by Kate Martin
He envisioned the knife, floating above the woman and plunging into her heart. The labrynths, and the torches, and the people.
And the mirror. It seemed unimportant given everything that surrounded it, but the image of the mirror pulled at him, taunted him.
It was the same mirror he had seen years before, when he’d first met Carma, when he had seen his own reflection in the myst and his reflection had attacked him.
— CHAPTER SEVENTEEN —
Carma, leave him alone,” Alec said, keeping his body between the demon and Bri.
She kept inching closer and closer. “I need to know what he saw.”
“I can tell her, really I can,” Bri said as Alec tucked him into bed. The kid was still shaking and feverish.
“No. You need to rest. And you,” he turned towards Carma, “need to get out.” He grabbed Carma by the arm and began pulling her from the room.
With a slow, quiet annoyance, she lifted her arm free from his grip. “Fine. But you will tell me what you know. I know he’s told you things.”
“Alec, I think I remember enough to tell her,” Bri called after them, though he sounded half asleep already.
Alec ignored the boy and shut the bedroom door. He leaned against the doorframe, prepared to stay there all night if that was what it took to ensure Bri got a decent night’s sleep. Alec thought carefully about his words. “He said he saw a ritual. Labrynths. The woman who touched him was killed, and there were others. Beyond that, you’ll have to wait to hear what details he remembers.”
“A ritual.” Carma stepped back, playing with a lock of hair as she thought. “He’ll have to describe it to Dorothea then. Perhaps she can decode it.”
“In the morning.”
“Something is happening, Alec. Wouldn’t you rather it was dealt with sooner rather than later?”
“What is happening?”
“I don’t know yet,” Carma admitted.
“You know something. You’ve been like this since before you disappeared.”
“Like what?”
“Suspicious. Dodgy. Secretive. What did you catch wind of that has you collecting pieces and children?”
“Pieces?”
“Ah ha. See? You can’t outright deny it, because you can’t lie. What is it, Carma?”
“Bri told you what he saw. Isn’t that cause enough for concern?”
“People perform rituals every day. Yes, one that uses mass killings is cause for alarm, but not from a demon. What do you care if people die? You’ve killed before yourself. So what is it you’re so concerned about?”
She was quiet a moment. Her gaze fixed on his, unwavering, unyielding. “I like the way things are now, don’t you? We don’t need any big changes to the world.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Well, that’s your problem, isn’t it?”
“Does this have to do with him?” They never said his name. Somehow it always felt as though it would summon him to their side. And Alec didn’t want that.
Her eyes darkened, the blue flashing, the gold shadowed. “You always ask that.”
“And you never answer. I’m beginning to think your evasion is answer enough.”
“You leave those sorts of things to me,” Carma insisted.
“Then you leave Bri to me. Let him sleep. We can deal with all this tomorrow.”
Picadilly’s confident footsteps entered the hall just before her voice. “There is one thing that should be dealt with tonight.”
Carma kept her gaze on Alec as she answered the healer. “And what would that be?”
“I suppose you were both too busy chasing after that boy to look around you carefully,” Picadilly said, pulling the pins from her long black hair. “If you had seen what I saw, you wouldn’t be so calm.”
“Don’t play games with me, Pica,” Carma said. “What did you see?”
Picadilly shook out the last of her curls. “Lillianna.”
Bri couldn’t sleep.
Despite the reprieve Alec’s touch had given him, along with the warm bath and the lavender salts under his pillow—all devices that had helped him sleep over the years—Bri couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes. It didn’t help that he could hear Alec and Carma talking just outside his door, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Curiosity wasn’t enough to pull him from his bed and go out into the hall. Alec had made it quite clear that he was, under no circumstances, to leave his room. He needed rest, and Carma wouldn’t give it to him if he left.
But rest was hard to come by. With Alec dealing with Carma, the option of retreating to the quiet wasn’t available.
Unable to stay still, Bri threw off his covers and got out of bed. He went to the window and breathed deep of the warm summer night air. A light breeze danced across his face and hands, but its ghostly touch reminded him too much of the myst.
He felt the heavy weight of a cold gaze on his back.
Turning, he faced down the mirror across the room. Most of the time he kept it covered, uncomfortable with the smooth reflective surface given his experiences inside the myst. But tonight it had been necessary while dressing for the ball, and in his haste, he hadn’t covered it back up.
Now, his reflection stared back at him. Pale and thin, it wasn’t much to look at. Certainly the dark circles under his eyes didn’t help, nor did his hair, which he could never get to lie properly. The vine along his hand glowed softly in the darkness, the only light was a single candle on his bedside table. That vine had become a reality anchor, an assurance that he was looking at himself and not the forceful reflection that hid in the myst.
Before he realized he had walked across the room, he pressed that hand against the mirror and its reflection. Then he did something he rarely did. He looked over his shoulder at the labrynth burned into his back.
It spanned from his shoulder blades to his lower back, and it never ceased to amaze him just how clean and even each and every line was. He remembered the pain of it, and the fear that had made it necessary. Looking at it brought all that back. Looking at it also reminded him that he could be in control. Perhaps not perfectly, not yet, but control could be his. He thought of the woman he had seen die in the vision, and all the others who died around her. When he closed his eyes, he could still smell the blood, hear their screams. Alec had told him to rest, to worry about remembering in the morning, but already he could feel details slipping away. He knew he would never be able to describe the labrynths to Dorothea in perfect detail, but he had learned enough from her to vaguely give her a place to start—if he could remember it.
The myst crawled in closer, pushing at the edges of his sight, hovering as though it could sense his attention. With its approach, his blood seemed to dance along the lines of the labrynth on his back, humming and waking the power that lay within. Alone like this, focused and able to concentrate, a bit of his bravery awoke. The myst came closer still, but Bri stared it down. It crept up that last step. With a deep breath, and a quick prayer that he wasn’t being stupid, Bri reached forward and let the myst take him in.
Entering was always simple. The cold fog wrapped around him, tugging him this way and that, making him feel heavy. Bri didn’t fight it. When the tendrils came close, offering their visions and knowledge, he reached out and met them half way.
The first sent him staggering back, forcing its way into his mind and showing him the grim fate of some alley-dweller from the city. Bri wrenched himself free, the smell of unwashed flesh lingering. More tendrils of myst came, all as violent as the first, causing Bri to dodge between them as he would between the legs of stampeding horses. They showed him death, poverty, illness, and misfortune. Their darkness latched onto him, sinking their teeth deep within his mind. Though Bri opened himself to everything nearby, no love or light arrived. It was as if nothing good surrounded the city. Callay was to become a harbinger of darkness, and Bri could not break free.
The myst reached for him again and again. One tendril sl
ipped between his eyes, carrying the images of the assault of a young girl. The pain she felt became Bri’s pain, and coupled with memories of his own. He reached for the power of the labrynth burned into his back, desperate to dispel the visions. But he hadn’t yet seen what he had come for.
Enduring with courage he hadn’t known he possessed, Bri released the labrynth and stayed.
Darkness and pain enveloped him.
“Lillianna hasn’t been seen in centuries.”
Picadilly toyed with a lock of her hair. “And yet I saw her.”
Alec sank into the armchair before the open window. They had taken their conversation to the drawing room, in the interest of letting Bri sleep. There was little chance a discussion about the mother of all demons would be civil and quiet.
“You’re sure it was her,” Carma said, not for the first time, from her perch atop the mantel. She tended to act less human after any event where she needed to blend in.
“Quite sure.” No cheeky snaps when Carma asked the questions. Pica reserved that for Alec.
Carma settled into silence, eyes open, but sight turned inward, as if Alec and Pica had disappeared. Alec knew that look. She wouldn’t come out of it until she had finished piecing together whatever exclusive knowledge she possessed.
“What would she be doing here?” he asked, the question directed to both Picadilly and no one at all.
“She was with the king, and I felt nothing from her. She did not feel like a demon.”
“Only demons can sense other demons.”
“I was a demon once,” Pica snapped, baring her teeth as though she had fangs, but those, too, had left her. “Not everything is gone, stupid human. A demon as old and as strong as Lillianna would still speak to me.”
“If you say so,” Alec said. “But that still doesn’t answer what she’s doing here. In fact, it raises a new issue. Why didn’t you, or Carma for that matter, sense her?”
“She must be blocking our senses.”
Cel-Eza. Two thousand years should have shown him everything by now. “Can she do that?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but she is.”
Alec glanced at Carma, who was still lost in thought. “What would it take to give her that ability? A certain soul? A certain number of souls? A ritual?”
“A labrynth.” Pica leaned against another of the windows. “And a ritual, and souls. I have never met another who could hide like this. It would take something never before conceived.”
“At the very least then, we know she has a witch.”
“Any smart demon does,” Pica said. “What she has is an extraordinarily powerful witch.”
“We’ll have to ask Dorothea about it then.”
“Ask me what?” The old witch hobbled into the room, her hair let out completely, and her feet bare, peeking out from beneath the hem of her nightgown. Her hands were red, scratched, and bandaged in places. She had been working.
When Picadilly didn’t immediately speak, Alec assumed it was up to him to take up the question. “Would it be possible to scribe a labrynth that would prevent a demon from being sensed by others?”
Dorothea looked to the mantel. “What is she doing?”
“Thinking, plotting, concocting secrets. The same thing she is always doing. Dorothea, could you make a demon invisible to others?”
She turned her grey gaze on him. “With enough time, I believe anything is possible.”
“Time. So the witch would have to be old, experienced.”
“Yes. Or very powerful. Very strong.”
“Do you know of anyone like that?”
Dorothea looked away from him. “He died years ago. He was young and powerful. I am powerful, but I am no longer young.”
“So, no one then.”
“Not that I have met.” Wandering the room, she lost herself in her own thoughts, but her gaze always returned to Carma. Alec watched them both, ignoring the irritating click of Picadilly’s fingernails behind him.
The wind picked up, slapping branches against the side of the house, and whipping into the room through the window at Alec’s back. As papers on a nearby table began to flutter, Alec stood and quickly gathered them up, then noticed the overcast sky out the window.
Dorothea appeared at his side.
“Someone is pulling power,” she said.
“Who?”
She did not answer him, but simply laid her hand against the glass pane, and stared out into the darkness.
Picadilly stopped her impatient clicking and wrapped an arm around herself, inspecting the ceiling as if it were the cause. “I didn’t feel Lillianna, but I feel that,” she said.
Alec opened his mouth to speak, but a sickly cold crept down his body, starting at his head. His stomach lurched. “What is that?” He turned to Carma, but she had not moved from her perch.
Dorothea threw the window open wider, leaned out, and smelled the night air. “It is many things. Labrynth, and Hell, and Haven.” She gave him one of the clearest gazes he had ever seen from her. “And myst.”
“Bri.”
Alec ran from the room, up the stairs, and down the hall to Bri’s closed door. The feeling was stronger here, like a thick fog that would choke the unwary. When Alec touched the latch, it was ice cold. Picadilly appeared at his side, her hand stilling his, preventing him from opening the door.
“Perhaps we should wait for Dorothea.”
“It will take her too long to get up the stairs. Go help her get here faster if you’re so concerned. I’m not leaving him in there alone.” With his final word, he shook her off and shouldered the door open.
No candles burned, and barely a sliver of moonlight came through the window. In the nearly pitch black, Alec waited for his eyes to adjust. All he could hear was panicked breathing and the smash of glass.
“Bri!” he shouted into the darkness, but received no answer. He called again. Still nothing.
The scratch of a match brought light behind him. He saw Picadilly in the doorway with a candle that spilled much needed light into the darkness. In that light, Bri stood before his shattered mirror, eyes wide, but unseeing, staggering, arms bleeding, clutching his head in pain or fear.
“Cel-Eza.” The familiar invocation slipped from Alec’s lips as he rushed to the boy, but Picadilly one again stopped him, grabbing his outreached hand just before he was able to touch Bri.
“What happens if you touch him like this?”
“He comes out of the myst.”
“Safely? Alec, he is far gone from this world.”
Before she could make him second guess himself, Alec grabbed Bri with his free hand, wrapping his arm around the boy’s shoulders and pulling him tight against his chest, bare fingers pressed to Bri’s throat.
The scream that erupted from the boy was pure agony.
Alec held tight, the scream rending a hole in his heart, but he was committed to what he had already begun. Bri didn’t struggle; he went taut, then sagged and collapsed. Alec lowered him to the floor carefully, never letting go. He cradled the boy against him, as he had done the first night Carma had brought him home, and stared into silver-brown eyes. “Bri? Can you hear me?”
Bri drew a few shaky breaths, nodding, looking up at Alec, then squeezing his eyes shut.
Alec wanted to be more patient, but his fear got the better of him. “What the hell happened? I thought you were sleeping.”
“Foolish child.” Picadilly brought the light closer. “You need to learn your own limits.”
Bri didn’t answer either of them. His body tensed in Alec’s arms and he lurched away, becoming violently ill.
Damage already done, Alec sat beside him and rubbed his back until the episode passed.
Dorothea arrived. “What have you done?”
“Leave him be, Dorothea,” Alec said.
“I wasn’t speaking to him. I was speaking to you,” the old witch said. She walked around to get a better view of Bri. “He never leaves the myst this badly.”
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“You didn’t see how he was.”
“You touched him, didn’t you? Pulled him from it.”
“What other choice did I have? He was in pain, hurting himself!” Alec gestured to the broken mirror.
Dorothea huffed. “He must learn to walk out on his own, even when things are bad. You do not help.” She knelt before Bri, lifting his chin and studying his face. A long moment passed that left Alec ready to jump out of his own skin. Finally she nodded and stood. “He will survive.” She turned her gaze on Alec. “He is beginning to take after you. Both are too stupid for your own good when others are involved.”
She got one step away before Bri reached out, grabbing her by the ankle. “Wait. I saw it. I went back in to see it, so I could tell you, and I saw it.” He sounded weak, unsteady, but determined.
Dorothea regarded him like some disappointing pupil who might be able to redeem himself. “Saw what?”
“Yes, Bri,” Carma’s voice drifted into the room like a summer breeze in winter—lovely, but wrong, and dangerous. The minimal light cast her in shadows in the doorway. “What did you see?”
“The ritual. The one I saw at the ball.” He paused, each word taking more out of him than it should. “I can describe it. Give details.”
His eyes rolled into the back of his head. Alec caught him just before he could smash his face against the hard floor. Normally Bri burned with fever when he had exerted himself past his limits. This time he was cold in Alec’s arms.
A pop sounded in the far corner of the room, as if all the air had left at once. “Well,” said a lilting voice Alec vaguely remembered, “this is an odd place for Death to lead me.”
— CHAPTER EIGHTEEN —
His scream echoed off the ruins of the once magnificent stone structures of Talconay’s former capital city. After two years of war, Tarkava was little to look at, and the senators and ruling prince had long ago relocated. The people had taken to the outskirts of the city, no longer able to find food or shelter in what had once been a grand symbol of equal rights and a wealthy society. Vaah had done them all in, turning Talconay’s superior weaponry against them. All the blood and death had been quite lovely.