by Hannah West
Our hands dropped to our sides. Our feet shuffled together. The light in Tilmorn’s elicrin stone danced as he toyed with us, manipulated us, forced our bodies to move without our permission.
Step by calm step, my feet brought me back to the mirror, obedient to Tilmorn. Glisette’s stiff form went through the same motions at my side.
Mercer, please, please come looking for us. You are the only one who can save us.
Tilmorn towered over Glisette, who stood a palm’s length taller than me. Even his neck looked immensely powerful. His paces were measured as he circled behind us, sending a brigade of shivers skittering over my scalp.
But it was Glisette he approximated. He stood behind her, studying her reflection. “You must be the rogue sister,” he said in his low voice. His eyes resembled Mercer’s, but a deep darkness dwelt within them. It was like glimpsing opposite sides of the same pair of gold aurions. “Those curls,” he mused, flicking one of her honeyed tendrils. “What man hasn’t been brought to his knees by a girl with yellow hair?”
His thick arm reached around her shoulder, following an arc that suggested he might use his power to caress her breasts. No, no, no, no. Astounding curses would have exploded out of my mouth if my tongue hadn’t been glued to the wall of my teeth. This can’t be how this mission ends, I pleaded. With rape and torture and death.
But it was Glisette’s elicrin stone he sought. With his hand hovering over her chest, he curled his finger and beckoned the white light within her opaque purple chalcedony. It burgeoned and coiled out in a bright tendril, snaking through the air to nest in Tilmorn’s smoky gray gem.
“What about you, lovely?” he asked. Taking one step, he overshadowed me and flicked the laces of my tunic collar, opening a gap that exposed the hollow area beneath my sternum. A scream that I couldn’t release built up inside me like steam in a kettle.
Tilmorn smelled of icy wind, smoke, and the bitter briarberry tea that Darmeskans partook of every hour of the day. He must have come to Ambrosine straight from the mountains. I wanted to shut my eyes and crumple where I stood, but all I could do was breathe, breathe in that scent that confirmed the captivity of my father’s people, the claiming of their home by an enemy.
“You’re the one who dried up the Water,” Tilmorn said, his mountain accent thick as congealed blood. “The one who could end the reign of the Lord of Elicromancers.”
Nauseating fear swept over me. We had spilled dangerous secrets to the Realm Alliance through Fabian and our missives, desperate to convince them of the truth so we didn’t have to do this alone. I’d thought even the most selfish people in that chamber would act nobly with so much at stake. But we’d given more than we gained.
The Moth King knew of me, and what I was meant to do.
Tilmorn turned his palm up and beckoned. I felt a nudge inside my ribs. As soon as he found a way to extract my power—or realized he couldn’t—he would destroy me. He tried again, and that nudge inside me became more of a thud that left me fighting for air.
He frowned in dismay. Was there anything remaining of him besides loyalty to this manipulative Moth King? I longed to remind him of Lundy and Halmer, of his brother who had fought to bring him home. Speaking their names might constitute magic beyond any he traded in.
A shout rang out from the garden. It sounded like Mercer. My heart soared with hope, but then I heard the sounds of struggle: shuffling steps, singing blades, and elicrin spells bandied back and forth. The Moth King’s servants had come for my companions.
Just as panic and the pounding of my power against my ribs robbed me of breath, Tilmorn stepped back and slid his sword from its sheath. This ignited terror in my every vein, though my body couldn’t even flinch in response. It was a simple sword with a leather-wrapped grip and plain disk pommel, crafted for one service alone.
Tilmorn’s calculating expression showed me that I posed too great a threat to be given mercy. I could move only my eyes and chose to close them, terrified to see him reel back to strike me down, terrified to see the horror on Glisette’s face.
But he didn’t bear down on me. The blade didn’t pierce my heart or lodge in my neck.
I opened my eyes and found Perennia’s image in the mirror, her teeth clenched in concentration. Her hands reached out, trembling, as though lifting a heavy crown, and her rosy elicrin stone swirled to life.
The cunning in Tilmorn’s eyes dissipated. His broad shoulders relaxed. I thought Perennia had to touch to take away anger, sadness, guilt, fear, distrust—but perhaps her power simply worked best that way.
Glisette and I were able to shake off his control. “Give my sister back her power,” Perennia said in a soft, soothing voice.
Tilmorn did as she asked. Glisette snarled at him, the light churning vengefully as it nestled back inside her stone.
Tilmorn lurched in response, showing his teeth, nearly breaking free of Perennia’s grasp on his emotions.
“I can’t hold him for long,” Perennia said. “My power is weaker from here.”
“We should kill him while we can,” Glisette growled.
“Mercer could get him on our side,” I argued. “He could help us defeat the Moth King.”
Tilmorn didn’t react to his brother’s name. My faith in his redemption had wavered as I’d watched him prowl and loom over us. That faith now vanished altogether.
“Take his elicrin stone and go,” Perennia said. “Make sure he never finds it.”
My heart throbbed again, but this time with exhilaration. Tilmorn was a major source of the Moth King’s power. Without his ability to trade elicrin gifts, he couldn’t give the Moth King whatever gift he desired. For a glimmering moment, I imagined tossing that powerful gray stone into the thrashing waves off the western cliffs. This was the solution. We could spare Tilmorn’s life so that Mercer could reunite with his beloved brother—yet castrate his elicrin magic so that he could no longer aid the Moth King in butchering the realm.
But when I stepped forward to seize the medallion, Tilmorn ripped away from Perennia’s control and charged to meet me, the dim light glancing off the deadly steel of his sword.
I cringed and covered my face as the blade swung down to cleave me in two. Its edge bit into my forearm and I screamed in anticipation of agony. But the sword stopped before it rent muscle and bone.
I cradled the torn flesh and dared to look up. Perennia’s shoulders shook as she regained wavering control over Tilmorn. Her piercing eyes turned bloodshot. She wouldn’t be able to spare us a third time.
“Find the astrikane and get out!” she shouted.
“But—” Glisette started.
“I know you can stop Lord Valmarys. Just…do it before it’s too late.”
Glisette hauled me to my feet and pushed me out the door.
E burst outdoors to find Mercer covered in blood but standing, alive, unharmed. An exquisite relief overcame me. Tilmorn’s two henchmen lay limp in the grass, their blood splashed liberally across patches of flowers. Mercer’s sword made a loathsome wet sound as he withdrew it from one’s chest. He slid the medallions encasing their elicrin stones from their throats.
Kadri leaned against the garden gate, staring feverishly at the mess before her. The sore on her neck had grown to the size of my thumb and was as discolored as a rotten fruit.
“Run, run, run!” Glisette yelled as we hurtled down the path. She yanked Kadri to her feet. Warm wetness seeped through my fingers where they pressed tight on my fresh cut.
“Where’s the Healer? What happened?” Mercer caught me and tried to peel my hand away so he could see the source of the blood. Had he not seen Tilmorn?
“No Healer. Just one of the Moth King’s men,” I replied in a rush. “Help Kadri. I’ll follow you.” I sprinted to the greenhouse, rampaging over the weaving paths with my heart walloping in my ears. The sun emerged from behind the clouds, casting rainbow beams through the ceiling on a single young astrikane tree tucked inside an ivy-trammeled gate. Most of its brigh
t white leaves had shriveled without Perennia’s attentions.
I mounted the gate and grimaced at the pain that gored my arm. My bright blood smirched the dead leaves as I foraged. There were only a handful worth taking and I stuffed them into my pocket.
I struggled back up the slippery foliage alongside the waterfall, not daring to look down at the cottage. When I reached the ledge, I expected to scoop up half of the supplies, untether Calanthe, and hurry to catch up with the others. But there was nothing: no Calanthe, no packs, not even a solitary piece of dried fruit for us to split four ways—three, since Kadri probably wouldn’t be eating anytime soon. The others stood dumbstruck.
“Where’s Calanthe?” I demanded.
“We don’t know,” Glisette said, panic raw in her voice. “Did you see anyone besides those two, Mercer?” She gestured at the bodies below.
Mercer shook his head as he lowered Kadri to the gray grass. Sweat drew dewy red rivers down his blood-spattered forehead. “Not that I saw. But…” He bent over, studying the impressions underfoot. “There are multiple sets of footprints here. Bigger than either of yours.”
Glisette raked her fingers through her dingy hair and looked warily over her shoulder at the cottage. But she noticed something, tilted her head in curiosity, and sprang forward to pluck an item the size of an aurion from a trench in the grass.
“What is it?” Mercer and I asked in unison.
“I don’t know,” she said, handing it off to me. From the back, it was clear the object was a broken pin. I stopped putting pressure on my forearm wound to turn the pin over with a bloody fingertip.
The enamel surface showed a yellow-and-maroon Erdemese flag. I glared at it. “Did either of you notice Kadri wearing this?” I asked, passing it to Mercer.
He shook his head and Glisette muttered, “No.”
I took the pin back and studied it, baffled, until the truth struck like a thunderclap.
More matters are settled in the cloakroom than the communal chamber.
Rayed Lillis had uttered those words to me on the way to Beyrian.
No one’s going to believe this violence was perpetrated by an ancient dead tyrant when you’re right here, flesh and blood—not to mention the rumors that you’re defying orders by practicing magic.
He had said that in the courtyard, near Brandar’s mutilated body.
I kicked a solid rock and the caged thing inside me clawed its way toward freedom. A wave of destruction slashed out of me, splitting the smooth face of the boulder and withering the verdant vegetation surrounding us.
Why? The question seemed to sear holes in my head. The betrayal stung as sharply as the gash from Tilmorn’s blade. But I had no time to linger and parse out past suggestions of Rayed’s treachery.
I flung a wild glance at Kadri. What if she had helped him, had lied to us in saying no one from the Realm Alliance was coming to our aid?
I could hardly ask her now.
A wet wind whipped over the grass. “We have to go,” I said. “Cover our tracks.”
“We can’t leave without the supplies,” Glisette argued.
“We have no choice! They’re gone.”
“And what do we do about her?” she demanded, gesturing at Kadri. Her skin held an awful tinge of sallow gray and the whites of her eyes flared with red veins.
I sifted through the damp leaves in my pocket and produced the white astrikane. “We have this, at least.”
“What’s that? Astrikane?” Mercer demanded. “Well, at least she’ll have pleasant delusions while she’s dying and we’re growing too weak to help her.”
“It’s the best we can do,” I barked. “Here, Glisette, put one on her tongue and another on the sore.”
Mercer set his jaw. “If I go back to the cottage and finish off Valmarys’s servant as I did the others—”
“He’s not like the others. That’s why we have to move. Do you need help with Kadri?”
Mercer didn’t reply. He limped back to Kadri and held his hands over her, palms up. He looked like Tilmorn trying to beckon our power. I flashed Glisette a look that I hoped would communicate how foolish it would be to mention Tilmorn right now. Mercer would get himself killed, along with the rest of us.
“Nagak nerenin,” Mercer whispered. A levitation spell evoked his elicrin light. Kadri’s chest bowed out and she was spirited into the air until the toes of her boots floated just above the ground and her head drooped back. Mercer slowly reclined her until the spell suspended her horizontally about five hand heights from the forest floor.
Glisette tenderly crossed Kadri’s arms over her chest and whispered spells to cover our tracks. I led the way onward, taking sharp, random turns as an extra precaution. But the unfortunate truth was that we needed to make our way to the nearest village or we wouldn’t survive, and those pursuing us knew that.
“Rayed Lillis betrayed us,” I said aloud. “That pin with the Erdemese flag is his.”
“That’s an absurd leap,” Glisette said. “There are countless Erdemese citizens in Nissera.”
“But Rayed has one just like it. And he convinced me to leave Beyrian.”
“Yes, because Brandar’s death looked bad for you.”
“It looked even worse when he persuaded me to run.” I put too much pressure on my fresh wound and hissed at the pain. “And it was the same hour that the blights came for Mercer. The plan was to sour my reputation and capture or kill Mercer.” I thought for a moment, pulling at this terrifying thread. “Rayed said someone was taking advantage of my misfortunes, using my reputation to cover their own deeds. He accused Mercer, and I thought he truly mistrusted him. But he was driving a wedge between us, making me fear for my well-being so that I would flee, which was practically an admission of guilt considering the circumstances.”
“But Rayed’s a mortal,” Glisette pointed out. “He couldn’t have materialized to the summer cottage, and how else could he have arrived in time to steal from us?”
“Maybe he followed us?” Even as I said it, I realized how unlikely it was. If he had followed us, he would have seen Kadri and realized she had not embarked on her ship. And somehow I knew, even as I questioned everything else, that he would never do anything to hurt her, would never leave her sick and without supplies.
“What would be his motivation?” Mercer asked, clearly intrigued by the theory, though not quite sold.
Each realization became a rung on a ladder, but I wasn’t sure where it led. Rayed Lillis possessed power, relative wealth, respect. More matters are settled in the cloakroom than the communal chamber. The damning observation looped through my thoughts.
“He was compromised,” I said, cupping the gash on my arm again. The blood had dried sticky on my fingers, soaking the bandage wrapped around my stitched hand. “He voted to extend the age of surrender for elicromancers. He cast the deciding vote. He’s under someone’s heel. But who could it be? Someone who wants to see me fall, who wants my fall to obscure their own rise to power. Someone who’s working for the Moth King and wants him to succeed. Perhaps Glend Neswick. But what would he want with an extension, as a mortal?”
I thought back to my short visit at Yorth. I didn’t remember seeing Rayed and Neswick fraternizing, but perhaps they’d kept their distance on purpose. I nearly felt sick wondering if Rayed had been working on behalf of Neswick when he first arrived in Arna to rescue me from the Conclave’s sentence.
“And then we have the Summoners,” I said, my mind navigating its own treacherous path as my feet charged over the forest floor. “Those who believe Valmarys is the ‘Lord of Elicromancers.’ Perhaps they aren’t isolated mountain-dwellers clinging to their tales, as Professor Strather and Neswick himself suggested. Maybe they are more sophisticated than that. Maybe there’s a reason they must wear masks—because we would recognize them.”
They listened without comment as the details of my suspicion unspooled, so I charged on. “Neswick occupies a seat on the Conclave and the Realm Alliance. After A
mbrosine manipulated me into taking the fall for Devorian’s mistake, it gave Neswick ideas. Rayed himself suggested as much. They say the best way to lie is to tell as much of the truth as you dare, and he told the truth: that someone was looking to ruin me.”
“If Glend Neswick is a Summoner who wanted you to be blamed for the Moth King’s deeds, why would he send blights to kill all of us but Mercer?” Glisette asked. “And if the blights were sent to kill Mercer the morning of Brandar’s death, why did they try to take him last night?”
I inhaled deeply, stopping to turn my face up to the green canopies that shivered in the damp breeze. “New information changed their minds about both of us. Valmarys was content to let me live in exile, using me as a cover for his actions until he gained enough power that the Realm Alliance couldn’t stop him. But then Fabian told the Realm Alliance everything, including Mercer’s vision of me. Once the Moth King learned of my supposed destiny—from Neswick or Rayed—I was too dangerous to leave alive, and Mercer too useful to kill. I wager the blights would have taken you captive as well, Glisette, as your gift could be stolen and given to the Moth King.”
“And Tilmorn would have killed me after he stole it—” Glisette muttered, then gasped, realizing her mistake too late.
“Tilmorn?” Mercer echoed. I heard him stop in his tracks.
I closed my eyes before finding the courage to turn around. When I did, the stalwart hope on his face wrenched my gut.
“Was it Tilmorn back there?” he demanded.
I felt the urge to grip his hands, in part to restrain him—but only in part. “Yes. It was. He tried to kill me. He took Glisette’s power. And he knows that I am supposed to kill the Moth King.”
Mercer lowered Kadri and turned to retrace our trail to the summer cottage. Glisette caught his arm. “You can’t, Mercer. You’ll die.”
“This is the chance I’ve been waiting for.”
“Mercer.” Her graceful hand molded along his jaw and she stepped closer to him. Seeing him soften at her tenderness sent a spear of envy through me. “I can stop you from leaving, but I’d rather not have to,” she said. “We need you. You’re the one who knows the Moth King’s ways.”