“Can you stand?” Warner asked.
I nodded and he put me down. I felt the solid marble underneath my feet for only an instant before I was crushed into a brutal, sooty, Chinese-spiced, dark-chocolate hug.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Yazi said, pressing his lips against my temple hard enough to bruise me. He let go before I could respond, though. “Healer? Her eyes?”
The magic of the portal snapped shut behind us.
I felt Qiuniu brush his fingers across my temples. I could barely taste his magic, having to strain to hear the music he usually carried with him.
I blinked, my eyesight clearing enough to make out his lovely face and his strained, dark eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I murmured.
“Your magic is overwhelmed, and my own is tasked elsewhere,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it will take time for you to regain your equilibrium.”
“That’s not what I meant … something besides me is wrong.”
The healer turned away without comment, hunching down over a large figure propped up beside the door Warner had just pulled me through.
A large, fur-cloaked figure.
Pulou.
I blinked a few more times, but my sight remained hazed in gold.
The treasure keeper was slumped over his knees. The healer pressed his shoulder and he shifted back against the gilded wall behind him.
I took a step toward Pulou and stumbled.
Warner caught me just as I realized that my perspective was oddly skewed. The floor had felt a lot closer than it actually was. “How long was I … gone?” I asked.
“A few hours,” Yazi said, crossing to the healer and the treasure keeper. He moved as if nursing multiple injuries. The braid burn at his neck was an angry series of red, swollen welts.
Hours? And the guardians were still behaving as if they’d just been attacked and injured? They should have been fully healed. If not instantly, then certainly within an hour or two.
I looked at Warner for confirmation. My eyesight had cleared enough that I could plainly see the stress etched across his face and his stiffly held shoulders.
“More than a few hours,” he said. “I couldn’t get to you. We couldn’t get to you without the treasure keeper. So … the healer woke him … upon request.”
Qiuniu snorted. I gathered it was the ‘request’ part of Warner’s declaration he found suspect.
The healer and Yazi hunkered down, placing Pulou’s arms over their shoulders as they lifted him between them. It wasn’t an easy task.
I was starting to shake. I grasped my necklace and fought the impulse. It wasn’t a good time to break down, not in any noticeable way. Not in front of a bunch of seriously injured demigods.
“Jade …” the treasure keeper muttered.
“You found her,” the healer said. He lifted his free hand and placed it on Pulou’s neck as if checking his pulse.
The treasure keeper’s head lolled to the side. His face was a raw mass of barely healed, bright-red scar tissue. He was still missing an ear.
My father stumbled as if more weight had just shifted onto him, catching him off guard.
I reached for Warner’s hand. He met me halfway. Gripping him and my necklace helped to steady my trembling limbs. I hated seeing my father diminished. It didn’t … fit. It didn’t click with my worldview.
“Pulou sleeps again,” Qiuniu said. “As should you, warrior.”
Yazi ignored the younger guardian. “Jade, you are not to leave the nexus.”
“Sure thing, Dad.”
His fierce gaze fell to the centipedes attached to my necklace. “You have the braids as well?”
I dug the five-colored silk braids out of the pocket of my jeans, holding them across my open palm.
Warner squeezed my other hand a little too hard.
Qiuniu flinched.
And I couldn’t taste a single drop of the magic that bothered them all so much. Pulou had told me that my magic masked the power of the instruments when I held them, but obviously even the sight of the braids disturbed the healer and Warner.
“The sentinel is officially reinstated,” my father said. His tone was unyielding.
“What?” I cried.
Warner shook his head, just once. “Without the spell.”
Yazi scowled at the interruption. “He will collect the instruments from you and give them to the treasure keeper. You will not leave the nexus. You will leave the hunt to me.”
“She holds the far seer,” I said. “She’s made ransom demands that you can’t fulfill.”
“Chi Wen’s participation in all of this is … confusing, but ultimately his own choice. Perhaps he thought to draw her away from you … from us.”
“Or perhaps he had a deadly weapon at his neck.”
“What?” Warner asked.
I locked my gaze to my father’s. Tension ran along his jaw.
Warner and Qiuniu glanced between us.
When neither of us elaborated, the healer shifted Pulou higher onto his shoulder. “Warrior,” the Brazilian guardian said softly. “We must —”
“I know,” Yazi snapped.
Warner turned to me, holding a plain platinum box in his hand. I made a show of dutifully depositing the braids into it. He snapped the rune-etched lid closed.
I met my father’s gaze a second time. “I don’t need the instruments to take out the rabid koala. I believe I’ve proven that my knife will do just fine.”
Warner closed his eyes and shook his head. The healer quashed an involuntary laugh.
“Jade.” My father gnashed his teeth on my name. “You’re making it personal.”
“It is personal.”
Yazi tried to take a step toward me, then realized he couldn’t do so without dragging Pulou and Qiuniu with him. He looked to Warner. “Sentinel?”
“I’ll do my best, warrior.”
I tamped my mouth closed on any further retort. I was being childish again. Being ordered around by a parent evidently brought out that reaction. However, it obviously wasn’t the right time for overt feistiness. My father needed a dose of whatever healing power Pulou had gotten from Qiuniu to make him sleep, so I needed to shut up and agree … for now.
Yazi eyed me for another moment. Then he and the healer turned to carry the treasure keeper out of the nexus.
“My time and reserves are already overtasked,” Qiuniu said without looking back. “Until the other guardians return to the nexus, we will be … lesser.”
“I understand, healer,” Warner said.
“Warner is not the boss of me,” I muttered to my father’s retreating back.
“Excuse me?” Warner said quietly.
I looked up at him. “Nothing. I just had to get it out. What do you ‘understand’?”
“The healer has given us permission to pursue the … Shailaja. But we won’t have any guardians at our backs until this has all been sorted. If we choose to act against the warrior’s wishes, we are on our own.”
“Geez, you pack a lot into an understanding. I didn’t hear any of that.”
Warner reached up and ran his fingers through my hair, tugging on the curl that Pulou had chopped in half over a year ago. That lock was longer now, and though Warner liked to tease my vanity over getting it snipped, he wasn’t being playful.
“I know now,” he said. “I know how losing you feels. How you must have felt in the temple of the centipede when you thought …”
I closed the space between us, pressing myself fully against him and lifting up on my toes. He met me halfway, but it was my kiss.
I kissed him for all the pain I’d caused him. I kissed him for almost leaving before we’d really begun our life together. I kissed him because I didn’t say yes.
Energy from the betrothal rings ran between us. And though it seemed cheesy to even think of it in those terms, it felt as though that magic connected us, heart to heart.
“You found me,” I whispered against his lips.
“I thought it was you who found me.”
I laughed softly. “Well, that’s impossibly perfect.”
“I guess I can’t make you promise not to do it again.”
“Could you promise such a thing?”
“Doubtful.”
“There you go.”
Warner brushed his lips against mine again. Then we both caught a movement in our peripheral vision.
Drake was waiting, watching us from a few feet away. He was in his dragon leathers, and was taller than he was the last time I’d seen him. Pushing six feet now. His dark hair was cut almost too short, making him look older than his almost-sixteen years. Older and angry. I’d never seen him look so fierce.
No, not fierce. Vengeful.
“I’m going with you,” he said, once he had our full attention.
“No,” Warner said.
“All right,” I said.
Warner glared at me sternly, which was difficult since we were still both intimately wrapped around each other. “Even if we are going after her —”
“We are.”
“Even if, the fledgling —”
“Who is stronger and more resilient than either of us.”
“Not everything is about magical amperage. Training and knowledge —”
“Chi Wen is my mentor,” Drake said, stepping closer. “He’s my responsibility.”
Warner dropped his arms from around me, running his hand through his hair with much frustration. “Jesus, there’s two of you.”
I swallowed my smirk. Now really wasn’t the time to be amused.
“You’ve got that backward, fledgling,” Warner continued. “You are his responsibility. Our responsibility.”
Drake turned his dark gaze on me. “If you leave me, I’ll follow.”
“I know,” I said. Then to Warner, I added, “If we’re all ignoring guardian directives, we might as well be together.” Suanmi had almost fried me for taking Drake to London when I’d been hunting Sienna, and Shailaja might actually be crazier than my blood-crazed sister. But the fledgling guardian was safer with Warner and me than he would be hunting on his own.
Warner growled a string of curse words in German under his breath. He yanked a second rune-carved box out of his pocket and held it out to me.
“If we’re leaving,” he said. “If. We won’t get out of the nexus without giving the instruments to the treasure keeper. I think they might have been part of the reason I couldn’t find you in the portals.”
“Uncollectable by dragons,” I said. “Though Shailaja managed to get her hands on them.”
“She touched boxed instruments. Though why the hell Pulou let her spend enough time in the chamber to find them —” Warner clamped his mouth shut, then slid his eyes toward Drake. The fledgling was listening to everything with great intensity.
Being pissy about the guardians was obviously a line Warner was unwilling to cross around a guardian-to-be.
I tickled my fingers underneath the centipedes twined around my necklace, and they obligingly dropped into my hand. Then I deposited them into the box Warner held.
He snapped the lid closed, almost clipping my fingers.
I raised my eyebrows at him challengingly.
He narrowed his own eyes at me. “Do I have to drag you with me?”
“We won’t go anywhere without you,” I said. “You’re the boss. Remember?”
“Who made him the boss?” Drake asked. “I thought the removal of the sentinel spell was successful?”
“It was,” I said.
“The warrior,” Warner said, just a split second after me. “And I didn’t need to be reinstated. I chose to have the spell removed, but that doesn’t mean I intended to abandon my duties.”
I narrowed my eyes at the so-called sentinel. I wanted him away from Shailaja, and … crap. Well, here I was, threatening to go after her and forcing him to come with me.
Drake frowned. “If anything, I should be the boss. The far seer is my mentor —”
“No.” Warner and I said it in unison.
Then, swallowing more inappropriate laughter, I brushed my fingers against the back of Warner’s wrist. He was holding both boxes in one hand. It should have been impossible that such terrible, destructive artifacts could be contained in such small packages.
“I won’t go anywhere without you.”
“The portals are shut down, Jade. You wouldn’t get very far before I caught up.”
“And then you’d be pissy and sullen for hours,” I said. “I’m cool with avoiding that.”
Warner’s growl was playful. Then he turned away to stride off in the direction my father and the healer had taken Pulou.
“You have an odd method of communicating with the sentinel,” Drake said.
“It’s called flirting.”
He looked doubtful. “Is it?”
“Hush, fledgling.” I grinned.
Drake nodded thoughtfully, then reached over his shoulder and tugged a rolled piece of thick parchment out of a leather backpack he wore. The pack blended so perfectly with his dragon leathers that I hadn’t seen it before. He was also armed with his golden sword. Its plain, serviceable hilt and pommel protruded from just behind his shoulder. Its sheath was built into his vest.
“I have a map of the grid point portals,” he said. “They should all still be active. Though the ride might be bumpy.”
Bumpy? How about suffocating? Or terrifying?
Delightful.
“So we can’t go directly back to the bakery?”
“Not without Pulou to open a specific portal.” Drake eyed me. “You should know that. You always come and go with Pulou’s help, don’t you?”
“Ah …”
“Is there a permanent portal in the bakery?”
“Maybe …”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Drake forgot his gruff new persona in order to be genuinely upset for a moment.
“It’s a secret.”
“Oh.” Drake unrolled the map, looking mournful.
“You’re thinking of all the cupcakes you could have eaten.”
“I am.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“Plus the secret part.”
“Right.”
“I understand secrets.”
“Any you’d like to share?”
“Nope.”
Drake grinned at me, but neither of us could maintain the levity for long.
“If the portal to the bakery is of Pulou’s construction, it will no longer be active,” he said.
“It is Pulou’s.”
“Even the guardians are stranded right now. With only Pulou, Yazi, and Qiuniu in residence. The other guardians will know something is wrong. If they can abandon whatever they’re doing, they’ll make their way to a grid point and return to the nexus.”
“How long does that usually take?”
“I don’t know. This hasn’t ever happened before.”
“Ever? Like never ever?”
“Yeah. Never.”
“Okay, then. That’s not daunting.”
“Nothing daunts the warrior’s daughter.”
“A brave face isn’t necessarily a sign of courage. In my case, it could simply be pure stupidity.”
“I disagree.”
Our conversation was interrupted by Warner striding back into the nexus. He was outfitted in a backpack similar to Drake’s, though he was armed only with the sacrificial knife I’d modified for him as a Christmas gift two years ago.
Oddly, he also had a wad of jade-green silk scrunched in his hand. As he drew near, he flicked his wrist to fan the fabric out. It was a gorgeous, gold-embroidered, quilted silk jacket with a short Asian-inspired collar.
He handed the jacket to me. Apparently, Warner had noticed I was wearing only a tank top.
I accepted the pretty thing, smoothing my fingers admiringly over the dragon motif on its front panels. “Thank you,” I murmured sedately, though I was grinning like a g
ushing idiot.
“I didn’t want you to be cold. I looked for a set of leathers, but found nothing usable. Not quickly.”
“Who does it belong to? I’m just going to end up ruining it.” I sighed.
Warner shrugged. “It was abandoned in the healer’s chambers. I doubt anyone is coming back for it.”
I laughed. “I doubt the owner is being invited back.” Anyone who went around laying blistering kisses on unknown half-witches, like the healer was prone to doing, didn’t spend many evenings alone.
Warner snorted.
Drake was glancing back and forth between Warner and me. “I don’t get it. It’s a somewhat useful garment. Why would the owner abandon it?”
The sentinel shook his head at the fledgling, then gestured at him to spread out the grid point portal map. Black-inked continents, lighter colored-in countries, and crisscrossed lines of longitude and latitude inscribed the ancient-looking parchment.
I slipped on the jacket. It was silk lined and felt absolutely delicious against my skin. I had been a little chilly. God, I absolutely adored Warner. Did everyone have issues with not completely pawing and gushing all over their boyfriends every second of the day? Maybe it was just me.
“I have the dragonskin map,” I said. “So if we get close enough to the final instrument, I might be able to get the map to reveal the temple or whatever. If it works the same way as it did before.”
Warner flicked his eyes to mine, stoic and unyielding. Apparently, all I had to do to ruin the cozy feelings that had settled between us was to open my mouth.
“We are not collecting the instrument,” he said, looking down to Drake’s map.
“How else are we going to lure her out?” I asked mildly, attempting to not be a complete brat. “She can track me, but we can’t track her. Apparently, no one can. Right? That’s why we got all the way to the temple in Peru before the warrior found us.”
Tension stiffened Warner’s shoulders. He didn’t look at me. We didn’t talk about Peru much. We didn’t talk about Shailaja, or the guardians’ previous failures in apprehending her. But I was fairly certain that Warner had engaged in endless conversations about it all with Pulou and my father.
I prodded him. “It’s the shadow demons, isn’t it?”
“What shadow demons?” Drake asked.
Artifacts, Dragons, and Other Lethal Magic Page 10