by Ardis, Priya
To build a giant gate took about a day. It became a game with me to figure out which cover story they used in which city. Not wanting to admit the pathetic stalking I was doing as Vane traipsed around the world, I only did this on the iPad when I thought no one was looking. I’m pretty sure Matt knew anyway. He would test me by casually asking which city was next on the schedule and then grimace when I replied from memory.
I researched the golden apple frantically.
Something about Vane’s memories nagged at me.
Matt finally admitted defeat in Derbyshire, and we returned to Avalon Prep. He and I often worked in the school library together… Neither one of us wanted to be alone. We worked, but we didn’t talk more than absolutely necessary. I didn’t know what to say to him—I’m sorry I may possibly kill you soon. I’m sorry I slept with your brother. (I wasn’t.)
I’m sorry my brother ditched you after one night. I imagined as his reply. Followed by, I told you so. He didn’t say it, but when I met his gaze, I knew he’d read my thoughts and I knew he agreed with them.
Help also came from other sources. Marilynn took detailed pictures of the Boston Library paintings and whatever other research bits she could from Boston. Grey tried to help, but was called into organizing the gargoyles for the evacuation. Gia got pulled into helping him. The excruciating part for everyone—the governments, gargoyles, and wizards alike—was picking and choosing who would be told about the evacuation and who not. Who would live and who would die.
I researched more. I slept very little.
But mostly I just missed Vane. As I watched the numbers on the countdown clock become smaller and smaller, my uncertainty grew bigger and bigger. The old insecurities crawled back. Was I just another in a long parade of infatuations? As Gia said, had he wanted to bag the sword-bearer? Was it another ploy for control?
Outside, the sun shone with excruciating heat as Kronos’s Fury neared.
Even the nights were hot. The airless atmosphere made everyone restless.
Then there was the constant anxiety at what was coming. Mark, Gia’s ex and one of the wizard candidates Vane recruited to try his hand at pulling the sword, convinced me to resume training. We had no teacher, but it helped keep the crazy in check.
Two weeks passed.
One afternoon, I stumbled on Matt watching a secure web feed.
“You don’t want to see this,” he said.
Of course the declaration made me want to see it more. So far all anyone had told me about the evacuation was “you don’t need to know” and “concentrate on getting better.” I sat down next to him. It didn’t take me long to figure out I should have listened to his warning. A group of world leaders sat around the rectangular table at the UN headquarters. From the limited number of people in the room, I guessed it was another secret session. I asked, “Is the Queen there?”
Matt shook his head. “Not for this.”
A mustached man, who I now recognized as the current president of the Security Council, came into focus. “Merlin, have you confirmed how long the gates will be open?”
Matt cleared his throat. “We will build as many as possible until the last possible moment. Since there is only one apple, we must open all of the gates at once from a central point.”
On the video chat, numerous faces stared back, waiting for a final number.
“Using the Kronos Eye as the model reference and extrapolating for the level of activity, the current data model sets the time at seventy-six seconds. We can last for seventy-six seconds before the Fury overwhelms us.”
Seventy-six seconds to evacuate our whole planet.
Murmuring broke out in the meeting room. Questions started coming at Matt about who made the determination, how it was made. I listened, but got lost at the names of experts being thrown around. I tuned back in when mustache-man steered the meeting along.
“… let us proceed to today’s topic of discussion. We have come down to these proposed criteria. The first is a lottery system. Second, standardized school scores…”
I took a harsh breath, finally understanding why Matt had not wanted to involve me.
They were coming up with a way to pick evacuees. As I listened to them define a system to designate a number rank to sum up a person’s worth, the overwhelming guilt I’d been keeping at bay threatened to choke me. Midway through the arguments my mind rebelled. I stumbled into the nearest bathroom, the nearest toilet, and tossed up the entire contents of my stomach.
I don’t know how long I stayed in there, but by the fading light in the window, I figured it was most of the afternoon. I alternated between rocking back and forth on the floor and hurling offerings to the porcelain gods. Finally, my stomach emptied.
I stayed on the cold floor, too weak to get up. Sometime later, Matt walked inside. Arms went around me. He pulled my back against his chest. The simple touch was all it took to open the floodgates. I turned into his chest and cried. Not the soft kind of weeping, but the kind where I expelled huge amounts of snot and tears until his T-shirt became soaked with fluid. He held me for what seemed like forever. I fell asleep on his shoulder.
I woke up later in my bed. He slept in Gia’s bed a few feet away. Hugging a pillow to myself, I stared at him. His eyes opened and he looked back at me.
“Do you think we can be friends?” I asked.
He stared up at the ceiling. “Probably not, but we can pretend.”
“I don’t want to pretend.” I tilted my head on the pillow. “Why did you tell Vane you wouldn’t let me go?”
“You know why.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. “You have your magic back.” And the curse.
“He’s the wrong one.”
“Maybe I am too.”
He stared up at the ceiling. “Do you know I used to wait for him? After he left, I used to sit in the woods outside and wait for him to come. I made a secret satchel, so we could run away. I waited every day for two years. Then, one day I missed going out. A few months later, I missed two days in a row. Eventually I stopped. He never came.”
“The Lady forced him to leave.”
“I know, but I waited. I thought he could do anything.” His head turned on the white pillow. Shaggy brown hair fell over his eyes as he gave me a tired smile. “When I turned five, I started having dreams. They were horrible dreams. Of what he’d done… what he’d been forced to do. How many he’d killed. I saw them all. Then, he came back and I had the vision of me killing him. I wished he’d never come back.”
It hurt to hear him say it. It made me even madder at the Lady for tearing them apart. “Matt, he loves you—”
“I don’t think so.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. He didn’t think his brother loved him. I wasn’t sure how to convince him.
“It doesn’t matter, Ryan. We’ve got bigger worries.” Matt flipped to his side. “Didn’t I tell you it was going to be complicated to know me?”
“A swoon-worthy line.” I smiled at the memory of our first meeting. “I didn’t realize you were being literal.”
“Neither did I.”
After that, I tried not to think about the evacuation.
After that, things became less awkward with Matt.
Three weeks after Vane left, my mind swam with the details I collected from researching, but a silent hand seemed determined to keep it all in separate boxes, and I couldn’t make the connections I desperately needed. Finally, I ditched the library in defeat and went to work out. I hoped pushing my body to exhaustion might push my mind to flow.
I walked into the converted cathedral to meet Mark and a few other candidates. Past stained-glass windows and white-stone walls on the ground floor, curved archways led up to a turret with a winding staircase. On the second floor, the large gym had gleaming wood floors, intricate wood moldings on its windows, and rustic racks of weapons along the walls. Inside the medieval training room, a very modern gel mat outlined a workout space.
It was hard to b
e in the room. Every single time I stepped in I expected to see Vane, and every single time I didn’t, I felt a little broken. His office lay down below another winding staircase, off the side of the gym. I did sword forms with Mark and four others. Two friends of Blake and two more of Vane’s candidates. Three girls and three guys. Mark and I ended up being the mismatched pair since we pushed ourselves the hardest.
The arrangement had been working fine until Mark whacked me across the stomach with a sword. It wasn’t a practice sword. We were the last ones left. The others had already gone off to dinner. Mark dropped his sword. I sat down hard on the mat.
“Shit, DuLac.” He dropped down beside me and tried to heal the wound. Unfortunately, the cut exacerbated the healing wound and he wasn’t strong enough to combat the widening gash.
“Get Merlin.” I lay down on the mat, holding my stomach. My hands quickly became wet with blood.
Mark ran to his duffel bag. He cursed. “He’s not online.”
“He’s probably in the library.”
Mark hurried off. I closed my eyes.
Around my neck, the Dragon’s Eye heated.
I lay on a beach. Soft blue waves rolled gently into a curved cove. I hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t the same one from the Medusa visions. This one boasted smooth yellow sand. A lush green mountain with a hint of black on its peak served as a backdrop. Rain clouds misted the top, but down on the beach, the sun shone brightly. No threatening clouds hovered in the horizon. Warm blue-green water tickled my toes as I lay just above the surf.
I could have stayed forever.
“Leave you for a bit, DuLac, and you wind up with blood on you.” Vane’s voice washed over me. I blinked. The door between our minds gaped open.
“Nice place for a rest,” he said. The ocean turbulent behind him, he emerged from its furious waves. The mermaid walked on the beach. His hardened torso glistened under the soft rays of the sun. His hair wet and coarse with saline, I wondered if his lips would taste salty too. The wondering made me angrier.
Vane knelt down on the sand beside me. On top of my stomach, my hands curled into fists. Green ringed his pupils. He looked exhausted. I told myself I didn’t care.
I was not happy with him.
He gave me a wistful smile as if he read me, but offered no explanation.
“I’m going to put you to sleep,” he said.
“Not a chance!”
“You’re going to bleed to death if I don’t heal this.”
He’d healed me twice before while I slept. I didn’t know how or what, only that it worked. I had a feeling I didn’t want to know. That was before. Before he left me in pieces for Matt to pull back together.
“So do it.” It couldn’t be worse than what he’d already done to me.
“You don’t want to see this. Trust me—”
“You’re right. I don’t. Trust. You. At all. Because you’re a big egotistical jerk.”
I stared off into the blue sky and waited.
After a few seconds, he growled, “Fine. Be stubborn.”
Green intensified in his eyes. It overtook him. The monster snarled free. A shadow fell over Vane. Against my will, my eyes fell shut. Red eyes, horns curling out of his head, and the face of a bull melded into Vane’s sculpted chest.
The Minotaur sat on the beach. I lay spread out like a bonfire buffet before him. I took in a panicked breath. The monster I helped bring to life would be the end of me.
CHAPTER 19 – FAITH IN WESTMINSTER
CHAPTER 19
FAITH IN WESTMINSTER
“Don’t move,” the bull’s mouth commanded. Its hands pushed aside mine to reveal my stomach. It lowered its mouth. My nails dug into my fists. The agony of the bull tearing through my stomach still sat fresh in my mind.
A thick tongue extended and licked my wound. Saliva coated the gash while the bumpy tongue swept away the blood in slow whorls, much as the warm ocean bit and nipped at my toes. I lay still through it, oddly and completely content.
The monster gave a final lick and started to fade.
“Wait,” I told it.
The bull looked at me curiously. I put a hand up to its cheek. It crooned into my palm and snorted hot breath that tickled my skin.
“I need to ask you something.”
Its red eyes watched me calmly and waited.
“Who am I?” I asked him.
I didn’t think he would answer. He stared off into the volcano. A shadowy figure moved behind us that caught his attention.
“Daughter of the sun and sky. The Preserver,” Vane said in a low, rougher voice. “The one for whom I waited—the one to free me.”
The one to free me. It didn’t sound good. “Hercules defeated your father on Crete. Do you know the story?”
It snorted with displeasure. “Poseidon resurrected me with my memories.”
My heart sped up. “Do you know how many apples Hercules stole from Elysium?”
“My mother said three.”
The shadowy figure stepped onto the beach behind us. It was Matt.
The bull vanished and in its place, Vane sat beside me once again.
Vane gave me a considering look. “You didn’t panic.”
“You did.”
I wasn’t talking about the wound. He knew it.
He glanced at his brother. “Merlin is right. I’m not the one meant for you.”
“I’m not the little princess from your memories, Vane. I don’t need to be protected.”
Taking my hand, he jerked me up into a sitting position. “Then, why do I keep having to rescue you?”
He winked out of sight, leaving me alone.
“Jerk,” I repeated.
I opened my eyes to the bright light of the cathedral. The salty scent of the surf still lingered on my senses.
Matt sat on the floor in Vane’s place. “You talked to the monster.”
Mark hovered behind him. Thoughtful amber eyes flickered over my healed skin. I touched it gingerly. “I’ve always been afraid, but this time… I wasn’t.” I looked at him. “We have to go to London. I figured out how to save Vane.”
“That’s going to be difficult,” Matt said.
“Why?”
“The story just broke. The Queen conferenced me to formulate a response.” Matt held up an iPad. It was stopped in the middle of a news clip labeled ‘Breaking News – End of the World Tomorrow.’ A reporter sat with Dr. Latimer, the physicist who’d written the supernova report for the UN.
He said grimly, “Kronos’s Fury has gone public.”
I wished I could close my eyes and go back to the beach.
***
Later that evening, I stood beside King Henry V’s tomb inside the gothic grandeur of Westminster Abbey. The main hall of the monastery boasted pointed arches, rose windows, gold filigrees. Statues of knights, kings, and memorials to the famous and not-so-famous departed lined the stone floors as well as the walls. Tucked past the main hall, in the tomb, the coronation chair of Edward the Confessor, and all subsequent British monarchs, stood upon a stone pedestal.
The simple wood chair with a high back and plain finials didn’t seem all that grandiose, more befitting the simple stone frame of the monastery than its layers of accrued adornments over the centuries. The chair had a simple seat and small wooden legs. Sometime in the sixteenth century, a base of gold with four gilt lions serving as its legs was attached at the bottom of the chair.
I ran one hand over the stone pedestal and gripped the strap of a bag I’d picked up at school with the other. “This is it, Mark.”
“What are you doing sneaking in here?” a furious voice asked me. “You set off about a million intruder alarms. They have a wireless security system. At least that made it easier.”
I jumped about a foot in the air. I turned to see Vane striding down the silent monastery. Somehow he fit in the cold walls of the church, and yet, he also fit in the ultra-modern black suit he wore. Mark had broken through the security gate
s, but with brute magical force. I hoped it would take care of any other alarms in place. I arched a brow at Mark.
He returned a tight smile. “Vane told me to let him know if you tried anything.”
Great. I recruited a spy.
“Get back to the school and cover for her,” Vane barked at Mark. I’d snuck a van out of the Avalon Prep garage, and convinced Mark to come with me.
Mark jumped to do Vane’s bidding.
“Don’t even think about it.” I glared at Mark. It took several hours to drive back to Somerset from London. “How am I supposed to get back?”
“I’ll take her back,” Vane said.
Mark shrugged. “You needed a wizard, DuLac. Vane’s a better one.”
He is also a bastard.
“I never said otherwise.” The words shot back in my brain.
Mark rushed off without a backward glance, leaving me alone with the one person I didn’t want to be alone with. I muttered, “I need to enlist better help.”
“Merlin’s caretaking skills are abominably lacking,” Vane said with exasperation.
I glanced around. No minions lurked in the shadows. Vane was alone. For once. I scowled at him. “The schedule has you in Paris.”
He inclined his head. “You memorized my schedule?”
I glowered at him.
Stormy green eyes turned smug. “I finished in Paris early. Others are working here.”
“And your usual entourage?”
“Getting ready,” he replied cryptically. He tilted his head. “Why are you here, sword-bearer?”
“You told me to find another way.” I turned back to the Coronation Chair. “Do you remember Glastonbury Abbey? During Arthur’s time, it was considered one of the wealthiest and most well-endowed churches in the country. Said to supposedly house the tombs of Arthur and Guinevere.”