…there is a taste to emotions. If you ever hear Jahlene talk about, and she won’t often, she’ll mention a spicy anger, bitter grief, sweet pleasure. How strong passion can become like honey eaten from the jar—too much and it clogs the taste and becomes revolting. When you eat a stew, can you tell which spices flavored it?”
Mattin thought about it. “Sometimes. At the inn, always. Here… you use spices Father didn’t. And more of them.”
Cook nodded. “Just so. But you can taste stew and say it is bitter, or sweet, or savory.”
“Yes.” Mattin was beginning to see where Cook was going with this.
“So, Jahlene can take that you are ‘bitter’ or ‘spicy’ or ‘salty’. But she doesn’t know you well enough to find the source of those flavors.”
If the mistress tasted him now, would she assume he was reacting to her words? Would it confirm his suicide in her eyes? Or did she know him well enough to understand? Maybe, if he couldn’t save himself, he could at least warn her.
Brit came here because the mistress couldn’t taste him. Far enough away he’d have privacy. Even if she would understand, did he have a chance of reaching so far?
Strong emotions, she had said once, reached further. He’d been holding back his emotions, forcing himself to stay calm, to think.
Strong emotions reached further. How many miles further? The pool of blood spread further with each passing moment. Marta poured another dram of uisqe and took a cautious sip.
Strong emotions. Mattin surrendered his control and let his emotions wash over him.
Pain—physical pain. The burning cuts along his wrists. The cords digging into his flesh. Pins and needles in his legs
Mattin keened, the long drawn-out cry ripped from his chest to echo through the cabin. He thrashed against the chair, wrenching his wrists, ripping his wounds even further open, shortening what time he had left.
The pain of knowledge. Betrayal. The sister he loved, gone forever, an illusion of his own desires.
He kicked against the floor, the table, tried to reach Marta but had no chance. He nearly knocked the chair over, but it was too heavy to shift easily and it didn’t matter anyway.
Anger. At Marta, for being this monster. For threatening Jahlene. For killing him. At himself. For bringing her here, exposing Jahlene and his family to this madness.
Grief. He didn’t want to die. Wanted a chance to make things right with the mistress. To spend more time with Cook and find new ways to irritate Brit. Fear. Of dying. Of what would happen to Jahlene and Brit and Cook and the others here he’d come to love. Of what Marta would do next. Of death and what came after. Riding the Bloody Mare…
He screamed, wailed, pleaded, begged. He shivered, cold with blood loss and wracked with fear. Tears poured down his face, and snot bubbled and dripped, unnoticed, from his nose. He pulled at the ties on his wrists—short, steady jerks—as the will to live fought against despair, and despair lost. For now.
Marta crouched behind him where he couldn’t kick her. Cleaning his face, murmuring in his ear. He craned his head around and spat in her face. Cursed her with a virulence that would have shocked him if he was truly aware. But the words were just words.
Again pain. Pain became everything. Pain of betrayal, pain of failure, physical pain from his bleeding wrists and wrenched muscles. His stomach cramped and heaved. His lungs fought for air. Shock and blessed numbness tried to shield him from the pain, but he clung to it. It was his, every drop.
He retained no sense of time or place. No sanity. He was barely aware of his body as the pain spiraled through him, showing him how he brought this on himself, how he had brought destruction upon the mistress and his father and everyone he loved, how he had failed. Again, and again, and again, he failed the ones he loved. And in the floating place the pain sent him, he had no defense against despair.
There was no escape. No last-minute reprieve. He had failed and would die for his failure. And he wouldn’t suffer alone… He slumped in the chair, no longer fighting, but moaning quietly and begging forgiveness from the loved ones who couldn’t hear him.
He wallowed in it. Buried himself in the worst feelings of his life.
But behind everything else, determination and hope paced together through his mind. Feel, they whispered, you can still do something. Feel fully, feel everything, open yourself to all the horror and pain. This is your chance. This is your message. You haven’t failed yet. Leave a warning written with your pain and despair and hopelessness, and you can still protect her.
And so he did.
He sent his pain and fear and regret out, spread them across the world.
Hope.
The hoofed prayer that carried him on and kept him from being crushed beneath his helplessness. Hope that his warning might be heard.
They moved through the dark woods at a steady pace. Jahlene resisted the urge to run. Even jogging they risked twisted and broken legs. They had no reason—yet—to believe greater risk was warranted.
Ten minutes down the trail, Jahlene caught the first edge of Mattin’s emotions. The taste was faint but enough to know he was suffering. If she could taste him from this far away… She tried to tell herself his pain was from her rejection, but she didn’t believe it.
“Trouble ahead.” She spoke softly but in a tone pitched to carry. “We were right to come.”
The guards clucked their tongues in acknowledgment and Brit picked up the pace, just a little bit.
For a few minutes, the taste remained the same. A there, not-there sensation on the back of her tongue, nearly undetectable behind Brit’s growing concern. Then a hammer smote her, sending her reeling. The hunger within her awoke, stirred by the unexpected feast. It was delicious. It was empowering. It was… terrifying.
“Mattin.” She whispered, unaware of her own voice. The world around her faded behind the piquant flavor of pain, the roiling heat of anger. Salty grief. Bitter fear and betrayal, like coppery blood.
She felt, from a distance, one of the guards steadying her. “Mistress, what’s happening?”
Under everything, the sweet, sweet taste of desperation. Of pleading. The taste she knew so well from hundreds of times driving her toys right to their limits. The taste that said Please, Mistress, please.
“Something is wrong. I think… I think he’s trying to tell me something.”
Brit, still at the head of the column, stiffened, frowning into the dark. “Are you sure?” He’d learned long ago to send her a message with his emotions, but no one else had ever tried.
Jahlene nodded. “Yes. We need to hurry.”
She did her best to ignore the emotional storm and the way her glamour devoured it. She started running. When she stumbled, Brit grabbed her elbow, and held her on her feet as he raced beside her. They had no time. She’d tasted such grief many times before… Mattin was dying.
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