by Rene Sears
It doesn't matter, I told us both. Let's get you where you should be and we can all go home. I wasn't sure where I meant when I said home. Morgan's house? Strangehold? Whatever was home for her. It gave me a weird feeling to think that I didn't have a home anymore, regardless of what Teo said. Reassurance flooded me, like someone holding my hand, though her body was still on the ground and mine was standing several feet away.
We bent toward the tangle of our magic and pulled. Loss and relief both filled me as I put us both where belonged. I thought—I hoped—that both of us were back with nothing lingering of the other.
You did well, the dragon said when only I remained. I'm going to release you now, except for what I am keeping, as we agreed.
As we agreed, I echoed.
It withdrew from me and I hastily pulled my spellsight in before I blinded myself as the energy around me regained its full power. I had been working with that? The realization of how I might have crushed myself, and Igraine and Iliesa and Rowan as well, sent a shudder down my back. I was suddenly utterly exhausted. My shoulders ached, and my legs were actually wobbling.
We will speak again, the dragon promised, and pulled the last of its energy free. I sank hastily to my knees so I wouldn't fall.
No—it wasn't entirely gone. It had left a knot of magic over my heart. What had it taken from me?
I let myself slump to the ground and rolled over on the thick moss, hard bark pressing into my back, and stared up into the silvery sky and the tree vanishing in the distance. There was no sign of the dragon, but I knew it was out there, flying around with a piece of me. I wondered what I had done, and how terrible an idea it was.
"Javier?"
Igraine's face filled my field of vision, blocking out the infinity of the tree. She looked drawn, as if the vines of the source had sucked more out of her than her magic. "Are you okay?"
"Are you?"
She shrugged, and I nodded. I rolled to the side and began the process of getting to my feet with a stop on the way to drink from my water bottle. I was thirsty, and my chest throbbed where the alien magic was burrowing in. I was tired from handling magic that could incinerate me, but I didn't hurt the way I had after touching the magic at Strangehold. I had the dragon to thank for that. I owed it much more than it seemed to have taken.
I looked around and took in the state of our party. I was not the only one suffering the effects of the magic we'd done here. Rowan and Morgan were leaning heavily on each other and Igraine and Iliesa were gingerly helping each other stand. I didn't have a mirror, but everyone else looked like shit and there was no reason to think I'd be an exception. Hawthorn was the only one who looked all right, and combined with her ethereal fae beauty it made me kind of hate her a little.
The tree towered above us. The thought of climbing all the way back up the stairs to Strangehold was exhausting.
Hawthorn saw me looking. "We don't have to walk quite all the way. There's another shortcut, if I can remember where it is," she said. "I'll take a look around while you rest."
Igraine shot me a furtive look. The place in my chest pulsed and I had a sudden flash of imagery—of a dark stairway I'd never seen before. Igraine pushed herself to her feet and wavered. "Hawthorn. I'll help you look."
Hawthorn narrowed her eyes, but she only held out an arm to Igraine, and the two of them walked off while the rest of us tried to recover. Morgan and Rowan were speaking to each other very softly, but I was too tired to listen. Iliesa and I just lay there until a horrible thought occurred to me and I sat up.
"How did those vine things get attached to you anyway?" I looked around. What if they had been sneaking up on me while I lay there?
"The gate that sent us here was—weird. Wrong." Iliesa frowned, lines pulling at the corners of her mouth. She shot me a look, her frown changing slightly, and I wondered if she was getting those weird flashes of imagery, of understanding, like I was of them. "I don't know why it brought us here, but it dumped us right on the roots and then it snapped closed. When it did, a burst of energy arced from where the gate had been and hit the tree. Those vine things snaked out of it and caught us like you saw. We tried to fight it but...you know what it feels like to touch the energy here. They just grabbed us faster after that." I shuddered, and she shot me a wry smile. "I think as long as we don't do anything it might interpret as an attack, it should leave us alone."
I lay back gingerly, trying to think non-aggressive thoughts.
Hawthorn and Igraine returned with the news that there was another way up. We walked slowly, Igraine and Iliesa leaning on each other, Morgan and Rowan holding each other up. I refused Hawthorn's offer to help out of some perverse pride, and she walked beside me with her hands slightly apart like she might have to have to catch me at any moment.
There was more water—a little pool caught in a knot in one of the roots, with a narrow, shadowy stairway leading up to it. I looked thoughtfully at Igraine's back. She and Iliesa walked up to it unhesitatingly and stepped in, vanishing as the water hit their knees. Rowan and Morgan followed, and then it was our turn. Close up, the center of the pool gleamed with the oil-slick of color I remembered from the way down. At least this time there was light. Tiny pink and yellow flowers picked out a hollow at the edge of the water in the shape of a footprint. Someone, some time, had made this.
"I owe you a debt," Hawthorn said abruptly. I looked at her questioningly. "For what you did for my friends. For saving them, for bringing them back. I know you just met them."
My face felt hot, and I wanted to look down, but I met her gaze. "Anyone would have done it."
She shook her head, smiling. "No. But you did. If you have need of anything from me, from Strangehold, you have only to ask. You will always have friends here."
The thought warmed me. "Thanks," I told her. "I really appreciate it."
She nodded and held out her hand. I took it, and we stepped through.
The dizzying flux of magic was way too strong in my current state. I was lashed by silver strands of energy too powerful to touch, and my ears buzzed with faint voices speaking no language I knew. But then it was over, and we stepped out of a shadow in the trunk onto a path next to a broad branch, where our friends were waiting.
Like the root, the branch seemed to stretch out into infinity, and I had to look away before dizziness knocked me over. A faint thread of alien amusement insinuated itself into my head, like an overheard chuckle, and then was gone. Hawthorn pulled me closer to the trunk, and I leaned against it gratefully.
"We didn't pass any branches on our way down," Morgan said.
"No." Hawthorn looked at the branch, then thoughtfully, only for a fraction of a second, at Igraine. "We are above Strangehold," she announced, "but not, I think, very far."
After that it was just walking, but it wasn't long before the path became stairs, and after a long turn around the trunk, Strangehold came into view below us.
The sense of homecoming surprised me. I held it close, a small, warm, satisfying flame.
*
I stood in the shower for a long time, letting the hot water wash away what it could. It couldn't wash away the point of strangeness in my body—the alien presence in my chest. The exchange with the dragon should have marked me in some way, but the skin over the place where it rested was smooth and unblemished. And then there was the less-alien but still strange presence of the twins.
I had picked us all apart as best I could, but what if I left part of me in them, and part of them in me? Would the flashes of memory fade, or were we connected now by more than the bond of shared experience? There was so much I didn't know. I wish I could have asked my parents. Grief tugged at me, for once uncomplicated by concern over whether I was doing what they would have in my place—or concern that I was tainted by my father's actions, or what my mother would have wanted with regard to her family. It didn't matter. I just missed them.
As I was getting dressed something beeped at me from the bedside table. I'd left the phone that Teo ga
ve me there when we had gone to the root of the tree, not wanting to lose it. He had sent me a text at some point.
Hope you're okay. Talk to you soon.
I am. I'll call when I can.
I pocketed the phone, and wandered out of my room. The shower had revived me a little, and I was so hungry I felt hollow. My parents had always told me casting used physical energy as well as magical energy, but I had never felt it as much as I did now.
"Javier," a voice said in the hallway.
I turned toward the twins' doorway, but it was still closed. Instead, Rose shimmered into existence in front of me.
"Hi, Rose." To my embarrassment, my stomach rumbled audibly, but Rose only smiled.
"Let me walk you to the kitchen." She solidified as I watched, until I could have mistaken her for a living woman, if I didn't look too closely. "Hawthorn was very impressed with what you did out there."
"Oh, well..." I could feel myself blushing and hoped it wasn't too obvious. "I wasn't sure what else to do."
"Well, you have our thanks." She looked at me sidelong. "I'd like to take a look at you magically, if I could—just to make sure everything's okay."
My eyebrows lifted, but I wasn't going to turn her down. Hadn't I been worried about whether I'd left bits of myself somewhere else? Maybe she could tell me. And if anyone would know about the dragons, surely it would be Rose, who built her house in their midst. "Okay."
The halls started to look familiar, and I smelled coffee just before we found the kitchen. Rose pointed me to the makings of a turkey sandwich and talked of nothing much while I put it together. She was surprisingly easy to talk to for a dead person.
Once I'd eaten, she said, "Can I look?"
I rolled my shoulders back. "Sure."
She frowned slightly in concentration, but I didn't feel her do anything. After a moment, her eyes widened. "What did you do?" she murmured, but it sounded more like a rhetorical question than one she expected me to answer so I held still. "This is intriguing," she said finally, and looked up to meet my eyes. "You've got a link to the twins not quite like anything I've ever seen, and you appear to have embedded a fragment of the source inside yourself, but it's stable and not tearing you apart."
Tearing me apart? "Was that likely?"
She smiled. "The only other caster I know who was ever able to manipulate the source effectively is me, and I got much better at it once I was dead. Might I ask how you did it?"
It occurred to me that I didn't even know whether any of the others who'd been there had been able to tell that the dragon was helping me, or even knew that I had talked to it. So I told her about asking it for help, and the exchange it offered me. She listened, asked a few questions, and by the end was chewing on one perfectly-manicured red nail.
"Fascinating, Javier, absolutely fascinating. I've never been able to talk to them, you know. But then, you could talk to Lunn, too, couldn't you? I think you've got a gift in that regard." She smiled again, arching one eyebrow higher. "Maybe you can show me a thing or two? I'd love to talk to them."
"Sure, I'd be happy to." It was weird to think of myself as some kind of communicator to magical beings, but I was getting used to it and I kind of liked the idea.
"And..." She hesitated, then shrugged. "If you've any interest in a mentor when things settle down, I'd be happy to instruct you. Since both of us have touched the source."
The spellcaster who built Strangehold as a mentor? I hoped my mouth wasn't hanging open. "Yes. Yes! Thank you. I'd like that very much."
"Good." She nodded decisively. "I'll look forward to it. I know Hawthorn will be happy to have you here.
Happiness spread through me, warm as sunlight. Then a thought occurred and I touched my chest, where the dragon's knot rested. "What happens when I go back home?"
She shrugged. "Who knows? I've never seen anything like this before. My suspicion is that it will remain as it is once you pass through the gate. I could try to remove it if you like."
"No." I moved my hand away. "I promised the dragon. I'll keep it."
We both turned toward the door at the sound of footsteps. Rowan came in, looking as haggard as possible for one of the fae. He smiled at both of us as he came in, and I realized I was glad to see him.
"How's Morgan?" Rose asked.
"Resting," Rowan said firmly. "Against her initial wishes. But I convinced her that she needs to give the hole in her side a moment or two to heal, and the girls have come to keep her company. Quiet company."
"I'll take a look at her injuries," Rose offered.
Rowan nodded. "I would appreciate that." And with that, Rose was gone—a nearly-solid woman one moment, vanished the next.
"How are you?" Rowan said.
I assessed my physical state. "Tired. Hungry." I took my plate back to the fridge and started making another sandwich.
"What you did..." He shook his head. "I could not have freed myself. The girls and I would have been pulled apart and drifted into nothingness. I could feel it happening."
I shrugged, not wanting to dismiss what had happened to them, but also wanting to downplay my own part in it. I felt uncomfortable with his thanks, and I wasn't even sure why.
He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at the table, watching me, hands cupped about his mug, but not touching it. "Morgan tells me you are Matthew March's son."
Unease curled into my stomach. "I am, yes. Did you know him?"
"I only met him briefly, but I knew of him, of course." Some shadow moved in his expression, and I wasn't sure I wanted to know about their meeting. "There is a thing I must tell you."
"If it's about my dad, you don’t have to. I know what he did to get exiled."
"It's not that. I was once the Queen's Blade." He met my eyes over his coffee. "I thought you should know what you saved."
"I actually already knew that." He just lifted an eyebrow, but I had the feeling this was like a shout of surprise from him. "That fae lady...Briar?...told me when we went to find Morgan in Faerie."
"Ah." He leaned back. "And you saved me anyway."
I shrugged uncomfortably. "That was a long time ago, right? You stopped."
"I did." I couldn’t exactly read his expression, but he seemed to be bracing himself. "Javier. At his trial was not the only time I saw your father." I bit the inside of my cheek. I already knew I wasn't going to like whatever he was about to say. "Do you know what he did during the magical illness?"
"Yes." It came out a whisper. I cleared my throat and made myself say it. "It was a spell. His spell. He was aiming it at your people, only something went wrong." The sickness had killed humans, spellcasters, the people he wanted to protect.
"The queen closed the gates to Faerie when she sensed it," Rowan said, "and it deflected, flowing down the leylines until it found other targets." He laced his fingers together and leaned forward. "Morgan recognized his spellwork, and she and I found him so we could stop him." The sandwich had turned to lead in my stomach.
"What happened?"
"He was in the lighthouse on Tybee Island just off the coast of Georgia. He had tied himself to the spell, feeding out an endless series of knots of infection. He was...horrified when we told him what had happened. That his spell was affecting his own people instead of Faerie." Rowan looked at me. I was holding my breath. It felt like my heart had stopped beating. "He wanted to stop the spell, but he couldn't. He had put too much of himself into it. The only way the spell could end was with his life."
"So you killed him." The words sounded odd, like someone else had spoken them. They sounded like words that didn't belong in my mouth. Words that didn't belong in my life. For a moment I hated Rowan with an intensity that felt satisfying, that felt good. He had killed my father.
But then I remembered the note my father had left me, and the hate slid into something hollower. My chest ached, and I could feel my heartbeat, not stopped after all but painfully present. My father had gone to that lighthouse not expecting to return. He had
thought the spell was worth his life to accomplish. The flip side of that coin was that a life with my mom and me hadn't been worth staying alive. He'd made a choice, and what he'd chosen wasn't me.
Rowan might have struck the blow that killed him, but he had already decided to die.
"I did," Rowan said. "I'm sorry. I didn't know he had a family. I didn't know about you."
"Would you have done anything differently?" I didn't know what I wanted him to say.
He met my gaze, muddy green eyes shadowed. "No. I'm sorry for that too. Too many people were dying."
I swallowed the ache in my throat. "He went there knowing he wouldn't come back. He left me a note explaining what he was trying to do."
Rowan's fingertips went white as he pressed his hands flat on the table.
I made myself look at him and say what I knew to be fair. "So I know why you'd have had to stop him even if his spell hadn't misfired. He was wrong." My lips were cold.
"Javier—"
I stood up. "I have to go." I was close to coming apart and I wanted to be by myself when it happened.
"There's more," he said, quietly. "Do you want me to tell you now?"
More? But I nodded. Might as well rip the Band-Aid off while I was already half-numb.
"The queen traced the spell back to your father." He leaned back and looked at me. "I want you to know I have not been her Blade for longer than your parents have been alive. I did not do this, but I know how she thinks. When she considers someone a mortal enemy, she often has their family killed as well. Your mother—"
"And my uncle. My uncle was with her." I was standing on the edge of an abyss of grief. It was all so stupid and pointless. They'd had nothing to do with it.
"The hellhound that found you at your aunt's home was likely looking for you to tie up the last loose end."
"Not the last, though," I said. "Is my aunt in danger?" But then it occurred to me that there was a much more direct connection to my father. "Teo! My brother."
Rowan frowned. "It is unlikely that either of them is a target. They would be searching for connections of proximity more than blood."