Page 63 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

Myrddin’s defensiveness shifted to anger, his blond beard quaking.

“I would have been a dead man to tell him no, Your Majesty. He would have tortured me until he got his way. I might have my pitfalls, but I am the reason Rennes is not steeped in blood tonight.” His eyes flitted to Bastion, who glared at them both.

“Indeed, one of my powers is clairvoyance, but I am bound by the laws of the Old Faith from telling anyone of the future. I am only allowed to advise and direct, but that hasn’t stopped the great kings I’ve been indebted to from trying to extract the information from me, however they see fit. ”

“So your great advice was to trap them together until she ended up dead or enthralled,” Bastion spat.

Lilac said nothing, shivering against the sudden cold.

“I did what I had to. As did Lilac and Garin. I can tell you things about events passed, and possible outcomes that are no longer. What I can tell you is that Garin would not have stopped here. He would’ve stayed a few more hours, drank his fill.

Then, as he slowly realized the blood he spilled did not fill him, he would’ve fled into the night, killing as he went, diverting to your castle at the end.

He would have struck your army down until you had nothing left to fortify yourself against France.

Then, their country would be the least of your concerns. ”

“He wanted my blood.”

“He wanted,” he corrected, “with an uncontrollable desperation and hunger, to simply find you. It seems you both were driven by the same urges.” He craned his head, contemplating. “You broke through his entrancement, did you not?”

She thought of Garin’s words. Those tonight, and the threat she’d thought was empty, meant to scare her when he’d cornered her in his grotto. She was unable to help herself from imagining it.

She closed her eyes, only to discover a vision?—

Garin, striding up to the chateau gate, unarmed, asking to see her. He’d ask once. A glint of blades in the moonlight as the guards refused, laughed, and in a flash of black, him tearing through their flesh with his teeth and hands before they got close enough to see the red of his irises.

Lilac tried to open her eyes, but the vision remained.

He was in the corridor before the Grand Hall, veering right for the throne room, where her parents often entertained their closest guests.

“Stop,” Lilac begged Myrddin, as Garin—the ghoul of him—stalked toward the stone doors. “I understand.”

The vision eased. Bastion stood next to her, looking just as unsettled.

“Better here than there. And through all that chasing, his bloodlust would have grown so great that when he finally cornered you, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself.

The urge to complete the bond drove his endless hunger, but your death would’ve been another solution to free him, wouldn’t it?

” The warlock’s question hung in the night grown silent.

“We both had the Dragondew Mead tonight,” she added. “I, no more than a few drops, him, possibly more. Two guests who’d tried to seduce him put it in his drink.”

“Ah,” said Myrddin, understanding immediately. “That certainly would have complicated things. The effects of the plant were likely made more potent. But it probably saved you time, if not your life. His lust for you would have recentered him from his hunger, but not for long.”

There were shouts for water in the background, and she thought the blaze dimmed slightly, the hiss of a suffocating fire and billowing smoke sounding above them. But she couldn’t look away from the warlock, both intrigued and terrified at the unyielding magic that had befallen them tonight.

“Why was there the urge to complete the thrall bond in the first place?” Lilac said, her voice barely audible.

,“There usually exists some form of yearning for one another’s company once a first level bond is initiated, thus the need to watch and keep the potential thrall and regnant apart,” he explained, stroking his beard.

“But an instant bond like this is rare, if it has ever existed before. Either way, it was better you found him early.”

She steeled herself against the mixture of emotions that followed, even as the weight of being Garin’s thrall bowed her shoulders.

The memory of his control over her upstairs made her insides clench with both fury and longing.

A shard of pain spiked at the right side of her throat, where Piper and Garin had sunk their teeth into her—where Kestrel had dug his inch-long claws into the bloodied meat there and held her windpipe shut at Cinderfell.

She looked down at herself, distantly wishing she’d worn one of Garin’s self-cleaning kirtles. She was covered in blood, hers and his.

Myrddin’s outstretched arm appeared in her periphery; she blinked the tears away and looked at him questioningly.

“May I?” he asked, holding his hand out.

“Don’t do anything to hurt her,” Bastion warned. “You’ve already signed our names in blood by staking Garin in the fucking kidney.”

“Don’t remind me.” He gave a curt nod to Lilac. “Your Majesty, would I steer you wrong?”

She refused to answer his irony, but waited for further instruction.

Myrddin waved his hand in the air, first in a circular motion, then what looked like half a square before he pushed his palm toward her. She flinched as a tingling sensation enveloped her feet, then began climbing up her legs.

Lilac gasped; before her very eyes, her shoes and skirts were clean, perhaps even more neatly laid and freed of wrinkles than they’d been when she’d left the castle.

The sensation continued up her torso, her arms, chest, all the way to the top of her head, until not a speck of dirt, sweat, or blood was felt upon her body.

She spun, regarding herself. “That is quite impressive, Myrddin.”

“It’s only an illusion. Nearly the same type derived by Adelaide’s tonic. The same disenchantment rules apply—the moment you ingest food or drink, it wears off. This is to get you home without needing to answer questions.”

Bastion made a noise of relief. He was looking up at the balcony. “The fire’s out.” He concentrated, listening. She hadn’t noticed, but they had been cast in near darkness, lit only by the torches on the street. “Everyone seems to have made it out.”

Myrddin shifted, placed himself between them and held his hands out, palms up. “On the count of three.”

They both nodded.

“One.”

Lilac braced herself, readying her palm above his, shifting Garin in her arms. Bastion did the same, looking utterly skeptical and ready to recoil, probably thinking about Kestrel’s unpleasant portaling experience.

“ Two… ”

Myrddin clamped a steel grip on her outstretched forearm. She heard Bastion scream somewhere off to her right, and her stomach dropped as the ground disappeared and the world started spinning. She hugged Garin tight and shut her eyes.

There was a rush of warm air, and a set of new screams. The world—the room they’d landed in—had slowed and eventually came to a stop, but they were contained within a vortex of wind that loosed every piece of parchment and shuddered the hanging pots suspended by the beams on the ceiling.

They’d teleported into a firelit room shrouded in potted, hanging greenery, amber and cobalt bottles galore—no Low Forest plants to be seen this time.

Adelaide shot up in a small bed tucked in the right hand corner of the room, cussing and pulling the covers up over herself, her bare shoulders barely visible above the knitted comforter.

Lorietta was dressed in a pretty, puffed sleeve white gown with a hem adorned in pink roses, in the middle of pulling a pair of brown boots on.

She dropped the second shoe and stumbled back. “ Modron! ” Lorietta squeaked as Myrddin dipped into a bow, seemingly unbothered by the way his vortex had promptly floated the bottoms of his robes.

“Stake me now,” Bastion said, shielding his eyes with one hand and tugging Myrddin’s robes down with the other. “You couldn’t bother to at least wear your braies? ”

“Greetings and salutations,” Myrddin shouted above the wind that continued around them, several pieces of crumpled paper and leaves making their rounds. “A delivery for you. Two vampires, intact. Mostly.”

“ Myrddin ,” Lorietta screeched, her large eyes falling upon Garin’s limp form in Lilac’s arms—the gore staining his face and body. “ Not my chamber! ”

There was a large lump on her bed, under the covers, where Adelaide had been.

“If I’m teleporting within a property’s walls, I can only teleport to people .

Or Daemons. An arcane law meant to protect…

ethics?” He waved a vague hand. “Seems rather counterintuitive in this particular circumstance. I hate to deposit this dormant, rather deadly vampire and his aloof brother on you, I truly do. My apologies, my friends.”

Lilac wanted to close her eyes again, on the verge of throwing up, but she kept them open out of burning curiosity.

The air around them had slowed considerably, almost making the spinning sensation worse.

Myrddin shook Bastion off, and the vampire coughed and stumbled out of the vortex onto Lorietta’s rug next to the pit-style hearth in the center of the room.

The warlock then elbowed Lilac but clamped his now free hand over hers, which had been tucked under his arm. “Well, Your Majesty? What are you waiting for?”

Keeping her distance, Lorietta refused to get any closer but craned her neck to get a better view of Garin as Bastion gingerly righted himself before her. Lilac held him close, a carnal feeling of distrust flooding her body.

“It will be okay,” Myrddin shouted over the wind. “I promise.”

“I can’t.” She shook her head, clutching him. “I can’t leave him.”

“You can. This place is his home,” the warlock said with a reassuring squeeze of her hand, his crystal gaze warming her even as she held tears back. “You will see him soon. You have no choice.”

“I thought we were severing their bond,” Lorietta interjected.

Myrddin glanced knowingly at Lilac, unmoved by the sickening motion. “We can try. If that’s the case, I’d prepare for more casualties, though.”

There was a simultaneous exclamation of fear and protest from Lorietta and Adelaide. “That goes against everything he wanted for her.” Lorietta glanced at Garin in horror. “What made him change his mind?”

“It was me.” Lilac shifted Garin forward as they all looked to her. “I did it. I made myself his thrall.” Gingerly, cradling his head, she leaned over. “Be careful with him.”

Bastion took him from her, and the moment he was out of her hands, she attempted to follow—tried to step out from the vortex. She was yanked back by the collar by Myrddin, who held her close around the shoulders as the wind picked up.

The room dissipated into blurs of orange and green.