by Lisa Daniels
I don’t want to anger her further, he thought, but he also felt that shifty impatience inside, that impulse to try and change the topic. “Of course not.” He paused again, unsure what she wanted. “It’s not really expected.”
“How do you think a relationship between a man and a woman goes?” She folded her arms, lips pursed in a calculating manner. Her wild, dark hair got a lot of attention from the Zamorkans walking past, since all of them had far lighter shades and less chaotic strands. “That it’s all about buying gifts, having sex, and popping out babies? You know they also talk about feelings, too?”
“What? Where’s this coming from?”
“You. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since… when we did what we did.”
“The sex?”
“Yes, that,” she said, smirking in spite of herself when one passing couple appeared positively mortified at the word being said aloud. “You have quite the reputation with traders in the skies. They see you as someone to be reckoned with. Your family is seen as strict misers who hoard gold and squeeze it out of every unfortunate soul to come their way. You were raised up in a kind of environment where if you didn’t work hard, you didn’t get fed. So you learned that emotions got in the way, I think. If you spent too much time being angry or upset or sad, that also meant a rumbling stomach. So I suppose you learned from there that your emotions would do nothing but get in the way.”
He didn’t respond at first. He merely stared at her, both in partial annoyance and exasperation with the emotion talk. However, a small part of him wanted her to continue, to hear what else she had to say. Just how she assessed him.
And see if it made sense. “You get all that from what I said about working hard?”
“Mm, no. You came from another family before the Ruthes took you in. A family that had very different values from the Ruthes, right?”
The silence this time was even longer. The background noise faded into nothing for Janus, as he considered the words, and the blot of emotions within that wanted him to both change the subject and get her to keep talking. “Yes. They… did. Not that I remember too much about it...”
Just that I was very sad to lose them. That they wanted me to stay away from them when they were infected. That they… He closed his eyes. “I don’t think I want to talk about this, Evelyn.”
“Could you try? For me?”
“Why?”
“I want to know you,” she said simply. “I don’t want Janus Ruthe, member of a family people fear or hate, or Janus Ruthe, the person I’ve had some conversation with, and shared a bet with. I want… the person that’s hidden inside all of that. If this ever becomes something more. Will it be something more?”
He saw the way she sat nervously, chewing her bottom lip, and realized, in a rush of understanding so powerful that it left him a little dizzy, that it was a big risk for her as well, to pry into this. How easy would it be for someone like him just to dismiss this? To tell her to shut up, that she was making him feel bad?
No. He had to do better than that. “You can know me if I can know you,” he replied, though the words seemed oddly difficult to convey. “I don’t see it as fair if you’re going to be asking all about me, but I don’t get to hear about you.”
Besides, he wasn’t entirely sure if the Ruthe family was a great judge of romantic relationships. They had a marriage of convenience that worked out, but they didn’t necessarily… ooze affection from their pores. That might be an issue when it came down to things.
“That’s fair,” she said. “It probably wouldn’t work if only one of us was answering questions the whole time.”
“Okay. Let’s start this easy. I don’t know who I am.” He shrugged at her small twinge of disappointment. “If I did, I’d tell you. I know I only vaguely remember my first parents, but I miss them. My second set, the Ruthes… I... I’m pissed they went. Pissed I have to take over everything before I’m completely ready, and pissed off that I can’t find a cure for the Creeping Rot. It took all of them, and I’m here repeating the same life.”
Evelyn nodded, eyes soft in understanding. “At least until you ended up on a skyship to Zamorka.” She grasped his hand, and he squeezed it briefly. “Guess there is a heart underneath all that ice after all.”
“It’s a lot of ice,” he said defensively. “You haven’t lost anyone yourself, have you?”
“Some of my classmates to the Creeping Rot. But nothing as extreme as yours. My family’s about as non-magical as you can be, so they won’t be first targeted by the disease.”
“It might spread to them.”
“Maybe.” She glanced around the park, to the green and gray ducks, and the plainer females waddling around the other benches for food. Briefly, Janus considered how the male birds were always more colorful than their female counterparts. For humans, they went the opposite in some ways. Females were more colorful, more vibrant. Males showed off their value in other ways, such as muscles, confidence, wealth. “You ever feel like you’re expected to be one thing, but sometimes you look at yourself and realize you don’t fit into that expectation at all?”
Still holding hands, he felt the heat rise to an uncomfortable point, and let go. It was like that. Despite his age, he felt like a boy playing dress-up with his more skilled parents’ job. So far he’d been doing a great job, but that was also because they’d already set things up for him to succeed. He didn’t need to make new connections because they long since introduced him to all of theirs. The main conflict came from what he did now. Risking everything for a long-distance trip, leaving a trusted servant in charge of operations back home. He was childless, had no woman, had no real contingency plan if something went wrong here.
Yet, a part of him did want something to go wrong. A horrible, irrational part that just wanted him to shred the Ruthe finances and disappear into the winds. He kept that part under control enough to do this.
And then Evelyn started teasing into his thoughts, until he now sat here wondering how he’d allowed one single woman to gain so much influence over him. Sky curse it—he’d made that deal, he followed her with his eyes when she came in close proximity… he tried to answer her questions. Even with the rude way she spoke to him at the start of their trip, it hadn’t been enough to completely push her out of his mind.
Screw it. He leaned forward, just as she was about to say something, and cut off her words with a long, lingering kiss. She stiffened under his touch, before relaxing into it and kissing back, hands threading in his hair.
“You lose,” she whispered against his lips.
“I wanted to,” he whispered back.
Besides, clinging to her like this was a good way of ensuring that some of the swirling emotion inside him came to a rest. Emotions—he didn’t deal well with them. Didn’t have the first clue about what those stabs in his stomach and chest and brain meant, really. But this helped with them.
It helped a lot.
Chapter Nine – Evelyn
All they needed to do was go into some creepy tomb. Easy. Except, apparently it involved a Zamorkan team of about twenty people, and all the magic users from their skyship were encouraged to come as well. The ordinary crew members and scholars were to stay put and continue experiencing the sprawling culture of Leavenport, all of them followed by bodyguards to make sure that there were no more attempts to frame them, or get them killed.
Wonderful. Evelyn now waded in deep jungle with Rukia and Janus on either side of her. They’d traveled some of the way in a series of small hover boats, but now they needed to walk the rest of the way.
“Why is this tomb even in the wild magic area anyway?” Evelyn said, feeling a horrible, clammy sensation steal over her body, as if the magic in the atmosphere was cloying on her skin. They left about an hour before the last wildstorm ended. If this was what the wild magic felt like at low power, Evelyn shuddered to think what kind of pressure it exerted at full.
None of the Zamorkans answered. Perhaps they didn’t hav
e an answer. They just pushed through dark green foliage, tapered bark and vines and thick, leafy bushes. To their right towered mangroves, with their roots slick in swamp water. The air had a stifling quality to it, which made Evelyn keep sucking in deep breaths, trying to grab air that didn’t feel saturated with magic, and failing. She could even taste it upon her tongue. Rukia had absently started scratching at her bare arms, and Janus’ expression appeared pained.
“I like flying in skyships for a reason,” Rukia said, glaring at an offending vine dangling above them like a noose. “I dislike walking around. I also dislike walking around in areas that might just get us killed.”
“Yes,” Evelyn said. “That’s exactly why we choose to steer skyships. So we don’t have to do all of that pesky walking.”
“Exactly.” Rukia’s attention shifted to Alex, who was ahead of the group. A side profile caught a stony expression. “She’s been a bundle of joy the past two weeks. Even with her boyfriend there to cheer things up.”
“She’s taking it hard that she failed to save someone,” Evelyn said, reaching to tie back her slick hair yet again, because some of it was teasing loose and sticking to her head. “It’s not her fault, and she grabbed the guy as fast as possible. He was just dead before he hit the ground, I think. But she’s kicking herself for it.”
“That’s pointless,” Janus said, lacking sympathy. “She has no reason to blame herself.”
“I don’t think ‘reason’ has anything to do with it,” Evelyn replied wryly. “Sometimes, people just want to punish themselves. And she’s doing it pretty bad.”
Evelyn’s boots slid through a wet mud patch, causing blobs of dark brown to splotch over her pants. She grimaced, seeing others lose their balance and one unfortunate witch go flat on their face, which prompted some laughter.
“Wonder if people back home will believe us when we tell them what happened here?” Rukia grinned. She was far more dainty compared to the other trekkers, paying attention to the ground. For a person who claimed to hate walking, she did seem very assured of her own movements, like she was a master tracker or something. It made Evelyn wonder about her background.
With a smirk, Janus said, “I’m sure they would. We nearly crashed our ship and entered Leavenport, and then after some of the witches tried to frame us for someone’s death, other witches demanded our help in entering a mausoleum in the middle of a cursed forest. Turns out only parts of Zamorka are cursed. That’ll reassure the home crowd.”
“Better than the whole place being cursed, though, isn’t it?” Rukia helped Evelyn before she ended up falling flat. “Still, I wish we were allowed to use our magic now...”
“Only when it’s necessary,” Evelyn echoed the expedition leader’s words with a sigh. “Because sometimes the wild magic goes crazy if someone starts using powers in it. You’d think they just needed to send ordinary people if we weren’t allowed to use powers.”
“They wanted Meridas and me, though,” Janus said. “Presumably being a dragon helps.”
“You’d think so, right? Someone pissing you off… just turn into a dragon and breathe fire at them. You do breathe fire?” Rukia asked.
“No. Why would I breathe fire?” Janus drew closer to Evelyn and laced his hand in hers, sending a thrill through her body. She imagined for a moment his passionate kiss on the bench over a week ago, and the other kisses they’d shared since then. She was glad he lost the bet, because she’d been entertaining the idea more and more of just kissing him herself, finding the terms of the bet less binding than before.
It was all in the head, anyway. An excuse to be closer to one another. A way to acknowledge one another.
Her mother would probably have a heart attack if she brought back Janus Ruthe to the home. Her father would be absolutely desperate to make some trade deal or get a discount on something. The rest of her family would flock like vultures, trying to grab the best scraps of meat due to her choice of partner.
Were they partners, now? Evelyn regarded Janus with a critical eye. They hadn’t said anything out loud to indicate that. Just a slow dance until they pulled in tight to one another, and never quite let go.
“We should be getting close to the Mausoleum now,” their leader called. “But watch out for people from the Conclave. They may have a camp nearby.”
That was another nice way of admitting they might be ambushed. Evelyn didn’t like the notion of enemies lurking in the overgrowth, waiting for their time to strike. She felt vulnerable, even behind all these people with Janus clutching her hand, because of the nature of the strange magic in the air. The magic itself felt like an infection waiting to happen, forcing itself down her throat with every attempt at breathing.
They’d sent people to this Mausoleum before. And all of them failed. What would make their group any different? Because they weren’t Zamorkans? Because they had a life witch? Because they had dragons?
Either way, they seemed to think their chances increased with strangers in their lands.
“I can’t shrug off the feeling we’re being watched,” Rukia whispered, huddling closer to them. “Which is highly rude of those people if they want to watch but not say hello.”
“I think I’m fine with them just watching,” Evelyn remarked.
“I’m fine with them not being there at all,” Janus said. Evelyn noted that the whole group was becoming increasingly nervous, perhaps feeling that same sensation of being observed.
The magic in the atmosphere grew thicker, enervating the magic coating the wild forest. Things started blurring at the edge of Evelyn’s vision, like people just out of sight, but when she turned sharply, the blurs vanished. A quiet chittering entered her ears, like people whispering, or the wind rustling through leaves.
“Can you hear… people talking?” Rukia examined the people ahead and behind her, trying to see if they were the causes of the sounds.
“I can,” Janus said, jaw set tightly. “But nobody here is responsible for it.”
Evelyn couldn’t make out any words, but the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. “Anyone feel like they’re in the middle of a cursed forest?”
A general consensus of “Yes” came back.
Ahead of them, the sludgy, dense trees and vines gave way to lean-to shelters, and signs of people living in the area. Huts made out of thin branches tied together with twine. Cooking utensils, a stone pit for a fire. Maybe around forty or so buildings in total. All of them empty.
Abandoned? Or had the people here been expecting them?
Cautiously, the group prowled through the area. They needed to, because their destination was in the middle of the primitive settlement. A small structure made out of completely white stone, with a set of double doors that had a black circle with patterns inside it overlapping the stone. The arch above the doors had something written in a language Evelyn didn’t know.
The group advanced to the Mausoleum. Evelyn had expected something huge, something that might tower like the buildings in Leavenport, if this was meant to be the grave of the Red Woman.
She didn’t expect this little stone house, no bigger than a shed.
“Where are the people?” Rukia wondered. “This is the Conclave encampment, right? Surely there must be someone in one of those huts...”
There wasn’t. They’d checked every section of the camp to make sure of it. Janus still hadn’t let go of Evelyn’s hand, and he didn’t seem inclined to, either. “Stay close,” he whispered. “Something’s not right about this...”
“You’re telling me? It’s obvious something isn’t right, Janus. I feel like we’ve walked into a trap. That we’re not prepared at all.”
He leaned his head against hers, and let out a sigh. “I feel like we’ve been going in blind since the start, so...”
True, she thought, poised to access her magic at a moment’s notice. She didn’t mind the blindness too much. She did mind the idea of being cursed, of succumbing to something they couldn’t see, and only felt.
She wanted to blame Janus and Meridas if something went wrong, because they were the ones who stole her from her old job.
Yet at the same time, her old job had nothing on this. And a part of her liked the danger. It resulted in a mixed bag of emotions.
Outside the Mausoleum, the leader of the Zamorkans touched his hand to the black painting, in the center where there was a space about as big as a head. The doors creaked open without any real force pushed against them, revealing a gloomy passageway—stairs that led down into a mysterious underground. Like the depths of the Underland.
“Oh, skies, no,” Evelyn hissed. “We’re not going into a crypt.”
“Mausoleum,” Rukia said.
“What’s even the difference between a crypt and a mausoleum, anyway?” Evelyn snapped at her, and she shrugged in response.
“I don’t know, but we’re going in it.”
Just great. Cursed forest, creepy underground place that didn’t have any light, while moving through a camp of what probably was the enemy, except they were currently missing in action. Maybe they had moved somewhere else while the wildstorm raged. Maybe they had died. Or maybe…
“Wait. Wait. What if they’re inside?” Evelyn snapped at the leader. “The people who are supposed to be a part of this camp?”
That possibility swam through the others, suddenly making them nervous.
“Last resort, be prepared to use your magic,” the gray-robed leader said. Evelyn hadn’t bothered to learn their names, neither did she want to. Just twenty nameless Zamorkans. Rukia tensed at her side, and Janus’ lips curled back in a partial snarl. Ready to go. If there was even the slightest chance they could come back out with a cure for the Creeping Rot…
Then Evelyn doubted that Janus would let go of the opportunity. She wondered if a part of him intended to sell the cure, monopolize it, somehow, or whether he genuinely wanted to help people. She believed he did… but there was always that nagging thought at the back of her head that questioned otherwise.