by Kristen Pham
“I have no idea how to find him,” she said.
“You reached out to him with your mind before, maybe you should try again,” Chern suggested.
She concentrated, but he didn’t appear. “When he came, it was because I needed his help.”
“There’s a little Conjuror with a broken leg. He’s in the Healers’ Guild, but it’s a complicated fracture, and it will take some time for him to get better,” Chern said.
“How do you know that?” Cyrus asked.
“The Master Healer, Nightingale, is a close friend. He asked if I had heard of any techniques used in the past to help with this kind of injury.”
A tingling in her mind suggested that something wasn’t right. Maybe Chern was right, and Darling was in trouble. Now that she was focusing her mind on him, it seemed like her discomfort was increasing.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Inside the Healers’ Guild, it was very quiet and peaceful. Low music played with a complicated, haunting melody from an instrument that she couldn’t place. All of the Healer apprentices walked quietly and spoke softly. They were lucky that it was visiting hours when they arrived.
“We’re here to visit little Emin in the children’s ward,” Chern said. Without questioning him, they were led to the bedside of a boy with dark skin that had a gold cast to it that reminded her of Elden. Was he one of the People of the Woods, and if so, why he was living in Silva?
“Hi, Chern! Who’re these guys?” the boy chirped in a high, musical voice.
“They’re my friends, Valerie and Cyrus. They want to see if they can help you get better.”
Valerie sat on the side of his bed. He smiled cheerfully, but when she came closer, she could see the shadows under his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping, and his face had the drawn look she recognized from the children in her hospital who were really sick.
Nightingale appeared at the doorway. He was green, with long ears and sharp teeth that could be a little frightening at first glance, but he had nursed her carefully when she had been badly beaten by Sanguina all those months ago. She was a little ashamed that she was so uncomfortable in his presence.
“How are you, Emin?” he asked. “Is the pain lessening today?”
“A little,” he said, wincing as Nightingale pulled back the bandage to examine the wound. It was red and puffy, as if it were infected. He put some ointment on it and rewrapped it.
“I’d call Azra for help with this one, but she is not in Arden,” Nightingale said, to Valerie’s surprise. She knew that Azra was planning to visit leaders in other countries to talk to them about the threats that were arising, but she didn’t know that she had left already.
A sudden stab of concern for Emin gripped her heart. He was really hurt. What if she couldn’t call Darling? What if—
Before she finished her thought, Darling appeared on Emin’s bed and jumped in her lap. She sighed in relief.
“Thank you, Darling,” she said, and he gurgled a sweet little sound of joy as she hugged him.
Darling hopped from her lap into Emin’s, and Emin started to tickle him. His high-pitched giggle reminded her of a baby’s first laughter. As the two played, she saw Emin’s color return, and the pain that creased his forehead disappeared, without him even realizing it.
Chern and Nightingale were both watching closely, however, and noticed the change. They glanced at each other.
“What a relief,” Chern said, and reached out his hand to pet Darling’s golden fur. In the process, his ring got caught on a strand of his fur and pulled it out.
Darling yelped in pain and leaped into Valerie’s arms. “S-sorry,” Chern stuttered.
But Darling gave him an injured look and vanished as quickly as he’d come.
“Feeling better, Emin?” Valerie asked.
“Oh boy, yeah! I better get home,” he said.
“Do you need me to take you somewhere?” she asked.
“I’ll discharge him to his parents,” Nightingale said, ushering her and Cyrus out the door. She had the impression that they were being dismissed.
“Bye, kids!” Chern added in an overly cheery, condescending tone. “Run along home now before it gets dark. These parts have never been safe!”
They went their separate ways, and once they were out of earshot, Valerie and Cyrus giggled at Chern’s paranoia.
“Something about that guy annoys the heck out of me,” Cyrus said.
“He helped Emin, so he isn’t completely self-absorbed,” Valerie countered.
Before Cyrus could reply, she suddenly was pulled from herself into Henry’s mind. On the Globe she wasn’t weakened by the connection, so she could completely concentrate on what she was experiencing through him.
Henry’s heart was pounding. He was standing at the doorway to Kanti’s room—Valerie recognized it by the black walls that contrasted with a princess-y, four-poster bed. Lying on top of the covers was a shape that looked like a person sleeping inside of a white sleeping bag. Leaning over her was a woman with long hair streaked with silver.
Valerie’s heart sped up as she realized who it was—Ani, Kanti’s aunt. She had betrayed her and Kanti to Zunya when they had been in Elsinore. Whatever she was doing with Kanti, it couldn’t be good. Valerie sent images of what had happened to Henry, and his hands clenched.
He tapped Ani on the shoulder. She turned, smiling sweetly. “You MUST be Kanti’s boyfriend. I hear you’re with her ALL the time. A little bit like a STALKER, if you ask me. And I told my sister and her husband so. You won’t be staying LONG.”
She nodded to a broad-shouldered bodyguard who appeared at the door. He pulled Henry roughly by the arm and hauled him to the lawn in front of Kanti’s family’s magnificent ice castle.
Henry’s blinding fear returned, but she was proud of him as he fought to drive it back. Ani could be doing anything in the room with Kanti, and it was up to him to stop her. He stared up, squinting at her window, which was three floors above ground level. Without hesitating, he began to climb.
Valerie’s palms began to sweat for her brother, but she knew he needed her encouragement right now rather than her doubt, so she braced herself and helped him find secure hand and footholds. A few times, the slippery walls of the castle almost cost him his footing, but he had an uncanny ability to find a crevice to cling to.
After several tense minutes, he reached Kanti’s windowsill. Night had fallen, and her room was dimly lit by a glowing orb in the corner. Ani was still by her bedside, and she pulled out a long, sharp object from her purse. Henry leaped through the window with a strength she wouldn’t have given him credit for and tackled her to the ground.
“Don’t you touch her!” he screamed.
She shoved him backward, and he stumbled into the bed and cracked his head on the floor.
“Who’s to stop me? YOU?” Ani quickly raised the hand holding the pointy object to bring down on Kanti, and a powerful emotion crashed through Henry’s mind, a kind of protective rage.
“Yes, me,” he said, more to himself than to Ani.
With the force of his thought, he shoved her arm away from Kanti and pushed her out the door, which slammed shut and locked. Then Henry dropped to the floor and released his hold on Valerie’s mind.
She opened her eyes and saw that Cyrus was gripping her hands tightly. “Are you okay?”
“We have to get a message to Dulcea. Now,” she said. “What’s the fastest way?”
“I have an idea—it’s worked a few times before. What do you want to say?”
“Tell her that Henry is trapped in Kanti’s room, and Ani was trying to hurt her—maybe even kill her. She has to go protect them both and convince Kanti’s parents about what happened.”
Cyrus raised his finger and began tracing words in the air. Like a magnet, light from the stars was drawn to the lines he created. A short note hung in the air, each letter entirely composed of light. Then he shut his eyes and threw his hand up in the air, and the words flashed out of
sight.
“How long will it take to get there?”
“Speed of light fast enough for you?” he asked.
“That was amazing,” she said. Sometimes she forgot how creative and powerful a Conjuror Cyrus was. He had the ability to control light, and this wasn’t the first time that it had saved a life.
“Aw, shucks,” he said, making her smile.
But her face quickly hardened. “First Jet, now Kanti. If the Fractus want a fight, they couldn’t have picked a better way to start one.”
Chapter 11
Back at the dorm, they were able to talk to Dulcea and Henry through the magic mirror and discover that Kanti was safe. Ani had escaped by using her glamour disguise to hide as an old man named Iago, a trick that she had been using for years.
“But Kanti’s parents are still sending us away. Even though Henry saved Kanti’s life!” Dulcea said indignantly, her blonde curls a rumpled mess from being dragged out of bed.
“They don’t completely trust our story, so they’re keeping everyone away from her,” Henry explained. “At least she’s safe. I can tell that her parents really are trying to do what’s best.”
Dulcea sniffed, still irked.
“Does this mean you’re coming home?” Valerie asked.
“Yes, we’ll be back tomorrow,” he said. She was surprised by how happy she was that he was coming back. They hadn’t known each other long, but being apart from her twin was like having a weight on her heart.
They said goodbye, and she and Cyrus went back to their rooms for the night. Once she was ready for bed, she touched the crystal that connected her with Thai.
He was waiting for her, since this was the time of day they usually met. “How’d it go with Midnight?”
Valerie shook her head. “I’m not sure. Midnight is convinced that Sanguina is trying to change her ways. But I bumped into her and—”
“What! Did she attack you?”
“Relax, she didn’t do anything. She wanted to tell me something, but we were interrupted.”
“Don’t even think about going after her by yourself. Way too dangerous.”
She repressed a smile. Thai’s protective streak was a mile wide, but rather than finding it overbearing, she loved that someone was watching out for her.
“No need to convince me. Being around that woman gives me the chills.”
“So you think she’s the spy, then?”
“I’m not sure. I have a lifetime of associating her with torment, and now that I know what she did to Henry, I positively can’t stand her. It’s hard to separate that from who she is now.”
“What does your gut tell you?”
She sighed. “That as much as I wish she were the spy, she isn’t. Or maybe she’s involved with the Fractus, but she’s not the real threat.”
“Time to move on to your next suspect, then. Who are you going to take on next?”
She thought for a little while. “I do already know another one of Chrome’s suspects. He’s the groundskeeper, Oberon. He helped heal me after I fought with Sanguina once.”
“Then he can’t be all bad.”
“Maybe. There’s something off about him, though.”
“Maybe you should leave this to Azra. It sounds too risky.”
“Azra’s not here right now. And one thing I know for sure is that finding this person is urgent. Something’s going to happen.”
He shook his head, resigned. “I don’t know why I keep thinking that you’ll walk away from danger when all you ever do is run toward it. Make sure you talk to him somewhere public in case he goes nuts on you.”
The next day Cyrus and Valerie left the dorm with less of an appetite for adventure than they had the day before. They dragged their feet, and she was hoping that maybe they wouldn’t be able to find Oberon. There was something wrong about confronting a man who had helped her.
But he was immediately visible polishing a statue of a warrior in front of the Weapons Guild. He was blind, but he worked methodically, and unless someone saw his cloudy eyes, they would never guess that he couldn’t see.
“Hi, Oberon!” Cyrus called. Oberon turned toward their voices, and his face thunderous. Cyrus took an unconscious step back.
“Leave me in peace,” he said in a low voice.
“I’m sorry, finding you was my idea,” Valerie said. Oberon froze.
“Who are you? Your voice…”
“Valerie. You and Azra helped me awhile back after I was hurt. I came to thank you.”
He shook his head a little, as if he was clearing cobwebs from his mind. “That is not entirely true, is it? There is another reason you came to see me.”
Her heart beat a little faster. Maybe she wasn’t the only one with a sixth sense for people’s intentions. “We also wanted to see if you’d heard anything suspicious around here.”
“Word on the street is that there might be a spy trying to find out secrets from the Guild Masters,” Cyrus said glibly. She was suddenly very glad he was with her. Oberon’s intensity was intimidating. “We thought, since you’re always around, people might not notice if you were listening.”
“That’s not the whole truth either, is it?” Oberon replied, but then he sighed. “You are not the first to suspect that it is me who is spying for the Fractus. It isn’t.”
She instinctively trusted his words, but she wasn’t sure why.
But Cyrus continued to press him. “If we’re putting it all on the table, then I wonder why you’d still oppose the Fractus, even though your reason for leaving them is dead.”
Oberon drew himself up to his full height, and the air grew heavy around them, like the instant before rain pours down. She could even hear a distant rumble of thunder. “Enough. Leave me. I owe you nothing.”
His hands were shaking, and the wind around them began to blow hard, pulling her long hair into the breeze. Valerie remembered that Oberon wasn’t supposed to touch his magic for one hundred years as a punishment for working with the Fractus, but she knew how difficult it was not to tap into power when her emotions ran high. She’d rather not see what happened if Oberon consciously or unconsciously decided to seize his magic.
“Sorry, man,” Cyrus said, and she thought Oberon would incinerate him with a bolt of lightning right there on the steps of the Weapons Guild. She could sense that there was an instability in Oberon, and she could imagine the whole city crumbling if he didn’t regain control of himself.
“Thank you. And I’m sorry. We won’t bother you again,” Valerie said, and she and Cyrus turned and ran.
When Valerie arrived at her guild later for her daily training, she was still shaky. But if she wanted a distraction, she couldn’t have come to a better place. The guild was in an uproar. There were over one hundred Knights on the lawn, and everyone was talking excitedly. She found the red-haired boy in her class, Juniper, who actually turned out to be nice after they got to know each other.
“What’s going on?” she asked him.
“Kellen’s missing, and we’re sure it’s the Fractus. He was supposed to be Azra’s escort on her trip, but someone grabbed him between our guild and her office. Again, no magic trail. Chrome’s going nuts.”
“I thought Azra had already left Arden,” she murmured, but she was distracted by the sight of Chrome pacing at the edge of the crowd. Even from a distance, she could see the tension rolling off of him in waves.
“Attention, everyone,” Gideon’s commanding voice cut through the chatter. “Chrome will be organizing the effort to interview witnesses and follow any leads. Report to your mentor for assignments.”
Everyone resumed bustling, but with more purpose now. She stood, unsure who her mentor was. Did recruits have mentors? Gideon approached her, and she asked him.
For the first time ever, he stumbled on his words. “I will be your mentor. That is, well, if you’ll have me.”
“I’d love that,” she said. Despite the chaos that her life had been in since her return to the Globe, her
ties to the people she loved were stronger than ever.
Beside her, Juniper’s eyes widened. “I thought you didn’t mentor anyone anymore,” he said.
“I do now,” Gideon replied simply. Then he pulled her aside and spoke quietly. “Chrome and I have agreed that it is time to seek help in a new direction. You and I are going to the Roaming City to seek a prophecy.”
“Your need is certainly great enough,” Valerie agreed. The Oracles only allowed their city to be found by those who truly required and deserved guidance. “But why bring me?” she asked.
“You are one of the most powerful Conjurors on the Globe, and I have requested your presence. That is reason enough. Now pack quickly. I will meet you at the Lake of Knowledge,” he said, naming the lake in the forest outside of Silva.
She hurried home, turning Gideon’s words over in her mind with disbelief and a little worry that he was expecting too much of her. Her thoughts were interrupted when she bumped into Henry on the steps of the dorm.
“What is it?” Henry asked breathlessly, already sensing from her mind that something important was going down.
“I’m going to the Roaming City for a prophecy. I have to leave right away,” she explained.
“I’m coming with you,” he said, and she nodded. His need for a prophecy to help Kanti was also great. Maybe it would even help them find the city more easily.
They packed their belongings in the callbox in her room, and walked to the lake. Gideon was already waiting for her, and he nodded when he saw Henry.
“I need a prophecy of my own,” Henry said. “Please, let me come with you.”
“I will let Valerie make the call,” Gideon replied. She nodded quickly in surprise. She was always uncomfortable making decisions, but this one was easy.
“How are we getting there? Another roller coaster?” Henry asked, wincing. She had to hide a grin.
“Um, actually, I’ll help with that,” Chern said, walking out of the trees. He turned to Gideon. “You’re quite sure that there won’t be any danger?”