The Keep

by Bella Forrest

  “I don’t have time for this. I need to see Elias, now!” he yelled, growing more impatient by the second.

  “How about we begin with you telling me what has caused all this?” she said, gesturing at Alex, a mass of beaded bracelets jangling heavily on her wrist. She mimicked the state he was in by puffing out her rouged cheeks, making herself look somewhat ridiculous. “I’m not going anywhere, Alex, so you may as well speak to me. I can be of help to you, but it’s a two-way street,” she added, with a note of frustration in her voice.

  Alex wondered what on earth she had to be frustrated about. She wasn’t the one who had just found out his father was dead, and learned that the creature who killed him was the very same creature that had been his constant guide throughout all of the madness that had become his life.

  “Why should I tell you anything?” he spat.

  “Because I’m the only one who can understand,” she replied, staring intently at him through the thick lenses of her glasses, her eyes almost bug-like.

  Alex scoffed. “You can’t understand what I’m going through.”

  “You won’t know if you don’t try. Are you a quitter, Alex Webber? You never seemed like a quitter to me— definitely not one to shy away from a challenge,” she said.

  “Do you even know who I’m looking for?” he asked bitterly, realizing he had never heard her mention the shadow-man before, though she had seemed to know whom he meant when he asked where Elias was. Were they in cahoots too? It didn’t sit well with Alex; none of it did.

  Siren Mave laughed sarcastically. “The things I know about that shadowy pest—I could tell you stories that would make your toes curl and tales that would split your sides with laughter. Do I look dumb to you?” she asked, raising a drawn-on eyebrow. “Mm, perhaps you should not answer that in your current, heated state. Let’s not get into flinging childish insults—that’s more Elias’s style. In short, yes, I know who you are seeking, though I would like you to explain why. Think of me as a reluctant mediator.” She smiled, her thick lipstick cracking slightly.

  “He killed my father,” Alex whispered, pushing away tears.

  “You have seen it with your own eyes?” she asked curiously.

  He nodded. “I have.”

  “Pesky necromancers, always meddling,” she muttered. “I presume it was the necromancer who showed you?”

  “I’m glad he taught me how,” Alex said defensively.

  “Yes, as well you might be, but it has brought a whole lot of trouble my way,” she sighed. “Always fixing everyone else’s mess.”

  “It’s good to see you haven’t lost your compassionate side,” Alex said mockingly, feeling angry at the stout, toady woman before him, who was making little attempt at empathy for his loss.

  She stared down her nose at Alex. “Kindly remove yourself from your high horse, Alex. It doesn’t suit you,” she remarked curtly. “You see, the thing about necromancy, especially the way you see the spirit world, is you only get a snippet of the whole story. You make assumptions and fill in the gaps of what you don’t see, and you know what happens when you assume, don’t you?”

  Alex frowned. “What?”

  “It makes an ass out of you and me,” she quipped. “So, let’s agree not to assume anything, yes?”

  “I don’t think witnessing a murder is an assumption,” he said tightly.

  She sighed. “Okay, you’re clearly not in a cooperative mood, so how about you just listen for a while? You might learn that everything is not always as it seems,” she said, an unexpected touch of sadness in her voice.

  It was a lesson Alex was already more than familiar with. Nothing was ever as it seemed, Elias included. He did not need a lecture on perception.

  But he shrugged anyway. “I’m all ears.”

  “Things didn’t happen exactly as you believe they did,” she began.

  “How do you know?” Alex cut in, wondering what the relationship was between Siren Mave and Elias.

  “Elias and I are not so dissimilar, as much as I hate to admit it—we are branches of the same tree, if you’ll excuse my flowery language,” she explained. “Our purpose here is the same.”

  Alex tilted his head. “Purpose?”

  She nodded. “At the time of your father’s death, we were both entrusted with the protection of the last Spellbreaker. He and I are… guardians of sorts, for lack of a better word. Mm, I wish I could think of a better word,” she muttered. “Anyway, Elias came into this ‘business,’ if you like, voluntarily. I, however, was drawn out of the void by the royals, when the imbalance was created in our world and they didn’t know how to fix what had been done, with the mists of the Great Evil coming for their kind. Silly name, if you ask me—not very original,” she remarked. “Still, they created me from the void. Like I said, always fixing other people’s problems.”

  Alex took a moment to let Siren Mave’s words sink in. If what she was saying was true, then she had been aware of Elias for a long while. Perhaps she already knew Elias had been visiting him on the sly, feeding him information. What intrigued him more, however, was the idea of her being created by the royals—she seemed real enough, but did that mean she wasn’t flesh and bone, like he was? He had to wonder what she was forged from, if not the usual materials.

  “How did Elias become what you are?” he asked, trying to understand.

  She gave him a withering look. “He is not what I am. Do I look like a formless wisp to you? No, we serve the same purpose, but he created himself, as a guardian, to avoid a worse fate. Some might say it was a bold move; I would say it was… Well, it’s not for young ears like yours. The thing is, something must have happened during the metamorphosis, meaning he did not come out as solid as he might have liked. He’s come to love it, mind you—I know he finds a sick sort of pleasure in his mistiness, always sneaking in shadows and slipping from place to place, snooping where he’s not welcome. I lost count of the times I used to catch him hiding in Esmerelda’s chambers and had to shoo him out,” she said, her face puckering in distaste. “I digress—Elias was new to it all, still learning the ropes of seeking out hope for mage-kind, when the news came that a Spellbreaker had been sensed. It had been a long time since there was a confirmed sighting of one of you, and it was big news.”

  “Looks like you didn’t do a very good job of keeping my father safe,” he remarked drily.

  “Are we assuming things again?” she challenged.

  “Just making an observation.”

  “We were doing a perfectly good job, I’ll have you know, but I will admit—and I am not prone to doing so—we made a slight error in judgment. We thought we were safe, and we weren’t,” she explained, her tone regretful. “There were other mages who sought to capture and use the last Spellbreaker for their own purposes, driven by personal vengeance and hatred.”

  Alex thought of the hooded figure with the twisted mouth he had seen in the trees, and wondered if the Head had been behind the plan that saw his father evaporated into a black mist. Perhaps Elias had been working as a double agent the whole time, with Siren Mave believing him to be on her side, when in reality he had been working to kill Alexei.

  “It forced our hand when we saw that someone had started to trail your father—someone working for an underground organization of mages, disgruntled with the king and his rule. It was Elias’s job to watch your father, that day in the park. I told him to summon me if anything happened, but he didn’t—I think he was trying to prove his worth. I hadn’t been the most supportive of mentors, and I think it got to him—again, that is my fault. Enjoy these admissions of failure, as I will not be repeating them,” she remarked. “Ultimately, he failed, but I promise you he was trying to save your father.”

  Alex shook his head vehemently. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “You should—it’s the truth. Elias tried to attack your father’s assailant, but the attack was too strong, and it ended up killing your father too. Think of it as magical shrapnel, wh
ich unfortunately took your father’s life. Had it been normal magic, your father would have lived, but the magic we use is different… It is stronger, more volatile, more unpredictable, especially when wielded by novice hands,” she said sadly. “It was a tragic accident, and we admit our responsibility.”

  “I don’t see Elias admitting to it,” said Alex sharply, gesturing around at the otherwise empty turret. “It makes no difference, really—my mother was left without her partner, believing he had just up and left without a word.”

  She fingered the beads of a bracelet. “About that… We didn’t know about you.”

  “It seems you didn’t know a lot of things.” Alex flashed her a look of resentment.

  For the first time, Siren Mave looked genuinely apologetic. “I’m sorry we left your mother alone. We didn’t realize she was pregnant—she wasn’t showing, and she hadn’t told anyone other than your father, so we figured that was it… no more Spellbreakers. It didn’t occur to us to try to explain to her what had happened to him. It was a can of worms we didn’t want to open. We don’t believe he knew what he was, and your mother certainly didn’t know anything about the magical world. So we went back to the royals with our tails between our legs, believing our jobs to be over. We had nothing to protect, nobody to guard. It was a real blow… We had been searching for him for years and years, trying to follow snippets of information about Leander Wyvern’s non-magical mistress and their progeny, following leads, usually ending up at dead ends. He was the end of the road,” she sighed.

  “So I am a descendant of Leander Wyvern?” Alex asked. He had hoped and believed he might be.

  “You are.” She nodded, a look of relief on her face.

  “What happened when you went back, after what Elias had done?” he pressed. He felt no less angry at Elias, but he was willing to hear the whole story before he made any further judgment.

  She smiled wryly. “As punishment for losing the last hope of balance in the magical world—quite the crime, I’m sure you’ll agree—I was made to do menial labor around the havens. Elias being Elias, he decided to make himself scarce, using his shadowy form to his advantage, shirking off his share of the punishment, disappearing into thin air. I wasn’t pleased, I can assure you,” she grumbled. “I presumed he’d gone for good until I saw him again recently, speaking with you. I think he’s trying to make amends for what he did—trying not to make the same mistake again.”

  Alex wasn’t sure which part enraged him more—that she was defending Elias, trying to make what he had done seem less awful than it was, or that she had known all of this and had chosen to say nothing, for so long. He said as much, venom dripping from his words.

  “Why didn’t you say anything to me, after all this time? Do you have any idea the heartache and pain you could have saved, if you had both just been honest? Are you that inhuman?” he snapped, his eyes burning. “Not once have you lifted a finger to help me! Isn’t that your job?” He gripped his fists into a tight ball, trying to push away the sparks of his aura that burned at the edges of his skin.

  “That’s not entirely true, is it?” Siren Mave replied, her voice calm.

  “Fine, that creature has helped me, but you—you have done nothing.”

  She shook her head sadly. “I have tried, Alex. Not every kind of aid is one you can see,” she said softly. “I have been there for you. I tried to get you out.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  “I tried to get you out,” she repeated. “It took me a while to realize what you were, initially, but once I understood, I did try to help. I bent the rules, and I tried to intervene… I am not supposed to use my magic to manipulate anyone, as it can be very dangerous, but that is exactly what I did, for you. I got in Aamir’s head and maneuvered him into letting you go.”

  Alex looked at her in wide-eyed shock. “Why would you do that?” he gasped, realizing with a pang of sorrow that it had been Siren Mave’s offer and not the Head’s or Aamir’s. It had been the real deal. For a moment, he truly had been so close to going home. It physically stung as the wound tore open afresh.

  “It’s my duty to protect you and help you, and I wanted you to see your mother again. I wanted you to go home, so you could explain to her where you had been—that you had not abandoned her. It was supposed to be a gift, the chance to put her mind and your own at ease, refreshing your soul and your motivation,” said Siren Mave, fidgeting with the glass beads of her many bracelets. Alex felt as if there was more Siren Mave wanted to say, but she did not say it, her lips pressed firmly together, preventing further words from slipping out.

  “Surely, life would have been easier if you had just spoken to me? I don’t understand why you and Elias seem so eager to skirt around everything all the time. It’s like I can’t get a straight answer from either of you!” he sniped, absorbing the information she had just imparted, though it was painful to accept.

  She shook her head. “It’s not that simple. Believe me, I’d rather be straight with you than have to tiptoe around everything all the time. I’m not exactly built for tiptoeing,” she quipped.

  “It’s easy—you open your mouth and speak,” he remarked coldly.

  “We are governed by rules of our own, Alex. It is not in our jurisdiction to directly intervene, and I would not be speaking to you now had my hand not been forced by the progression of recent events. We can only answer to what you already know, or if the right question is asked. It’s intensely frustrating, for both parties, believe me, but we can’t give you any new information, theoretically,” she explained.

  Alex wanted to scream at the cryptic nature of it all; it didn’t make sense to him, and he couldn’t wrap his head around it. He was tired of the games—he didn’t have time for riddles. Still, he managed to force his mind to concentrate for a moment, trying to consider what Siren Mave had said, and trying to think of what the right questions might be to get the answers that he wanted.

  His brow furrowed in thought. “What is your purpose, as a guardian?”

  “We are supposed to seek out hope for the magical race.”

  “What does that even mean? You say these things and they don’t mean anything!” Alex cried, exasperated. “Why am I so valuable to them? What is it that the royals want from me?”

  “You are vital to their existence,” she replied, with the same maddeningly cryptic tone.

  Alex’s cheeks were purple with frustration. “I am vital to their existence? How?”

  “There is something within you that they lack,” she said, clarifying nothing.

  Alex wanted to scream, and shake the toady woman until she told him something in plain terms that he could wrap his head around. Infuriated, but knowing he wasn’t going to get anything clearer from the over-painted lips of Siren Mave, he switched his train of inquiry, trying to fill in some other gaps.

  “And my father didn’t know that he was a Spellbreaker?”

  Siren Mave shook her head. “He didn’t know—he didn’t know why he was being followed and chased. He was scared, and Elias misjudged the situation.”

  “And when he died, what did you think?”

  “When he died, as I say, we thought that was it. No more.”

  “So, you can’t believe my surprise when I saw you,” whispered Elias, appearing sheepishly from the gathering darkness.

  Alex wasn’t sure he could control his rage, seeing the shadow-man shift into sight. Whatever the reasoning, Elias had still killed his father, and he wasn’t sure there was anything that could be said to make him forgive that.

  “What did I tell you?” snapped Siren Mave.

  Elias lifted his misty shoulders, playing coy. “I couldn’t just watch.”

  “You could, but you had to slink into the spotlight, didn’t you? I have this handled, Elias—your presence is neither required nor wanted,” she said frostily.

  “I don’t ‘slink,’ I sashay,” he remarked sourly. “It only felt right that I come and defend myself.”

 
Siren Mave raised an eyebrow. “Says the creature that wouldn’t know what the decent thing was if it came up and smacked him in his wispy head.”

  “If you’re going to call me a creature, at least include the ‘exceptional’ part—I thought we were pals,” he purred.

  Siren Mave rolled her eyes. “How about vexatious creature?”

  He flicked a wispy wrist. “Better… It brings me such joy to know I get under your skin.”

  Alex listened to their back-and-forth in silence, wondering if they even knew he was still there. Glancing between the two of them, he thought about what his next move might be, but found he no longer had the patience to confront his shadowy acquaintance. Siren Mave had told him all he needed to know on that score, and to ask Elias would only bring forth a barrage of smart remarks, vague comments, and backhanded compliments. It wasn’t something he particularly felt like suffering through. There were too many other things whizzing about in his overwrought brain.

  “If you two are finished, I’d like to go now. I have pressing matters to attend to, and I’ve wasted more than enough time on the both of you,” he said, cutting Elias off mid-insult. The shadow-man was in the middle of a rude remark involving a toad, in response to Siren Mave calling him an idiotic, self-centered ghoul.

  They looked at him in surprise.

  “No, don’t go!” said Elias hurriedly. “We have a lot to talk about, Webber.”

  Alex shook his head. “I’m done talking. I have more important things to do right now. Seeing as neither of you would stand in the way if Alypia wanted to tear out my insides, I need to go and make sure she doesn’t.”

  “See what you’ve done!” snarled Elias, rounding on Siren Mave, teeth flashing. “Alex, I was trying to protect him, you have to believe me,” he pleaded suddenly, turning back to Alex.

  “I can’t forgive what you did, Elias. Not today, not tomorrow, probably never,” Alex replied heavily, turning to leave. His father was dead and his mother had been left alone, wondering what happened to the love of her life, because of what that shadow creature did—and worse, kept secret.