Illusions: Faction 4: The Isa Fae Collection

by Jade Kerrion

  Nithya’s jaw dropped. You arrogant ass! I was never yours.

  Tristan twisted his hand in Varian’s hair. “You took her from me and you didn’t even care!”

  “Nithya? You never—”

  “Never what? Told you?” Tristan spat. “What was there to tell? Like everyone else, she looked at my bracelet and didn’t think I was worth anything. It didn’t even matter that her bracelet was no brighter than mine. I still wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough for anyone, and it was your fault.” Tristan slammed Varian’s face into the granite tiles. He flung himself at Varian, hurling his fists into Varian’s unprotected face. “If you hadn’t been born, my father would have accepted me as his heir instead. I would have been protected, cherished!”

  Nithya sank to her knees and buried her face in her hands, but she could not block out Varian’s choked cries of pain.

  “No!” one of the guards shouted. “Put that dagger down!”

  Nithya’s eyes flashed open. The two guards wrestled with Tristan, trying to pull him away from Varian. The dagger in Tristan’s hand flashed down. Varian screamed an agonized cry that did not even sound human.

  Tristan struggled in the grip of the mercenaries. Crimson drops splashed on the tiles.

  Nithya swallowed a scream of horror. Varian’s face was covered with blood.

  One of the fae mercenaries knelt by Varian, blocking her view. Nithya’s heart thumped so loudly that the only thing she could hear was the blood rushing through her ears. After what seemed like several long moments, the mercenary twisted around to glare at Tristan. “You could have killed him, and then where would we be—traitors of the realm, instead of supporters of the rightful prince, legitimized by Varian’s sentencing and death?”

  “I am the rightful prince!” Tristan shouted. He paced the small cell, stalking like a caged tiger. “You see him over there? He’s the usurper. He took what’s mine. I was the firstborn!”

  “How bad is it?” the other mercenary asked quietly.

  “The prince’s not as pretty anymore, but he’ll make it to moonrise.” The fae rose, and Nithya caught a glimpse of the bloodstained cloth partially covering Varian’s face.

  “Should we fetch a physician?” the false Nithya asked.

  The fae shook his head. “He’s unconscious. There’s nothing more to be done for him now. The best help is to keep Tristan from killing him.”

  With difficulty, the three fae pulled a furious Tristan from the cell. The door slammed shut and the footsteps faded into silence.

  Nithya crept forward to kneel by Varian’s side. Her fingers trembled as she lifted the bloodstained cloth off his face. Bile swelled into her throat and burned like acid when she swallowed it down.

  Varian’s lips were bloody, his nose broken, and his face already beginning to swell. Tristan’s dagger had cut through Varian’s left eye, tearing a gash from his forehead to chin. His breath wheezed noisily, erratically. His ribs were fractured; his lungs were probably punctured. Varian would not bleed to death immediately, but he was dying.

  All her illusions had accomplished nothing.

  Nithya’s hands were cold, and tears rolled unchecked down her cheek as she cradled Varian’s head in her lap. She stroked the bloodied strands of hair away from his face and dabbed at the crimson trails trickling from the open gash.

  Varian would never know it, but he would not suffer or die alone.

  Chapter 18

  Motion pulsed shafts of pain through Varian’s body, jolting loose the prison of red mists that entrapped his mind. He tried to open his eyes, but his left eye seemed swollen shut and his right eye could not focus. The blur of gray slowly resolved into granite tiles moving beneath him.

  Strong grips on his arms pulled him forward. His broken body, flayed raw, screamed with pain at every fractional movement. Each breath burned like acid in his lungs.

  Gruff voices spoke above his head. He struggled to untangle the words.

  Moonrise.

  The Convello…

  He did not need to look out of the window

  It was time.

  Less than twenty-four hours earlier, the spell had seemed the most important thing in the world. Now the only thing that mattered was undoing his mistake.

  Stop Tristan.

  His head spun from blood loss and his vision—what little of it—blurred into shades of ochre. An uneven tile jostled his shattered knee. Vertigo seized him, wringing his mind and squeezing tight until the entire world turned a sickly yellow color.

  He gasped, the sound scarcely more than an escaping breath.

  “He’s awake,” Tristan’s familiar voice rasped.

  Hands fisted in his shirt, yanked him upright, and slammed him against the wall.

  Stars exploded in his back of his mind, and the yellow vanished to black before slowly resolving into natural hues. His lungs clenched, convulsing into coughs that wracked his body.

  The pain was so vast, so consuming, that by the time it was over, he did not even have enough strength left to wipe the blood from his mouth.

  Tristan’s face loomed close to Varian’s right eye, filling his field of vision. “It’s time, Varian. Time for you to fulfill your father’s dream.”

  My father’s dream was not mine.

  The admission was as painful as it was late.

  Tristan closed his grip around Varian’s throat, pressing the steel band of the runic collar deep into Varian’s flesh.

  Varian tried to pull off Tristan’s fingers, but his vision was already fraying on the edges, hues yellowing, then darkening.

  Cast.

  Cast something. Anything.

  He had to cast through the runic collar, hurl the entirety of his magic through it. The backfire would kill him, but it would kill Tristan too.

  It would wipe clean the slate for La Condamine.

  His bracelet glowed as the spell took shape, but the viciousness in Tristan’s eyes was faster. Tristan slammed his fist into the still bleeding wound in Varian’s side.

  The black fraying Varian’s vision flashed into white-hot pain. Agony shredded the spell.

  “Before you try something stupid, think hard. The backfire will kill you, and it will rock the castle walls, endangering all the people gathered in the courtyard. Do you want the castle walls tumbling down on your mother?”

  Mother…?

  “I found her, and my mother, too, hiding in a filthy tavern near Grenth’s Cove.”

  Darken Tavern. Nithya?

  “They have front row seats, flanked by my best men. One poorly timed twitch on your part, and I’ll have them run through.” Tristan smiled triumphantly. “I’ve won, Varian. You may have kept your power from me, but you might as well have spilled it out on the ground for all the good it’ll do. You’ll hurl it at the unforgiving sky, spend all of it on a spell doomed to fail.” His grip tightened. “What does it feel like to die for nothing?”

  “Nithya is safe from you. It’s everything. It’s enough.”

  Tristan scoffed. “Love has made a fool of you. In the end, she abandoned you, just like everyone else.”

  Motion flickered in the corner of Varian’s eye. He glanced toward a moonlit corner, but saw nothing until something moved again. Only then did he notice the tiny gray mouse, almost invisible against the granite tiles.

  The mouse was practically glaring at Tristan.

  No, it can’t be…

  The truth overwrote the lie in Varian’s mind. The illusion peeled back, like the fraying edges of an old cloak to reveal Nithya—an ethereal vision kissed by moonlight.

  There was nothing ethereal, however, about the fury on her face.

  Varian stared at her. Their eyes met, and she twitched guiltily. She shook her head and touched her index finger to her lips.

  His silence kept her illusion intact from the scrutiny of the unaware.

  His heart clenched. She had remained with him the entire time. Not alone. Not abandoned.

  It meant he could n
ot force a backfire against the runic collar. The castle walls would likely hold up, but the magical backlash would kill everyone around him—including Nithya.

  Tristan released his grip on Varian’s collar. “It’s time for the Convello. Get him out of here.”

  The agonizing, jostling journey through the castle continued until Varian’s many centers of pain blended into a dizzying whole. The unexpected relief of the frigid night air, however, revived him enough for him to raise his head.

  The silver orb of the moon hid behind the wispy dusting of clouds in the sky, but the courtyard blazed with the light of a hundred torches mounted on the walls. Each individual flame was a glowing, dancing ball of formless shape and hazy boundaries.

  The brutal combination of torture and drugs made it impossible to focus his vision, much less his thoughts. Varian squinted against the glare as the guards shoved him into a chair in the middle of the raised platform. Immediately, a hush fell over the courtyard, the silence so thick and palpable so as to resemble a wall.

  His head spinning from concussion and blood loss, he could not find faces in the crowd. Not his mother, nor Tristan’s mother. He was distantly aware of Nithya hovering some distance away, but it did not matter. He had to focus on holding himself together.

  He looked up at the sky. Not much longer now.

  Tristan’s voice rang out. “My people. Your faith in me has been justified. For more than a year now, I have forgone comfort and easy sleep to work closely with Varian Delacroix, who has foully betrayed his people, trading your lives for his personal glory. I have exposed the mechanisms behind the Convello. More than that, I have thwarted him. I have set free the prisoners he took, the lives he would have spilled tonight. Now, the only life spilled will be his. He will cast the Convello. Alone.”

  Tristan walked over to Varian and bent to whisper in his ear, “No foolhardy actions now. Look into the crowd. Look at the faces of the people who trust you to do the right thing. My men are interspersed among your people. I know you, Varian. You want to stop me, no matter what it costs you, but you can’t. One wrong move—anything happens to me—and your people will die, violently, brutally. How many more deaths will you be responsible for, Varian?”

  Despair was a leaden weight in Varian’s stomach when Tristan ran his finger along the edge of the runic collar, releasing it.

  Power tingled at his fingertips—more than enough to kill Tristan.

  Not enough to save his people.

  My only duty…my final duty is to my people.

  No one else should die for me or for my father’s dream.

  But when he murmured the words of the Convello, his only thought was of Nithya. Only at the end did he allow himself to acknowledge. I wanted a lifetime with you.

  I wanted forever.

  Chapter 19

  Nithya, concealed in the illusion of a curious mouse, had followed the guards out into the courtyard, careful to keep a safe distance. Her heart broke when Varian was exposed to the horrified scrutiny of his people. He wore black pants and a white shirt already stained crimson with his blood, but did not react to the cold. He had been pushed beyond pain, his dark eyes glazed with numbing fatigue.

  She was standing close enough to overhear Tristan’s whispered words, close enough to see the defiance in Varian’s eyes finally quenched by despair. Whatever he had planned, Tristan had outmaneuvered him.

  Varian would never hurt his people.

  Not even in revenge.

  She was close enough to hear the murmured incantation, the words of the Convello powered by Varian’s will.

  No, please don’t.

  But it was too late to stop. He crossed an undefined barrier, a magical threshold, and the spell took over.

  The Convello was greater than him, and it soared, tearing out of him. It flung his head back, ripping magic from every cell in his body, drawing it out of his very breath.

  The glow on his bracelet dimmed.

  Magic shot into the sky.

  Golden light rippled against the darkness of the night.

  The barrier. His magic struck the barrier, but it did not break through. He did not have enough magic. No one person did.

  But all of La Condamine did.

  Flinging off her illusion, Nithya raced to Varian’s side. Stripped of all disguise, her bracelet glowed with the brilliance of a star. She caught him as he reeled. His head fell back against her shoulder, and she covered his lips with a kiss, pouring most of her magic into him, keeping him alive.

  A small part of her magic she flung up into the sky.

  Sometimes, the truth begins with a lie.

  A jagged black line slashed across the golden ripples.

  “It’s breaking,” someone gasped. “The barrier is shattering.”

  “No,” Tristan roared, “that’s impossible.” But his voice was drowned out by the stampede of feet; the awestruck guards shoved aside by people swarming up the platform.

  A hand rested firmly on Nithya’s shoulders. She glanced back.

  Ariel, eyes glistening, offered her a small, hopeful smile. Behind Ariel, the people of La Condamine joined hands in an unbroken chain. Nithya found familiar faces in the crowd—Sabine and Isobel, Lord Grimaldi and Madame Defarge, Thane and Maxine. Noble and commoner, witch and fae, their magic channeled through Ariel and into Nithya. She poured it into Varian through her kiss.

  The magic—the combined magic of La Condamine—burst from Varian, shooting upward with the force of a thousand explosions.

  Isa Fae shook. Vibrations rolled from the planet’s core. The golden ripples against the barrier suddenly vanished, and the beam of light shot straight up, unhindered.

  “The barrier,” Ariel murmured as she let go of Nithya. “We’ve broken through.”

  Nithya looked down at Varian. “You did it,” she whispered. Alarm closed around her throat. Varian was unconscious, but the rapid sound coming from his throat was half-breaths, inhalations cut short of reaching his lungs. “What’s happening?”

  Ariel looked stricken. “He’s dying.”

  “But the spell succeeded. It’s over. Why is he dying?”

  “Because it took everything from him.”

  “No, he can’t die. Not now. Not after he’s won.” Nithya’s thoughts reeled. Her chest wrung with pain. “I can share my magic with him, keep him alive.”

  “There is nothing left of him, Nithya. Even if you gave him your magic, the spirit that is Varian is completely gone. Let him go. He’s just a shell. You have to let him go.”

  “Wait.” Nithya yanked off Sabine’s pendant and placed it against Varian’s heart. “Break it!”

  Ariel hurled her magic at the jewelry.

  Precious stones shattered.

  Varian suddenly took a deep breath, and then another.

  Sabine stared at her son. “The piece of him he placed in the amazonite…”

  “It’s back in him now.” Nithya glanced at Varian’s dull gray atern bracelet. “He has no magic, but he’s alive.”

  “Not like this!” Tristan suddenly roared. “I will not let it end like this.”

  He brought his sword down. Nithya threw herself over Varian’s body, prepared for the cold slice of steel. Instead, the distinctive sound of metal striking metal rang out.

  Conrad stood over her, his blade drawn and braced against the downward strike of Tristan’s sword. “As the heir to the throne of La Condamine, I hereby charge you with high treason for your attempted murder of Prince Varian Delacroix.”

  Tristan’s mercenaries rushed toward Conrad, but hoofbeats thundered against cobblestone streets. Armored warhorses, bearing the white-clad soldiers of the La Condamine cavalry, charged into the palace courtyard. The furious whinny of warhorses and stamping hooves rose above the joyous cries of the city’s citizens.

  The mercenaries stared at the battle-hardened troops, then, as one, ran to the gate, but their escape was blocked by the return of La Condamine’s army—grim-faced warriors wielding spears and
shields.

  Conrad inclined his head to Princess Sabine. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to track down and return with the military.”

  The princess wore a trembling but radiant smile. “You are not too late.”

  Conrad’s flinty gaze passed over the mercenaries, herded into a tight ball of white-faced, trembling fae. “Arrest them all. Take Tristan away, too,” Conrad ordered. “Varian can pass his judgement on them he recovers.”

  Nithya looked up at Conrad. “You’re not…”

  Conrad stared down at his cousin’s body—broken and barely breathing. He shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line. “I’m not crazy enough to aspire to the La Condamine throne after my cousin has so definitively secured his place as one of history’s greatest rulers. No one could live up to those kinds of expectations.” He beckoned to the soldiers. “Take him into the palace and send for the healers. The people need their prince.”

  Chapter 20

  Varian thought he was asleep, but his dreams were different—distant, as if viewed through a veil that filtered sound and leeched color.

  “Am I dead?” he asked, but no one answered.

  He could not wake. He did not try. Lethargy weighed him down, stripping strength from his limbs.

  Sensation seeped back slowly, like someone drawing back heavy velvet curtains to spill sunlight into the room. Scents intruded—the deep fragrance of exotic spices.

  Nithya.

  Sounds came next, voices speaking words too soft to decipher, subtly accented voices that teased him with their familiarity.

  When the curtains of his mind finally drew all the way back, his consciousness rose from a deep, dark place. His vision opened to a room full of light.

  He groaned. He would have brought up his hand to shield his eyes, but his arm seemed too heavy to move. What’s wrong with me?

  “Varian?” His mother’s voice—one of the few he had heard from that fathomless place—was immediately beside him. “You’re awake. Finally.”

  Finally? He tried once, then twice, and managed to rasp out a single word. “Mother…”