by S. M. Boyce
Victoria tensed, ready to run again, but Fyrn shook his head. “We can stay here. If it knew where we were, it would have attacked already.”
“Oh, good. I feel safe now.” Victoria rolled her eyes. She groaned and slumped on the ground, thoroughly frustrated. “Okay, guys. What’s Plan C?”
Chapter 19
The mercenary knelt at the entrance to Lochrose, a vague sense of unease settling deep in his gut as he studied the rocky floor of the gem-filled corridor. There were dark creatures in these tunnels. He knew that much, and he did not want to meet them.
He also wouldn’t survive disappointing Luak, thus his dilemma. Option A led to certain death, while Option B led to danger and possible reward.
Option B it is.
“Move,” he said, shoving their kidnapped wizard forward.
The barefoot man stumbled, his hands bound in front of him as he led them through the tunnels. “O-of course.”
The mercenary gestured to the myriad hired orcs and elves behind him, and they followed his silent command. He had surprise and a small army. The Rhazdon host he hunted had nothing more than two wizards who were out of their league.
He would win.
Only a wizard could navigate these paths, and the mercenary didn’t like the fact that he had to rely on a prisoner’s word. However, he didn’t need to threaten their captive anymore. They had shattered his will to fight, and he was now obedient. The broken wizard knew the price of not doing as he was told.
Pain. Lots and lots of pain.
The mercenary had a single mission: find these girls Luak wanted and drag them back to Fairhaven. That Rhazdon host had dark magic in her blood and a shiny little sword, but she now had far more to fear than some monsters in a cave.
Chapter 20
Victoria wanted to join in the discussion of what to do next, but she mostly just stewed in her own anger. Styx petted her hair and cooed softly, but the tiny strokes did nothing to stem her fury.
It was bubbling over. Her frustration at being stuck with the Rhazdon Artifact in the first place, her inability to wield the power her father had given her, and the way Luak continuously chipped away at her city despite all her efforts. And no matter what she did to prove otherwise, almost everyone she met in the magical world assumed the worst of her.
Every. Fucking. Time.
Rhazdon hosts are evil. That was the universal rule.
Ha. As if it were that simple.
“Victoria?” Fyrn asked, as though he were waiting for her input on a question.
“Maybe this is all a mistake,” she said softly, with no idea what he had asked.
“What?” Diesel sat upright. Audrey leaned forward, apparently as dumbfounded as he was.
Victoria stood and paced in circles around the group’s makeshift camp. “Maybe getting a second Rhazdon Artifact really is a mistake. Maybe it will make me evil. Maybe coming here and promising the impossible to some asshole queen was the worst thing I could have done. Maybe—”
“Maybe you’re afraid she’s right,” Fyrn interrupted.
Victoria stopped dead in her tracks and stared at her mentor. For a moment she couldn’t speak, but the anger bubbled once more to the surface. She had to swallow hard to stem the tears. “Why the hell does everyone I meet think I’m a monster? She didn’t even ask why we were here, Fyrn. She didn’t care. No one cares!”
“They don’t understand.”
“Are you sure, Fyrn? I mean, why am I not evil? By all accounts I should be. All the rest are, right? Rhazdon. Luak. I’m sure there are loads more. Am I going to slip into madness or something? Should I buy a hut in the woods so I don’t rampage? What makes me different? Who am I to think…” she trailed off, tears springing to her eyes as she fought to finish that statement.
“I don’t know how, but you’re not evil. Not even a little,” Fyrn answered.
“Not yet.”
His jaw tensed, but he nodded. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. We don’t know.”
“You don’t know.” She echoed his words, her voice so soft she almost couldn’t hear herself. His confession broke her heart. She rubbed her eyes to stem the frustrated tears as she reevaluated her entire life’s purpose.
“Maybe it’s in your blood,” Fyrn said. “Or maybe it’s the way you got the Rhazdon Artifact—through a sacrifice to save your life, rather than greed on your part. Some scholars debate that the ghosts tied to the Rhazdon Artifacts can impact the host’s experience in more profound ways than we understand, but I doubt that in your case. Shiloh is rather useless.”
“I heard that,” Shiloh said from somewhere in the shadows.
Victoria waved him away. “You wouldn’t be useless if you were more helpful and appeared with at least some regularity.”
“Humph,” the ghost said quietly.
With a sigh, Victoria plopped onto the nearest boulder, shoulders drooping. “Maybe I just haven’t been a host long enough for the darkness to take hold.”
Audrey stood. “Victoria, you said I could slap you around if I needed to, and I’m about to if it means I can knock some sense into your brain.”
Victoria frowned and sat up, confused. “Audrey, this is serious. This might be out of our control.”
Audrey leaned toward to Victoria’s face until Victoria had no choice but to look her friend in the eye. “You are a fighter, and you will not go down quietly.”
“I—”
“Are you evil? Jesus. No! You’re not! You saved a city from a snarx. You saved me from Atlantis. At every turn, you are kind and protective. If you’re evil, that’s the kind of evil I want in my life. If that’s evil, evil is the shit and I love it.”
Victoria sat a little straighter, debating the words, and let them sink in. A slow smile spread across her face, and she wiped away a final tear. “Thank you. And you did it without any slapping at all.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Audrey smacked Victoria on the cheek hard enough to sting.
“Ow! What the hell!”
“That’s for doubting yourself. Don’t do it again.” Audrey nodded, apparently satisfied with herself.
Victoria rubbed the welt, but she accepted it all the same. “Fine. Ass.”
“You’re welcome.” Audrey returned to her seat. “So, we have a second Rhazdon Artifact to steal and a sphinx to kill.”
Victoria laughed. “Damn right we do.”
“What’s the plan?”
Victoria leaned back against the cave wall, her hope renewed. “Let’s figure something out. I think its neck is vulnerable, so we’ll start there. Any ideas?”
Diesel raised his eyebrows suggestively. “I have loads of ideas when it comes to the neck. Shall we try a few?”
Victoria rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t suppress her smile. “You’re an idiot.”
***
While the other three laughed, Fyrn leaned against the wall in contemplation. In truth, Victoria had voiced his darkest fear.
In his core, Fyrn nursed a lingering thought that would not leave him however hard he tried. He hoped she would never lose herself to newly acquired power. All the rest had. Why not her?
She was kind and compassionate. If he left things as they were, she would stay that way.
He watched the young woman he had taken on as a student and, if he were honest, a daughter. She laughed in the low gemstone light of the tunnel, and he answered his own question.
Why not her? Because she was Victoria Brie, and not even the darkness would win against her.
He smiled, truly happy for the first time in decades. When did he become such a sentimental old fool?
Chapter 21
Victoria woke with a start, sitting upright as she struggled to catch her breath.
Across from her, Diesel sat still as a stone. It must have been his turn to keep watch. He studied her as though she had startled him, and perhaps she had.
Panic flooded her body as though someone were attacking her, but she still lay on the floor
of the cave in a bedroll from the pack Queen Angelique had given her. Audrey and Fyrn were in their bedrolls on either side of her. Diesel’s bedroll was still tucked in his bag, waiting for his turn to sleep.
Despite the stillness, something was terribly wrong. Victoria just didn’t know what it was.
She stood, her body flooding with adrenaline she didn’t understand. It was as though something were crouching in the shadows just out of reach. The sensation reminded her of the times she wove through the tunnels on her way to their safe house in Fairhaven, something hot on her heels the whole way.
But this was worse.
Far worse.
“Get up,” she hissed to Audrey and Fyrn. The two stirred, but neither opened their eyes.
“Victoria, what—” Diesel said.
“I don’t know, but we need to go. Now.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere but here.”
“But—”
“Hello, little dinners,” a familiar echoing voice said from the darkness.
“It seems the creature found you,” Shiloh said. The ghost was suddenly beside her.
Already jumpy from nerves, she spun on her heel to face him with a bite of sarcasm in her voice. “That was almost helpful. Thank you.”
He offered a lazy bow and disappeared.
The creature roared, and the shrill scrape of claws against the rock wall screamed through the tunnel. Pebbles tumbled from overhead, and Victoria nudged Audrey one more time as the heavy sleeper finally woke. She hopped out of the bedroll and tucked it under her arm, barely bothering to fold it as she grabbed her bag.
“We have to go!” Victoria shouted. They raced through the tunnel, and the grate of claws on rock followed them.
“I thought it couldn’t sense us in the tunnels!” Audrey shouted as they ran.
“These are my tunnels,” the eerie voice answered. “It merely takes time to find my food in here.”
“Great,” Victoria said with an eyeroll.
A rock fell from overhead, and Victoria pulled Diesel out of the way at the last second. He shot her a flirtatious wink as they bolted past the boulder, and she supposed that would have to suffice as her thanks for saving his life.
Around a bend, a gaping hole in the tunnel exposed them to the inner lair beyond. It was as though a hole to space itself had opened before them, and a thought occurred to Victoria—this thing had been hunting them. As soon as it had broken open the tunnel wall, it had shattered the Lochrosian enchantment on the tunnel and destroyed the magic that had hidden them.
Shit.
Teeth appeared in the opening, the lips stretched wide as the disgusting thing grinned in victory. It roared from barely thirty feet away, and the force of the sound knocked Victoria backward.
Off-balance, Victoria dropped everything. This thing would eat them. It would rip them apart and kill the people she loved most.
Like hell.
She had only her empty hands and her instinct, so Victoria acted on impulse. Using her training as fuel, she jumped toward the sphinx and summoned her sharpest sword, digging it into the beast’s open mouth as it ferociously clawed at the opening.
The moment her blade sliced open its tongue and gums, the sphinx screamed the loudest it had so far. Victoria’s ears rang. It thrashed like a snake, desperate to get away, and Victoria fell. She hit the floor hard and rolled, sliding the last few feet out of reach.
The massive head snaked backward until its icy eyes zeroed in on her. Its copper mane flailed like Medusa’s hair, wild and untamed.
“You are food,” it growled.
“No, I’m pissed,” Victoria corrected.
On a whim and, with full trust in her Rhazdon Artifact, she summoned a throwing knife. She tossed the blade at the beast’s nearest eye, and it struck. The sphinx clawed at the wound and slid out of sight.
Victoria raced to the edge, ready to strike another blow. As she neared, a blast of air hit her in the face. Her hair danced around her head as she stared down an impossibly steep cliff face. Gouges in the rock betrayed where the sphinx had tried to regain its footing as it fell into the darkness.
Victoria closed her eyes for the briefest of seconds and called her weapon back to her, and a weight settled into her hand. Sure enough, the throwing dagger had appeared on command.
She smirked at the beast lost somewhere in the shadows of the cavern floor. In the darkness, one glowing eye seethed up at her, the other one probably sealed shut from the wound.
In a flash, it disappeared. She scanned the valley below, desperate to track it.
There.
A massive shadow tore past the islands of rock in the inner cavern, occasionally blocking out glowing gemstones in the wall. It seemed to be heading toward the glimmers of golden light in the far corner.
Its loot.
“Victoria, that was amazing!” Audrey patted Victoria on the back.
Victoria offered a small smile in thanks, but her mind was elsewhere. Bit by bit, she pieced together the information she had picked up thus far and began to make educated guesses about the rest.
“See, I was helpful,” Shiloh said from behind them.
Victoria raised one eyebrow in challenge. “Warning me that the sphinx had found me after it made itself known wasn’t helpful.”
“I woke you up,” he said simply.
This caught Victoria’s full attention. “That panic feeling was you? Why didn’t you just talk to me?”
“You yell at me every time I do that.”
She crossed her arms, waiting for a better answer.
He shrugged. “In your dream state, you can’t converse. I had to speak with emotion.”
“You can feel emotion?” Audrey asked.
Victoria elbowed her friend in the ribs.
The ghost elf studied his fingernails. “Anyway, you’re not dead. Good job, I guess.”
“Shiloh?” Victoria asked.
He paused and looked up at her, obviously waiting for her to yell at him again.
“I like it when you’re helpful. Thank you,” she said instead.
He nodded, apparently bored with the whole conversation, and disappeared into thin air.
Darn. She had hoped for a smile or something. Oh, well.
Diesel and Fyrn leaned against the cave wall, conversing in hushed voices while Audrey stretched and smiled as though they had won some great battle.
They hadn’t won anything. The creature would be back.
Victoria’s thoughts raced as she tried to put together the final piece of the puzzle: why the sphinx cared about dark magic at all. Perhaps the monster gained power from the Rhazdon Artifact in some other way than a host would. Perhaps the magic could heal it or make it stronger, and thus the sphinx coveted the item and had raced to it when injured.
Regardless, Victoria now had a far better idea how to defeat this creature once and for all. But to do it she would need a little help, and Audrey wasn’t going to like this one bit.
Chapter 22
“This is an absolutely terrible idea,” Audrey seethed, her voice a whisper as they snuck through the palace halls.
Victoria shushed her. It was too late to argue.
The four of them moved through the darkened hallways, Fyrn and Diesel using every sneak and glamour spell they had ever learned to mask their steady approach to the queen’s chambers.
Similar to Fairhaven’s green crystals, the amber-colored stones powering Lochrose dimmed to simulate night. Victoria had waited until the darkness gave them shadows to run through, offering them a better chance to infiltrate the castle.
Right on time Styx flitted from around the corner, gesturing wildly to the left. Apparently he had found the room they were looking for.
Victoria almost released a sigh of relief when the glimmer of glowing wand tips appeared at the far end of the hall. Without a word, Fyrn cloaked them in a shimmering mist. Victoria held her breath, and Audrey gripped Victoria’s shirt as though it were a substitute
for throttling her.
The pair of guards walked by, muttering in the language she didn’t understand, and turned down the hall to the right. Above them, Styx hung onto a chandelier to keep anyone from hearing the buzz of his wings, just as Victoria had asked.
She gestured to her companions, and the march resumed. They didn’t have long.
The more Victoria had thought about it, the more it had seemed like the queen was hiding something from her—something very important. Something without which Victoria couldn’t kill the sphinx that had trapped the people of Lochrose in their homes.
But it didn’t make sense. They had an agreement, and the queen had promised to give Victoria anything she or her small group needed.
Well, she needed the truth, and she also needed to make a point.
As they neared the door, Fyrn set to work clearing any protective spells on the entrance. He made short work of them—in seconds, small puffs of smoke wafted out of the keyholes. When he had finished, he gave a curt nod toward the door.
Now or never.
Victoria gestured for them to wait outside and twisted the magnificent red door’s elaborate golden knob.
“We’re coming with you,” Diesel whispered.
“This is a solo gig. Stay hidden.”
“Victoria, she’s dangerous.”
“So am I,” Victoria said with a smirk. Not eager to debate it further, she slipped into the room and shut the door behind her.
She pressed her back against the closed door and surveyed the scene, looking for traps or guards.
All was silent.
In fact, the utterly quiet bedroom reminded Victoria of a museum, maybe one of the classy ones she saw in documentaries at school, like the Louvre. A high school gymnasium could have fit in the enormous round room. Elaborate white columns dotted the space every ten feet or so and pedestals sat between them, holding a crystal chalices or jewelry or other shiny things.
In the center of the room sat a round bed draped in a thick crimson blanket. The fabric rose and fell gently as the sleeping figure in its center breathed.
Victoria eyed the rest of the room one last time to check for anyone who might interrupt her. A doorway on the far side probably led to a bathroom of some sort, but there were no other entrances or exits beside the door through which she had just come.