Renegade Red

by Lauren Bird Horowitz

  “Black and sludgy … and meanwhile, I’ve been doing greater and greater feats, things I could never do at home. And when I’m hurt or tired, I’m recovering more quickly. Even the sun here feels less heavy than it did when I arrived, sometimes it even feels like it’s healing—like on the rooftops, when I was leaping across them…” Noa looked up pleadingly into the Seer’s eyes.

  “Pretty stupid curse,” Hilo said. “Seems to only suck for Judah.”

  The Seer frowned, but Noa was already there. “No, no, Hilo, don’t you see? Don’t you understand? It turns Judah mortal, but it turns me Fae! That would mean I lose everything! I would be a danger to everyone I know, everyone I love—”

  “Including Judah,” the Seer put in. “Fae cannot live stripped of their core magic. Once he turns fully mortal, he will die. That’s why his blood’s turning black: it’s been poisoned by forbidden love.”

  Horror struck Noa and Hilo both.

  Hilo whirled on Noa. “Stop! You have to stop loving him right now!”

  Noa fell away from her. “I didn’t even know I did love him! How can I stop what I can’t control?”

  Hilo spun to the Seer, mad with fear. “What if Noa dies? Would that stop the curse?”

  “Hilo!” Noa cried.

  “It would not,” the Seer said curtly, “even if you could do it, which I doubt.” Hilo growled at the Seer, tore at her hair in despair. The Seer ignored her histrionics. “Judah loves Noa, and if she dies, his love for her memory will continue forever and probably even strengthen—and, along with it, the curse.” The Seer turned to Noa. “As for you. I’m afraid one more time I must complicate your feelings.” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “It is tempting for me to at least let you have this certainty. To say, this proves it, you are in love with Judah, simply and clearly. But … I cannot give you that.”

  “W-why?”

  “The true-love curse is … tricky. A very ancient magic. Judah’s obviously in love with you; that’s why his powers are going to you. But your vulnerability to his curse may be coming from your love for a different Fae. A love we know is true.”

  “Sasha,” Noa breathed.

  The Seer nodded. “The love between you and Sasha alone would not trigger the curse because it is a different kind of love, but its presence does leave you open, vulnerable, to being cursed by Judah’s love, even if you do not love him back the way he loves you. Especially because they share blood.

  “In either case,” the Seer sighed, “the only way to end this curse, Judah’s curse, is to make Judah fall out of love with you. Then the transfer will reverse, and both of you will be saved.”

  “But I can go on loving Sasha, and she me, without hurting her.”

  “Yes. Though it will always leave you vulnerable.”

  “That’s a chance I’ll take,” Noa said. “Living without her is not.” Noa took a deep breath, turned heavily to Hilo. “And it’s not a chance we can take with Judah. I don’t know how I feel about him, I told you that before. And it’s something”—she broke off, realized she tasted tears—“something I wanted to figure out, especially now, with Callum. You understand?”

  Hilo nodded slowly. “But—”

  Noa hung her head. “But. Yes, Hilo. Even if I do love him in that way, even if … I have, I-I will give him to you, Hilo. I will make him fall out of love with me.” She wiped her cheeks. “But Hilo—you must catch him.” She pressed her eyes closed, unable to look at Hilo’s face, at the solemn, reassuring softness, the glowing pixie beauty, that she knew would be there. “You must promise me you won’t abandon him again. Not ever.”

  “I promise,” Hilo whispered. “I promise. On my life.”

  “No,” Noa murmured, forcing her eyes open, forcing herself to stare hard at Hilo. “On his.”

  Hilo clutched Noa’s hands, and nodded.

  After a moment, the Seer cleared her throat. “Now, about your other mission to free the boys from mind control.”

  Noa barely heard her, but Hilo turned, startled back into the reality that there was more they had yet to cover, even beyond this.

  “I’m afraid this new technology—which distills Fae gifts into tubes and bracelets, divorcing magic from the humanity that tempers it—it is something I never studied, and therefore I cannot advise you. The Scrolls never anticipated such a perversion. However, if you wish to infiltrate the Palace Tower to try to save them, and perhaps free Sasha if she is there, I may be able to guide you in that part. But your time is running out.”

  “Noa,” Hilo said gently, getting up.

  “I can’t, I need a moment,” Noa whispered, shaking her head, unable to stand or take in any more. She was Marena, rocking in their cell. She was her mother the fingernail moon, swallowed by the dark.

  The Seer looked from Noa—unreachable—to Hilo. “I will relay the information to you, Hilo, and then our business is at a close.”

  Hilo looked at Noa, then walked over toward the Seer, leaving Noa to recover in a modicum of privacy.

  Noa lay on her side, curled up in the damp, the dank, the darkness, and let it all fall down on her.

  Everything she’d lost.

  • • •

  Hilo went to wake Noa gently. She had fallen fitfully asleep on the ground, but even in sleep, Noa’s face remained stricken, tensing, as if she were in no place of rest. Grief rose from Noa’s skin like steam, seeping into Hilo until she too sagged with it. Hilo could have blocked it with her gift, but instead she let it happen; she didn’t want to forget Noa’s suffering, not then or later. She wanted it written on her bones. A touchstone. To remember.

  So though time was of the essence, Hilo took a moment to curl beside Noa, stomach to back, nesting Cs again, pixie around mortal. The expanse of skin widened between them, one landscape, two hearts, to spread more thinly Noa’s pain.

  Harmony watched for only a moment or two, allowing again that small stirring she had once thought dead forever. She’d felt it earlier, when she’d found herself at Noa’s side. It had frightened Harmony; she’d pushed it away, named it transference from Noa’s feelings and memories. But here it was again. Warmth, a rhythm beating from her heart.

  Motherly.

  Harmony felt moisture on her cheek, put up a stunned hand to touch it. It was black, as she’d known it would be. She turned back into the dark.

  When she reached the subtle crack between the walls, Harmony wove a light sleeping spell behind her. Hilo joined Noa in her sleep, and Harmony turned to the pixie hidden in the crevice.

  Her sister.

  “Why did you help them at all?” There was little light in this hidden place, but the scar across her sister’s face would have been visible even in the bleakest dark. Harmony could have fixed it, but Lia—or Captain Lia, as she was known above—had wanted to keep it to remember. Harmony too had scars, but she wore them where they could not be seen. They’d robbed her of far more than just a pretty face.

  “An apostle hidden in the jail sent her to me, gave her my name. He must have heard something from her in there, and he was right. He’d been waiting there for quite some time, watching, listening. He did well.”

  “That old man? He was part of your circle? You should have told me, I would have protected him—”

  “We are few, but every one who serves me is willing to die for me. He died for a good reason.” Harmony looked Lia in the eyes. “She’s the one. She will reset the balance. She who shines the light…”

  “You sound as if you now believe in prophecy.”

  “Not prophecy,” Harmony sneered. “I believe in balance! Everything I studied, everything we are, everything that was taken from me in this world comes from one thing: balance. A sacrifice was made to open that Portal. But Darius did not want to pay the price. So I had to.”

  “We had to,” Lia corrected quietly. “They were mine too. You said
that once.”

  Harmony nodded. “Losing them…” Another black tear, wiped away quickly, angrily. “But this girl can bring them back. This girl will reset the balance. She will reopen the pathway from the other side, with the sacrifice originally intended. She will set my children free.”

  “Surely they will die….”

  Harmony spun to her sister, lizard eyes flashing. “And a long wrong will be righted, the balance set anew.”

  Lia said nothing, bowing to her sister’s passion. She knew what it was to lose a child forever, to see him stop breathing before your eyes. She understood why they must do anything, everything, to bring them home again.

  “So what now? You cannot know she will do it. You always say you do not See the future. No one can.” Lia asked.

  Harmony drew herself inward, pushed out her armored lizard skin.

  “I have seen her heart. And I know what endures. Balance, and the inevitability of love.”

  “That’s why you help her now?”

  Harmony nodded, grim. “Her love will die, but not just yet.”

  • • •

  The Seer stood with Noa and Hilo on the underground bank one last time. Noa was tired but determined; she’d sealed everything up—the whole messy, twisted, excruciating jumble—inside a mammoth, duct-taped box and locked it in a closet far in the back of her mind. So she could focus on the task at hand. So she could accomplish the goal. Rescue.

  For their sake, and her own.

  In the back of Noa’s mind, she suspected Hilo might be helping her, gift-wise, with this enormous emotional denial, but if so, she was okay with that.

  “I can create a small window to right outside the Tower, where you thought your sister might be concealed,” the Seer told them. “That’s as close as I dare to drop you. You will need stealth on your side.”

  “A window? Like a Portal?” Hilo asked.

  The Seer tensed. “Portals require deeper ritual, and open between worlds. Not even I could do that. Even a temporary rip between worlds would require blending all colored magic—and then it would be so brief and so unstable—”

  “But you do have all the gifts,” Hilo interrupted.

  “No, I have knowledge of the gifts,” the Seer snarled. “It is not the same as possessing them entire, inside.”

  Hilo looked confused and tired.

  So was Noa. “So you’ll drop us outside the Tower. Then we can get Sasha, and then figure out how to get the boys.”

  “We should get the brothers first,” Hilo argued.

  “No,” Noa said sharply. “My sister first.”

  Hilo clenched her teeth and narrowed her eyes.

  Noa frowned, frustrated. “Trust me, you want her with us. Especially if their minds are still messed up.”

  The Seer smiled a tiny smile while Hilo threw up her hands.

  “Ready?” the Seer prompted.

  Noa looked at Hilo and nodded. The Seer lifted her weathered hands, and the air in front of her coalesced into a kind of looking glass, but instead of the Seer’s face, it showed grass, dirt, the exterior of a vine-covered stone wall.

  “Not a Portal, just a window inside Aurora. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  Noa took a deep breath, and with Hilo at her side, stepped out of the darkness.

  • • •

  The Seer was right: stepping through was just like sneaking out a window. Harmony had also chosen a good place—they were shaded by nearby trees, hidden in the dappled light.

  “Which side is the room where you saw your sister in Captain Lia’s mind?” Hilo asked, looking up at the many-windowed Tower.

  “I didn’t actually see her—”

  “Whatever.”

  “I just saw a room up in the Tower that Arik was guarding. Where they keep ‘the weapon.’”

  “Okay, so where was it?”

  “I-I don’t know,” Noa realized. “I only saw the hall from the inside.”

  Hilo rolled her eyes. “Well we can’t go in the front door so what do we do?”

  Noa tiptoed to the Tower wall and ran her hands along it. The vines here were not only part of the stone; actual vines had grown up along the side.

  Noa smiled. She knew all about going out windows and up and down trees. She did it all the time.

  “We climb.”

  Noa jumped up into the vine’s twists and turns, climbing quick as a cat, her energy rising. It felt good to be doing something she knew and did well. Handhold, foothold, lift; handhold, foothold, squeeze, hop, lift. Higher and higher.

  “Slow down!” Hilo hissed from below her. “Damn, you must be draining Judah’s juice.”

  Noa froze. She hadn’t even considered that—did her exertion speed up the transfer process?

  “Relax, Noa, I’m just teasing you,” Hilo said with a smirk as she came up even with Noa. “I’m sure it doesn’t work like that, and it’s not like we’re out for fun here.”

  Noa wanted to slap Hilo, but didn’t. She was right. This wasn’t a fun run. But she made a mental note to maybe slap her later.

  They continued up the wall several more feet until they began to reach rows of windows.

  “Whoa, there are a lot of rooms,” Noa said.

  “But only two levels, see?”

  “Yeah but once we start to look, it’s only a matter of time before someone catches us. We need enough time to find her—”

  “Relax, Noa. We’ve got this,” Hilo said confidently. “We’ll just split up.”

  Noa almost lost her grip. “What?” she hissed.

  “Come on, it makes the most sense. I’ll start at the top level, and you take this level, and hopefully one of us finds her before we get caught.”

  “Some plan,” Noa said uneasily. “But I guess if one of us does find her, we’ll be okay.”

  “Why do you keep saying that? Is there something I don’t know?” Hilo replied suspiciously. “I mean, Lily’s a Clear as far as I remember, so she doesn’t really have a lot to add on her own.”

  “Just trust me,” Noa says. “She’s stronger than you think.”

  “O-kay. Well let’s do this then.”

  “Forward,” Noa nodded.

  “See you in a bit.” With that, Hilo scurried up higher.

  Noa turned to the window above her head, murmuring, “I really hope you’re here, Sasha my love.” She climbed up beside the bottom of the window well and found, to her relief, it was cracked for air. She considered trying to look through the window first but worried it might make her visible to someone on the inside. Besides, the glare would work against her.

  No peeking then. All or nothing.

  Noa pulled herself up flush alongside the window, then in one motion, leapt to the well, bent, grabbed, and thrust the window up and somersaulted inside—

  —and fell several feet through empty air until a hard iron chair painfully broke her fall. She sprang to her feet immediately, ignoring the pain, poised to fight and bite and kick—and froze.

  Callum was standing open-mouthed six inches from her, in a Captain’s uniform, and Judah was slumped and filthy in a cage.

  “I know you,” Callum said softly, confused. “You’re in the blurry place, the mermaid, you won’t go away….”

  Judah struggled to his feet behind bars. “Noa?” he coughed, squinting and blinking. “You’re alive? And you … you came back for us? After everything…”

  “I came to get you out of here,” Noa said tersely, not able to meet his eyes. “I’ll explain later.” She looked at Callum instead. You betrayed me. There was no time for that now either. “Let him out, Callum, we have to go find my sister.”

  Callum struggled, frowned. “No, he has to stay.”

  “It’s no use,” Judah muttered bitterly, breathily. “I’ve tried, he’s just too brainwashed—”

>   “But you’re not.”

  “Because you woke me up.”

  Noa’s stomach twisted. Judah sounded sick, weak. She ordered herself not to look at him, to focus. “Callum!” she demanded instead, grabbing Callum’s uniformed shoulders, staring at him hard in the eyes. “You need to wake up now! Like Judah did!” It did not even occur to her to be frightened. She was much too angry for that. And this Callum was not so sure as the Guard who’d killed Marena. This Callum, she could see, was wavering.

  “Noa, no,” this Callum whimpered. “You’re not clear, you’re all mixed up, I’m not supposed to go there, you’re the mermaid—” He shook her off, flinging her arms away with sudden strength. “I have to take care of my brother!”

  “It’s no use. You can’t break through,” Judah moaned.

  Rage flared inside Noa. She steeled herself, shoved away how much she knew this was going to hurt. She grabbed Callum’s face, pulled it toward hers and kissed it, hard and angry. Callum fought her at first, then kissed her back, confused and then with hunger, then voracious—

  Callum ripped himself from her. “No! No! Take it away!” he cried.

  Noa tried to grab his forearms, angry and desperate. “Callum! You know who I am! You know who Judah is! Stop with the lies and just wake up!”

  “I can’t,” he cried, frenetic. “I can’t, I can’t! Take it away!”

  “Please Callum—” She fell to her knees, burying her face in her hands, too desperate even to stand. Almost automatically, Callum found himself kneeling beside her, wanting, needing to help.

  “Callum,” Noa whimpered into him, “you breathed for me once, when I was underwater you gave me gills. No matter what else—or what…” He was touching her cheek so gently. She took his wrist, looked into his frightened eyes. Forced her voice to strengthen, steady. “Now you have to let me breathe for you. Come back to us. If Judah can do it, so can you.”

  Callum held her gaze, wanting, trying; he started rocking on the floor with the pain of it, backward and forward. Noa found her arms around him, her voice soothing, whispering. She almost forgot for a moment how his skin burned against her skin, how her heart pounded with what she could not now unlearn.