by Jean Lee
Despite his injuries, Arlen keeps his back arched as Dorjan changes again to slip his claws beneath the line to saw wherever he can. Every scrape against the cord causes Dorjan’s wolf-face to wince, and soon Charlotte sees why: the line burns whatever it touches, the little silvery whisps of steam glittering with contact.
Yet up close, these magic shards look no different than glass done up for a chandelier: tear-drop shapes the size of Charlotte’s fists, all smooth and shiny. And the line looks no different than some wire for hanging pictures. So being Charlotte, she grabs the line around Arlen’s legs.
She may as well have grabbed burning coals. A hunk of lava. A falling star with her father’s laugh and sister’s gum and mother’s smile, and isn’t that her Aunt Gail over yonder with a glass of bad beer and a pipe? And all she’s got to do is hold the line, and it’ll tug her home.
“Charlotte!” Arlen jerks his legs out and slaps Charlotte’s arms. “What in Aether—you can’t, you are human, you cannot. This magic was born of human veli. You could have become the veli the water road was created to gather.”
“Then how in brewing blazes could you even get tied up? Bernie’s hands are fine.” Charlotte asks as her hands curl like lit paper. “I get this in one second, and—” No, they wouldn’t do their own dirty work. They ordered someone. Someone strong. “Devyn.”
Arlen nods sadly.
Dorjan lets loose a growl when the last line snaps free. He changes, and says, “Of course. Nothing like having an old friend tie you up in death. Bloody bastards. Now, let’s get you—” his breath flies into the back of his throat. His head whips towards the stairs up to Rose House’s tunnel. “Steps.”
“Go this time.” Charlotte pushes Dorjan with her shoulder. “I mean it, they heard Arlen say my name, go!”
The steps overcome their echo.
“Go, Dorjan!” Arlen hisses, and Dorjan bolts for a tunnel and changes, his fur perfect camouflage in the black tunnels.
And just in time, for a figure skids into view at the tunnel to Rose House:
Liam. Suit wrinkled. Shoes scuffed and muddied. Hair still missing.
But wow eyes, all his.
Even across the atrium, Charlotte knows their lightning, the inner storms.
Liam leaps and lands with a cry of pain. “Mac an donais, these shoes!”
Charlotte runs to him, laughing, and throws her arms around his neck. She’s got his breath on her cheek, and his heart next to hers, and— “It’s really you talking and not some mother-made zombie. I knew you could snap out of it!”
His arms press her into him, lifting her up, groundless, weightless. Even his voice lifts despite its worry. “I heard Arlen cry out your name and feared so much.”
“Just my hands.” Charlotte holds them out. Blistered and peeling, every inch of her palms is burned. Her fingers remain curled, too pained to straighten, too pained to curl further. “Arlen’s free, that’s what matters.”
Liam cups her hands in his own. His skin feels so soft; his subtle sweet scent of a forest after a storm, it makes Charlotte want to laugh and cry all at once. “But your music,” he says with pained face.
And inside, there is a corner of Charlotte that cries the same lament. But to breathe Liam in, to see Arlen alive for his family, to protect however she can— “There’s always the kazoo,” she says, a tear trailing her cheek. She even sobs a laugh.
Liam combs his fingers through her hair to hook it behind her ears. “Arlen and I must heal your hands. I can fetch lavender from the garden—”
“We must send her out of River Vine, Liam,” Arlen glances at the tunnel where Dorjan hides. Dorjan must have his eyes closed, for Charlotte sees neither blue nor green glowing in that darkness. “Now, while the wedding distracts them. Remove her mark and send her home.”
Liam’s arms slacken, but his fingers only slide enough to hug Charlotte’s hips when she staggers back, stepping on Liam’s stupid shoes. Her throat clamps shut, too afraid to ask, He could free me, here and now? I could go back to Anna and Aunt Gail? I could go back to school, camp, hang out with Dad’s old crew, see the cemetery, go back to the old neighborhood, all the old…
The old…
Go back to the old bits of life.
Go back to the past.
The Voice clutches those words, holds them like a child’s drawing before her. There is no going back. You know that.
“But River Vine’s finders-keepers,” Charlotte finally says. “It took my sister, so I traded places with her. It’s not like someone can trade places with me.”
Arlen shuffles close to them and grabs Liam by the shoulder. “Send her home, Liam.”
Liam’s body shudders, right down to the fingers still on Charlotte. His cheeks, so often round and boyish, cave in now, hollowed out. “N-no. Sh-she needs to… be with…”
Skipped stones crack the glass of Charlotte’s hope. For all her want to hear him finish, she can’t deny that, “You’re getting married.” She must force herself not to spit the word.
“Send her home, Liam,” Arlen says again, diction sharpening.
“N-no. No!” Liam jerks himself free, eyes widening as panic bleeds down his body. “Then you will leave me with them again, and you will both be free and happy and gone, and all will be as before,” his face twists with the time, “as before,” he sobs, “as before.” His knees buckle.
“We’re not the ones leaving.” Charlotte kneels before him, Arlen right beside her. “We just want you happy, not hurt.” She pulls his limp hand into her own, shooting a new burning throb of pain into her arm, but still she holds his hand to her chest.
“I swore no more hiding,” adds Arlen, “and I meant it. But Charlotte must be sent to safety.”
“LIAM!” a not-so-jovial voice booms.
“Oh Aether,” Liam whimpers as his head spins towards the tunnel towards Rose House.
“Send. Her. Now, Liam,” Arlen says, hand dangerously close to the blood dagger’s sheath.
Liam’s eyes dart between the tunnel and Charlotte. The sweet odor of him caves to the tang of fear. He pants, once, twice. “NO!” He shoves Arlen to the ground. He picks up Charlotte like a rag doll just as Lord Artair approaches the edge of the tunnel. “Who do you think you are, freeing a prisoner of the Artair House?” he shouts, and throws her like refuse.
36
Crimson Claws Burn
Charlotte flails, catches sight of Lord Artair’s shape at the tunnel just before her body thuds against the rock wall. Stars explode across her vision as she falls face-first into a pile of old white tree scraps and ignored human bones. Liam’s shoes crunch the scraps as he lands astride her. One hand presses her face into the ground while his other yanks the bone knife out of her belt and buries it beneath the dead refuse. Liam, I can’t skip stones. I can’t see your wings please—
Liam breathes like a bull into her ear. “Do not. Get. Up.” His words drag through the bones with a beastly growl.
Where is the fighting eagle in you, Liam? Let it out!
Yet the Voice in her, it’s not so desperate as she. Smell it, Charlotte. He’s not being vicious. Something else.
The weight of his hand against her neck lightens. Beneath the cover of her hair, his thumb strokes her jawline once, turning her head on its side. Now she has one eye that can peer through the rib bones to see Arlen, gaunt yet defined, painted in rivers of dried blood without canyons—hardly a wrinkle creases his features.
“How did this happen?” Lord Artair jiggles down the stairs.
Liam pulls himself upright and walks towards Arlen. “You know my teacher enjoys his lost causes. He bonded with the human after my arrival.”
What in Sam Elliott does Liam think he’s doing? Charlotte wonders as she lies among the bones.
“Did he?” The lantern light pulls shadows from every line on Lord Artair’s face, especially around his mouth. “Spend many days among the flowers, did you?” He skulks a little closer to Charlotte. “Meet his pets, perhap
s?”
Canine. Dorjan’s scent grows closer. Charlotte likes the idea of outnumbering this bastard, but not with that stone ring of his, and not with Arlen bloodied and Liam thinking…whatever he’s thinking. Charlotte couldn’t see his game plan at all. Guess I gotta make my own. “Shuh,” she says, face still partly smushed on the rock floor. “Cub’s ah coodie.”
“Cub,” Lord Artair repeats, lips folding around that “b” as if to snare the word. He raises his hand, and the stone ring’s low, sad note echoes round and round the atrium. The sound feels like a net around Charlotte’s body. The note tightens, restricts her—it is a net, an invisible one, and it lifts her out of the rubble and carries her to where the three men stand.
Liam remains still with his hands at his sides, his face smooth and silent…unlike his glare, which Charlotte knows is screaming, Can’t you EVER keep quiet?
Arlen’s eyes dart to Dorjan’s tunnel again. He opens his mouth to speak, but Charlotte beats him to it. Her face free while the net holds everything else, she smirks and says, “Old idiot kept a thing on a leash in a lake—can you believe that? So I untied it.” She looks at Arlen. “You’d think a few thousand years would be enough time to learn knots, jeez.”
The net jolts Charlotte down, bending her neck to keep her head upright while the rest of her body is angled away from her. Only a few inches remain between Charlotte and Lord Artair’s sweaty nose bridge. “Where is the cub now, and where is its mother?”
Charlotte snorts. “Have you been to Wisconsin? Bears run, like, half the North Woods. And some of those traitorous towns on the Illinois border. Damn Cub fans.”
Lord Artair spreads his ringed hand’s fingers. Charlotte’s limbs begin to spread. She can feel tendons stretch, stretch, stretch her like dry play-doh and dammit, any more and she will crumble. “I could quarter you right now,” he says quietly with a quiet little smile to match.
“Father, please”— “Bearnard, that’s enough.” Both Liam and Arlen speak at once, their approach in sync.
“Do it,” Charlotte says through gritted teeth. “Do it, and bring Rose House crashing down. You think it doesn’t know where I am?” she forces a cackle, hoping the Voice in her heart is right, that she’s right about Rose House’s reach. “You think it won’t squash the rest of you fuckers upstairs?”
Lord Artair tisks as he spins her around and onto her back. Now her splayed legs are before his eyes, and she cannot close herself. Sure she has trousers on, but what are they to magic? “Perhaps it’s time for a different revenge,” he says, the odor of his intentions already too damn heavy.
Charlotte’s stomach knots, wringing acid into her insides. No no no no no no Her muscles fight the magic, the Voice runs the bellows in her as hot as they can go, but she cannot move, cannot see, cannot stop—
“I thought Cairine was your want, Father.”
NO NO NO! “Hey jackass, you bringing Darra down here to meet your ex? She’s the pudding in the corner, unless Keller’s dragged her head somewhere.” Charlotte adds a dramatic gasp just to be a proper asshole, and adds, “Oh my G-O-S-H, Orna’s head could be the cake topper! That’d be just so gosh darn adorable!”
But it’s too late. Lord Bearnard releases the net and lets Charlotte strike the ground next to her lantern. “Where is she, boy? Tell me, tell me now, where she is.” Desperation flows beneath the command as he crowds his son, eyes wide and expectant.
Dorjan’s canine smell grows again. A very, very low growl touches Charlotte’s ears, but the others are too tangled in Cairine to notice. “Liam please, don’t.” Arlen’s voice quivers.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Liam snaps. He straightens his shoulders, and suddenly the suit looks like an awful, perfect fit.
Charlotte coughs and heaves so she can roll herself to face Dorjan’s tunnel.
A green dot and a blue dot shine in the dark. Anger seeps into the air like a fog.
This shit’s gonna get real nasty if I can’t do something.
“Then where are they, boy?” Lord Artair’s ring doesn’t sing so much as whimpers when he grips his son, jowels shuddering.
Arlen’s eyes blink back tears. His hands hang limply at his sides. Wrinkles carve his forehead and travel down. Gray paints his hair one lock at a time. “Liam…”
Dorjan’s growl grows. Dammit, he’ll be loud enough to hear! Charlotte staggers to her feet and starts shouting, “Don’t you dare!” at Liam, Lord Artair, both so they don’t hear Dorjan, don’t talk. Don’t, Liam, please let someone survive this pain—
But pleas and threats do nothing to Liam’s haughty stature. Hell, he even sneers. “Don’t bother. You really thought you could wall up a corner of the Pits to hide them?”
Dorjan’s growl stops.
Before anyone can breathe a word, Liam picks up Charlotte’s lantern and smashes it on the ground. Now the only light in this well of night pulses from Lord Bearnard’s ring and Liam’s blood dagger, which he unsheathes far away from Charlotte’s face.
“You really thought I wouldn’t find out what you were up to in the orchards during my living decay?” Liam holds the glowing blade so close it singes a few hairs of Arlen’s beard. The flames dance in Arlen’s unwavering dark stare. “You shouldn’t babble so much to humans. They’ll say anything to be immortalized, even if only in a crude clay copy.” Liam spits on Arlen’s shirt, sneers again at Charlotte. “Come, Father, leave these fools to the darkness, and I’ll show you.”
Charlotte’s never wanted to kiss Liam so badly as right then.
Liam takes a few strong strides with his flaming dagger, then spins on the soles of his shoes, crunching bits of bone and splinters as he moves. “This way, Father.”
But Lord Artair’s not moved. His ring glows like a dark room’s red light, exposing Arlen’s blank face.
His blank, dark-haired, wrinkle-free face.
Lord Artair’s right eye twitches. “I knew it.” The stone ring begins to wail, loud and mournful. It echoes up and down the atrium, fills Charlotte with hollow caverns of ache, want, desire, pain, but anger above all, a vicious, biting anger. She tries to cover her ears to the wail, but then Lord Bearnard’s stench floods the recesses of her instead. Only the Voice in her heart keeps her eyes functioning, showing her Liam’s veins sparking beneath his skin, eyes hurricanes as Arlen bravely lifts his head to certain death.
“Tell me where they are,” Lord Artair commands.
Arlen says nothing.
“Tell me tell me TELL ME!” His ringed hand becomes a fist. Charlotte’s sure she hears one of Arlen’s ribs snap, if not two.
Charlotte jerks away as if to hide her eyes, but really to see if Dorjan’s still in the tunnel.
Empty.
Blue and green lights hover on the far side of the atrium, scouting the best attack position. But how to attack with that stone ring?
Arlen winces as he looks down to meet Lord Artair’s gaze. He smiles. “Safe from you.”
The atrium echoes with that wail, suffocates with the hatred, desire, so much desire from Lord Artair that it’s panicking— “No one is safe from the House of Artair!” he roars. But the ringed stone’s wail begins to stammer.
Fade.
Lord Artair hisses ancient curses and cradles his fist. Arlen falls on his knees, sparing his ribs, but one good punch where they’re broken will surely puncture…whatever it is princeborns breathe with.
“Perhaps we should speak with Mother about this, Father,” Liam says calmly, his blood dagger now the only source of light in the atrium. “Surely she’s worrying about us both by now.”
“Don’t tell me about my wife!” Lord Artair’s lips splutter as he growls, coughs…pauses. Blinks. “Liam.” He turns slowly toward his son. “You know where she is, don’t you?” When met with silence, Lord Artair goes on. “I know you and I have not always gotten along,” he says, ambling slowly toward Liam’s flame-lit face and hurricane glare, “but our family has always, always come first in my heart’s fire, son.
This man,” he points to Arlen, “put his own desire above his family’s needs. Your needs. He would rather see you eternally grounded like a worm than to soar through a cloud’s kingdom.”
The hurricanes falter.
Charlotte moves silently to Arlen’s side as she tracks Dorjan’s movements around the perimeter, inching closer to their side of the atrium. Just a little closer, Dorjan, and you can grab him while I spit in this monster’s face.
But despite his crooked frame, Arlen’s voice remains strong and clear. “I’m not the one who abandoned our house, ashamed of our father’s passion for protecting the Earth instead of destroying it.”
Charlotte’s jaw drops. Oh. My…oh for all the heart’s fires in the universe, this… Arlen once said his own brother wouldn’t…I didn’t think THIS guy, he’s…yet Charlotte can see the pieces come together like shards in a glass window…why Arlen is chosen as Liam’s teacher…how Liam’s parents always seek Arlen…why Arlen had to hide his family from Liam, the son of a man who stalked Cairine and tried to rape her, Dorjan’s loathing of Liam…they figured like father like son. For a while, they were right.
Liam’s dagger drops to his side. Darkness floods where flames wane. Dorjan’s blue and green eyes flicker out as well, and Charlotte hopes he lies good’n’low.
“He abandoned you, boy.” Lord Artair covers the faint glow of his ring, his words churning in the blackened air like flesh in a meat grinder. “He’s put his own selfish heart’s fire above you, then and always. A woman over his own kin. Love.” The word ricochets in the atrium, a stray bullet. “There is no such thing! But pain is real. You’ve known pain, boy, in this prison. Have you ever showed Arlen your pain?”
Liam’s breathing heavily through his teeth. Fresh sadness and anger waft through the air. Sparks fly about his shoulders. Fire pulses in the veins of his cheeks, neck. He kneels.
“Kill him. Unleash your pain and become a proper heir to the skies once more. When we leave this place, your wings will cut the heavens in the name of Artair.”
Metal drags on rock. Embers glimmer in the feathers of Liam’s dagger, now held firmly in his hand.