by Kate Martin
“Like pure life. Power and energy and life force, all pressed into one.” Kai lit up, half rising from his place on the ground. “It’s like reaching into the sun.”
His exuberance made Bri more aware of the coldness of the myst. “It sounds like you got the better half of the deal.”
Kai slid forward, closing the gap between them and pressing their knees together. “It doesn’t have to be that way. Like I said, I think we can help each other.”
“It doesn’t sound like you need my help.”
“I need my brother. Isn’t that enough?”
Was it?
Sinking back, Kai looked around, as if searching for an answer. “All right, forget all the complicated parts. We’re finally meeting after fifteen years. Let’s just talk. About life, about food, anything, everything. We can decide what to do later.”
“Okay.” The word fell from Bri’s lips faster than the thought passed through his mind.
Kai smiled. “Okay.”
— CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR —
The cool night air couldn’t soothe away everything Alec had seen and endured that night. He did his best to hold still while Dorothea worked at the holy cuffs still binding his wrists, but his tender skin stung with each movement and some spots had gone numb. It didn’t help that Carma had rooted herself to the spot just in front of him since the moment he had materialized before her.
“What did she say?”
Alec was too damned tired for this. “Who?”
“Gabriel.” Her dual colored eyes were alight.
“What do you mean, ‘what did she say?’ You were there. Ow!” The blessed bindings pressed into his flesh, and he jerked away.
Dorothea slapped his arm with her young hand and gave him an admonishing look, then hauled him back around to continue her work while Carma spoke.
“After I left. What did she say?”
“After you—Did you leave me there on purpose?”
“Of course I did. Gabriel mutters in between cursing, she always has, and I knew my escape would send her down that little road. So, what did she say?”
The depths of her planning and cunning continued to surprise him, so much so that he stood there silently, unable to vocalize anything coherent. But the memory of what she had said focused his flailing mind. “The boy. She said something about the boy and the myst.”
Carma stepped back, her gaze turned inward, her silver hair shining in the moonlight and lightly blowing in the night breeze. “She’s looking for him.”
“For Bri?”
Carma paced between trees. “She must have followed him somehow.”
“Carma, answer me. Is she looking for Bri?”
“We know he is hunted by the seraph. You have known that since the first night I brought him home.”
“Yes, but it’s been two years. We hid him. Successfully, I thought.”
“They must have people watching for him in the myst,” Carma said.
“Then he’s not going into the myst anymore. He’ll be done with it.”
“He cannot be done with it. It is a part of him, and I still need him to see.”
“See what?” When he tried to move towards Carma, Dorothea’s grip on his arms jerked him to a halt. “He already saw what you wanted him to. Didn’t he? Isn’t tonight what you were waiting for?” Alec asked.
“It is only the beginning.”
It felt like the world collapsed around him, like his heart and lungs had sunken to the soles of his feet, and all the air had left. He barely noticed when the seraph bindings fell to the ground.
“There,” Dorothea said with her too-young voice, patting his shoulder as she stepped around him. “Free once again.”
If only Bri’s bindings were so easily removed.
Picadilly descended from a tree above their heads, landing lightly on her feet. “The manor is to the north of us, no more than half-a-turn’s walk. Your aim is commendable, considering the situation,” she said to Carma, who smiled and gave a nod like nothing less had ever been expected.
Hands finally free, Alec grabbed Carma’s arm and spun her around until shewas forced to look at him face-to-face. “We’re not done. The beginning of what?”
“Are you really so dense, Alec? Did you not see who was there?”
Olin. “I thought you were done with him. Nothing good ever comes of it when you deal with him,” Alec said.
“Exactly. Don’t you want to know what he and Lillianna are up to?”
“She wants to be a god. No surprise there. Who cares?”
The blue rings of Carma’s eyes darkened. “Olin does, apparently. Doesn’t that seem odd?”
“Not really. He’s probably arranged to be her right-hand man. He always was power hungry.”
“Indeed he is. But he also doesn’t like to share.” Carma shrugged free of Alec’s grip and began to walk. Picadilly followed silently, but Dorothea remained behind with Alec.
Her youthful face was serene, her arms folded neatly along her flat stomach. “There is a world of problems here, Alec,” she said.
“I see that.” It took all his self-control not to grind his teeth down to powder.
“Tonight was a passing chapter. We have not seen the last of Lillianna’s ambitions.”
“I don’t care if she wants to be a god. There are always gods, one more will change little.”
“It could change everything.” Dorothea was emphatic.
“Or it might not. Do you know what did change though? You. What the hell have you done to yourself?” It was strange to look at her like this—as if the past seven-hundred years hadn’t happened, and she was still young.
“You don’t like it?” She extended her arms and gave him a little twirl. “You liked it long ago.”
“You were actually a young woman long ago. And it was only one night.”
Dorothea smiled and all her old eccentricities—the ones that came with her youth, rather than old age—seemed to flood back. “It was a good night.”
“It doesn’t matter. What did you do? How could you do this?”
“The power of that workshop needed somewhere to go once I tapped it. There was quite a lot. It was a spur of the moment decision.”
“It’s unnatural.” Immortality existed, yes, but the regaining of youth, no.
“Bah. It is as natural as the earth it came from. Besides, it will not last long. It has already begun to wear off. See?” She held out her hands. “Already they are showing signs of my age once again.”
A few wrinkles, nothing more. Alec resisted the urge to pull out his hair and instead began walking in the direction of Carma and Picadilly. When he didn’t catch up with them soon enough to ease his nerves, he picked up his pace. Dorothea followed easily, now that she had such young legs.
He found them under a large oak tree, Carma reclining against the trunk with an expectant look, Pica licking at the burns on her wrists from her restraints. The crunch of leaves and sticks beneath his feet, and the chirp of crickets and other insects filled their air as he approached.
“We decided to wait for you,” Carma said.
“I’m surprised,” Alec said. “You know I have more questions.”
“As well as demands, I’m sure.” Carma stood and slipped a hand into the neck of her dress. “However, I thought this might put an end to some of them.”
“Nothing will change the fact that tonight accomplished nothing. We saved no lives, we stopped no rituals. And you will not distract me from that.”
“Not a distraction. This.” She withdrew an object from her chest that shone in the dim moonlight. Alec grasped the shard and turned it over and over in his hands. It was silver, with etchings that wound their way up and down from its flat broad edge to the tip where it narrowed to a point sharp enough to pierce skin. In between, a small plate of glass lined the back.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A piece of one of Lillianna’s boxes.”
“What boxes?”
&nb
sp; “The ones she was keeping the hearts in.”
Alec studied the shard, not understanding what point Carma was trying to make. Then, as he turned the piece over in his hand, the lines of silver began to match up with the lines of pale flesh on his wrist. Not the same, but similar. “The boxes are labrynths.”
“Very good.”
“They keep the hearts alive, or safe, any number of things.”
“They do.”
“And you broke one of them.” Alec was catching on.
“I did.”
“You’re a genius.”
“Two thousand years and you are only now figuring that out?”
Alec ignored her hubris in favor of what that small shard could mean. “So what will happen now? With a broken box?”
Carma shrugged, took the shard, and placed it back within her dress. “Dorothea could make a better prediction than I can.”
“It will weaken her spell,” Dorothea said. “That much is for sure.”
“Will it prevent her from obtaining god status?” Alec asked.
“That remains to be seen,” Dorothea said, her voice eerily even in her youth. “Even with the broken box, she will possess much power now. Possibly enough to begin collecting followers. It will take time before she is truly ready to ascend. Such a leap would take a great amount of power and sacrifice.”
“We shall have to watch things closely,” Carma said.
Picadilly shook her head. “It makes no sense for Olin to help her. I have known him nearly as long as you have, if not quite as well. He was never one for assisting others.”
Alec had never cared much for demon politics. “Lillianna’s ascension must gain him something then.”
“The question is what?” Pica twisted a lock of her black hair through her fingers.
“All good questions,” Carma said, once again walking the game path through the forest. “I will have to go to Hell in search of answers.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go to Hell alone so much,” Alec said. Every time she did, she came back more in touch with her demonic side.
“I’ll take Pica with me then. She likes it there.”
Her dismissal of the topic worried him, but Alec was too tired to argue further. His wrists ached, healing slowly without any magical help. He toyed with the idea of opening himself to the healing power of Hell, but decided against it. The pain was preferable to the addiction, and once was enough for the night. They made the short trip back home in relative silence. Pica continued to lick her wounds, leaving them nearly healed by the time they reached the great front door where Brannick and Mary waited for them. Despite their usual iron-clad composure, neither could hide their shock when Dorothea walked in, younger than she had ever been during their lifetimes. The old witch, for her part, simply smiled, gave them both a coy wave and headed towards her workshop, fingers already twitching.
Mary pulled Alec aside. “What has happened?”
Alec sighed, exhausted, and wanting nothing more than the soft comfort of his own bed. “Long story short, we didn’t stop the ritual, though we may have poked a hole or two in it. We were arrested by the First File, who seem to have been hunting Bri. And Dorothea absorbed an enormous amount of power, which she channeled into some unnatural reoccurrence of her youth.”
“Oh. Is she more lucid at this age?”
“Not really.”
Mary’s sigh became a groan.
“Is Bri awake?” The night was old, approaching sunrise, but given Bri’s mood when they had left, Alec doubted he had gone to sleep.
“Sleeping,” Mary said with a gentle shake of her head. “Or at least he was last time someone checked on him.”
“Which was?”
“One of the girls popped in about a turn ago.”
Refusing the offer of food and drink, Alec excused himself and headed upstairs for some much needed rest. His bones ached, feeling every one of his nearly two thousand years. The lamps burned on their lowest setting in the hall, casting shadows and a dim light his tired eyes were grateful for. He arrived at his door first, fingers brushing the handle before he made the quick decision to turn and arrive at Bri’s door across the hall. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Mary, but Bri sleeping through their return was too strange. Bri was a light sleeper, especially when he slept alone, and he would want a report about the temple.
Alec opened the door, and wasn’t surprised to see the oil lamp by Bri’s bed still burning. The light illuminated the sleeping boy on the bed, flat on his back, hands at his sides, chest rising and falling with a gentle rhythm.
Bri didn’t sleep on his back. He slept in a sprawl, or curled on his side.
“Bri?” Alec moved to the bed, calling Bri’s name again and reassuring himself that he had indeed seen signs of breathing. Bri didn’t react. His eyes flickered behind closed lids, moving in gentle patterns not at all like that of dreaming but more like seeing. A faint light glowed from under his back, casting the white sheets in an eerie greenish-blue hue. The labrynth on his back was activated.
He was in the myst.
Damn, stubborn… Alec couldn’t finish the thought, the idea of cursing Bri too foreign. He reached out to touch the boy, but stopped just shy of his hand. The last time he had forcefully taken Bri from the myst, it had gone violently. There had been enough of that for one night. So Alec kept his hand poised, ready, but did not touch, and called for Bri again. He would give him a quarter turn to wake, but if he did not, then Alec would bring him back whether he was ready to come out or not.
Bri heard his name like something on the wind, distant and unclear. At first he dismissed it, but then it came again, and again, and he knew he hadn’t imagined it. He knew the voice.
“—so after that I, of course, never mixed ale with scribing again,” Kai said with a grin, finishing a story that had included explosions, bloody noses, and small sentient rocks. “Bri?” he said, noticing that he had lost his brother’s attention. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s Alec. He’s calling me. They must be home.” Everything he had seen earlier suddenly came flooding back, and he remembered how desperately he wanted to know that something, anything, had gone right. He had gotten so caught up in exchanging stories with Kai, but Kai’s stories were far more entertaining than anything he had to offer.
“Won’t he go away?”
“No. He’s probably worried. I should get back.” And I can tell Alec everything about tonight. He won’t believe it. I’m not sure I do.
Kai slumped and pouted. “What a shame. I still haven’t told you about the time I summoned a chattering demon in the middle of a snowstorm.”
“Next time. We can meet again, can’t we? This isn’t a one-time thing?”
“Of course!” Kai came to life, sitting up straight, fingers twitching at his sides and along the ground. “Now that I found you once, it will be so easy to do it again.”
“What if it’s not a good time for you?”
“Eh, I don’t think that will be too much of a problem. But, hmm, here.” He gestured and lifted his hand to his mouth. “Bite your finger.”
“Why?”
Kai had already drawn blood. Bri didn’t think it would be so easy. “I’ll draw a small labrynth here. So small, no one will detect it, I promise, but you and I will be able to signal to each other through it. That way, you can tell me when you’re here, and if I can’t come, I’ll be able to signal back to you.”
“Okay.” He turned his attention back to his finger, then stopped. “Will this work? This isn’t my real body. Do I even have blood?”
“Bite your finger and find out.”
That sent a shiver up Bri’s legs. “I don’t think my fingers bleed as easily as yours do, Kai.”
Kai laughed. “You’re the Myst Master, not me. I suppose it will work with just mine though.” He touched his finger to the metaphysical ground, moved with what looked like a shiver, then sat back, leaving barely a mark at all. “There. Done.”
Ale
c’s voice called through the darkness again. Bri sighed. “I really should go. But I’m glad this happened. I’m glad you found me.”
“So am I.” Kai’s grin was lopsided and full of more childlike glee than Bri had ever felt. “We’ll do this again. Just you and me. We’ll make up for lost time.”
Bri had never had much to be excited over, but Kai’s mirth was infectious, and Bri wondered for a moment why the image of the mirror had ever frightened him the way it had. Now, the prospect of that other side seemed amazing.
“But, Bri.” Kai suddenly shifted, his demeanor changing as he leaned in closer, balancing on the balls of his feet. “The people I live with, they…aren’t very understanding. If they knew I was here, if they knew about you, it wouldn’t be good.”
Those words ushered in a darkness that settled around them. Bri remembered the bruise he’d caught sight of earlier, just behind Kai’s ear. “Are you in danger?”
“No. No, not really. Nothing you need to worry about.” Kai smiled a crooked smile and rocked back on his perch. “But, I don’t want them to know about this, about you. They have ways of finding things out, powerful ways. So, let’s keep this just between you and me, okay? Don’t tell anyone.”
“Don’t tell anyone?” The joy of his discovery deflated. “But, Alec would never say anything. He wouldn’t tell.”
“It wouldn’t matter. Trust me. The people I live with, they would know. It’s like they hear whispers on the air. Please, Bri.” He took his brother’s hands in his own, pleading. “Please, just do this. For me. When it’s safe, I’ll tell you.”
With Alec’s calls growing more frequent and more demanding, Bri agreed. “All right. I won’t tell. But you promise me that you’re safe.”
“I promise. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Bri scoffed. “You and everyone else.”
“Exactly. You have enough going on without my adding to it.”
“I suppose so.”
“You should probably go now.”
“Probably. But I’ll see you again soon.”
“I can’t wait.” Kai smiled, and Bri noted how it was a little crooked. Did his own smile look like that?