by Rye Brewer
It was with this in mind that I took Jonah by the arm and pulled him aside, behind one of the walls of the roof entrance. “I know you’re still angry with Fane over Sirene and the baby. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” he agreed.
“Just keep this in mind: I’m a half-breed, too, and I know what it’s like to grow up being shunned for who I am when, really, it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t choose my parentage any more than this baby could.” I pulled him close, staring up into his eyes like I could will him into understanding. “And this baby is still your sibling.”
“Half-sibling,” he corrected.
“Just like Sara is my half-sibling, but I don’t love her any less. And that never stopped me from trying to do the right thing by her, because she’s my blood and I love her. You have to do the right thing. I know you have it in you.” I placed a hand over his chest. “You have it in here. Please, don’t let your feelings about what Fane did color the way you think about the baby. It’s not his or her fault. And it’ll need a big brother like you to protect them.”
I looked for some spark of understanding in his eyes, but they were guarded. He insisted on holding back his feelings. I wished I could convince him to make it easier on himself—but I couldn’t make him do anything any more than he could make me.
“I love you,” I whispered.
It was the only complete truth I knew. He was impossible and still unpredictable, but I loved him.
He sighed as he took my face in his hands. “I love you, too.”
When we kissed, I could almost pretend it was just the two of us up there on that roof, without his father and brother waiting on me so we could begin the next journey.
32
Allonic
I withdrew into the shadows, careful to keep my eyes on the four of them. None of them had seen me or even sensed me hovering nearby, listening in as they made their plans. I had only hoped to find Anissa there. I hadn’t expected additional company. I should’ve known better, on second thought. She was rarely alone.
No matter. I had work to do, and fast. If Jonah wanted a new enchantment placed on the building serving as League headquarters, there was no time to waste. I needed to get there and get my work done while I still could, before there was any way to track what I planned to do—or, worse, stop me.
Another portal, and within moments I went from standing on the rooftop overlooking Manhattan to standing in front of the cathedral. There was a definitely change to the energy surrounding the place, and it had to do with Lucian’s absence and the disintegration of the enchantment. Jonah was right to be concerned, and I hoped for his sake that a fresh enchantment could be placed, and soon. There was too much at stake to be left to chance.
Even so, I hoped it took just a little more time before that happened. I couldn’t afford to leave anything to chance, either, and I had already made arrangements. It was merely a matter of seeing my hastily constructed plan through to fruition.
Another helpful aspect of the turmoil left in the wake of Lucian’s death was the lack of security. Was everyone that shaken up? I supposed so. Lucian had been in power for decades, and had probably ruled with an iron fist. Without his orders, the guards had no idea who was supposed to be on duty—and they were too stupid to take responsibility for themselves. Jonah, meanwhile, had too many pressing concerns to be as involved as he could’ve been. This all worked in my favor as I walked in through the main entrance with no problem.
The air was still, the place silent. Even my soft footfalls against the stone floor echoed slightly, rising up through the air and bouncing off the columns which supported the arched ceiling, many feet above my head. So far up, I couldn’t see it as I took another look around me to be sure I was alone. And I was.
Finding the dungeon wasn’t a challenge. I followed the sounds of pacing feet far below the cathedral’s main level, where services once took place. Those people, settlers in the area when it was nothing but unclaimed woodland, were long since gone. I wondered what they would think about what came of their magnificent monument.
Who was pacing in the cells? Genevieve, most likely. Or Marcus. Both of them wondering what had gone wrong, how they had found themselves locked away. If they possessed even a shred of self-awareness, they had to know this sort of situation was nothing less than what they deserved. If anything, they deserved much worse for the many crimes they’d committed.
I wasn’t interested in them. I wanted the third member of their party. He sat cross-legged on the floor, staring straight ahead at the bars, when I approached. His blank expression didn’t change when I came into view and stood before him. If his eyes were closed, I would’ve guessed he was sleeping.
He had done it—or, rather, the being inside him had done it. Valerius. I didn’t know whether to condemn or congratulate him for it. No one could argue the fact that Lucian needed to die before he caused any further irreparable damage. But that wasn’t enough to make me forget the business between Valerius and myself, business he was unaware of. At least, I believed he was unaware of what I intended to do.
Before he had the chance to say a word, to raise the attention of anyone else, I sent a spiritwalker into him. His already blank expression went slack as he lost control of his body. At my command, he stood and walked across the cell until he stood in front of me.
I looked around—it took no time for me to find that I’d hoped would be out in the open. The keys to the cells, strung on a rusted ring, hanging from the wall. Yes, security had suffered in Lucian’s absence. I took the ring from the wall and tested each key in turn until I found the one which opened the door.
“Help!” A sharp desperate whisper from another cell. A female voice. Genevieve.
I couldn’t help but remember the way she’d freed me—but her intentions had been far from pure. She’d only wanted to use me. I owed her nothing.
Instead of giving her the assistance she begged for, I led Vance’s body from the cell and left him standing in the corridor while I bundled up a few blankets in the rough shape of a body and left them on the bunk. It would, I hoped, buy me a little time before anyone noticed he was missing. I closed and locked the cell before leaving the keys where I’d found them, too. Nothing could look visibly out of place.
Vance’s body waited for me, still under my control. I led him up the stairs. I couldn’t portal until we got outside and knew it would be risky, walking him through the cathedral as I was, but we may as well have been the only two living beings in existence as we made our way through the great hall and out the tall double doors.
There was only one more thing to take care of before we left the area. His vampire aura would have to be hidden if I had any hope of transporting him through ShadesRealm undetected. It was nothing for me to place a ward on him, blocking his aura—even so, getting him into seclusion as soon as possible was a priority. I could only extend my abilities so far before suffering a breakdown, as I did during the League meeting.
A portal took us from the grounds surrounding the cathedral into ShadesRealm. Though there was little solace for me there, it was still the closest thing to home I’d ever known, and my soul felt a sense of calm on entering. Even so, there was no time to relax and enjoy the peace.
I took his arm and coursed to the tower where my mother had spent so many years. There wasn’t much time. I had to get him there before any of my brethren saw us.
He put up no fight, of course, though I felt Valerius fighting against the spiritwalker. His spirit was strong, powerful—even so, it was a waste of effort.
We reached the tower, coursing up to the little room Tabitha had made her own, and only when the door was closed behind us did I feel a remote sense of satisfaction. I had already come this far. Only a little farther to go.
The cell was as I had left it before portaling to the high-rise. If Valerius was surprised to see it, there was no way of knowing.
I wondered what my mother would think if she knew I’d put a silver-lined cell
into her former home? And if she knew what I intended to do with it?
For one, brief moment, I questioned myself. Had I gone too far? Keeping Valerius—or, Vance—shackled inside a cell?
It was the only way I could be sure to keep him safely locked up until I came into possession of Valerius’s body. There was no other way.
And at least at ShadesRealm, no one could start randomly looking for him here.
All that was left was convincing Philippa to release the body she’d been guarding. The real Valerius. His body. I needed him in order to place his soul back into his own body before…
Before taking his power.
Reminding myself of the ultimate goal braced me. I was taking the correct action. I would take my place where I belonged, with the help of Valerius’s power.
It was with this in mind that I shackled Vance’s body inside the cell, knowing the silver in the bars would prevent him from escaping. He looked as slack-faced as expected, only aware in his mind. I wondered briefly if Valerius understood what was happening to him, what was really happening, before I turned my back on him.
The most dangerous part of my mission was done. I could breathe freely with that out of the way.
What next? My thoughts immediately went to Avellane, and Felicity. She had been in the back of my mind ever since we’d parted ways.
Was this what it was like to fall in love? Being unable to get a person out of one’s thoughts even when there were much more pressing issues at hand? If so, how did anyone get anything accomplished?
I set off for the portal which led from the human world to Avellane. There had to be a way for me to get in to see her, or to bring her out to see me.
I couldn’t rest until I was with her again.
33
Sara
“If you’re absolutely certain about this, I can introduce you to a powerful elemental witch.” Stark’s eyes searched my face, as though he were looking for some clue as to how serious I was. “She’s perhaps the most powerful one in existence.”
A thrill ran through me at the thought of meeting someone with that sort of power—and learning to develop my own powers with their help. “I’ve already told you how sincere I am about this.”
“I know—but you may decide at some point that you’ve made a mistake, or you’ve gone too far. There’s no going back once you get started. I need you to understand this. A witch of this much power won’t take lightly the impression that her time has been wasted in training someone who isn’t fully committed.”
I tilted my head to one side, studying him. “Is your opinion of me really so low? Do you think I would change my mind on a whim?”
He shook his head, but smiled wryly. “Doesn’t this seem like sort of a whim to you? One moment, you told me you wanted to abandon your power and go back to being nothing more than a vampire. Now, you want to not only develop your power, but you want to be as strong as possible. Do you really blame me for my hesitation?”
He had me there. “I suppose not. You just have to believe me. I mean this with all my heart.”
“All right.” He said it with all the conviction of a man on his way to the gallows. “I’ll take you to Elewyn, then.”
Even her name carried an air of mystery and magic. Much more so than plain Sara, at any rate. “Who is she? And where?”
“One thing at a time,” he reminded me, and now he sounded like a parent attempting to calm an excited child.
“I met her when I was imprisoned on Shadowsbane Island. Her brother, Elazar, is imprisoned there. A necromancer with, I’d guess, another hundred years on his sentence.”
“What did he do?”
“Practiced dark magic, involving the summoning of souls and their transference to other bodies. Or something of that nature. Very nasty stuff, that. As his sister, she lives on the island to be near him. We’ll find her there.” I couldn’t imagine having that level of kinship with a creature as dark as Elazar sounded, enough to warrant living on a prison island just to be close to them. Then again, Anissa had done untold numbers of things on my behalf when I was imprisoned for breaking our laws.
“You’ll be there with me? You won’t leave me?” It was suddenly of the utmost importance that he be by my side.
“You’re not afraid, are you?” he asked, and there was a slightly teasing quality in his voice.
I didn’t take the bait. “I’m only afraid of losing you somehow. I can’t leave you behind. If that’s the price for learning from Elewyn, I’m not sure I can pay it.”
Stark’s eyes softened just before he took me in his arms, and I allowed myself to sink into his embrace even though my heart was heavy.
I hadn’t lied when I said I couldn’t leave him—but I couldn’t tell him how determined I was to dismantle his little group of murderous humans, either. That hidden truth would always be between us, no matter how close we were.
“When can we go?” I asked, my head nuzzled against his shoulder.
“You’re in a hurry.”
“I am,” I said, pulling back just enough to look into his eyes. He needed to see how determined I was. “This is important to me. I don’t see any reason to wait. Do you?”
“Not if you’re in a hurry, no.” He sounded almost resigned. “I suppose we can leave from here and I could go back to Hallowthorn Landing to pick up your things once I know you’re settled at Shadowsbane.”
“Great. Let’s go.” Having a goal in mind energized me. There was a purpose to my powers. They weren’t a curse. They weren’t something to be ashamed of. They would bring an end to something terrible. I only wished I had known much sooner about the Starkers. I might have embraced my powers then, rather than spending so much time trying to suppress them.
Stark created a portal of swirling light, all red and purple, and took my hand before leading me through. I was still not quite used to traveling that way, though it wasn’t nearly as scary an experience as I’d had the first time. I knew what to expect.
Though there was no anticipating what I saw when we first stepped through and I had my first look at Shadowsbane Island.
It was like something out of a nightmare—I even wondered vaguely, somewhere in the back of my mind, if this was the place where bad dreams were born. Hallowthorn Landing had frightened me when we first arrived. What I saw that first day was nothing compared to the prison island.
“People live here?” I called out over the ear-splitting crashing of the waves against jagged rocks which stretched along the coastline as far as the eye could see. They seemed to form a barrier between the island and the sea.
Stark nodded, pointing to the cottages which peppered the island. They were quite plain, with none being larger than what I guessed could house a family of four—even then, they would be cramped. In the daylight, without the wind and crashing waves, the little homes might have seemed charming with their thatched roofs and latticed windows which called back to a time long since passed. As lightning split the clouds and touched the surface of the churning water, however, the tiny houses looked sad and desolate, uninviting even in the face of a storm.
“It must be nicer when the weather’s better,” I reasoned, tucking my hair behind my ears when the wind whipped it up in a cloud around my head. That was a waste of time, since the wind only picked it right back up again.
“It’s never better,” he replied with a grim look.
I should’ve known.
“Come on. Elewyn’s this way.”
We started toward the little village, if that was what it was. I let him lead the way while my eyes kept shifting up toward the castle sitting on the island’s far end, high above where we currently battled our way through the wind, perched on top of a mountain. For a moment, just the blink of an eye, I was sure it would tumble over and be swallowed up in the waves. Its stone walls seemed to climb up to the sky, turret after turret almost overlapping one another.
A tall, thick stone wall ran around the outside, one I could imagine soldiers p
atrolling along the top of, looking out for threats from below. There was a winding road which wound its way up from the village, over a narrow shelf of solid rock, then through an iron gate in that wall. I could visualize the castle once being the center of all activity on the island, and the villagers living around it, paying rents and celebrating whenever the bells rang out with good news.
The bells wouldn’t ring with good news then, would they? No, there wouldn’t be good news on an island such as that. I shivered, rubbing my arms as I followed Stark. Once we reached the outlying buildings, the force of the wind died down as we were no longer unprotected against it. There were candles burning in a few of the cottages, making me wonder who lived there—and who they were waiting for inside the prison.
“How did we manage to portal straight onto the island?” I asked the back of Stark’s head. “Aren’t there any enchantments to prevent people from jumping on or off?”
“You mean, to keep them from escaping?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Yes, but not the way you think. It’s the cells which are enchanted, and the enchantments wear off as the sentence comes to a close. They prevent the prisoners from leaving, prevent visitors from entering prisoners’ cells. They even prevent the passing through of any items a prisoner didn’t bring with them on their sentencing—and they’re not allowed to bring much, believe me.” He shuddered at the memory.
I could hardly imagine him living in that castle. It was probably cold and damp, dreary, sad. How could anybody leave and live even a semblance of a normal life?
“The family, friends, loved ones—whatever you want to call them—are allowed to live in these cottages for as long as they want,” he explained.
The sidewalk, or what there was of it, widened and allowed us to walk side-by-side. I was able to catch a glimpse of his brooding expression. He didn’t enjoy being there. I could hardly blame him. But he’d promised to stay with me, which meant I couldn’t be the only one who felt the way I did.