by D. D. Chance
The mirror blackened for a half second, and I heard Liam shout, more faintly now, “Whoa!”
A laugh sounded in the hallway outside the door, jarring me, and I awkwardly jerked my hand away from the mirror. The plane of glass cleared, and I stumbled back, whirling around as a new figure entered—no one I recognized.
“Hey,” I managed, but the word came out as barely a gasp.
The young woman beamed at me, fairly bouncing. “You’re up! That’s excellent.”
The girl was slender and blonde, her long pale hair falling over her bare shoulders. Unlike Rhiannon, she wore a fancy silvery tunic and pants, with metal cuffs on her biceps and more at her wrists. Even with all that, I didn’t know if she was a servant, a queen, or some general in the army. Even with her enthusiasm, these people carried themselves with a sense of calm, cool power that was unlike anything I’d experienced before.
“And even better, you’re totally not dead,” she continued, sounding remarkably like a teenager. Then again, with a species as apparently long-lived as the Akari, how could you tell?
I gave her my best smile. “Were you expecting otherwise?”
“Well, yes, actually. Rhiannon is seriously angry at Grim. She believes he put you at needless risk to prove a point. And it’s a point that only matters to him.”
I screwed up my face at that. “What kind of point?” I asked.
She waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, you know…” she began, then stopped. She peered at me more closely. “Actually, you may not know.”
She broke into a delighted smile, a straight-up kitten who’d stolen the cream. I winced. I seriously needed to stop with the cat jokes, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
“Anyway,” she continued brightly without explaining further. “They sent me because I’m the least ferocious of the bunch. I’m Niali, sort of like Nina, yeah? But your name is prettier.”
“I totally disagree,” I said with feeling.
She beamed with pleasure, tilting her head to the side. “Well, like I said, I’m not very intimidating, or so everyone tells me. So if you weren’t feeling well, I, at least, wouldn’t make things any worse, you know?”
“I appreciate that.” I nodded. “Were you the one who brought the food?”
“Oh. Um…no.”
She peered over to the small table and furrowed her brow. “Looks like Grim was here after all,” she said, sounding satisfied while I jolted in surprise. Grim was here? “Anyway, since you’re up, and assuming you can handle eating a second time, I’ve been asked to bring you to dinner. It’s a formal affair, the ruling council all getting together to figure out if we’re finally going to break ourselves free of our oppressors, that sort of thing.”
“You guys have to do that a lot?” I asked, and she laughed.
“It’s been pretty much the only thing we’ve talked about for, I would say, about a hundred and fifty of your years? Something like that. Let me tell you, it gets old.”
I frowned at her. Rhiannon had used that exact same timing. It couldn’t be a coincidence. “You’ve personally been alive for a hundred and fifty years?”
“Oh yeah. Longer than that, really. Time doesn’t work the same here, and when you travel back and forth through the portals, it can really mess you up. Grim’s the only one who’s been able to stay on the other side for any length of time without being seriously screwed up about it, though with him, it’s kind of hard to tell. He made the decision to stay over in the human realm more, expecting to age faster, but that didn’t happen. He sort of got put on pause, you know? So I guess that’s good—weird, but, you know, good.”
I laughed. This young Akari reminded me of Merry Williams. “Have you been over on the other side? You talk like someone I know.”
“No,” she said, sounding disgusted. “Which is not for lack of trying. And I do watch people, of course, at the academy. You can see them sometimes, through the portals, and there are a ton of portals into it, even if they’re all blocked off. But eventually, I’m totally going across. They say it’s too dangerous, but at some point, I’m going to have to live, and there’s not much they’re going to be able to do about that. Grim can’t take on all the battles everywhere, no matter how much he wants to.”
“Ah…” I couldn’t decide how to respond to that before the young Akari was off again.
“But if you’re coming to dinner, it’s going to be a little formal. Do you have… Oh. Oh, that will work perfectly.”
She approached my bed, her gaze falling on Merry’s hot-pink party dress. “That’s yours? You have to wear it.”
“I’m not sure if it’s appropriate,” I began, though she probably had a totally different sense of fashion from me, she didn’t worry too much about that.
“No, seriously, you have to wear that. That fabric…where did you get that?”
I grimaced. “A friend of mine got it, um, at her old school?”
“You mean Twyst Academy?” Niali asked, making me blink. “Of course she did. Wow. Okay, I don’t have time to explain all this, but that fabric is amazing, and it’s not from Twyst, but, like, a realm they have access to that we only sort of can get to from here. Go ahead and get dressed. I can’t wait to introduce you to everyone—and here.”
Reaching into her pocket, Niali pulled out a strand of silver crescents that resembled the strange device I’d found buried in my side only a few days ago. I stiffened as she offered it to me.
“What is that?” I asked warily.
“Claws,” she announced proudly. “Carefully collected from Akari battles and threaded by Sheori herself onto this chain—it’s gold, not silver, and it’s potent magic. You’ll see.”
She practically bounced as she pressed the barbaric necklace into my hand, and I weighed it. There was no doubt at all in my mind. These…claws were the exact same weight and curve as the…thing that had been buried in me. It hadn’t been a device at all. It’d been a claw.
And I was almost certain I knew whose claw it was.
I swallowed, my hands beginning to shake. “Ahh…thank you.”
“You’re so welcome.” She beamed. “This is going to be perfect.”
7
Picking up the dress and draping it over one arm, Niali led me from my doorless chamber out into the hallway. No guards stood at the doors, and I wondered at that. “I could have left at any time? Just started roaming through the building?”
Niali smiled. “You could have, but you would’ve been found pretty quickly. Anyone who’s not an Akari tends to make a lot of noise. We’ve learned to dampen the sound in the bedchambers and leave guests to their own devices when they’re here, though. It’s too disturbing to have them in our main areas.”
“You get a lot of visitors?”
She shrugged. “Not anymore, but there was a time when the realms were more open, right at the beginning. That all changed when the wizards’ pact was broken and the Hallowells began their run on monsters.”
The new phrase made me glance at her sharply. It hung in the air between us, crystalline and dangerous. “Wizards’ pact?”
She bit her lip. “I always get ahead of myself—you’ll learn everything you need at dinner, but yeah. The wizards are like…I guess you’d call them magicians in your world, but not really—like, they’re darker. Meaner. And though they look and act human, make no mistake, they’re not. They’re probably some of the worst monsters in the realm. Illusionists to the end. No one ever sees their real forms. I haven’t, for sure, but I’ve been told they sort of look like…walking squids. Not that they’d ever let anyone see them that way. They’re super proud.”
“Really,” I murmured, and she nodded with vigor.
“Absolutely. We had three of them up until about forty or so years ago. Now there’s just one, the gray wizard. The Hallowells basically converted them to their cause, and the wizards have always held the most power in the realm, especially the gray wizard. The rest of the clans were blindsided and basically lost the f
irst battle before it had even begun. We couldn’t do anything but allow the Hallowells to take whatever monsters they wanted, whenever they wanted, and build up wards in between raids. We’ve built up pretty good protections now, deep in the forest like we are, but we used to roam a far wider range—all the way up the sacred mountain. It’s terrible.”
I nodded, though I couldn’t wrap my head around the Hallowells amassing that much power in a realm where they were the interlopers, even with the help of these wizards. “It sounds terrible.”
“Well, either way—don’t let on that you know anything and please act surprised when they bring it up, okay?”
I nodded, more than a little relieved that Niali apparently hadn’t heard me shouting at Liam through the two-way mirror. I desperately hoped he would be able to figure out a way to connect with this realm. If anybody could, it’d be Liam.
Niali took me to a room dominated by a waterfall that dropped from the ceiling and formed a small, steaming pool floating with fragrant blossoms. The water spilled over the stone floor and eventually drained through holes on the other side of the room. A stone bench piled high with thick towels and another large mirror on the far wall were the only furniture in the room.
“What is this?” I asked. “You use this?”
She laughed. “Never let it be said cats don’t like to be clean, but no. This room was also built for guests. It’s warm, right? A hot spring that Akari engineers redirected. You’ll like it. I’ll leave you here and will be waiting down the hall. When you’re done, head down the hall. I’ll find you.”
She left me to shower, and I quickly undressed, bracing myself as I stepped into the flow of water—but I needn’t have worried. The steaming water flowed down in torrents of soothing heat, pure heaven. I felt like I hadn’t showered in weeks, and I would have stayed there all day if I could.
I didn’t want to keep Niali waiting, though. I washed quickly and used the large towels to dry myself. Then there was nothing else I could do to delay the inevitable any longer. I put on Merry’s ridiculous pink dress and checked myself out in the mirror, grimacing.
Well, it would have to do. It was pretty, but it definitely wasn’t my style, making me feel like I was wearing borrowed clothes, which of course I was, but at least it wasn’t indecent. My prison-gear flats weren’t the intended footwear for the gown, but they weren’t terrible, I decided. And they were better than going barefoot.
“Nobody cares what you’re wearing,” I reminded myself.
Still, I was feeling strangely vulnerable as I emerged from the showering room and took a few steps down the hallway, unsure of which direction I should go.
“Nina,” Niali called, and I turned to see her standing at the other end of the hallway, her expression delighted and her smile wide. “Come on, everyone’s here.”
She watched me critically as I moved forward, and I fought the urge to fold my arms tight, protecting myself from her assessment, which was sort of ridiculous. I’d survived a predeath interview in the drawing room of the Hallowells, after all. Dinner with a bunch of cat people couldn’t be worse.
Right?
The dining hall of the Akari was set up with low tables and long, wide benches, allowing guests to sit or fully lounge against the table, depending on their preference. None of the guests wore fur either. All the Akari—and I assumed there were only Akari here—presented as humans. Men and women alike wore long tunic tops in rich colors over narrow-fitting pants and flat-soled shoes or boots.
I felt more awkward than ever in my dress, especially as the murmurs began the moment I breached the doorway. My gaze shot to the front of the room, where a group of people stood and talked, their heads together as they leaned over a table that hadn’t yet been set with food. I noticed that those Akari only wore clothes in hues of gray and silver.
The other tables had food to spare, set up in feasting style, which made my mouth water and my stomach rumble with interest as we passed. Even though I’d eaten recently, I was starving. I placed a hand over my belly, trying to quiet it, then dropped it as Niali chuckled beside me.
“Travel takes a lot out of you,” she said. “There was a time, at the beginning, when we encouraged interaction over the borders between the magical families and our kind. That’s when a lot of the human-related features in our buildings were created, to welcome you and make you feel comfortable. That plan backfired pretty quickly.”
“But how?” I asked. “How could the families have become such a threat?”
She shrugged. “We were fools,” she said simply. “We loved our land, our life, and we didn’t covet anything beyond it. That desire is a human trait, and we underestimated it by a lot. Still, when we were betrayed, we fought. And we killed. We’re good at that, then as now.”
Her words struck me as particularly dark, but there was nothing on the surface that was objectionable about them. This was their land, and they had been betrayed. But that didn’t explain—
“So why do monsters cross over into the human realm, outside of those who were brought there by the Hallowells?” I asked. “I mean, there’ve been stories about monsters for as long as there’ve been people to tell them. That didn’t start with the Hallowells.”
“It didn’t. The portals have always been there, and, well…” She swiveled her head toward me, regarding me with renewed interest, but whatever she was going to say, she decided against it.
“We’ve caught the council’s attention,” she said instead. “So chin up.”
Inwardly I grimaced, but lifted my head as directed. After a lifetime of searching for monsters in the shadows, I had a habit of keeping my gaze down and ahead of me, instead of posturing for the crowd.
But now I had the attention of the dining hall, including the knot of dignitaries at the raised dais in the front of the room. I searched the group quickly, but didn’t see Grim. Disappointment winged through me, but I didn’t ask Niali about him. She’d already begun acting strangely, and I felt out of my depth.
The woman I recognized from our traveling party, Rhiannon, strode forward to the edge of the dais. She looked exactly the same as she had in the forest, her heavy leggings and tunic top of pale silver echoing the white-blonde of her hair and setting off her gleaming eyes. Her high cheekbones and sharply cut jaw added to her fierce appearance, and while she’d been reasonably kind to me when she’d helped me in the forest, now she was all business.
“Welcome,” she said sternly, though I didn’t miss the way her gaze dropped to my pink dress. The faintest smirk creased her mouth.
“We’ll begin. You’re hungry. Join us.”
As speeches went, it was succinct and to the point, and was apparently what the rest of the room expected. The conversation returned to normal levels as I moved with Niali to the front of the room. She peeled off right before I reached the dais, and Rhiannon lifted a hand to me, helping me up onto the platform, which was taller than I expected now that I was right up on it. Still, I managed to climb up without falling down, so, bonus.
Rhiannon gestured to the assembled group, their faces older, their expressions more guarded than those I’d seen in the main area of the dining hall. Their hair was uniformly light blond, some with streaks of silver, and they all studied me with unabashed curiosity.
“You lived,” one of them said, and I focused on her, an older woman with a weathered face that was still unquestionably beautiful. A scar ran down one temple, thick and ridged, splitting the flow of her gray hair on that side of her head. “That was unexpected.”
A murmur of agreement rolled through the group, and I cast about for a response. “You’re not exactly how I expected to be spending my afternoon either, but given the alternative, I’ll take it.”
She nodded, but as she addressed the man beside her, ostensibly to make introductions, a new ripple of interest disrupted the back of the room. We all pivoted as Grim strode in, impossibly large and vital next to his Akari brethren. There was something about him that set him
apart—not just his anger, which only sharpened as he noticed me, but his sense of urgency, his quick and decisive movements. He was an outsider here, Rhiannon had been right. Despite the fact that these were his people, he was accepted, possibly admired, but he wasn’t understood. Not so different from how he must feel at the academy, bonded with a team of three young humans when he was…I had no idea how old. But old.
Something shifted in his face as he glanced over to me, then he refocused on the group on the dais. He crossed the room quickly, ignoring everyone else, and hopped up on the raised platform without breaking stride.
“They’ve reached our borders, but they’re not advancing. The wards hold.” I blinked at the tone of his voice. This wasn’t the twenty-something brute who grunted more than he spoke in complete sentences. This was someone who was used to being listened to and followed. Someone who spoke with authority out of habit, not need.
Just how old was Grim, anyway? And what was his real role with these people?
“The wards will always hold,” the old woman answered him, pride etched in every line of her face.
Grim nodded brusquely. “Which is why we will have to drop them when the time comes.”
My brows shot up, but this pronouncement didn’t surprise the gathered group. A few looked mutinous, still others worried, but nobody countered Grim.
“We have time to prepare,” he continued. “To see what allies rally with us. But the days dwindle, at long last.”
“The firebirds?” another Akari asked, a tall, powerfully built man with blond-and-silver hair.
“Have cemented their role as our allies. They came when we called them,” Grim replied. “They also lost no one in the attack, which is to our favor. And they could sense firsthand the magic the Hallowells are amassing in their human stronghold. That more than anything will convince them to fight.”
“And what of the other clans?” the man asked. “They don’t have that experience.”