The House Of Gaian

persuasion. So we’ve kept the humans away from them. To put it bluntly, you look like a gentry lady the Black Coats could twist around their little fingers.”
    Morag smiled. “That’s perfect.”
    Ubel watched that bastard Fae Lord walk into the warehouse... with two humans. His heart sped up when he recognized the man, so he turned away, pretending disinterest.
    “You there!” the Fae Lord snapped. “Baron Padrick wants to speak to you.”
    Moving with feigned reluctance until he stood close to the barrier of crates, Ubel studied the man these fools thought worthy of judging him . An active man, not gone soft and fat like some of the other barons he’d seen when he’d observed the barons’ council in Durham. This baron’s grim expression made him look hard and ruthless, but that might have been nothing more than the contrast between him and the woman he stood beside, her arm linked through his. She was too tall and thin to be appealing for sex, but the coiled black hair looked soft and enticing, and her dark eyes held nothing but vulnerability and dependence.
    As she stared at him, he felt himself sinking into her eyes. When she stepped away from Padrick and came to stand on the other side of the crates, so close he could have lunged over the barrier and snapped her neck before the Fae could have reacted, he stopped thinking about Padrick and the bastard Fae Lord and the other Fae around them. There was only her, only the need to have her submissive. Drawing up every drop of his Inquisitor’s Gift, he aimed his will directly at her.
    “You’re the one, aren’t you?” she asked quietly, her voice roughened by a thrilling touch of fear. “You’re the leader.”
    “Lady, I appeal to your sense of what is right and just,” Ubel said. He knew better than to answer a question like that, but he wanted to answer. Why was it so hard to avoid giving her an answer? “We are being held unfairly. We’ve done nothing to harm the people here.”
    “Perhaps not here, but elsewhere. You harmed so many.”
    Her eyes looked so soft, so sad. “The ones who stand in the way of men claiming what is rightfully theirs must be punished.”
    “You torture them, burn them, rape them, kill them.”
    “I...” He fought against the need to answer her.
    “You’ve been in the west before, haven’t you? You came to Bretonwood.”
    “I...” He shook his head, as much to try to break the hold her dark eyes had on him as to indicate a refusal to answer. But he couldn’t look away, couldn’t break her hold. Why couldn’t he break the hold of this soft, useless female? He struggled to impose his Inquisitor’s Gift on her. “You have to let me go. I shouldn’t be held in this place. I should be released.”
    “Yes,” she whispered. “You should be released. All of you should be released.”
    Triumph surged through Ubel. Triumph so keen it felt like a sharp, momentary pain in his chest.
    He smiled at her. When he raised his hands, he realized the shackles were gone—and also realized he could see the crates through the flesh of his hands. He heard cries of fear from the men imprisoned with him. He noticed the startled, yet satisfied, look the Fae Lord exchanged with Padrick. But his attention was still on the woman.
    He watched as she pulled the pins from her coiled black hair, letting it tumble down her back and over one shoulder. He watched while her face changed from human to Fae, as the softness in her dark eyes changed to something exquisitely merciless.

    “I have released you, Inquisitor,” she said. “But one of Death’s Servants will have to take you to the Shadowed Veil. I have to return to the east. I have a gift for the Witch’s Hammer.”
    Ubel tried to move forward, but couldn’t get past the barrier of crates. Why couldn’t he get past them?
    He was free now.
    “What have you done?” he shouted at her.
    She flicked a glance at the floor, then smiled at him.
    He looked down—and stared at his body, the shackles still around his wrists and ankles. He looked at the other bodies on the floor inside the barrier ... and the ghosts standing beside them.
    “What have you done?” he screamed. She just watched him. The face, the hair, the eyes. He knew who stood before him now. “You can’t do this!”
    “It is done. My choice. My judgment. I have given you the release you have given others.” She turned and started walking away.
    “You think you’re strong?” Ubel screamed. “You think