by Kaylin Lee
And they’d been cursed in the process of freeing me—cursed in my place. I pressed my lips together and tried to keep my expression neutral. Their sacrifice was the exact opposite of right.
As though she’d read my thoughts, Kaia sighed. “You’re not the only one who’s ever made a mistake, you know.”
“I know,” I muttered.
“But do you?”
I focused on the baby instead of answering her, rocking him slowly as he sighed in his sleep.
“I used to be an aurist, did you know that?” My head shot up. “Nearly died from it,” she added. “Nearly chose to die from it.”
Her baby’s warm, cozy body in my arms felt at odds with the chill running across my skin. “What happened?”
“My sisters saved my life. Now here I am, married to a better man than I ever even knew existed, with three precious children and so much joy in my life that at times it leaves me speechless.” She rolled her shoulders, then pulled her long, dark hair over her shoulder and rested her head against the wall. “I can’t believe that I nearly threw all of this away.” She inspected the ends of her hair and brushed some white powder off, then speared me with a glance. “You won’t stop fighting, will you?”
“No,” I said stiffly, perhaps guiltily. “I won’t.”
“Good.” She straightened away from the wall and held out her hands. “I’ll take him now. Thank you.”
I placed the baby in her arms as gently as I could, but the movement woke him. He stretched, then settled as Kaia tucked him against her body.
“Hello again, sweet one,” she cooed, smiling as her son fixed his dark eyes on her face.
“How …” I didn’t have the words. “How can you …”
“How can I still smile, with Cole gone and the world dissolving before our eyes?”
I nodded slowly.
“I should have died five years ago,” she said, then pressed a kiss to her son’s forehead. “Whether we beat the Masters or not, today is a miracle.”
Chapter 26
Thud. Thud.
Elektra hovered over my frozen body, her eyes flashing. “You thought you could escape me? Idiot. I always win in the end.”
She removed a vial from her violet robe, her eyes flashing with hatred.
I tried to move away, but my body was paralyzed in sleep. “Help,” I whispered, but the word stayed trapped in my mind.
Thud.
“I’ve already won.” Elektra poured the vial over me. Was the fire on my skin a memory, or real?
“Bri!” Thud. Thud. “Wake up, Bri!”
“You were mine for five years, creature.” She opened another vial. I tried to groan but couldn’t make a noise. “You’ll be mine for eternity,” she continued. “You are nothing without me. You are nothing without—”
CRASH. “Bri! Are you well?”
A hand shook my shoulder. I startled and sat up straight, torn abruptly from the nightmare as my nerves stood at attention. “Tav?”
He crouched by my bed, his red hair a mess and his chest heaving. Behind him, the door hung haphazardly from one hinge, still swinging from his entrance. He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. “You didn’t answer. I thought—”
“I was just asleep, I think,” I mumbled. My voice was hoarse and creaky from lack of use. I rubbed my eyes, then my temples. The headache from yesterday hadn’t eased. Instead, fuzzy sleepiness had joined it. “What time is it?”
“You’ve been asleep all day.” Tavar stood, looking uncomfortable. “They thought you were dodging the prince’s command to rejoin the Sentinels. No one guessed that you were still asleep until Alba mentioned something. But then your door was locked—”
“The latch sticks sometimes. There’s a trick to it.” I pushed off my blanket, feeling sticky and claustrophobic. “We lived in this room for a while, back when I was younger.”
Tavar nodded slowly. “You sure you’re well? I’ve never known you to sleep in or be late to a brief, much less miss a summons entirely.”
“The curse used to wake me up early.” I pulled the cord from my braid and loosened it, needing something to do with my hands. “Never let me sleep for long. There was too much to do.”
“I see.” Tavar’s stillness made me nervous. He was watching me too closely again, paying too much attention. What if the curse—
No. The curse was gone.
My fingers felt clumsy and thick. I twisted my hair into a quick bun, tied it, then stood. The room spun, but I stayed still by sheer determination. “Where’s the brief? I’ll be there in a moment.”
Tavar towered over me, and I was acutely aware that we were alone—alone, without the curse to observe us and offer snarling commentary on my every word and movement. The silence in my head was unnerving. But not as unnerving as the twinkle in Tavar’s blue eyes.
“You missed the brief by about six hours.” He leaned back on his heels and slid his hands into his pockets. “You should probably just find Raven and look sorry. She’s in her old office. Want me to walk you there?”
“No.” I hadn’t meant to sound so sharp. “I remember it.”
Tavar nodded, lifting a hand to his heart in a teasing salute. “Then I’ll leave you to it, Sentinel.”
He left with an uncharacteristic bounce in his step. I narrowed my eyes and went to the door to watch him stride down the hallway. What was there to be so happy about?
Then he glanced over his shoulder before turning down the next hall and caught me watching from the doorway. For some reason, he grinned. “Good luck with the Acting Commander,” he called back to me. “Glad you finally got some sleep.”
~
Raven’s voice was cold when she greeted me at the doorway. I entered uneasily, still woozy from so much sleep.
A pretty, dark-haired woman and an older, bespectacled man straightened from where they worked at a paper-strewn table, both eyeing me with palpable interest. Ella’s Draician colleagues from the Office of Ancient Kireth Research, I thought. Chloe, and a university professor whose name I’d forgotten.
“You’re late, Sentinel.”
I focused on Raven. “Apologies, ma’am.” My voice was dry. “I was asleep.”
“For nearly twenty hours?”
“Yes, ma’am.” My headache pulsed at my temples. “It was an accident.”
She studied me for a moment, then reached into a drawer and plunked a large, shiny black rock on her desk. “Look familiar?”
I peered at it, suddenly on edge. “It does.”
“Tell me more.”
The man and woman at the other table watched me closely.
“I saw it in the crater. It was inside the rock wall, not everywhere, but perhaps every few paces.” I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how the crater had looked in the dark, rainy, late-afternoon as the curse ushered me into the palace for its fulfillment. “Fixed to the crater walls at regular intervals, maybe. Like someone stuck the rocks there on purpose.” I opened my eyes to see Chloe lifting her chin triumphantly.
“I knew it.” She crossed her legs and picked up a sheet of paper from the table. “Just like I said earlier. They’re using it exactly as the ancients did.”
“The most recent mention of sorbus in Kireth legends dates back well over a thousand years, way before the invasion.” The elderly man removed his glasses and polished them, his brow furrowing. “There’s no way that it has suddenly appeared in Theros after all this time. Besides, Briar Rose didn’t say they’ve built a sorbus wall or fortress, did she? She said they’ve simply fixed it to the crater at intervals.”
“This is sorbus?” I picked up the rock and turned it over. “How did you get a piece of it?”
“Your sister, actually,” Raven said, leaning back in her chair. “When she lost you, she found shelter with a group of Badlanders working in a mine deep in the Gold Hills, not far from the crater itself. The Masters had convinced a Procus couple to run the operation, mining and transporting this sorbus stuff by the cratef
ul. We found a sample in the late Lord Galanos’s office. Professor Kristoff quickly connected it with an old legend he had in the archives.”
My breath caught. “Lord Galanos was behind it all along?”
“And his wife,” Chloe said. “Once we got our hands on the rock itself, it wasn’t hard to figure out its purpose. The rock is impervious to magic. It’s like a shield, repelling any magic that comes near it—natural or alchemical, expellant or absorbent.” She took the rock from me and tilted her head thoughtfully, brushing her fingers across the slick, shiny surface. “Intervals, you say,” she murmured. “I wonder if—” She hefted the rock, then slammed it hard against the edge of the table, cracking it into two jagged pieces. Then she held them out to Raven, one perfect brow arching in an unspoken challenge.
Raven leaned across the table and took the two pieces of rock from her, then held them up in two hands. “This far?”
“A little further, I think.” I tried to picture the crater walls again as she stretched her arms wide. “Yes. Like that.”
Chloe lifted a hand, gold sparkles pooling in her palm. “Ready?”
Raven nodded once.
Chloe shot a stream of expellant magic at her with enough power to knock her out cold. Before I could even blink, the stream rebounded back straight toward Chloe, who dodged it neatly with a twist of her head.
The sparkly stream slammed into the wall behind her, blasting a hole in the wall the size of a fist and shaking crumbs of plaster down in a small shower.
“Oh ho!” Professor Kristof crowed, leaping to his feet. “You ladies are far too reckless, you know, but would you look at that?”
Chloe grinned widely, her cool expression flashing into a moment of pure triumph before settling into a cold mask again. “Sometimes recklessness gets results, Professor. And it looks like my theory has been proven. They’re doing just what the ancients did. They’re building a shield.”
“The Masters are the ones with alchemy, not us.” I leaned my elbow on the table and pressed knuckles to my lips, my thoughts racing. “Why would they want to block magic?” Sorbus seemed like something magicless Fenra people would need, not the Kireth Masters themselves.
“In the legends, ancient Kireth warlords used it to defend their strongholds during battles with rivals.” Professor Kristoff shoved the loose leaves of paper to the edge of the table, then plucked a handful of pencils from the jar beside him. “Alchemical attacks in those days had grown devastating as innovations in alchemy advanced. The only sure way to defend their own armies against an attack was with sorbus.” He arranged the pencils in a rough circle, then plunked an empty coffee mug into the middle. “It formed a barrier, beyond which no magic, no matter how strong, could pass.”
Chloe nodded. “Precisely. If Briar Rose is certain that they’ve lined the crater with sorbus, and we’ve just confirmed that a shield of sorbus need not be continuous to be effective, there’s no question. They’re building themselves a refuge from their own storm.”
“Then the mission has a chance.” Raven clasped her hands and nodded to Chloe. “If your calculations are right, that is. We’ve got a real chance.”
“My calculations are right.” Chloe pulled a shiny tube of mage-craft lipstick from her pocket, then frowned at the small, crumbling pile of dust that dissipated into the air when she removed the cap. “Or, as close to right as anyone is going to get at this point.”
The professor nodded and held up a large sheet of paper covered in neat, black numerals. “Two days until it’s strong enough to enervate—drain of magic, I mean—anyone unfortunate enough to be outside of solid, stone shelter,” he said clinically. “Without magic in the air to replenish what the storm sucks out of their bodies, biological mechanisms will cease to function, and they will perish quickly. Three more days, and even stone buildings like the palace and the Procus villas will begin to crumble, because there isn’t a single structure in this city that wasn’t constructed with a bit of magic to hold it together. That process should take a couple of days. Two, perhaps three? And then it will be complete.” He coughed. “The dissolution of all life on the continent, that is.”
I’d known it was coming, but still, his words raised bumps on my arms. I shook my head to clear it, wishing I could restore some of the prior numbness to my panicked thoughts. “What’s the mission, though? What could possibly stop—”
“We’re not stopping the storm.” Raven twisted a pencil between her fingers, eyeing me with a cool, measuring look. “We’ll rescue the hostages first. Then we’ll move the statue and its forsaken storm back inside the crater, behind the sorbus barrier, and then …”
“We’ll accelerate it.” Chloe blew the remaining white dust off her now-empty lipstick tube and replaced the cap with a decisive click. “And that will be the end of that.”
Chapter 27
“What is it, Bri?” Raven set her empty victus bowl on the table, covering the map of the crater I’d been helping her sketch out. “You haven’t touched your rations. Something’s wrong. Spit it out.”
I fiddled with a jar of sharpened pencils beside my neglected bowl, arranging the pencils until they fanned out at perfectly spaced intervals. “I was hoping you could promise me something.”
“You’re not in a position to make demands.” She sounded wary.
“I am, actually.” One of the pencils rolled out of place so I adjusted it again, conveniently avoiding Raven’s searching gaze. “You need me, you need to know what I saw and heard in the crater. But I need something, too.”
“Don’t do this, Bri.” Her voice was hard as steel. “Don’t.”
The pencils kept rolling. Worthless, uncooperative things. I left them to sit in their messy chaos and met Raven’s narrowed gaze at last. “I need to make up for what I’ve done.” There. I’d said it.
Raven’s eyelids flickered slightly, the barest hint of a flinch. “I said, don’t. Your father—”
“Is cursed because of me. My mother, too. My team. Thirty Sentinels, cursed and helpless, and it’s all my fault.”
“You were just a child. You don’t—”
“I do. I need to pay for what I did. For that mistake and for every lie, every false moment of the past five years.”
Her mouth formed a thin line. “I don’t agree, and I don’t see what you expect me to do about it. Just help plan the mission, like the prince has tasked you, and you’ll be clear. We’ll consider it all clear.”
“Not enough. I want to go on the mission.”
“The whole point of the mission was to rescue you! The commander would want to keep you safe this time. There’s no question.”
“Well, that was the previous mission.” I straightened my shoulders. “This time, the whole point is to rescue those hostages and destroy the Masters once and for all. I want to be on that mission. And I’m not asking you to do anything more than put me on the team. And maybe …” My fingers twitched toward the pencils, but I held my hands still on the table and continued without wavering. “And maybe, if there’s a chance for me to make up for my mistakes, I want you to give it to me. Promise me that you’ll give me that chance, and I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”
“It’s against Sentinels protocol to blackmail your Acting Commander,” Raven snapped, her nostrils flaring. “I don’t like this. No one will.”
“I don’t care if anyone likes it.” Justice wasn’t about making people happy. I had to do what was right, no matter the cost. “Will you promise, or not?”
The quiet room waited, the air between us feeling empty and drained though the storm hadn’t yet reached us.
How had it come to this? Surviving the curse, only to see my own parents cursed in my place, and my entire continent threatened with extinction days later?
“I promise.” Raven stood abruptly. “Now get out of my office. You’re dismissed.”
Chapter 28
I wandered the narrow, dusty halls of the palace basement as the luminous lights dimmed f
or the evening. Then I approached the old Sentinels training room, hoping it’d be empty.
No luck.
“Well, look who it is.” Corbin dropped his guard as he and Tavar stopped sparring, Corbin’s easy grin a contrast to the odd apprehension on Tavar’s face. “Heard you’re not allowed to quit after all.”
The room smelled of expurgo and sweat. Someone must have cleaned it once we were all stuck in the palace. It seemed I wasn’t the only one hoping to work off my nerves by training.
“Guess not.” I turned to the hooks beside the door, hung my black overshirt, kicked off my boots, and tucked my socks inside them, setting them by the mat.
A few more Sentinels sparred on the mat beyond where Corbin and Tavar stood.
I rubbed my shoulders, then did a few movements to engage my muscles, my body feeling awkwardly jerky. How long had it been since I’d trained without the curse’s constant instruction, criticism, and threats?
“You want to spar?” Tavar approached me slowly. “We just finished.”
“Oh, we did, did we?” Corbin coughed behind him, but Tavar ignored the comment. Corbin rolled his eyes and joined the other Sentinels on the far side of the mat.
“Yes—” I stopped, crossed my arms over my stomach. “No. I don’t know.”
Tavar rubbed the back of his neck. “What don’t you know?”
The silence in my head was unnerving. Could I even spar without the curse? You’re nothing without me. What if I needed its motivation to fight and train like a true Sentinel? “I mean, I don’t want to spar.” I swallowed. “I’m just here to do a bit of training on my own.”
He nodded, his posture relaxing slightly. “Me too. I can spot you on the weights.”
I wasn’t sure if that made me feel safer or more terrified, but I tried to look casual. “Fine.”
We started with legs. The moment I felt the heavy weight of the barbell on my shoulders, something seemed to settle inside me, like an ache had finally been relieved. The jerky nervousness I’d felt since leaving Raven fled, replaced with a solid, satisfying comfort in my own skin.