by Kate Martin
His shirt was torn, and Lillianna tore it further when she grabbed it and hauled him close enough that her face brushed his. “Did you not hear me? I gave you your orders. Your brother does not matter. Not now.”
“You promised!”
“I promised you would have him. And you did. It is not my fault you lost him. Once I am a god, you can try again to your heart’s content. Until then, you do as I say, and you finish the labrynths.” She tossed him to the large demon standing at her side. “Olin, would you be so good as to ensure he does so?”
Olin caught the boy, his hand easily encircling Kai’s upper arm. “Certainly. I want nothing more than for all our plans to go off perfectly, and timely.”
“Fantastic.” She turned and headed back towards her garden, intending to have more than just another glass of blood in preparation. She would need to be in her best health.
Kai screamed after her. “Lillianna! You can’t just order me around like this! We had a deal! He’s important! Lillianna!”
His next words cut off suddenly. Stepping outside, Lillianna left Olin to deal with her eccentric child. Three more days and his submission would be non-negotiable. She wouldn’t need to demand it, she could enforce it.
And oh what a glorious enforcement it would be.
— CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX —
Despite everything that had happened, despite knowing he had no right to wish it otherwise, Bri so very desperately wanted to be alone. Just for a quarter turn, at least. As much as he loved Alec, and appreciated everything he did for him, Bri was so tired of seeing him day in and day out. Three days had passed since Kai had betrayed him, and in that time Bri had neither slept nor ate without Alec hovering close by.
At first, he had been grateful. The side effects of Kai’s entrapment had left him off balance and ill for the remainder of the day, and Bri hadn’t wanted to be alone. The myst crept too close, threatened too much. Alec had postponed their talk about what had happened until Bri had felt better, but the resulting time had given Bri time enough to work himself into a guilt-ridden mess. He had told Alec everything, from his first vision of the mirror, to his first meeting with Kai. He described watching his brother work labrynths and allowing him to see the visions in the myst. What little he knew of his parents and why they had separated, each taking one boy with them, he shared. Hardest of all was describing the change that had overcome Kai when Bri had revealed to him the blackened myst, how a calm and worry-free face had twisted into something mad, like Kai had become unhinged. The entire story he peppered with apologies, but even as he recounted the tale, he saw no signs of Kai’s true nature. Nothing. His twin’s act had been thorough and flawless.
Outwardly, Alec forgave him, told him he understood, that there was clearly no way he could have known about the treachery. But Bri could see the disappointment in his eyes. Disappointment not that Bri had fallen for Kai’s act, but that Bri had kept the information from him. It was a mistake Bri intended never to make again.
Bri told himself he deserved it as he ate breakfast, wishing Alec would sit farther off so he could at least pretend he was alone. Every so often, Alec would reach over and touch him briefly, just long enough to push away any bit of myst that might have wandered close or taken hold. As a result, Bri felt like he rode a wave across the ocean, surging up and down and up and down, over and over, as he slipped into the edges of the myst, only to drop out suddenly with Alec’s touch.
I deserve it. Maybe next time I’ll think twice before trusting someone I’ve just met, even if he is my brother.
Bri supposed he really shouldn’t have been surprised. Life had never been kind to him. Why had he thought he could have the happy surprise of a brother?
The blunt end of a piece of silverware jabbed him in the arm. “Ow! Hey!” Bri rubbed the abused spot, more out of surprise than actual pain and glared at Alec.
Alec, for his part, regarded him with a bland expression, twirling the fork between his fingers. “Stop brooding. What’s done is done.”
“Easy for you to say.” Bri pushed his food around his plate. “I made a mess of everything.”
“You don’t know that. Lillianna knows where we are, she would have found another way to get the shard if she couldn’t use Kai.”
It didn’t make him feel any better. His appetite diminished, Bri looked instead at the newspaper that lay on the table. The front page proclaimed in bold letters the total number of soulless captured and burned throughout the country, as well as the number of souls saved by divine intervention.
Alec tossed the paper on the table, out of sight. “Don’t pay any attention to that.”
“He’s responsible! Kai, my brother, my twin. He did that. He’s been killing people all over, and it doesn’t bother him one bit.”
“Unfortunately, some people are like that.”
“But how? How could we come from the same parents and be so different?”
“One of life’s great mysteries. Not everyone copes with tragedy the same way. Your childhood was hard, it made you better. Kai—he let his make him worse. He was raised in Hell, you have to remember that. Hell is no place for a mortal, let alone a child. Lillianna twisted him, made him what she needed him to be.”
“Perhaps, but I think something in him was broken long before that.”
“Maybe. Either way, he’s not your responsibility.”
Bri met Alec’s unwavering gaze, wondering at the confidence with which he spoke. “You always told me family was worth protecting.”
“In my experience, it has been. I would have done anything for Marc, and I would do anything for you, but Kai…” He let the words trail off.
Alec spoke so rarely of Marc, Bri knew the memories pained him. In the interest of bypassing any possible discomfort further discussion might bring, Bri let the subject drop.
Pica entered the dining room, dressed in an adaptation of men’s work clothes, with dirt and soot smeared across her face. “Dorothea needs you.”
“Me?” Alec leaned back in his chair.
“No. Not everything is about you,” she said coolly. “Bri. She thinks she has found where Lillianna will ascend from.”
Bri leaned back in his chair. “What does that have to do with me?”
Pica smiled, and her teeth shone white amidst all the dirt. “You claim to know your brother’s magic well. You may even have a connection to it. So she wants you.”
When they reached Dorothea’s workshop, descending the stairs into the cool earth beneath the manor, a flare of light flashed. Throwing up an arm to protect his eyes, Bri felt Alec yank him to a stop on the last of the steps. The light faded away far more slowly than it had erupted, and Alec’s curse was audible as their eyes struggled to regain sight.
“Damnit, Dorothea. Some warning next time?” Alec said.
“It be no bother to me if you can’t see,” Dorothea said from deep within the workshop. The sound of her bare feet padding along the dirt floor mixed with the clatter of bottles and bowls. “You should have announced yourselves as you came in.”
“You called us here!” Alec took the last steps inside, not releasing Bri until he, too, was standing on flat ground.
“Bah.”
Bri rubbed his eyes, struggling to relax and not squint, though the light had faded completely. Pica moved around him, finding a perch on a nearby bench. Alec continued to grumble and pace, finally settling for leaning against the wall. Unsurprisingly, Carma stood at the far end of the room, looking radiant and perfect as always. While Dorothea and Pica had become mottled with dust and dirt, not a speck seemed to have clung to the demon. Bri avoided making eye contact with her. They hadn’t spoken since the day Kai had stolen back the shard. “Pica said you needed me,” he said, moving towards the large round table that took up the center of the room and where Dorothea was shuffling things about.
“Yes, yes. Come. Here.” She took him by the wrist once he was close enough and laid his hand flat along the table. With a thin brush co
vered in black ink, she began to draw on the back of his hand.
The ink was cold, and Bri remembered a time when he would have flinched, but she had long broken him of that habit. It was best to stay still when a spell was being written into your skin. He expected a labrynth to appear, but as her strokes moved deftly across his hand, a rune took form instead. The sweeping lines and sharp crosses weren’t anything he had seen before. “What is it?”
“Just a precaution.” She finished, and tossed the brush into a nearby bowl. “Now, here.” Pulling him once more, she led him around to where she had inked a labrynth into the wood of the table. This, Bri was able to recognize pieces of. There were familiar loops and runes that she often used when teaching him how to safely navigate the myst. Dorothea handed him a small knife. “Cut. Be quick about it.”
Bri took the blade, resigned. “How much?”
“Just a few drops will do. Hurry. Stop dawdling.”
Piercing his middle finger, Bri offered her his hand once the blood began to bead. She grabbed his hand and in one great arch, swiped it across the whole of the labrynth on the table. Runes lit up, and lines began to pulse with life. Bri saw it all so differently now, after experiencing the power first hand with Kai. Before, when Dorothea worked her spells, he had only seen light. Now, he could imagine the energy there, the feel of the power, and the pull of the magic. The myst rushed closer, as though invited. The tendrils caressed him, flitting their visions across his mind.
“What am I looking for?”
The old witch leaned close. “Your brother. His energy.” She pressed a vial into his hand. “Drink this. It will help.”
“What is it?”
Exasperated, she directed his hand and the vial to his lips. “Just drink.”
The tonic was sweet, with a tang in the aftertaste that felt sharp on his tongue. As it hit his stomach, he felt a wave of pressure crash over him, knocking him off balance and sending him rocking. He expected to feel Alec’s arms steadying him, but instead felt the old hands of Dorothea push him forward until he braced himself on the table. In the strange underwater feeling that surrounded his head, he thought he heard Dorothea order Alec away.
Then the witch’s voice whispered in his ear. “Find him. He has created a pathway between your souls through the myst. As he finds you, so you can find him. Reach for him. Reach far.”
The myst was strangely easy to ignore. The visions came and went, passing through with little attention. Bri sought that familiar presence he had learned to seek all those months of visiting with Kai in the myst. The old labrynth had been removed; their beacon that had once alerted them to each other. Kai’s energy was still there though, floating around, free and unfettered. Bri recognized it and reached for it, but it remained just out of his grasp. He reached again, stretching that mental pull that allowed him to see into the myst. It escaped him once more. Finally, he lunged, certain of its location, and felt it touch his mind with a gentleness he associated more with the brother he had first met.
That touch turned stronger, harder, and Bri felt it latch onto his mind with a grip he could not shake free. Then he fell. Tumbling through endless darkness, he felt weightless and heavy all at once. Weightless, as he did within the myst when he was without his body, and heavy like that same flesh had become burdensome and out of place.
Sharp pain in his knees shattered the hold on his mind. Cold stone bruised his hands, and Bri managed to regain control of his limbs in time to prevent his face from slamming against that same unforgiving ground. He breathed, surprised at the very real sensation of it. In the myst, everything was lighter, lesser. Now, he felt alive. Whole. Physical. He opened his eyes and the unevenness of the light surprised him. It was dark, but torches burned in far corners, illuminating the space with flickering and short reaching light. The walls glowed with lines and loops, twists and turns. Bri stood on shaky legs and turned, observing the four solid walls that surrounded him. The stone was smooth, flawless, solid. Not stacks of bricks or blocks. No doors or windows. Carved into that stone were living, energized labrynths that pulsed. And etched into the wall directly in front of him were two words.
Hello, brother.
Alec stared at the empty space Bri had just occupied.
Dorothea released her grip on the table and stood upright, her back cracking as she did so. With a patient air, she brushed her hand over the smear of Bri’s blood, gathering what was left. Pica remained perched on the bench, chin in her hand, while Carma watched from the dark corner.
Not a one of them seemed surprised.
Grasping at empty air like an idiot, Alec needed to reassure himself that Bri had disappeared completely. “What the hell happened?”
“Precisely what I intended,” Dorothea said.
“Which was?” Panic was turning into something he felt far too often.
“For Bri to track his brother.”
He resisted the urge to strangle the old woman, and slammed his hand on the table instead. “But what happened? Where is he?”
Dorothea traced patterns in the blood on her hand. Bri’s blood. “He fell through the myst. Out the other side. A trap was laid.”
“And you knew?” He turned on Carma. “You knew? You sent him into a trap? Deliberately?”
Carma remained still. In the shadows, she looked like a messenger of doom. “Yes.”
“Why? In all the gods’ names why?”
She moved now, coming towards him like a predatory cat. “Because it is the only way to find Lillianna. She has had her witch block everything. Dorothea cannot determine where she will perform the ritual. But that child of hers, Kai, he is desperate to have Bri. He has laid traps all over the myst, waiting for him. When Bri sought him out, he was pulled through. Bri will be at the heart of it now.”
“With Lillianna! Have you completely lost your mind? How the hell are we supposed to get him back? You just gave him over to his brother!”
Dorothea waved a wrinkled hand at him, dismissively. “He will be fine, as long as you shut your mouth and listen instead of wasting time hollering like some child. The rune I painted on his hand, it allows me to track him. I know where Bri is, so we can follow.”
Panic and anger made Alec’s blood boil. Standing still was impossible. He pressed his hands to his eyes and tried to breathe. “You should have told him. Warned him. What is he going to think when he realizes you sent him into our enemy’s hands?”
Carma studied one of her long-fingered hands, changing it back and forth between human and demon form. “There are more important things right now. For example, do you remember how to kill a demon, Alec?”
“It’s foremost in my mind at the moment, actually.”
She smiled, hearing his undertones loud and clear. “Charming. And how to kill a god? Are you well-versed in that as well?”
The jab would have hurt more a few hundred years ago. “You mean since my god was killed?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It’s not easy.”
“Well then, we should stop talking and start acting, should we not? We don’t want to give Lillianna enough time to ascend and make our lives even more difficult. Change your clothes, gather what you need. We shall leave before the next turn.”
— CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN —
Fires blazed through the field, marking each point of the nine-pointed star that had been scorched into the earth. Bare feet cradled in the soft ground, Lillianna could feel the bones that lay buried only an arm’s length beneath her. The blood that had once brought life to those bones had soaked into the soil, lending power and life. Only weeks before, a fierce battle had been fought where she now stood, dressed in pristine white and gold. Talconay had lost some twenty-five hundred men there. Vaah only fifteen hundred. The ruling prince of Talconay had been taken prisoner, and under torture, his men had revealed the location of the remaining royal family members. They had been captured and taken deep into Vaah for safe keeping, their futures uncertain. Kai had delighted in r
etrieving them for her, his deep-seeded hatred for everything Talconian powering his spells. He had brought her the nine royal souls one at a time, laughing as he made them watch their family disappear one by one, only to find them once again here, in a field of hellfire.
Trapped by a labrynth of ingenious creation, they stood together in a tight circle at the center of the nine-pointed star. The old king, too old to rule and too senile to be left alone. His queen, a woman of lost beauty but maintained wisdom. The ruling prince, son of a king who refused to die, and his wife, a princess of unsurpassed beauty and the gift of youth. Their two children, a boy and infant girl, held close by their mother and their aunt, a lady passed the age of marriage. Finally, the king’s brother and his eldest son; two souls denied the throne by the lottery of birth.
Nine souls. Nine points. Youth and old age, beauty and ugliness. Things a god would devour, and assimilate as power. They would act as the catalyst, the fuel behind her ascension. It was a recipe she had spent years researching and perfecting. No demon had ever risen to godhood in all the years since she and her brother had been the first to tear out their own hearts and descend. It had been deemed impossible. Gods were born of faith and magic.
Lillianna could feel the change in the world. She had done it once before, mothering all demon-kind. Now, she would do it again. Treading lightly around the edges of the star, she breathed in the power of the moon, and imagined the effects of the change she was about to undertake.
Olin appeared in a swirl of fire beside her, immediately wrapping his arms around her and placing a kiss on her neck. “It is almost time.”
“I can feel it. Like the power is already in the air, just waiting to be absorbed.”
“You will be magnificent,” he whispered the words into her ear, kissed her again, then released her. He had dressed for battle. The leather straps crossing his chest made him look larger and more formidable.
“Expecting trouble?”