“The portal to Sanctuary is so close to the Dreamhaven. How come the Institute hasn’t found it yet?” I asked.
“Even if they had, they don’t have the spell or key to open it.”
“Are there other ways into the City at the End of the World?”
“You’ve no doubt heard the saying, ‘To find a thing in Everywhen, one need only look for it.’ The same is true for the city. That’s how I found it. I put the portal to Sanctuary close to the Dreamhaven’s entrance because I didn’t want to risk getting lost.”
Nephelie, Aquila, and Linh walked into the office. Aquila’s long brown hair fell straight down her tanned back, and she wore a black tank top with leather pants. She looked like someone who got piss drunk in dive bars and arm wrestled every guy who measured a few inches taller than her. That may have been true, but I’d only ever seen her crack jokes, not skulls.
Nephelie wore a long black dress that showed off her strong arms, and her locks were bundled atop her head, tied with a blue-and-green ribbon. Although her crimson eyes were intense—shouldering a rebellion carried a lofty emotional burden—her rich ochre skin was soft, like combat had never grazed her.
“Oh my God!” Linh said when she saw us. Linh had been one of my closest friends at the Institute. She wasn’t tall, but she packed a lot more personality than people twice her size. Her black hair had grown out to her shoulders, and she was wearing a purple T-shirt and some jeans. Linh had led me to Luther Dorian, and she and Aquila had been the ones to help us escape. We parted ways shortly before I went to Gaspar’s hideout. She probably didn’t think she’d ever see us again. “How’d you all get here?”
Nephelie didn’t know what to make of our intrusion. Aquila, however, had a funny look on her face. “You again? Luther, what’s going on?”
“I found them in the Dreamhaven . . . aware,” Luther said.
“That’s never happened before,” Nephelie said.
“I know. They asked me to get them out.”
“Aquila,” Nephelie said, “can you take the children into the dining room and see if they’re hungry? When they’re done, Linh, please show them to their rooms.”
“Okay, everyone,” Aquila said, standing by the open door, “file out.”
Linh looped her arm around mine. “You’ve got to tell me everything.” We started out the door, but Luther and Nephelie stayed behind to talk. Already keeping secrets. I wanted to hang around and listen, but “get them something to eat” hadn’t been the worst thing I’d heard lately.
An old foyer awaited us outside Nephelie’s office. I’d seen enough houses like these back in Chicago to recognize the ornate, Victorian interior. A grand staircase split the main hall in half and joined the manse’s two wings, with Nephelie’s office in the upper right-hand corner. Adjacent Nephelie’s office, in the southeast corner, a wide entry led to a dining room. An antechamber ran between the front entrance and the foyer, and a closed door lay on the foyer’s western side, across from the dining room. Linh let me go and started talking to Blake. While no one watched, I crept off to investigate the closed door.
Discovering the door unlocked, I stole a peek inside. A few short bookcases rested their backs against the walls, and a wing chair sat on a rug near a latticed window. Two young boys and a girl read quietly around a table. The children’s bored faces told me everything about their reading material. One child lazily browsed a book with the words Science and Health on the cover. I gathered the others were also textbooks. Aquila cleared her throat at the dining room’s entrance, arms folded over her chest, an eyebrow cocked at me. “They need to study. Life doesn’t stop just because we’re in a war.” I closed the door quietly so as not to alert the children, then walked into the dining room. We congregated at a long table, near a window overlooking a cliff and a large body of water. Aquila left the room once we all took seats.
“So this is Sanctuary? What’s the deal with this place?” Alison asked.
“It’s like . . . a home for underage wizards,” Linh said. “Since they’re not old enough to take care of themselves, once the Defectors get them out, they bring them here. The Defectors are broken up into cells, and Nephelie doesn’t really run her own cell, but she runs this place and oversees a lot of larger operations, so the Defectors also treat this place like a central hub.”
“Cells?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s how the Defectors are arranged. There’s a core group of cells, but new, unaffiliated cells pop up all the time. Supposedly the Defectors are organized that way so if one cell gets captured, the Institute can’t read their minds and uproot the whole rebellion.”
“But don’t plenty of Defectors know where this place is?” Alison said.
Linh pointed to a small magic circle carved into a wooden pilaster. “They have those sigils all over Sanctuary. The Defectors can activate it to move the whole place.”
“Move it?” I asked.
“Through teleportation.”
The Defectors moved Sanctuary around to keep it hidden. Clever.
“Why keep a bunch of kids in the central hub of a rebellion?” Blake asked cynically. To him, good guys in the war between the Institute and the Defectors didn’t exist. Like the Institute, the Defectors wanted something. He just didn’t know what yet.
“This is the safest place for them because it can move around.”
“What happens when they become adults?”
“They can choose to fight with the Defectors, and the Defectors will help them secure housing and jobs and stuff.”
Aquila returned with a pot of dumplings floating in steaming vegetable broth. She placed a stack of wooden plates on the table, and a ladle and some metal spoons. My stomach growled when I saw the shimmery, golden soup. “Serve yourselves,” she said. We descended on the food like locusts, ladling spoonfuls into our bowls and shoveling plump dumplings into our mouths. No one said much while we were eating.
When we finished, Aquila cleaned up and Linh led us upstairs, to the left wing. There was a round stained-glass window over the landing where the staircase in the foyer split. The image depicted two dragons, one light one dark, bound in fire-breathing combat. The same image on Luther’s pocket watch.
We headed down a long hall, toward our room. The first door we passed on the right side of the passage was open. Inside, two kids—a brown-haired boy and a girl with black pigtails, each no older than six—jumped on a bed, screaming as they beat each other with pillows.
Linh stopped at the door. “Hey, Aquila’s going to yell at you guys.” The kids let out another wild screech and hopped off the bed, speeding past Linh into the hallway. Linh sighed and we continued to our room.
“How many kids are here?” I asked.
“Ten, counting you guys. There were eight a while ago, but Pollux and Castor both turned eighteen and left.”
“They didn’t become Defectors?”
“Castor’s a pacifist. Pollux wanted to join, but Castor talked him out of it and they just left.”
“And the Defectors just let them go like that?” Blake asked.
“This isn’t the Institute. What’re they going to do, force them to become Defectors?”
“What if the Institute captures them? Won’t they find this place?”
Blake’s vigilance amused Linh. “It can move, remember?” She led us into an empty room at the end of the passage. “Here we are.”
Two bunk beds juxtaposed each other on opposite sides of a window. The not-too-distant crashing of waves and cawing seagulls revealed that we were close to a large body of water. Sanctuary presided over some steep cliffs to the north and pine forests to the south. It didn’t have any neighbors either—the Defectors liked their privacy.
“How do they choose where to move the house?” Blake asked, staring out the window with me.
“The Defectors do a lot of research befor
e they move Sanctuary. They use scouts to find new locations. I don’t know all the details, but they make charts and stuff Nephelie uses to map out where the house will go next,” Linh said. The Defectors lacked a strong central structure, but they worked well in tandem. It made them unpredictable. That was their greatest weapon against the Institute.
The sun had started its downward journey toward the horizon, smearing the sky with pinks and oranges, the room a pleasant glow. “I think there’re some spare pajamas. I’ll get them for you.” Linh ducked out.
Blake splayed himself on the bottom left bunk. Hunter wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into the lower bunk on the right. I fell on top of him, so he grinned and planted kisses all over my face. I sunk into his chest and let his gentle heartbeat soothe me. Alison peeked her head out the door, checking for Linh. “We’re the oldest kids here.”
“Looks like it,” Blake said, arms folded under his head. “Is it weird that I still feel tired?”
Alison came back into the room and checked the small cabinet under the window, but there was nothing inside. “No, I get it,” she said, her attention drawn outside. “My body feels weak.”
“Did you get your memories back?” I asked.
“Yes!” she said. “This big light pillar shot down from the sky and busted through Veles Hall’s roof, then the Institute went nuts. Smiths were crawling everywhere. We saw them pull you two out of your room and drag you to the Heka Building. I was about to march in the Heka Building and be all like ‘can I speak to your manager,’ buuuuut”—Alison spun toward Blake like she had an axe to grind—“doofus here thought it’d be a better idea to cut a deal with Aiden.”
I knew where this was going. Aiden, leader of the Legacy of the Crowns, hated Blake after he’d embarrassed him during a wizard duel.
“What was the deal?” I asked.
“I told him we’d stage another wizard duel, and I’d let him beat me if he helped us get inside the Heka Building.”
“What happened?” Hunter asked.
“He walked us into a trap.”
“Did you forget to mention the part where I told you that asking Aiden for help was a bad idea?” Alison said.
Blake clamped up, embarrassed. “Alison warned me about Aiden. She said we could find some other way.”
“How did you guys end up in the Dreamhaven with us?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Last thing I remember is those agents spraying us with that smelly, green stuff.”
Linh walked into the room with a few towels and some pajamas. “There’s a bathroom at the end of the hallway if you want to take a shower.”
“So where are we?” Alison asked. “Like . . . in the US . . . or Canada or whatever.”
“Michigan, I think. Somewhere along Lake Superior. About six hours north of Chicago.”
“Linh,” Luther called from behind, startling her. She spun and found him standing in the doorway. “Please, go make sure the other children have had dinner.” Linh caught her breath and left. Luther clasped his hands behind his back. “Children, before you do anything else, I’ll need you to follow me upstairs.”
We followed Luther into the hallway. Alison gave me a skeptical look. “What do you think they’re going to do?”
“Hopefully not sacrifice us to something.”
Luther led us to the other wing. We passed a small infirmary halfway down the hall, then Luther grabbed a cord dangling from the ceiling. He pulled down a trap door and ladder leading to the attic, then scurried up like a mouse. Blake climbed the steps with no problem, then Hunter. Alison found the shaky steps wobbly but managed. I, with my grace and luck, drove my foot through one of the rungs and almost fell. Luckily, Alison caught me by my sleeve. Once in the attic, Luther showed us to a wide-open space around a large circular array, which had been drawn on the floor in white chalk.
The ring looked familiar, then it hit me: the sigil under the Keep—the Legacy of the Crowns’ dorm—the one Crowns used to induct initiates into the Legacy. While not resembling the sigil perfectly, it was a close enough match. This one had a heptagram like the one I’d seen on Luther’s pocket watch.
“What is this thing?” Blake asked, eyeing the symbol.
“It is our own Legacy array, constructed long ago to overwrite the death curse.”
I’d forgotten that the Institute had marked us for death. The Institute had been arranged like a giant magical array, and when you stepped inside, the circle placed a death curse on you. When the Institute activated the death curse—the results were self-explanatory. They used this curse to mark non-Lineage wizards, those who hadn’t been born into magical families. Gaspar had called it a quelling, a rare but occasional purge conducted to “maintain order in wizard society.”
“You knew we were marked the first time we met, and you let us go anyway?” I asked Luther.
“We tried to bring you here, but you went after Gaspar instead. We couldn’t risk showing you the array and then having the Institute find out about it when they recaptured you.” Luther regarded the circle fondly.
“If this is a binding circle, then this will bind us to a task.”
“There is no stipulation. We do this ritual with anyone that we help escape the Institute. Be aware, the ritual is not perfect, and if you reenter the Institute, the curse will overwrite this spell and mark you again, unless you’re a Legacy wizard.” Luther turned his focus on Blake. “You do not need this ritual because you are marked with the sigil of the Thorns, and the death curse will not work on you.
“Please stand in one of the triangles in the larger circle,” Luther said, stepping into a smaller circle at the top of the array. We walked into the larger circle, each taking our place in a different triangle. The old man raised his frail hands and weaved his fingers through the glowing machinery of the vivit apparatus. He tampered with the clockwork until the rings shined crimson. A wind swept through the room, and into my ears crept the faint sound of people marching and yelling. I saw protesters fiercely clashing with police; tanks, one after the other, rumbling down empty streets; and a tattered flag waving in the air amid a sea of corpses. A feeling of triumph pulsed through the horrifying visuals, like an underlying theme: To die for this cause is great. My heart, once sad and weakened by the events in the Dreamhaven, grew hardened, angry. Vengeful. No longer was it good enough to merely flee the Institute; I wanted it destroyed.
The rings stopped glowing. Luther pulled his hands from the golden machinery and it vanished, except for the circles still crudely drawn on the floor.
“Was that it?” Alison said. “No more death curse?”
“No. I’ve overwritten the curse with our own seal,” Luther said.
We returned us to our rooms, changed by the ritual. I couldn’t stop thinking of how much I hated the Institute and everyone who worked there. The receptionists, the teachers, the deliveryman—every single cog and wheel that kept that machine running. I wanted to visit misery upon all those people. To slake my thirst for revenge with their blood.
“J,” Alison said, drawing me out of my frenzied thoughts, “look at my aura. Tell me what it looks like.”
Alison and I closed our eyes across from each other. Immediately, the same visions I’d had during the ritual flooded my mind: people yelling in defiance, street clashes, feet marching, and bottles shattering. Was endless warfare the freedom the Defectors spoke of? Even if we chose not to fight, like the two boys who had left before we arrived, we were Defectors. Their enduring struggle had marked our lives forever.
Chapter 12
Our first night in Sanctuary, I caught Hunter sneaking out of bed and followed him. I found him sitting on the half landing. Moonlight passed through the stained-glass window, refracted into a dozen pale beams that showered him in airy colors.
“Hey,” I said, dropping down next to him.
He shot me a smile, but it
hurt him. “Hey, J.”
“Is your head hurting again?”
He threw an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. “No.” Another stabbing pain shot through his head.
“Did you take any medicine?”
“It’ll go away. They never last that long.”
“Don’t you think you should talk to Luther about it?”
“About a headache?”
“About a headache you brought here from the Dreamhaven.”
“It’s just my sinuses, J—I always get like this during the spring. Plus, that’s not why I woke up.”
“Why did you?”
“I had a nightmare. . . about the Void.” Hunter never spoke timidly, but right then he hushed his voice, like he feared the Void itself would hear him and come looking for him.
“Can you . . . can you tell me about it?”
He didn’t seem like he wanted to relive those feelings, but Hunter never backed down. His courage always got the better of him. “It was . . . dark and lonely . . . but I could feel it in my head. The Void. It said things to me.”
“Like what?”
“It told me to join it. It said that I could never escape and that I should serve it for all eternity. I think it wanted to eat my soul.”
“Why didn’t you . . . join it?”
Hunter looked at me, a warmth burning in his eyes. “Because I wanted to be with you again.”
We kissed then, under the moonlight, and I urged him back to bed.
Over the next five days, I kept thinking about Mikey. Although he’d enabled our escape, his reasons for helping us lay mired in doubt. Did our escape serve some greater design, or did he help us just because? My cynicism told me to dismiss the latter, but that would’ve been premature. I didn’t know enough to speak on his motives.
In the City of the Nightmare King Page 10