Page 50 of Tangled Power
“You heard me,” Carter said, then he reiterated. “I can see spirits. It’s an incredibly rare gift in the Vesten court—connected with a shifter form that’s all but extinct. We only have a record of one or two others with the power, and no one else alive can take the form. Aterra knew, and that’s what Aiden held over me.”
Luc shook his head, trying to collect his thoughts. “That’s unexpected. Though your conversations with Rose make a bit more sense.” Then he added, “Why is it such a bad thing if others know?”
Carter gave him a look that said he already knew the answer. “Yes, I think Rose is close to understanding, though I’ll just tell her now that I’ve told you. But besides the perils you are all too familiar with regarding uncanny demonstrations of power, the more pertinent issue has to do with the form I take. If certain entities knew about it—my life would be in danger. Even more so now with the extra power from the Vesten artifact.”
“I see.” Luc wanted desperately to pry into the shifter form Carter took, but he sensed the Vesten Point didn’t want to share more on that topic. He pursued a different line of questioning. “You see spirits around the mist, then?” Luc paused. “There were spirits in the woods as the mist appeared?”
Carter nodded. “The mist tends to carry spirits everywhere I’ve seen it. I don’t know enough to understand if they’re victims of the mist plague or…something else.” Carter’s words were careful.
“You think those impacted by the mist are dead?” Luc asked. He thought of Tara’s body when they’d found her in Bury. Her breath had still risen and fallen in her chest. She couldn’t be dead. Maybe this was another reason it was good Carter’s ability wasn’t widely known.
“I’m not sure,” he said honestly. “Spirits can be disassociated from a body, but the person may not be dead. Existence is much more than the binary of life and death. I don’t think we’ll know for sure until we rid the continent of the mist.” He shrugged. “This was weird, though. Here, more spirits arrived as the mist dissipated. It’s why I asked you to wait. I’ve never seen that before,” Carter said as they finally broke through the tree line. “They seemed harmless, but they flooded in from beyond the veil somehow with that mist—maybe with the Nebulus?”
That didn’t make sense. Rose and Juliette should have been fighting the Nebulus as soon as he and Carter started running. He wondered at Carter’s comment but lost his train of thought as he let out a deep breath—Rose was in his sights again. His power pushed against him to get to her.
Carter reached for his arm before he could rush forward. “There’s something else you should know.”
Luc turned back to Carter, his face much more concerned than it had been in the forest. “What?”
“The hole in Loch? Spirits gathered there too.”
Luc reeled. Of course. That’s what Carter had been looking at.
“I can’t determine if they were passing beyond the veil there—I don’t think they were—but spirits were gathered there at leastthinkingit was a place they could pass through.”
Luc nodded. “Thanks for telling me, Carter.” He shook his head as he refocused on Rose. She was safe. Now, he smiled wryly, thinking about her motto for this trip. Treat the Compass Points as you want to interact with them in the future, not the past you’ve experienced. Halfheartedly, he rolled his eyes as he thought how unbearable she would be when he told her she had been right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sandrin was alive around them, abuzz with activity as they entered. Rose hadn’t realized how nervous she’d been that it, too, had been impacted by the mist plague while they traveled. It had been over a week. She wasn’t sure what news they had missed once they’d left Loch. Being back in a city brought other creature comforts like books to choose from, easy access to a forge, and, of course, a bed.
The forest floor hadn’t been as accommodating to her new relationship as she would have liked. Even with the discomforts, the thrill of waking up next to Luc every morning wasn’t waning. What little time they had alone left her breathing easier. His steady support grounded her in a way she’d never before experienced.
Luc caught her staring, and she quickly turned her attention back to the city. She wasn’t embarrassed—she just wasn’t one to gush over her feelings. They would have time to figure out their communication style. They would have time to be together after Aterra was dealt with. The pull she felt toward him was only growing stronger. It was a physical force at times, encompassing all her senses—even her magic.
They wasted no time heading straight for the Vesten Quarter. It was funny that they called it that. The Norden Quarter, the Suden—it implied that the city was divided neatly among the four fae courts. It was clear that this naming convention was created by the fae given its complete disregard for the fact that humans also lived here. Sandrin was a city run by humans. The fae courts only held a few buildings in each respective section of the city.
Her mind roamed to what Luc had learned of Carter’s magic. Spirits—Carter could see spirits. Luc unraveling Carter’s mysteries was a surprise. Not so much the secret itself—that fit perfectly. No, the interesting part was that Luc had been the one to pull the information from the hesitant Vesten Point.
She bit her lip as they rode. Would she have figured it out without Luc’s breakthrough? It didn’t matter, she guessed. She knew it now, and it felt like exactly what she had been missing. If flame and shift were two sides of the same coin, life and death—existence—was the cycle on which they connected. She may not have known precisely what was missing in her evaluation of the Vesten Point’s magic, but she had been right that there was a third piece, like the spike she wanted to use to sit between the double-headed ax she would make him.
The Vesten library loomed before them. They needed to conduct their research quickly while continuing to practice uniting their power. With Carter, the Compass Points were instantly recognized and ushered through private halls into a large open room filled with books and shelves. He led them with an expertise that spoke to years working in the stacks before assuming his position as a Compass Point.
“Will the Vesten elders be unhappy that you shared these histories?” Rose couldn’t help but ask as they walked. The library staff had been cautious noting the fae leaders, but wereeager to please the Vesten Point by letting them through. They were certainly unaware of what texts the group intended to read.
“I find this to be the perfect situation in which we should ask forgiveness later, instead of permission.” Carter shrugged.
Guiding them to a specific corner, Carter let his finger brush along multiple spines before pulling a handful of well-worn journals down. “Here they are,” he said, handing volumes to each of them.
“You don’t know which one we should read?” Rose asked.
Carter shook his head. “It will be faster if we each start reading one and share any interesting passages. These five cover Kenna’s tenure as Vesten Point. That is where we should start if we’re looking for information about the Covenant.”
Rose took her volume, sat on the floor, her back against a shelf, and carefully leafed through the pages.
“You trust us to read these documents?” Juliette asked. A variation on Rose’s line of questioning, but an important difference. Carter’s actions indicated a new level of conviction in the goal to unite the Compass Points. One Rose wasn’t sure Juliette had yet reached.
“I think I’ll take a page out of Rose and Luc’s book.” Carter shrugged again as he flipped through the pages himself.
