The Hallowed Knight

by Jenn Stark

  And then the Magician opened his mouth, his focus fully on me. When he spoke, his words were elegant, rich, and harrowingly succinct.

  “Do I know you?”

  Chapter Thirty

  I roused myself from the pane of glass, straightening as the door opened behind me. In the room beyond, nothing had changed. Armaeus still lay in a hospital bed, an entire fleet of monitors and machines whirring around him, a perfect symphony of data trackers and energy modulators and systems analyzers. According to Dr. Sells, Armaeus had ordered this suite custom-made for him…five years earlier. Long before he’d even met me.

  Much longer still before he’d forgotten me.

  No sooner had he recovered from the jolt back to a sort of awareness I’d made possible than he’d passed out again, his body shutting down everything but the most vital processes. Dr. Sells had ordered him moved to this suite, which Kreios and I had facilitated. Once connected up to every monitor known to man, technology I couldn’t even hope to understand, he’d dropped even deeper into a coma. Kreios had departed immediately to brief the Council, but I’d remained here, sequestering myself in this dark observation room, my head against the glass.

  Armaeus had left me. Completely.

  The demigod lying in the room beyond me hadn’t been completely unconscious, not the entire time he’d been transported and hooked up and processed and tested. He’d slipped in and out of awareness, long enough to speak with Kreios, Dr. Sells, whom he clearly still knew—and to turn his oddly golden eyes on me, questing and intrigued, but without a flicker of recognition. He’d asked Kreios a series of long and convoluted questions, he’d bossed Dr. Sells around as she’d hurriedly refined the room configuration, and he’d watched me like a bug. No one told him who I was, and I certainly didn’t. How can you compress years of your life and entire lifetimes of your heart into a sound bite sandwiched between tersely ordered computer tutorials and logistical scanning? Eventually, I’d wandered off, more tired than I’d ever been in my life, until Dr. Sells had found me and shown me this room.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been here. Not days, certainly. Probably hours. Yet time seemed to flicker and jump, the same minute reliving itself over and over and over again, like it had in that room in Dublin, when I’d held Armaeus in my arms and imagined our lives together forever. How could everything have fallen apart so quickly?

  “Sara.”

  The voice was a familiar and welcome one, but it still took me several long moments to drag my gaze away from the glass. Kreios stood in front of me, wearing a dark, official-looking suit, with a white shirt open at the collar, revealing his deeply bronzed skin. I blinked quickly, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. “You’re looking…very stylish,” I allowed.

  “The Magician had arranged a particular protocol in the event of his temporary absence from the Council, a protocol that was invoked at the moment of his collapse.”

  “Good, good…” My gaze drifted back to Armaeus. “Has Death returned?”

  Kreios shook his head. “No. But according to Simon and Tesla, both of whom are tracking the electrical currents circling the globe, there has been no great disruption to the earth’s energy systems. So she’s either hiding, or fighting something we can’t track, or recovering somewhere.”

  “In Between?” I asked, not liking the sound of that.

  “We simply don’t know. Jimmy’s gone too.”

  “Dammit…” I sighed. Jimmy would have told me if Death had been killed, I was certain. But him not being here made everything more complicated. “So now what?”

  “For the foreseeable future, the Council will be led by myself and the Emperor.”

  I blinked. “You had me right up until the end there. Since when is the Emperor equipped to lead the Council?”

  Kreios grimaced. “Since power broke along the lines of those interested in using the Council to guide the acts of humans and those members of the Council who still believe in the course of balance.”

  “Yeah, we weren’t exactly balanced during what just went down in Dublin.”

  “And yet we were more balanced than what the Emperor has even now called for. We have Conal and Niall in custody, awaiting delivery to the proper authorities. Viktor is of the mind that the proper authorities is the Council itself, from which the two would be returned to the rightful place at the head of their cult.”

  “What? No,” I protested, a spurt of adrenaline waking up my nerve endings. “That’s a terrible idea. The exact same thing would happen just as soon as they regrouped. The Neo-Celts didn’t learn anything from their little pre-Beltane demonstration. Most of them were knocked flat by the end of it and probably don’t remember much at all.”

  “Exactly so. Another likely option is to return the brothers to the local authorities, who have no doubt assembled a list of indictments as long as their arms to level against them.”

  I pursed my lips. “That would be fine for Conal, but Niall is no shrinking violet. He’ll be out of custody within twenty-four hours, and then we’re back to where we started again.”

  “Option three is for Justice to do her job and bring the brothers to Judgment.”

  Narrowing my eyes, I glowered at him. “Was this entire little speech just a redirect to get me to go collect those asshats? Because I am not in the mood, Kreios.”

  “Not at all,” he said, not bothering to hide his smile. “They are already at Gamon’s door. But she cannot let them in without you there. So—”

  Not wanting to miss my chance to play the hip new Council game, I disintegrated into a fiery poof before the Devil could finish his sentence.

  I reappeared on an all too familiar ledge, a stark space open to the elements that looked like an entry bay to a Norwegian airplane hangar—if such a hangar were etched into the face of an icebound mountain. The wind was cold and bracing, which, along with the fact that I wasn’t alone in this space, woke me up further.

  Three figures stood waiting for me. Niall, Conal, and Gamon.

  The brothers looked slightly worse for wear. Conal, I realized, was not completely awake. Instead, he was held up by some force of magic versus any ability of his own. Beside him, Niall stared at me with a curious peace in his eyes. Not defeat, peace. Gamon, for her part, looked her usual fierce self, her long black hair braided down her back, her attire the usual darkly hued combat gear and shit-kicker boots. Her hands were gloved and her expression unrelenting.

  “Took you long enough,” she muttered.

  “You know, I was a little busy.” I jerked my head toward Conal. “You do that to him?”

  “No, I did.” It was Niall who spoke, his voice tinged with sadness. “His entire life, Conal wanted nothing more than to be the knight errant. To lead the world into a more ordered, gracious, and chivalrous experience. To give people something worth fighting for with the return of reverence for the earth that has long since bled away.”

  “But he wasn’t a Connected,” I said.

  “He was not, not at first. There was a spark of ability in him, to be sure, the nascent flame that exists in all of us. And perhaps that was even more fitting in the end. He was the champion of those who sought to reach beyond their station, drawing forth an ability they themselves could never claim without his aid. I was the Hallowed Knight, but never wanted the job, even after it became clear that it was mine to claim. Conal did. He always did. How could I not assist him?”

  “People died, Niall,” I said sharply.

  “They died in the pursuit of a lofty ideal. Is that so wrong?”

  I wasn’t about to touch that one. “But he was a fraud. You were the one with the ability. You were the one who held the Connected skill that he promoted as his own.”

  “It was his, after a fashion.” Niall shrugged. “I didn’t have one-tenth of my brother’s magnetic charm, nor his looks, nor arguably his youth when he first expressed magical ability.”

  “You mean when he first siphoned it
off you.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t realize that was in the nature of my abilities until it happened, and Conal was so elated, so beside himself with joy, I had no interest in popping that balloon. As a younger child, he was given to great bouts of depression at the state of the world, and so giving him the gift of hope was something any brother would’ve done.”

  “And your falling-out?”

  “Necessary to establish his place of primacy,” Niall said, as if this was the most logical thing in the world.

  “You called the ancient gods back to Earth,” I said, speaking as slowly and succinctly as possible. “You both did. That's not the mark of sane men.”

  “It was my charge to do so, instilled in my very bones by the ancient gods. Conal only wanted to help people grasp the power within themselves, much as I wanted to help him nurture the tiny flame that he was born with. My power was so much greater than his, but his vision was well beyond anything I could have conceived. And so he taught the people to believe, and, being Irish as we are, he turned to the old ways to find the stories that would help them believe. And the very land responded. People came bearing gifts, symbols of the old ways, stories he could not discount. Genuine miracles of faith and healing.”

  “The Fermanagh dirt.” I couldn’t deny the fact that Niall had helped save Nikki’s life. That didn’t excuse his other behavior, but…it complicated matters.

  “A perfect example. That soil has been there for thousands of years, and it is only now that science is willing to believe enough to test it and see that yes, in fact, it has healing properties. The people who live on that land have never needed scientific tests to know that it was true. They needed only to use it and believe in it.”

  I grimaced. “That’s a very dangerous line. You could say the same about any religious icon or even Tinker Bell. Without the scientific test to back it up, it’s just a fairy tale.”

  “But fairy tales so often have their roots in truth, do they not?” He hesitated. “One thing I’m sure you figured out that I did not realize. Why I had to step in with that Fermanagh soil…”

  “I got it,” I said, holding up a hand. “Conal was behind the poisoning. I just don’t understand how. That kid with the card…?”

  “Was no mere child, Justice Wilde. Nor the lasses with their bubbles. They were the wee people, the fairies. Loaned to Conal for the express purpose of paving the way of the Tuatha dé Danann back to the world of light. Conal wanted to be sure the poison took, though he’d no idea what its longer-range effects would be. He took every extra step he could.”

  “He used the fairy folk?”

  “I would’ve counseled against it if I’d known his plans. But he was already secretly in contact with the Tuath Dé by then, and well…” Another shrug. “You know what they say. Any man can lose his hat in a fairy wind.”

  “But why Nikki? Why did Conal attack her, not simply me? She was no threat to him.”

  Niall sighed. “That’s not true, I’m afraid. Nikki Dawes represents the one non-Council member still alive for whom you would lay down your life—your life and your cause and the Council itself, if it came to it. Conal intended Nikki Dawes to be a vessel for the Fomorian, eventually. They were supposed to find her in the In Between, which the fairies opened for her, singing her into the shadows. He intended to be able to control her, knowing you would never kill her if you thought she could be saved, not even to destroy the gods within her. I…in the end, that was not something I could allow.” His smile was soft, even sad. “Love and life are such precious things, you see, in this world or any other.”

  I could only gape at him as he turned to Judgment, who’d been watching silently this whole time. “So it is up to you to judge us, I see. The Morrígan herself.”

  Gamon studied him with her flat gaze. “I would’ve pushed you off a ledge a long time ago, buddy. But there are protocols to follow, and my job is to put you through those protocols. How you and your little brother do is much more up to you than anything to do with me. I just have the ability to make your stay ever so slightly more pleasant, or not so much.”

  Niall had the grace to pale slightly, but said nothing. He knew what he’d done, and he wasn’t apologizing for it. He wasn’t apologizing for his brother, either.

  “Niall, you have to understand, your way is not the right way,” I pressed, locking up his revelation about the poison in a box of crazy to be reopened…never.

  “And the Council’s is?” he shot back.

  I winced, thinking of the Council being run even in part by Viktor Dal. “Not always. But there must be a way for all of us to coexist, or none of us will survive. This isn’t a matter of pushing the old gods out and keeping them that way, this is a matter of reconciling all the new gods we’ve created and finding a way for us all to live together. Your way, Conal’s way, would have caused bloodshed. You know it would. And it would’ve been the innocents who died in the end.”

  Niall nodded, something shifting in his face. “Coexistence. I will think on that during Judgment Gamon’s…protocols. Which I have richly earned.”

  A scraping noise sounded behind us, and we all turned, the gates of Gamon’s own personal Valhalla finally opening. She cracked a mirthless smile as she nodded toward Niall. “Congratulations, your stay might not be quite as miserable as I’d hoped. Scoop up your brother and follow me.”

  As tenderly as any older brother, Niall did as he was told, folding Conal’s body up in his arms. Before he turned to follow Gamon, though, he glanced back at me, his face alight with awe. Awe…and something perhaps even stronger.

  “She is the Morrígan, the queen of warriors,” he murmured, his words enraptured. “That makes her my fated mate.”

  I glanced between him and Gamon, a sudden and completely incongruous spurt of laughter struggling to escape. I managed to hold it in until the door slammed shut behind them, then sighed.

  “Well done, Sara Wilde.”

  “Were you here that whole time?”

  Kreios stepped out of the shadows. “There were some truths that needed to be spoken, some desires that needed to be shared. I live to serve.”

  I glanced back at him, going still as I noticed the envelope in Kreios’s hands.

  “What’s that?”

  “This is an envelope that was lying on Armaeus’s desk when I returned from the Council briefing. It contained a letter addressed to you.”

  “Oh.” I reached for it, absurdly relieved. “So he knew this was going to happen to him. Like he knew where to tell you to find me when I arrived from Dublin.”

  Kreios lifted the envelope out of reach. “He did, yes. But he wrote this letter in 1478.”

  My hand froze as Kreios continued. “The envelope also contained a second letter, addressed to me, though of course, I also was not alive at the time of its writing. I’ve had Simon analyze the paper and the ink, and it’s authentic. The envelope itself was an illusion, a package alone, spelled into reality by, presumably, the events of this day.”

  “So the letters weren’t addressed to us, specifically, but to whom? Justice and the Devil?” I spoke the words woodenly, hope dwindling within me. There was too much about the Magician I didn’t understand. I had known that all along, but I’d always assumed that there would be time for that discovery.

  Now, I was no longer sure.

  Kreios nodded. “These writings are more than five hundred years old, and the penmanship is definitely Armaeus’s, for all that the phrasings are archaic. I took the liberty of Simon deciphering both pieces. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not,” I murmured. I wasn’t sure I would have been able to temper my frustration if I’d opened up a letter written in Old English. I would’ve been able to translate, but there were too many words and phrases that would have confused and obfuscated Armaeus’s original intentions, and I had no time for that.

  I had no time.

  “The notes were short but surprisin
gly clear once they were broken down to the core information. Armaeus made a decision in 1478 to break apart his psyche and stuff a series of memories down a very dark hole. He did this to ensure the safety of the balance of magic in the world during a very bleak time in human history.”

  “I can’t imagine the 1400s had much to recommend them.”

  “No,” Kreios agreed, “but the Magician, being the Magician, left a codicil. If he ever needed to recover those memories, he would put in place a finder of consummate skill and speed, who would not only recover that which had been lost but who could make him whole.”

  “He said that,” I deadpanned. “In 1478.”

  “He did.”

  The chill of Gamon’s frozen aerie disintegrated around us, and once more we were in the shadowy observation room, overlooking Armaeus’s inert body. Even without the benefit of my third eye, I could tell he was so deep down in his own psyche that there would be no pulling him back out. He’d prepared for all this. He’d worked and conjured and prepared.

  “But why did you forget me?” I whispered, looking out over Armaeus’s still form. “What could possibly have led you to do that?”

  Kreios stepped up next to me, laying a light hand on my shoulder, reassuring and certain at once.

  “I don’t know, Sara Wilde,” he said softly, his richly accented words a balm to my ragged nerves. “But after all the years I’ve known him, I can tell you this. The Magician always has a plan.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Thank you so much for reading THE HALLOWED KNIGHT! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the book. If so, I welcome any and all reviews on the book retail site of your choice!

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  Books by Jenn Stark

  Wilde Justice Series