Page 50 of Possess Me at Midnight (Doomsday Brethren #4)

Chapter Thirty-Four

W hat is Lucan doing?

“Just…stop.” He sighs. “I wondered how deep your sister’s attachment for Rykard is. Now I know.”

“I…” But what do I say? He hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s only tried to save magickind, too. I can’t be angry with him. “I’m sorry.”

“Shh.” He shakes his head as he cups my shoulder.

“One of the worst things I’ve ever endured was pouring out my devotion to Anka, trying to persuade her to return home to me, when her heart now seems to be with…

another.” He lets loose a bitter laugh. “How big a fool would I be to make the same mistake with you, Sabelle?”

I gasp. Is Lucan saying what I think he’s saying?

Bram whirls on him. “So I should just let her Bind to Ice? Give away one of your best political advantages?”

“I’m saying that I will not Call to her when her heart belongs to someone else. No matter how much I like and respect your sister, even desire her beauty, she and I both know that I will never love her. And the bond of the Call aside, I will never replace him in her heart.”

Nor will I replace Anka in his.

Cursing, Bram races across the floor. “This is war! Sacrifices must be made?—”

“Don’t speak to me of sacrifices!” Lucan snarls.

“I lost the mate of my heart fighting for this cause, and I live each day with the fact that she was tortured mercilessly as a means to weaken me—and all of us. What have you given up? A pile of bricks and a bit of your time? From here, it looks like you’ve merely used the war to grow your power. ”

I blink, my mouth gaping open. Lucan is being brutally honest with his best chum whilst refusing to Call to me.

I’m surprised…and filled with a guilty relief.

But everything he says makes sense. Anka is, even now, sleeping in Shock’s bed.

Lucan would never have lost her if not for this war. He knows vast pain.

“Mathias could be consolidating his power, talking to Blackbourne and Spencer or any of the other spineless twits and swaying the vote. We must name a candidate today.”

Again, my brother’s delivery might be horribly wrong…but he’s right.

“I will agree to the nomination to fill MacKinnett’s empty seat. I’m simply suggesting that we try to sway the Council without Sabelle as my mate.”

Bram pauses, tapping his toe impatiently. “Your nomination is far more likely to be rejected.”

Lucan shrugs. “Then let’s find another to nominate. But I will not Call to your sister.”

I send Lucan a profoundly grateful if watery stare. “Thank you.”

“You couldn’t bear to Renounce Ice. You weren’t going to be able to Bind to me.” A half smile lifts the corner of his mouth. “So you should thank me. I saved you a great deal of stuttering, I suspect.”

Relief and joy wash over me with all the explosive power of an emotional bomb. “I’ve no doubt.”

I fling myself against Lucan, hug him like the friend and big brother he is to me. He rubs my back soothingly—until Ice growls in warning. Lucan sets me away with a cautious stare and steps back, hands raised.

“Think about what you’re doing,” Bram demands, mouth agape. “If they reject your nomination, we’ll have lost precious time we don’t have. I can’t?—”

“Ask them unofficially,” I suggest. “Besides, you have your vote. Tynan will assume the O’Shea seat now that his grandfather has passed to his nextlife, like his father.

Surely, you can get Sterling to vote with you.

At worst, you’ll have a tie. But if you’re able to find out how Spencer or Helmsley will react to a well-placed suggestion of Lucan as a candidate… ”

“That isn’t protocol. Candidates are nominated, presented, then voted upon. A tie would bring about consequences… No.”

“A tie is still better than a defeat,” I point out.

Bram starts tapping his toe again, biting his lip.

Nervous energy rolls off him. I’m half-tempted to tell him to take a deep breath and center himself.

He shouldn’t be bleeding off this much vitality in the midst of war with his mate still missing.

But I don’t want to bear the brunt of the unpleasant temper Mathias’s spell has wrought. I bite my tongue.

“Do you still have MacKinnett’s mirror?” my brother asks.

I shake my head. “Duke, Marrok, and Olivia will have it with the Doomsday Diary, I expect.”

“And they arrived a bit past midnight.” With a short nod, he hustles from the room, ostensibly to find them.

What is he up to now?

Suddenly, I realize I’m standing alone with Lucan and Ice. The former studies me with resignation. The latter hovers behind me, his body pinging with impatience and hope.

I wish I knew the right words to say. Lucan might have refused to Call to me, but that hardly means Bram will welcome Ice into the family.

If I Bind to him now, I’ll likely lose my brother.

And I don’t delude myself; whatever has overcome Bram since awakening from Mathias’s spell will goad him into disclaiming me, as he threatened. I almost don’t care.

Almost.

But he’s my brother and cutting ties with the last of my family unless I have to… No. I can’t be impulsive. Maybe time, patience, a bit of soothing of the ways between Ice and Bram will allow my brother to accept my beloved. Someday.

“I should thank you, as well,” Ice says quietly to Lucan. “You spared me what Shock did not spare you, when it would have been so simple to use your anger and show me how truly heartbreaking losing your mate must feel.”

And Lucan’s suffering is many times worse than anything Ice would have experienced, given that he spent over a century with Anka.

Lucan closes his eyes, pain washing his features. “No wizard should feel that anguish. I certainly had no wish to feel it twice. Sabelle would be easy to fall in love with…and hard to forget.”

Ice sticks out his hand to Lucan. “I am indebted.”

Lucan hesitates, then shakes it. My heart catches. Maybe…the first step in Bram accepting Ice in my life is encouraging a friendship between him and my brother’s best friend. At least it’s another avenue to help pave the way.

Just then, Bram storms into the office again, clutching both his mirror and MacKinnett’s. “Duke had the foresight to retrieve my mirror from Olivia’s gallery.”

“Thank goodness.” I approach him cautiously. “What are you going to do?”

He doesn’t respond, merely plops down on the worn brown sofa and lifts the lid before he touches his finger to one of the crests.

My stomach clenches as I watch Bram prepare to make contact. He’s still affected by whatever darkness Mathias left behind. He’s impatient, aggressive, lacking his usual diplomatic finesse. The last thing we need is for him to alienate a potential ally with his current temperament.

“Bram,” I murmur quietly, catching his attention before he touches the crest. “Remember, we need Spencer’s support. Perhaps start gently?”

He waves me off with an irritated gesture, but I see his jaw clench as he tries to rein in his agitation.

Finally, a cultured voice greets him through the mirror. Kelmscott Spencer. He oozes political correctness, is always in favor of the path of least resistance. I can tolerate him—in small doses. But I never make the mistake of trusting him. The whole line is a bit shifty, in my opinion.

“You’re in one piece, chap? Heard whispers that you were under the weather.”

“The Anarki nearly killed me. And now Blackbourne has nominated their master to the Council. What the devil is he thinking?”

Spencer clears his throat—a subtle cue that Bram’s badgering is both heavy-handed and unwelcome. “I think, as he does, that it’s perhaps time to entertain a different point of view.”

“What would that be? Murder and mayhem? Slaughtering of innocents? Raping and enslaving? Murdering our leaders like Thomas MacKinnett and Clifden O’Shea?”

“We have only circumstantial proof that he’s involved in any of those atrocities. He’s assured us they are rogue factions of the Anarki, and he’s working to bring them under his control again and direct their efforts to matters more productive for magickind.”

“And you’re gullible enough to believe him?”

I wince. My brother has always been able to finesse and cajole situations and people to his advantage. This bull-in-the-china-shop approach will get him nothing but ignored and discredited.

I wrest the mirror from his hands with a warning glance and hiss, “If you want to influence others, try civil words, dear brother.”

He lunges at me, groping for the mirror. To my surprise, Ice and Lucan each grab a shoulder and push him back to the sofa.

“Let her try,” Lucan insists. “She’ll be far more delicate than you.”

Bram curses, fights, then finally sighs and slams back into the sofa, arms crossed over his chest. “You’re likely right. Damn it all.”

He wears petulance sorely, but I can’t spare the spell that’s choked his diplomacy another moment right now. But as soon as I have two minutes to rub together, I’ll start researching—and figure out how to break this hex once and for all.

“Hello, Kelmscott.” I smile at the older man’s thin-faced image, framed in gray hair and thick sideburns.

“Sabelle, dear. Lovely as always. What’s gotten into your brother?”

“Bad mood.” I smile sweetly. “I’ve threatened to throw him to a pack of wild dogs if he fails to improve.”

Spencer laughs. “Always a bright girl.”

“Thank you. You’re quite smart yourself, so you must know he was trying, although somewhat indelicately, to ask if you had received any assurances from Mathias that he’s not behind the violence?

Or if you’ve heard how he plans to progress and repair magickind?

Since Bram has been somewhat out of pocket, you see. ”

“Of course, of course.” Then he strokes his gray beard. “Now that you mention it, not precisely. But Mathias has advised us of potential unrest among the Deprived. He claims they’re at their wit’s end with the Social Order and warns there will likely be civil war if they are not…accommodated.”

In other words, Mathias insinuated that he’ll bring down the brunt of the Deprived anger on the Council if they don’t nominate and elect him. They’ve chosen the coward’s way out, believing that placating Mathias now will spare them mayhem and violence later. Fools.

“That’s a grave warning, indeed. But I have to wonder… Can Mathias truly quell any Deprived unrest?”

“Of course. He is their champion, my dear,” Kelmscott reminds.

Beside me, Ice snorts and shakes his head.

“He claims to be, yes. But he’s not one of them, so how can he know the Deprived will truly follow him? Or even what they want?”

The old wizard sighs. “You ask valid questions, but I don’t think we can afford to simply ignore the potential danger that refusing him would bring. If he’s deceiving us all, and he’s behind the recent attacks, perhaps keeping him close and controlled would put a stop to all this nonsense.”

Two of his fellow Council members were brutally murdered in a handful of days, and he’s trying to write it off as “nonsense”?

I grit my teeth. Spencer and Blackbourne, apparently two peas in a pod, have both determined that giving Mathias an inch will persuade him to sit quietly in his corner like a good boy. Neither sees that he will, in fact, take a mile.

Then…an idea occurs to me.

“If you’re truly concerned about a Deprived uprising, perhaps we should consider another candidate whom they might receive more enthusiastically?

In trying times, it might be best to consolidate our power and deal with this threat in a rational, well-planned manner with a voice familiar to them, rather than one with a history of violence.

After all, the Council wouldn’t want to be viewed as weak enough to bow to anyone’s threats. ”

Spencer frowns. “If you’re thinking to nominate Lucan MacTavish, save your breath. Blackbourne and I have already discussed this, knew Bram would push it. Sterling and his nephew… The family ties are far too close.”

I wasn’t going to suggest Lucan, but… “Sterling has his own heirs. The seat should never pass down through Lucan and?—”

“Two MacTavish wizards on the same council creates a potential impediment to fair voting on future issues.”

Translation: the loss of power likely to result if the MacTavish men create a voting bloc with Bram is something they will avoid at all costs. Shortsighted idiots.

“Don’t frown, girl. I’m quite set, and I speak for Blackbourne as well. The Council needs new blood, and Lucan MacTavish would bring only more of the same.”

They want change? A smile curls the corners of my mouth, and I look across the room to the wizards observing Bram with a watchful eye, Lucan with resignation, and Ice with a burgeoning grasp of the situation.

“New blood? Excellent notion. If we’re fearful of a Deprived uprising, which I completely understand, perhaps the way to show progress isn’t to elect another Privileged who claims to represent one of them. Perhaps it would be better to actually nominate one of their own."

Spencer recoils, his brushy gray brows forming a V over his prominent nose. “A Deprived? On the Council?”

“Indeed. Nothing would say change and progress to the Deprived more than that, and Mathias would have to champion that candidate if he truly favors their emancipation.”

“Eh…” His brow furrows in thought. “Perhaps we could discuss it. I’ll talk to Blackbourne. We may be able to find someone…”

I glance across the room again. Bram leaps up from the sofa with a snarl. Lucan and Ice hold back my grumbling and growling brother. After they subdue him, Ice pins me with a stunned stare and emphatically shakes his head.

“Actually, I have someone in mind,” I murmur. “Someone whose grandfather sat on the Council before the Social Order stripped him of his rank. Someone whose line is long, whose wishes to preserve magickind and peace are pure. Someone not ideologically aligned with my brother.”

“Oh?” He looks genuinely intrigued, and hope ratchets up inside me. “I would be very interested.”

“Good. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. How would you feel about Isdernus Rykard?”