Lover Avenged

FIFTY-SEVEN

Ehlena?” Lusie’s voice came down the stairs. “I’m going to head out now.”

Ehlena shook herself and glanced at the time in the lower corner of the laptop screen. It was four thirty? Already? God, it felt like…well, she didn’t know whether she’d been sitting at her makeshift desk for hours or days. The Caldwell Courier Journal’s help-wanted site had been up the whole time, but all she’d been doing was making circles with her forefinger on the mouse pad.

“Here I come.” She stretched as she rose to her feet and headed for the stairs. “Thanks for cleaning up after Father’s meal.”

Lusie’s head appeared at the top of the stairs. “You’re welcome, and listen, there’s someone here to see you.”

Ehlena’s heart flip-flopped in her chest. “Who?”

“A male. I let him in.”

“Oh, God,” Ehlena said under her breath. As she jogged up from the cellar, she thought, at least her father was sleeping soundly after he’d eaten. Last thing she needed to deal with right now was him getting upset over a stranger in the house.

As she came into the kitchen, she was prepared to tell Rehv or Trez or whoever it was to go to-

A blond male with a very rich vibe stood by the cheap table, a black briefcase in his hand. Lusie was next to him, pulling on her woolen coat and getting her patchwork satchel ready for her trip home.

“May I help you?” Ehlena said with a frown.

The male did a little bow thing, with his palm going gallantly to his chest, and when he spoke, his voice was unusually low and very cultured. “I’m looking for Alyne, blooded son of Uys. Are you his daughter?”

“Yes, I am.”

“May I see him?”

“He’s resting. What’s this about, and who are you?”

The male glanced over at Lusie, then put his hand into his breast pocket and took out an ID in the Old Language. “I’m Saxton, son of Tyhm, an attorney hired by the estate of Montrag, son of Rehm. He’s recently passed unto the Fade with no direct heirs, and according to my research of the bloodlines, your father is his next of kin and therefore his sole beneficiary.”

Ehlena’s brows shot up. “Excuse me?” When he repeated what he’d said, it still didn’t sink in. “I…ah…what?”

As the lawyer took another shot at his message, her mind scrambled around, trying to connect the dots. Rehm was definitely a name she was familiar with. She’d seen it in her father’s business records…and in his manuscript. Not a nice guy. Not by a long shot. She had some vague memory of the son, but it was nothing specific, just a leftover from her days as a female of worth on the glymera debutante circuit.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, “but this is a surprise.”

“I understand. May I speak with your father?”

“He’s not…receiving, actually. He’s not well. I’m his legal guardian.” She cleared her throat. “Under the Old Law, I had to have him declared incompetent due to…mental issues.”

Saxton, son of Thym, bowed a little. “I am sorry to hear that. May I ask, would you be able to present me with bloodline identification for you both? And the declaration of incompetence?”

“I have it all downstairs.” She looked at Lusie. “I guess you need to go?”

Lusie glanced at Saxton and seemed to reach the same conclusion Ehlena did. The male seemed perfectly normal, and in his suit and coat and with that case in his hand, he positively screamed lawyer. His ID was legit, too.

“I can stay if you’d rather,” Lusie said.

“No, I’ll be fine, and besides, it’s getting close to dawn.”

“All right, then.”

Ehlena walked Lusie out and then came back to the lawyer. “Will you excuse me a minute?”

“Take your time.”

“Would you…ah, like something to drink? Coffee?” She hoped he said no, as the best she could offer him was a mug, and he looked like the kind of guy who was more familiar with Limoges teacups.

“I’m fine, but thank you.” His smile was genuine and not sexual in the slightest. Then again, no doubt he only went for the kind of aristocratic female she might have been if finances were different.

Finances…and other things.

“I’ll be right back. Please have a seat.” Although those precision-pressed slacks of his might well rebel if he tried to take a load off on one of their grotty little chairs.

Down in her room, she went under her bed and got her lockbox out. Carrying it upstairs, she was numb, just totally fried from the drama that had been dropping around her life like flaming airplanes falling from the sky. Christ, the fact that a lawyer had turned up on her doorstop looking for lost heirs seemed…ho-hum. Whatever. And she wasn’t getting her hopes up at all. With the way things had been going, this “golden opportunity” was going to go in the direction everything else had lately.

Right into the shitter.

Back upstairs, she put the lockbox on the table. “I’ve got everything in here.”

When she sat down, Saxton did as well, putting his briefcase on the pitted floor and focusing his gray eyes on the box. After putting in the combination, she flipped open the heavy top and took out a creamy business-size envelope and three rolled parchments, each of which had streaming satin ribbons flowing from their coiled insides.

“This is the incompetency paper,” she said, opening the envelope and taking out a document.

After he looked the missive over and nodded, she unveiled her father’s bloodline certificate, that illustrated a family tree in lovely, flowing black ink. At the bottom, the ribbons in yellow and powder blue and deep red were affixed with a black wax seal bearing the crest of her father’s father’s father.

Saxton got his briefcase, flipped it open, and took out a set of jeweler’s glasses, sliding their weight onto his face and peering over every inch of the parchment.

“This is authentic,” he pronounced. “The others?”

“My mother and myself.” She unrolled each one and he did the same inspection.

When he was finished, he sat back in the chair and removed the specs. “May I look over the incompetency papers again?”

She passed them to him and he read, a frown tightening the space between his perfectly arched brows. “What is the precise medical situation with your father, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“He suffers from schizophrenia. He’s very ill and needs round-the-clock care, to be honest.”

Saxton’s eyes traveled slowly around the kitchen, noting the stain on the floor and the aluminum foil over the windows and the old, on-their-last-legs appliances. “Are you employed?”

Ehlena stiffened. “I don’t see why that’s relevant.”

“Sorry. You’re absolutely correct. It’s just…” He opened his briefcase again and took out a fifty-page bound document and a spreadsheet. “Once I certify you and your father as Montrag’s next of kin-and based on those parchments I’m prepared to do that-you’re never going to have to worry about money again.”

He turned the document and the legal-size spreadsheet toward her and took a gold pen out of his breast pocket. “Your net worth is now substantial.”

With the nib of his pen, Saxton pointed to the final number in the lower right-hand corner of the sheet.

Ehlena glanced down. Blinked.

Then bent all the way over the table, until her eyes were no more than three inches away from the pen tip and the paper and…that number.

“Is that…How many digits am I looking at?” she whispered.

“That would be eight to the left of the decimal point.”

“And it starts with a three?”

“Yes. There is an estate as well. In Connecticut. You can move in anytime you want after I finish the certification papers, all of which I’ll draw up during the day and pass immediately on to the king for his approval.” He sat back. “Legally, the money and real estate and personal effects, including the art and antiques and the cars, will be your father’s until he passes unto the Fade. But with your conservatorship paper, you will be in charge of everything for his benefit. I’m assuming you’re his heir vis-à-vis his will?”

“Ah…I’m sorry, what was the question?”

Saxton smiled gently. “Does your father have a will? Are you in it?”

“No…no, he doesn’t. We don’t have any assets anymore.”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“No. It’s just me. Well, him and me since Mahmen died.”

“How would you like me to draw up a will for him in your favor? If your father dies intestate, it will all go to you anyway, but if we have that in place, it makes things easier for whatever solicitor you use, because you won’t have to get the king’s signature on the transfer of assets.”

“That would be…Wait, you’re expensive, right? I don’t think we can-”

“You can afford me.” He tapped the spreadsheet with his pen again. “Trust me.”

In the long, dark hours after Wrath had lost his vision, he fell down the stairs-in front of everyone who had gathered in the dining room for Last Meal. The banana-peel move took him ass-over-headache all the way down to the mosaic floor of the foyer.

The only way it could have been more of a loser move was if he bled all over himself.

Oh…wait. As he put his hand up to his hair to push the shit back, he felt something wet and knew it wasn’t because he was drooling.

“Wrath!”

“My brother-”

“What the fuck-”

“Holy-”

Beth was the first of the cast of thousands to get to him, her hands going to his shoulders as warm blood dripped down his nose.

Other hands reached him through the darkness, the hands of his brothers, the hands of the shellans in the house, all gentle, worried, compassionate hands.

In a furious punch, he shoved them all away and tried to get to his feet. Without any orientation to ground him, though, he ended up with one shitkicker up on the last stair-which pitched him wildly off balance. Grabbing for the handrail, he somehow managed to get his boots level and shuffled backward, unsure whether he was heading toward the front door or the billiards room or the library or the dining room. He was utterly lost in a space he knew very well.

“I’m okay,” he barked. “I’m all right.”

Everyone went silent around him, his commanding voice unmitigated by his blindness, his authority as king unassailable even though he couldn’t see a fucking thing-

His back slammed against a wall and a crystal sconce above him twinkled from the impact, the delicate noise rising up into all the quiet.

Jesus…Christ. He couldn’t go on like this, bumper-car-ing around, slamming into things, falling down. But it wasn’t like he got a vote.

Ever since his lights had gone out, he’d been waiting for his eyes to start working again. As time passed, though, and Havers had no concrete answers, and Doc Jane was mystified, what he knew to be the truth in his heart started to make its way up to his brain: This darkness he found himself in was the new earth upon which he strode.

Or fell all over, as the case was.

As the sconce stilled above his head, every part of him was screaming, and he prayed that no one, even Beth, tried to touch him or talk to him or tell him everything was going to be all right.

It wasn’t going to be all right ever again. He wasn’t getting his vision back, no matter what the doctors might try to do to him, no matter how many times he fed, no matter how often he rested or how well he looked after himself. For shit’s sake, even before V had laid out what he had foreseen, Wrath knew this was coming: His sight had been declining over the centuries, the acuity washing out gradually over time. And he’d been getting the headaches for years, with increasing severity over the last twelve months.

He’d known this was going to be where he ended up. His whole life, he’d known and ignored it, but the reality was here.

“Wrath.” Mary, Rhage’s shellan, was the one who broke the silence, her voice even and quiet and not at all frustrated or flustered. The contrast with the chaos in his mind had him turning toward the sound even though he couldn’t say anything back to her because he had no voice. “Wrath, I want you to reach out your left hand. You’ll find the doorjamb to the library. Move yourself over and take four steps backward into the room. I’m going to talk with you, and Beth is coming with me.”

The words were so level and reasonable that they were like a map through a jungle of thorny growth, and he followed the directions with all the desperation of a lost traveler. He put his hand out…and yes, there was the uneven pattern of the molding around the doorway. Shuffling himself to the side, he used both hands to find his way beyond the jambs, and then he took four steps back.

There were quiet footfalls. Two sets. And the library doors were shut.

He sensed where the females were by the subtle sounds of their breathing, and neither of them crowded him, which was good.

“Wrath, I think we need to make some temporary changes.” Mary’s voice came from the right. “In the event that your sight doesn’t return soon.”

Smart packaging job, he thought.

“Like what,” he muttered.

Beth answered, making him aware that the two had evidently already talked about this. “A walking stick to help with your balance, and a structure of staffing coverage in your study so you can get back to work.”

“And perhaps some other kinds of help,” Mary tacked on.

As he absorbed their words, the sound of his heartbeat roared in his ears, and he tried not to hear it so much. Yeah, good luck with that. When a cold sweat splashed over him, pooling on his upper lip and under his armpits, he wasn’t sure whether it was from fear or the effort of keeping himself from breaking down in front of them.

Probably both. The thing was, not being able to see was bad, but what was really killing him was the claustrophobia. Without a sight reference, he was trapped in the tight, crowded space beneath his layer of skin, imprisoned in his body with no way out-and he didn’t do well with shit like that. Reminded him way too much of being locked in a crawl space by his father when he had been young…locked in while he watched his parents get murdered by lessers…

The piercing memory weakened his knees and he lost his balance, listing to the side until he started to topple off his boots. Beth was the one who caught him and gently eased him over so that when he collapsed it was on a sofa.

As he tried to breathe, he held her hand hard, and that contact was all that kept him from sobbing like a fucking lightweight.

The world was gone…the world was gone…the world was-

“Wrath,” Mary said, “if you get back to work, it’ll help, and we can make this easier on you in the interim. There are solutions that can make things safer and help you reacclimate to the…”

As she talked, he didn’t hear her. All he could think of was no fighting again, ever. No easy way around the house, ever. No way to get even a blurry impression of what was on his plate, or who was at his table, or what Beth was wearing. He didn’t know how to shave or find the clothes in his closet or see where the shampoo or the soap was. How would he work out? He wouldn’t be able to get the weights he wanted or start the treadmill going or…shit, tie the laces on his running shoes-

“I feel like I’ve died,” he choked out. “If this is the way it’s going to be…I feel like the person I was…is dead.”

Mary’s voice came from directly in front of him. “Wrath, I’ve seen people get through exactly what you’re struggling with. My autistic patients and their parents had to learn to look at things in a new way. But it was not over for them. There was no death, just a different kind of life.”

As Mary spoke, Beth stroked the inside of his forearm, running her hand up and down the tattooed delineation of his bloodline. The touch made him think about the many males and females who had gone before him, their courage tested by challenges from within and without.

He frowned, abruptly embarrassed by his weakness. If his father and mother had been alive right now, he would have been ashamed for them to see the way he was acting. And Beth…his beloved, his mate, his shellan, his queen, should not have to witness him like this, either.

Wrath, son of Wrath, should not be bowing under the weight that was laid upon him. He should be shouldering it. That was what members of the Brotherhood did. That was what a king did. That was what a male of worth did. He should be bearing up under the burden, rising above the pain and the fear, standing strong not just for those he loved, but for himself.

Instead, he was falling down the stairs like a drunk.

He cleared his throat. And had to clear it once more. “I need…I need to go talk to someone.”

“Okay,” Beth said. “We can bring whoever it is to you-”

“No, I’ll get there by myself. If you’ll excuse me.” He stood up and stepped forward…right into the coffee table. Biting back a curse as he rubbed his shin, he said, “Would you just leave me here? Please.”

“May I…” Beth’s voice broke. “May I clean up your face?”

Absently, he wiped his cheek and felt wetness. Blood. He was still bleeding. “It’s fine. I’m okay.”

There was a soft shuffle as the two females walked over to the door, then the click of the lock as one of them turned the handle.

“I love you, Beth,” Wrath said quickly.

“I love you, too.”

“It’s…going to be all right.”

With another click, the door shut back into place.

Wrath sat down on the floor right where he was, because he didn’t trust himself to circumnavigate the library to get in a better position. As he settled in, the crackle from the fire gave him some frame of reference…and then he realized he could picture the room in his mind.

If he reached out to the right…yup. His hand brushed against one of the smooth legs of the table by the sofa. He rode the length up to the boxy bottom and patted across the surface of the thing to find…yes, the coasters Fritz kept stacked neatly there. And a small leather book…and the lamp base.

This was comforting. In some strange way, he had felt as if the world had disappeared just because he couldn’t see it. But in fact everything was all there still.

Closing his eyes, he sent out a request.

It was a long while before it was responded to, a long, long while before he was spirited away and found himself standing on a hard floor, beside a fountain that chattered softly. He had wondered if he would be blind here on the Other Side as well, and he was. Still, as with the layout of the library, he knew what the place looked like, even if he couldn’t see it. Over there to the right was a tree full of chirping birds, and in front of him, past the sprinkling fountain, would be the loggia with the columns that was part of the Scribe Virgin’s private quarters.

“Wrath, son of Wrath.” He did not hear the mother of the race approach, but then she levitated around such that her black robes never touched whatever floor was beneath her. “You have come unto me for what purpose.”

She knew damn well why he was here, and he wasn’t playing her game anymore. “I want to know if you did this to me.”

The birds fell silent, as if shocked by his temerity.

“Did what to you.” Her voice sounded the same as it had when she’d appeared at the Tomb with Vishous: distant and disinterested. Which kinda pissed a guy off when he was having trouble making it down his own stairs.

“My fucking sight. Did you take it away from me because I went out to fight?” He ripped his wraparounds off his face and tossed them across the slick floor. “Did you do this to me.”

In days gone by she would have lashed him until he bled for that kind of insubordination, and as he waited to see what came at him, he almost hoped she licked his ass with a lightning bolt.

There was no smiting, however. “What was going to be was going to be. Your fighting had nothing to do with your loss of sight, and neither did I. Now go back to your world and leave me to mine.”

He knew she had turned away, because her voice faded as she headed off in the opposite direction.

Wrath frowned. He’d come expecting a fight, and he wanted one. Instead? He got nothing to engage with, not even a row over his deliberate disrespect.

The radical shift in paradigm was so stark, for a moment he forgot all about his blindness. “What is wrong with you?”

He got no answer, just a door shutting softly.

In the Scribe Virgin’s absence, the birds stayed quiet, the delicate sound of falling water all that grounded him. Until someone else approached.

On instinct, he turned to the footfalls and assumed his fighting stance, surprised to find that he wasn’t as defenseless as he’d thought. In the absence of sight, his hearing filled out the picture that was no longer created by his eyes: He knew where the person was by the rustle of their robing and an odd click, click, click and…shit, he could even hear their heartbeat.

Strong. Steady.

What was a male doing here?

“Wrath, son of Wrath.” Not a male voice. A female one. And yet the impression he had was masculine. Or maybe it was just powerful?

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Payne.”

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter. Tell me something, you plan on doing anything with those fists? Or are you just going to stand there?”

He dropped his arms immediately, as it was entirely inappropriate to raise a hand to a female-

The uppercut slammed into his jaw so hard, it whipped his head and shoulders around. Stunned, more out of surprise than pain, he fought to regain his balance. The second he did, there was a whizzing sound and he was pounded again, the next blow catching him under his jaw and kicking his skull back.

That was all she got in with the clean shots, though. His defensive instincts and his years of training responded even though he couldn’t see anything, his hearing functioning as his eyes, telling him where things like arms and legs were. He grabbed a surprisingly thin wrist and wrenched the female around-

Her heel made hard contact with his shin, the pain spearing up his leg and pissing him off as something like a rope swung into his face. He grabbed it and hoped it was a braid attached to the female’s-

Yanking it hard, he felt her body torque backward. Yup, attached to her head. Perfect.

Getting her off-kilter was easy, but man, she was a strong motherfucker. With only one leg supporting her weight, she managed to jump and spin, clipping him in the shoulder with her knee.

He heard her land and start to scramble, but he kept a hold on her hair, reining her in. She was like water, though, always fluid, always moving, hitting him time and time again until he was forced to manhandle her onto the ground and pin her down.

It was a case of brute strength winning out over grace.

Panting, he looked into a face he couldn’t see. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“I’m bored.” With that, she head-butted him right in the goddamn nose.

Pain made him feel like he was on a merry-go-round, his hold briefly lessening. Which was all she needed to get free again. Now he was the one on the bottom, her forearm cranked around his throat and pulling back so hard, she must have had a grip on her wrist for greater leverage.

Wrath strained to get air down into his lungs. Holy shit, she was going to kill him if she kept this up. She really was.

Deep within himself, deep down into his very marrow, deep into the double helixes of his DNA, the response came. He was not going to die here and now. No fucking way. He was a survivor. He was a fighter. And whoever this bitch was, she was not going to issue him his ticket to the Fade.

Wrath let out a war cry in spite of the iron bar across his neck, and moved so fast he had no idea what he did. All he knew was that a split second later, the female was facedown on the marble with both her arms twisted up behind her back.

For absolutely no reason, he thought of however many nights ago, when he’d popped the arms off that lesser in the alley before he’d killed the fucker.

He was going to do exactly the same to her-

The laughter rippling up from underneath him was what stopped him. The female…was laughing. And not like someone who’d lost her mind. She was honestly having a good time, even though she must have known she was about to pass out from the kind of pain he was going to inflict on her.

Wrath loosened his hold only slightly. “You are a sick bitch, you know that?”

Her hard body quaked under his as she kept on laughing. “I know.”

“If I let you go, are we going to just end up here again?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Strange, but he kind of liked those odds, and after a moment, he released her as he would have a stallion with a bad temper: quickly and with a fast out-of-the-way on his part. As he planted his feet, he was ready for her to come at him again, and sort of hoping she did.

The female stayed where she was, on the marble floor, and he heard that clicking again.

“What is that?” he asked.

“I have this habit of flicking my ring finger nail against the underside of the one on my thumb.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Hey, are you going to come here again anytime soon?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because that was more fun than I’ve had since…a long time.”

“Who are you again? And why haven’t I seen you here before?”

“Let’s just say She has never known what to do with me.”

It was clear given the female’s tone who the She was. “Well, Payne, I can come back for more of this.”

“Good. Make it soon.” He heard her get to her feet. “By the way, your glasses are right by your left foot.”

There was a rustle and the quiet shutting of a door.

Wrath picked the wraparounds up and then let his legs have a time-out, taking a seat on the marble. Funny, he enjoyed the ache in his leg and the sting on his shoulder and the pounding pulse points of each and every one of his bruises. They were all familiar, part of his history and his present, and what he was going to need in the unfamiliar, frighteningly dark future.

His body was still his own. It still worked. He could still fight, and maybe with practice he could get back to where he had been.

He hadn’t died.

He was still alive. Yes, he couldn’t see, but he could still touch his shellan and make love to her. And he could still think and walk and talk and hear. His arms and legs worked just fine, and so did his lungs and heart.

The adjustment was not going to be easy. One really awesome fight was not going to clear away what was going to be months and months of awkward learning and frustration and anger and missteps.

But he had perspective. Unlike the bloody nose he’d gotten falling down the stairs, the one he had now didn’t seem like a symbol of all he’d lost. It was more like a representation of everything he still had.

As Wrath came back to his form in the library of the Brotherhood’s mansion, he was smiling, and when he got to his feet, he chuckled as one of his legs hollered in pain.

Concentrating, he took two limping steps to the left and…found the couch. Took ten forward and…found the door. Opened the door, took fifteen straight ahead, and…found the balustrade to the grand staircase.

He could hear the meal that was being eaten in the dining room, the soft chiming of silver on porcelain filling the void where chatter usually was. And he could smell the…oh, yeah, lamb. That’s what he was talking about.

As he took thirty-five measured crab steps to the left, he started to laugh, especially as he swiped his face and the blood dripped off his hand.

He knew exactly when they all saw him. Forks and knives dropped on plates and bounced, and chairs scraped backward and curses filled the air.

Wrath just laughed and laughed and laughed some more. “Where’s my Beth?”

“Oh, sweet Lord,” she said as she came to him. “Wrath…what happened-”

“Fritz,” he called out as he fit his queen against him. “Will you make me a plate? I’m hungry. And get me towel so I can mop up.” He squeezed Beth. “Take me to my seat, would you, my love?”

Lots of silence that positively rang with holy-shit-what-is-this.

Hollywood was the one who asked, “Who the hell used your face as a soccer ball?”

Wrath just shrugged and rubbed his shellan’s back. “I made a new friend.”

“Hell of friend.”

“She is.”

“She?”

Wrath’s stomach let out a grumble. “Look, can I join the meal here or what?”

Something about sustenance snapped everyone back in focus, and there was all kinds of talk and bustling, and then Beth was leading him down the room. As he sat, a damp washcloth was put into his hand, and the heavenly scent of rosemary and lamb appeared right in front of him.

“For God’s sake, will you sit down,” he told them as he mopped up his face and neck. When there were all kinds of chair noises, he found his knife and fork and prodded around his plate, identifying the lamb and the baby new potatoes and…the peas. Yup, the roly-polies were peas.

The lamb was delicious. Just as he liked it.

“You sure that was a friend,” Rhage said.

“Yup,” he said, squeezing Beth’s hand. “I’m sure.”