There.
Even with the alterations, there was no mistaking her aura. Julian began to chant, using the words to direct his will, summoning her to this place of merging.
Resistance. She didn’t want to come. And the resistance built; the Unseelie were trying to hold her where she was. But they weren’t prepared for this, and the glade where the two worlds met was as native to her as it was to Julian. It called to her with a power she could not resist.
Julian opened his eyes and found her standing barely twenty feet from him.
Even though he was prepared for it, the sight of her twisted his stomach into a knot. It was Kim, but not: familiar features cast in an inhuman mold, familiar expressions distorted with cruelty and disdain. But the focus he’d given her hung around her neck, crystal wrapped in silver. He had to believe that, like the pendant, the Kim he knew was still there, somewhere. Could still be saved.
While he was distracted, she struck.
A lance of pure magical force, driving straight toward him. But Julian had been shielded before this ever began, and Grayson’s training served him well. When he spun the blow off, it shattered against a shield now covering the four of the inner ring. A similar barrier glowed around the outer circle. The Guardians were doing their job—leaving him to do his.
But before he could help Kim, he had to fight. She flung a second blow at him, a third. He parried them and cursed himself. Stupid, stupid. He’d worried about the Unseelie following Kim here, but he hadn’t stopped to consider the danger she represented. She was one of them. He was the enemy. Of course she would attack.
Kim threatened him with fire, superheating the air around him. He diverted the energy skyward, but not easily, though pyrokinesis had once been a weakness of hers. Levinbolts slammed into his shields, one after another, as fast as he could sink their force into the ground. Untutored, but strong, and she maintained her own shields with raw power against his attacks.
Julian bored away at her protections, seeking weakness. He had to work quickly; he didn’t know how long the meld could be maintained. But they hadn’t been able to guess in advance what he’d find, much less what he could do about it, and Kim wasn’t giving him a chance to study anything. He had to get inside her defenses.
Gathering his strength, he struck out with a massive blow that sent her reeling for just a moment.
In that heartbeat of vulnerability, he reached through and seized hold of her spirit.
But in his lunge to do so, he left himself open, and even as his psychic grip closed on her he felt hers do the same. Their two minds struggled in a deadlock, each trying to wrestle the other into submission.
Kim. Listen to me. Hear my voice.
There was no sign that she heard, nothing in her expression except cold, unblinking determination.
This isn’t you. They’ve bound you against your will. You can break free; you’re human, not sidhe. Break it. Come back to us. Come back to me.
No reaction. She merely tightened her grip. This pain was familiar: the Unseelie had tried the same thing, hoping to warp him to their pattern. But they had failed, and she would, too. All she could do was hurt him. So long as he accepted the pain, and didn’t let it distract him, he was free to work on her.
His mind slid over the shields within hers, sensing the changes, seeking their cause. It had to be there, somewhere. But he found nothing before Kim realized the futility of her efforts and shifted her energy to something new.
Julian screamed as she drove a wedge at his mind. It struck at the boundary between his sidhe-born gifts and his human self, trying to sunder them. He had never not been a wilder, had never known what it was to be without that Otherworldly touch. Now Kim’s attack threatened to alienate him from himself, splintering his sanity, making his own gifts foreign and uncontrollable—like the men and women who had gone mad during First Manifestation. Julian fought to stop her, but the sharp edge of her attack pierced his defenses as quickly as he built them up, and he could not both protect himself and work against her for long.
Forcing down his own growing panic, Julian hardened his focus to a diamond edge. He dragged vainly at Kim’s mind, striving to bring her back to herself, but there was no net for her to slip free of, no binding he could cut. It had to be there somewhere, but he couldn’t feel it, and couldn’t affect it. There was nothing he could attack. And while he searched, her own strikes came closer and closer to destroying him.
Julian pulled back at the last instant before she broke through, and only his will kept despair at bay. He couldn’t do it. He’d thought he could—had insisted it would be possible—but there was nothing for him to work on. Kim couldn’t be brought back.
He had to free her another way.
Now that he’d loosed his grip, the battle was more even. He struck once more with a blow that shifted her back a step. In that pause, a telekinetic flick sent the lid spinning off the box at his feet, and as Julian stretched out his hand, his sorcerer’s sword rose up to meet it.
She saw it and snarled. Julian caught a glint of metal, and realized she had her athame. He crushed the urge to swear and instead lashed out.
Power flowed through him and down the slender blade, arcing across the circle to strike at Kim. She parted it with her athame, but staggered. No one had trained her for this. He struck again and again, with hammer-blows intended to shatter her shields and lay her bare. She fought back with raw, animal strength, and the deflected energy cracked the air, slammed into the shields of the two circles, ripped apart the snow and soil beneath them.
Julian drove everything from his mind. He could not afford to feel. Kim, the Kim who had existed before they took her, would choose death over enslavement in Unseelie hands.
For her sake—for the sake of who she’d been, and what she’d meant to him—he had to give her that mercy.
Sparks showered down as they threw lethal blows with reckless abandon. Julian drew on the reservoir of power he’d built, heedless of the dangers of backlash. He had to do this. He had to.
He couldn’t.
They were too closely matched. He had the training, but the crisis that made her a wilder had taken her closer to the Otherworld. She was stronger than he was. And she had a purity of purpose he lacked, untroubled by any desire to save him.
But there was another way. Julian took a step forward, then another, praying to the gods that she was too focused on their magical duel to retreat. He’d never been taught to use the sword in his hands as a physical weapon, but it didn’t take training to know that if struck in the heart or throat she would die.
He just had to get close enough.
Another step, and then another. She was almost within reach. One final step—and he was there. Julian looked directly into her Unseelie eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and struck.
Or tried to.
His arms jerked, but would not follow through. Paralyzed, he stood wide open, and she snarled triumphantly and lashed out with a blow that shattered the sword.
Shards of metal scored them both. Julian leapt backward, clutching his shoulder where her athame had cut him. The wound burned agonizingly; she’d backed the strike with malevolent power. Blood trickled down his chest.
He had no chance to recover. With a grin of avid, unholy anticipation, Kim attacked again and again, driving him back one staggering step after another. Julian’s outermost shield shattered, and he knew he had lost. He’d failed to save her, he’d failed to free her, and now she had him on the run. It wouldn’t be long before the last of his shields failed. Then he’d be at her nonexistent mercy.
Only one possibility remained. He couldn’t get an attack through her shields, but if he could lure her in closely enough, he could take her down with him.
Wilders had died that way before.
He still struggled, reflexively, because he’d been trained from childhood to fight, and even at this extremity he couldn’t give up; but he was losing the battle and he knew it. K
im slammed through the last of his defenses.
Pain. Pain beyond anything he’d ever imagined. It drove him to his knees in the snow. She tore through his mind like a serrated knife, like acid, leaving him bleeding wherever she touched. Julian threw his head back and screamed in agony, and in despair. He’d failed. He could only hope to take Kim down with him. And he wept with grief and blind fury at the Unseelie, who had brought it to this, that because he loved Kim he had to kill her.
Another scream overlaid his own, and then it all came to a wrenching halt.
~
Snow. Snow in front of his eyes.
Julian tried to focus. He was on his hands and knees in the snow, and his fingers ached with the cold, but distantly, as though his spirit wasn’t quite anchored to his flesh. His gloves were gone, burned off. He remembered that dimly. His entire body was a throbbing mass of pain that paled in comparison to the agony in his mind.
But he was alive.
The world wavered dangerously. By the last dregs of his will, Julian brought his head up.
Her dark hair fanned across the snow around her head. Kim lay face-down on the ground, not moving, scant feet from where Julian struggled to hold on to consciousness. The world shuddered again, and he knew the circles were losing their hold, that the glade was on the verge of sliding apart once more. He mustered just enough strength to throw one arm out and seize hold of Kim’s wrist before it all dissolved.
Chapter Fourteen
The face in the mirror was no longer mine.
It was still mostly the same. The line of my jaw wasn’t identifiably different, nor were my cheekbones, or my nose. A difference marked them, though, the same subtle cast that identified wilders on sight—subtle, yet enough to render me almost unrecognizable. And my eyes, my eyes … they would never be the same.
A soft step sounded at the bathroom door, and Julian appeared in the mirror. I closed my eyes to block out sight of the sling on his left arm. I’d already seen the bandages, extending from his shoulder across his chest, and the burned slashes streaking his abdomen. Wounds inflicted on him by my hand and my magic. And those were just the visible ones.
Just as my golden eyes were merely the outward sign of what had been done to me.
He put one hand on my wrist. My skin no longer tingled at the contact; Julian’s touch was as neutral to me as my own. Gods only knew what my Krauss rating had become.
Death, and the Knight of Swords. Just as the cards had warned me, back when none of this was more than a stormcloud on the horizon. I’d become a different person, all right. I’d become a wilder.
Julian pulled me gently away from the mirror and took me out into the common room. Everything lay where I’d left it before the masquerade, textbooks and cups and dirty socks. An oasis of normality, false and mocking. Wolfstone was empty, the students evacuated. So was the rest of campus. The only ones left were Guardians, soldiers, and those of us bound in connection to the Otherworld.
I let him settle me on the couch. With all the reinforcements on our shielding, this room was as safe a place as any; even the doctor had come to me here. Not that he could do anything for me anyway. No one could. My remaining wounds, I’d have to learn to live with.
Like the one between me and Julian.
He tried not to show it, but I saw the hesitation, the brief internal struggle before he touched me or looked at me. And he knew it. “I won’t lie to you, Kim,” Julian said softly. “This is hard for me, too. I … I can’t look at you, and not think about what happened. What you did—what both of us did.”
Salt on raw wounds. I cringed into myself.
“But I’ll get over it,” he said, with more strength. “Not that it’s comparable, but—Kim, I know you used to look at me and see a wilder, just like everybody else does. What made you different was that you kept looking, made yourself get past that and see me. The least I can do is return the favor. You didn’t join the Unseelie by choice; I know that. And you’re free of them now.”
Free—except in my memories.
Julian waited for my answer. When it didn’t come, he said, “We just need to figure out what happened. What released you.”
I shrugged, still hunched in. “You’re the one who did it. You tell me.”
“I don’t know what I did. I wasn’t consciously doing anything at that point; I’d given up. I need to know your side of it.”
In a heartbeat, I was suddenly several feet from the couch. I didn’t even remember rising. “No, you don’t.”
Julian stared at me, surprised and confused. He reached out, and instinctively I backed up a step. The hurt in his expression cut at still-bleeding wounds and I turned away, hugging my arms around myself, to escape the sight.
“Kim, we have to know. Grayson thinks—I think it might be the answer. Some kind of defense against them, that would help us win our battles in the future. It’s what we’ve been searching for, all this time.”
I wanted to block my ears, to spare myself the sound of his words. “Find out some other way. You’re smart; you can figure it out without my help.”
Silence. Then a soft creak as he rose, but he didn’t come toward me.
“All right,” he said, and there was no censure in his voice. “I understand.”
He didn’t, not really. He couldn’t understand, because to do so he would have to experience what I had, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But I took his words for what they were—acceptance of my reluctance to speak—and I was grateful.
Julian left then, and I was alone in the room. I leaned against the window’s edge and sighed. Half of me was glad Julian was gone, with his pain and love and expectations, but half of me wanted him back. When I was alone, my thoughts were free to come out and dance.
The Arboretum was a dark smudge in the snow. I couldn’t see the riverbank from here, the new damage I’d inflicted on it. I could visualize it, though, all too well. That was the most terrible cruelty of all. The gods should have been kind enough to erase my memories of that time along with the binding that made me that way—but no such mercy. I remembered it all in perfect detail, from the moment the false Falcon led me astray to the blazing agony that ended the fight.
Pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes, I fought the memory down.
I didn’t want to remember. If I could, I would’ve blocked it all, wiped my memory clean. But I had tried that already, and failed. Instead I was left with crystal-clear recollections, and a desire for the courage to slit my wrists.
At least I was still sane enough to know that wasn’t a good idea.
~
There were guards on my room, of course. I was the biggest security risk in the United States, probably even above Julian. Almost no one got in to see me. Maybe I could have had more visitors if I wanted them, but I didn’t; the ones I had were too much. Grayson, on behalf of various officials. Julian—I couldn’t make myself say no to him. People to bring me food and take it away half-eaten, and a doctor to make sure I was continuing to recover from the backlash that had laid me out for days.
Not my mother, or my father. They never both came at once; they were taking turns flying up here, each of them called away repeatedly to deal with crises outside. The news had broken, and consequences were unfolding as expected. That was all I knew, and all I wanted to know. I couldn’t deal with the world right now. I couldn’t even deal with my family.
My mother’s only surviving child had become a wilder. I didn’t want to know what she thought of that.
But I couldn’t hide forever. I didn’t even expect to hide until the solstice. Sooner or later someone would break into my self-imposed isolation, whether I wanted them to or not.
I just didn’t expect it to be Liesel.
She stalked into the room and shut the door behind her, then stood staring for a long, wordless moment, hands on her hips. When she finally spoke, she sounded more like Robert than herself. “All right. Time to get off your ass.”
It jarred me out
of my half-numb state. “What?”
“I thought they were keeping me away from you for security reasons, but apparently it’s just so you can enjoy your pity party alone. Well, enough of that. I’m not going to tell you the pity’s misplaced; you’ve been through hell, Kim, and it isn’t over. Even if the sidhe leave you alone after this, the rest of the world won’t. But you know what?” She shook her head impatiently. “I don’t care about that. You could turn into a hermit if that would make you happy, and I’d cheer you on, except for one thing: you’re hurting Julian.”
Her diatribe had frozen me in place. When she stopped, I turned away, sheltering myself as I’d done a thousand times since waking up. “I already have hurt him. Worse than I ever wanted to. Staying away from him is the best thing I can do for either of us right now.”
I didn’t hear her approach. Her hand came out of nowhere to grab my shoulder and yank me around to face her. “Sure—be the first person he’s opened up to in his entire life, then cut yourself off from him. That’s a good plan.” She rolled her eyes, disbelieving. “Kim, that would be stupid enough even if this was just about your trauma. But there’s a bigger picture, and you didn’t use to be the kind of person who ignored it. Julian still isn’t. He’s trying to face it without the one person he thought he could trust to be at his side.”
The last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of Liesel. I pulled back, but I was running out of room to retreat. “I know I betrayed him—”
“By getting turned Unseelie?” Liesel shook her head in frustrated disgust. “Kim, you’re doing it right now. By letting that drive the two of you apart. Do whatever penance you like for trying to murder him—gods know he’s beating himself up for doing the same to you—but stand with him! We all need you two, because you’re the only ones who can put this puzzle together. And he can’t do it without you.”
The word “murder” had driven me the last remaining distance, until I stood in the corner between my desk and the wall. The only other place to go was out the window. Unwilling to commit that final indignity, I dropped my head, and found myself looking at something I’d been trying to avoid seeing since I first woke up in my room, days ago.
Lies and Prophecy Page 29