Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL)

by Archer, Jill

  “Did Rafe botch Revelare Lucere just now?” I whispered.

  Slowly, she shook her head. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. But they weren’t real. None of this was, right? A high-pitched, strangled keening sound came out of my mouth and I collapsed to my knees. But I didn’t want to burn the keep, or Luck forbid the settlers’ huts outside, so I focused all of my waning magic into a fiery ball of rage and regret and sadness and even hate, and I blasted that damned bone throne all to hell. Rain poured from the open parts of the ceiling and bone dust poured down from the rest. In a matter of seconds the entire thing was reduced to ashes.

  “Do not remake it,” I hissed to Rafe.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he murmured.

  Virtus came over to me then and butted his head against my leg, purring loudly. Somewhat surreally, I remembered that cats purr when they are in distress. Virtus was still a cub. Maybe he was even more traumatized by what had happened here than I was.

  I gave him a reassuring pat on the head and then held my hand out to Fara, who helped me up.

  “You can heal me,” I said, hobbling toward the door, motioning to the Angels, “but let’s do it outside.”

  Even the bubbling ooze of the moat would be preferable to this place.

  Chapter 25

  Some lesser demons aren’t adored. They live in anonymity. Maybe that’s why he wanted to be a Maegester.”

  A few hours later, the rain had stopped and we were sitting in the dirt courtyard inside the Stone Pointe moat. I’d sent Fara to check on Zella. I was worried she might already be in labor. Fara wasn’t a Mederi, but she knew some spells that might provide relief and comfort at least. Rafe had partially healed the wound in my thigh. Since it had been made with waning magic, I’d need a Mederi to finish the job, but at least I was now well enough to walk. In the time it had taken Rafe to cast the healing spell, the night had darkened. With the darkness, the questions had returned and we were now discussing, in various states of antagonism, Ari’s shocking betrayal. I’d nearly set fire to the moat a half dozen times (and Rafe had stopped me the same number of times with Flame Resistant Blanket) so, with my permission, Rafe had finally cast his most ridiculously titled spell to date—Chillax. He said he’d originally designed it to chill drinks but had inadvertently discovered a hidden benefit. Apparently, it also acted as a muscle and mood relaxant. Because I recalled only too vividly how I’d burned acres of rush lands the night Burr had died, I finally agreed to let him cast it over me. Just this once.

  “Rafe,” I said incredulously, “do you hear yourself?!” Chillax took the edge off so I didn’t burn down the Shallows, but it hadn’t left me completely emotionless either.

  “Demons may be worshipped in Halja, Noon, but who do you think really runs this country? The greater demons may not even exist. Have you ever seen them?”

  I was speechless with disbelief. Disbelief at both what he was saying and the audacity it must have taken to say it in the first place. But Rafe persisted.

  “Your father runs Halja. The executive to the Demon Council—a Maegester—rules this country, supposedly as the administrative head of a council of demons no one has ever actually seen, who themselves are regents for an absent demon king. Ari’s positioned himself well, attaching himself to you—Karanos’ only daughter. In fact, I’d argue that since Karanos has dozens of demon executioners, but only one daughter, Ari’s in an even better position this year than he was last year.”

  Rafe suddenly seemed to realize that he’d gone too far. That he’d said too much. I sat on the ground with my arms clutched around my bent knees and my face buried in them. I didn’t believe what Rafe had just said. It was outrageous, just like Rafe. But, unfortunately, there was also no way to refute it, and it highlighted all of the insecurities I’d thought I’d long since banished. Was Ari only interested in me because I was Karanos Onyx’s daughter?

  “Do you think Jezebeth told Ynocencia the truth at first?” Rafe asked softly.

  “Jezebeth . . . ?” I said, shaking my head, confused.

  “The drakon your father had executed in Timothy’s Square at the beginning of the semester.”

  “I know who Jezebeth was,” I snapped.

  “You asked why Ari would hide, what would he have to gain. Why did Jezebeth pretend to be Ynocencia’s husband? Did you really think he was trying to steal her farm? Isn’t it much more likely that he simply wanted a life that he hadn’t been born to? Not unlike you, Nouiomo. Until recently.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Look,” Rafe said, sighing, “I think we both know I’ve got no love for the Joshua School or the Divinity. And, as an Angel, I don’t feel particularly beholden to the Council either, except that as a resident of Halja, I generally follow the rules. But you tell me. You’re the future Maegester. Is Ari breaking any rules by not telling anyone?”

  I didn’t answer. Jezebeth hadn’t been executed for his duplicity. He’d been executed because he was a murderer. But then, Jezebeth had only pretended to be a Hyrke. He hadn’t put his name on the List and tried to train as a Maegester.

  Rafe shrugged, interpreting my silence as “no.”

  “So keep his secret. I don’t care. I’ll keep it too.”

  “Do you think he’ll come back?”

  “Revelare Lucere will wear off eventually, just like any other well-cast spell, if that’s what you mean.” It wasn’t, but Rafe couldn’t answer my question anyway.

  “When?”

  “When will it wear off?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know. A day maybe. At the most.”

  Would Ari come back then?

  Did I want him to?

  * * *

  Later that night, Fara met up with us. She’d checked in on Zella. As I’d suspected, the woman was in labor, but wanted no part of Fara or her spells. Considering the fact that Zella likely associated Fara with what had happened in the keep, I didn’t blame her. In any case, Meghan was with Zella and had assured Fara that the mother-to-be was in no real danger.

  Fara declared her oath to Ari broken. Angels were under no obligation to guard demons. The post-Apocalyptic treaty terms were clear. Angels were only required to serve Host warlords and their descendants. Not “the demon horde rabble,” as Fara had put it. She’d clapped her hands together too, as she’d said it, as if just like that she could wipe Ari out of existence—swish him away in the wind, brush him off her hands, and be done with him. I should be so lucky, I thought, fighting back tears and hating myself for it.

  Personally, now that the effects of Rafe’s calming spell had worn off, I wasn’t doing too well. The revelation that Ari had really been a demon, that he’d had a lot more than just the “drop of demon blood” most future Maegesters have, that he’d been fooling me, as Jezebeth had fooled Ynocencia, messed with my mind. It wasn’t, necessarily, the fact that he had shifted into a horrifying-looking beast (although I’d never forget the image of him biting the hellcnight’s head off). And it wasn’t, necessarily, the fact that he hadn’t told me (although that was huge). It was the fact that I should have known. Looking back there were myriad clues, and I’d willingly ignored each and every one of them. Oh, sure, I could blame my own ignorance. Any knowledge of magic gleaned in childhood was used for the sole purpose of avoiding detection, not ferreting out other waning magic users who might be hiding secrets of their own. No, it was my willful ignorance I blamed.

  When I’d first arrived at St. Luck’s, Ari had been the one who’d been ranked Primoris. Why? Because his magic was so much stronger than everyone else’s. And what had Ari done before enrolling at St. Luck’s? He’d been a demon executioner. Apparently, one of my father’s favorites. And yet he’d never once requested the services of a Guardian Angel. Why? Because he didn’t really need one. He’d told me himself, he’d chosen Fara as his Guardian for me.

  “So what’s our plan now?” Fara asked. “Just wait for the Boatman and catch a ride back to New Babylon?
” She looked unhappy. I couldn’t tell if she were reflecting on recent events or future ones. A trip back to New Babylon with the Boatman would take far longer than the trip out here, be much less comfortable, and just as dangerous.

  “We can’t leave,” I said quietly.

  Rafe and Fara spoke at the same time.

  “Wha—?”

  “You’re not suggesting that we stay here . . . indefinitely, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “But there are two reasons we can’t leave with the next Boatman—or I can’t.” I swept my arm in a wide gesture encompassing all of the Shallows. “What do you think would happen to these people if we left them here, without an outpost lord?”

  Comprehension dawned for the Angels. It might not happen right away, but eventually a rogare would figure out that there was no patron demon protecting the Hyrkes here. It would be a slaughter, and there was no way I was leaving the settlers here to face that alone.

  “So you—a first-year MIT who’s spent most of her life sequestered in the tiny village of Etincelle—are going to be the new defender of these people?” Rafe said. Again, that appraising look. Like he was seeing me for the first time or just wondering what I was really made of.

  “Not forever,” I said hastily. “Just until the Council can send someone else out, or figure out a way to relocate everyone here.”

  “They’ll probably refuse,” Fara said.

  I sighed. “First things first. The other reason we can’t leave is that I think there’s a second hellcnight hiding here.”

  “Really?” Fara asked, her eyes wide. “Do you feel another demon?”

  “No, but we were attacked by two hellcnights on the way here. And the hellcnight that Ari killed earlier wasn’t Grimasca. Grimasca has three parallel scars slashed across his face.” I told them what Sasha had said during class in the beginning of the semester and what Burr had told me the day before he died. They’d each had conflicting stories about how the scars had gotten there, but each agreed that Grimasca’s cheek was marked. “And that hellcnight’s cheek wasn’t,” I said, pointing toward the keep.

  “That means he wasn’t Grimasca, just an ordinary garden-variety hellcnight.” As if there were such a thing.

  “So you still think Grimasca is behind all this?” Rafe asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I only know that, one, Vodnik is dead. He was killed by the hellcnight in there, or the hellcnight’s partner, at some point in the past—most likely out in the Meadow the day the fishermen disappeared. And, two, I know that one hellcnight is dead. The one in there. And, three, I know there may be another one hiding here who may or may not be Grimasca.”

  The Angels sat silently, contemplating the fact that our demon fights for this assignment might not be over.

  “How long has it been since you cast Demon Net?” I asked Rafe.

  “Not since the Meadow earlier today.”

  “You should cast it again. I won’t be able to feel another hellcnight hiding here if it’s one of the ones that attacked us from before.”

  He did as I asked. Thankfully, Demon Net didn’t take as long to cast as Revelare Lucere had.

  His gaze met mine. He looked grim and somber. I couldn’t help remembering the lines from the song he’d sung to me the night we’d made tea together on Cnawlece. Sleep, my baby . . . sleep, baby do. Grimasca’s coming . . . and he will eat you.

  “There’s a demon hiding under the keep,” he said. “But it might be Ari.”

  I’d almost forgotten that Rafe could only sense a waning magic user’s presence with Demon Net, not their identity.

  “No, I would feel Ari’s signature if he were anywhere near, but I don’t. The fact that I can’t feel this demon means it’s one of the hellcnights that attacked us on the way here. So . . .” I said, blowing my breath out and clapping my hands together. I could hardly believe I was thinking about doing what I was just about to do. I eyed the dark, half-sunk, water-filled, lower windows of the keep and finally said, “Who’s willing to crawl in there with me?”

  Rafe scoffed. “You have to ask? I gave you an oath. Of course I’m in.”

  I turned to Fara. She leaned down and whispered something to Virtus. She scratched him behind the ear and pretended to listen to something he said. I tried not to roll my eyes. Over the course of this trip I’d grown to genuinely like Fara, but she could be . . . well . . . different. But then, who of us wasn’t? She looked up at me.

  “I’m in, but Virtus is going to wait with Russ. If anything happens to us, he knows Russ will take good care of him.”

  Right. Well, I put the odds of our surviving at fifty-fifty. And, since cats didn’t like water anyway, Fara’s plan was actually more thought out than mine.

  So that was that. We were going in.

  Chapter 26

  The three of us stood in front of the keep deciding which opening we were going to wade into. The sun had set long ago and the Shallows were completely dark. A slight, damp breeze stirred the far-off trees and my hair. I licked my lips and clutched Burr’s knife, wondering crazily if I should give the Angels some sort of “eve of battle” speech. I still wore the clothes Meghan had generously given me when we first arrived in the Shallows: loose linen pants and a slim-fitting tunic with a low-slung belt. I’d managed to keep the boots I’d been wearing when Cnawlece sank. I debated unlacing them and taking them off—they would make swimming more difficult—but I couldn’t be sure we’d be swimming instead of wading so I left them on. I took the belt off, though. No need for that extra weight. And I tore the long bell sleeves off of my shirt. They’d only get wet and get in my way. I didn’t necessarily need my hands to throw magic, but having my hands free would help me to focus.

  Rafe immediately followed my lead and shed his belt. Fara shed her glamour, which weighed nothing but the potentia she might need for other spells. She stood before us clothed in simple canvas pants and a nondescript shirt, not unlike the clothes we had on. She still had her scars but they looked less shocking now. Maybe it was because our circumstances weren’t quite as drastic as they’d been before, or maybe it was because I’d seen them already.

  Rafe cast the spells I’d come to think of as the “Pierce Triumvirate” (Painfall, Damage Cascade, and Hemorrhage) over me. He then cast Impenetrable and a cloaking spell before I stopped him and told him to shield himself and then preserve his potentia.

  I turned to Fara, motioning. “Come on, then. Don’t be shy. I hear you’ve got some spells I might be interested in too.”

  She looked confused. “Clean Conscience?”

  “No,” I said quickly, barking out a laugh. “Not that one. I meant Ascendancy. And I know you also have an AIR Boost. If I remember correctly, you learned them for me, so let’s see how they work, shall we?”

  She grinned and cast me up. Her spells felt different from Rafe’s. They seemed to have an expansive feel rather than a focused feel. I didn’t know whether the different feelings were because they were different spells or different casters. How had my life come to this?

  For most of my life I’d wanted to be a Mederi, to have waxing magic. I’d given up that dream last semester. For the most part, willingly. (Oh sure, there were some days when I still wanted a garden, but I’d genuinely tried to make my peace with the magic Luck had given me.) So it was fairly shocking to realize that my life had come to the point where I also willingly let two Angels cast me up with the most deadly spells imaginable while I shaped my own death magic into a fiery filleting knife so that we could crawl into a dark, watery hole in order to drag a demon out of it—or possibly kill it. I mean I’m the type of girl who obsesses over writing assignments, class attendance, and due dates for library books. I don’t think of myself as a monster fighter, defender of justice, or people savior.

  But then, life and Luck are funny partners. I guess they give you the life they think you can handle, not the one you necessarily wanted. Deep down, I knew I was doing the right thing (there was no way I was going
to allow a demon to continue preying on these people if I could prevent it) but that didn’t make what I was doing any less frightening.

  We elected to enter the lower level through one of its largest openings. If the Angels were thinking along the same lines as me, it was because we all wanted our escape hatch to be as big as possible. Despite the fact that it was midsummer, the water in the moat was cold. As soon as I stepped into it, it rose to midcalf, completely covering my already soaked boots. As careful as we were, a certain amount of splashing was unavoidable. The opaque water made me uneasy. It was impossible to see what was in it. The changing patterns looked like a giant thumbprint, a whorl of swirling browns, coated with a shiny, reflective egg wash. Every foot or so, I stumbled over a fallen stone from the crumbling keep or a large river rock that the Blandjan’s current had probably washed into the moat during a flood. I sheathed Burr’s knife and ducked under the crumbling stone archway of the opening, gritting my teeth against the cold as the water level rose to my waist. Inside, the floor kept sloping downward. We were going to have to swim.

  Once in, we all lit lights. After a deep focusing breath, I lit a fireball and was momentarily happy to see a well-controlled, flickering yellow fireball light in my hand. Rafe and Fara cast Angel light, which was more silver and steady than my flame. We used the light to take our first peek at the watery bowels of the Stone Pointe keep.

  I wished I hadn’t had to look.

  The walls were plastered, top to bottom, with huge skulls. Not human skulls—they were far too large for that. And yet, they had human features, not demon ones. Giants, I thought, pushing out into the water as I reached the end of the area within which I could stand. They were giant skulls. I kicked in the water with my boots, careful to keep my right hand, the one that held the fireball, above the surface. I gazed at the skulls—there were hundreds of them—with a sense of macabre wonder. And then it occurred to me that these walls weren’t the walls of subterranean catacombs, but rather were the walls of floors of the house that were once aboveground. Huh. Well, magic or no, I guess those ancient giants knew a thing or two about intimidation. Nothing like receiving visitors in rooms decorated with the skulls of your conquered. Or the skulls of your loved ones. Either way . . . I shuddered and my hand dipped beneath the surface of the water, extinguishing my light.