by Louisa Lo
“This should hold her for a while,” Trust said in a satisfied voice that suggested he’d wanted to do that for a long time.
The dragon, millennia old, was once the trusted advisor to generations of Dualsing kings and queens. As time passed, however, the Dualsingian rulers listened less and less to the old dragon, considering his ideas outdated, his voice unimportant. So he became that which he was believed to be—old and mute. Just as the current king had lost his name after being considered unworthy of mention. In our world, perception altered reality.
Trust had stayed that way for centuries, moping around the palace, too big to be overlooked as a pixie would be, and too aesthetically imperfect to be accepted by the beauty-conscious unicorns. That was the way he had been when I’d first met him as a child. Even at that age, I was drawn to unfortunate creatures such as him.
I treated him like a playmate and passed onto him trinkets gifted by visiting royals. Even pretty things given out of politeness to a not-so-favored crown prince were more than what the neglected draconic ex-statesman had received in a very long time.
And dragons did love their trinkets.
In return, he became my confidant and most loyal supporter. Through my acknowledgement of his existence, Trust regained his voice and health, though he was careful to maintain the illusion of his former state of being. He told me one should always have an element of surprise.
I turned back to the bed, and found Finny had completely vanished, not even an outline of her left.
“We have to act now,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Trust approached me, speaking in a deep, grave voice. “The risk was high enough before, but now…”
“It would be no worse than if we never tried.”
My original plan was to harvest enough magic through the Molten Amber—their strength was knowledge and knowledge was power—to fuel Trust’s ancient spell and make everyone forget about Finny being an outsider. With all the pre-Crossover political song and dance happening around the palace, I had almost stored up enough magic to do exactly that. But now the priority was to get Finny back.
“’No worse than if we never tried’? Dear boy, there are always worse things than inaction.”
“We have to act now. We don’t have a choice,” I pointed at the bed. “She’s gone. She could be anywhere across the planes right now.”
It seemed to be the last point regarding Finny that finally convinced Trust. Finny had been by my side when the dragon first came into my life. Though Trust had chosen to reveal his true self only to me, there was no doubt he was fond of the kind-hearted Finny.
“All right then. Do you have what I need?”
I took a flame-red hair charm out of my pants pocket. I’d taken it from the observatory before heading here, despite the protests of little Alina. I undid the charm and smoothened out the hair strand. “Here’s one.”
I walked to the bed, ran my hand over the lace pillow, hating myself for hoping that the Centaur Guard wasn’t entirely gentle when handling Finny. There, a small piece of brown hair, no doubt pulled out as they settled her on the bed and rearranged her braid. “Here’s the other one.”
Placing the two strands side by side on the dragon’s palm, the hairs drew close to each other like magnets, reflecting the intertwined fates, or maybe even the closeness of the physical locations of their owners.
“This should do it. I should be able to call Lady Serafina back through her pendant.”
Trust started chanting an incantation in a long-forgotten language. The two strands of hair started to fall away, then wrapped around each other in a bid to form a dead knot.
“What’s happening?” I asked Trust.
“It can’t be,” the dragon breathed. “My spell caught both Lady Serafina and your sister right in the middle of some kind of cross-dimensional merge, during a battle for life. My magic has intensified their connection rather than disengaging it.”
“Dammit. And what do you mean, a battle for life?” What had we done? Merged realities between two connected individuals were extremely rare occurrences. For us to attempt a rescue right when the merge was happening was pure rotten luck. It was almost enough for me to start worshipping the long-abandoned Fates. “Can you unwind them?”
“Yes, but—”
“Do it!”
Chapter Ten
Serafina
ONE MOMENT ANASTASIA’S WOODEN knife was seconds from making contact with my belly, the next the merged world we’d shared unraveled itself.
Her wooden knife hit a barrier. On her side, there was the rooftop and a city of glass structures and a million lights. On my side, there was the dark sky and the landing and the snow-capped mountain.
Then her side winked out of existence, leaving me in Dualsing and Dualsing only, my wings retracted and my body remained solid.
And uninjured.
I barely had time to let out a breath of relief before I started falling down the mountain, being pulled backward by my pendant. My body yanked through space, my scream lost in flight.
It was over before I truly had a chance to become frightened. I expected to land back on the floor of the observatory, with the anxious face of Alina above me. Instead, I found my feet solidly planted in the central square of the palace, with its exotic jade-crowned crane and ivory columns.
I tightened my left fist and was pleased and surprised to find the iron dagger still within its grasp. With everything that was happening, I’d forgotten all about it. I touched my pendant. It was there too, cool to the touch now.
A fine mist covered the entire square, and everything was silent, which was unusual for the bustling square.
That was because everything was frozen.
I could see pixies and the jade-crowned crane in mid-flight, the water droplets from the eternal fountain sparkling in the sun like perfectly round, stationary pearls. Far away, on a balcony of the east wing, a servant was beating a rug, except the rug was at a forty-five degree angle with the ground and unmoving. So was the woman holding the stick.
What was going on? The merged realities had resolved themselves. Everything should’ve gone back to normal.
“I really made a mess of it, didn’t I?” came Eldon’s voice from behind me.
I dropped the knife and it clattered loudly against the cobblestones. When I turned, I found Eldon standing by a potted cherry tree, his miniature dragon at his side.
“What’s going on?” I voiced the same question I had asked just hours earlier; it felt like a lifetime ago. “And why aren’t you and Trust frozen like the others?”
Then I took a closer look at Trust and did a double take. The dragon looked like those described in children’s history books—its wings wrapped in a gold lining, its scales glossy and vibrant.
A champion worthy of a king.
Eldon drew close until he was looking me in the eyes. “Trust made it all happen. I asked him to. Then I asked him to bring you here.”
My jaw fell open. I always knew that Trust was more intelligent than everyone gave him credit for, but if he was somehow responsible for the stasis that seemed to be enveloping the palace, then it would suggest some advanced spell-casting abilities as well.
Just as the children’s history books described.
“I’ll let you explain,” Trust nodded to Eldon and retreated. I never even knew that the dragon could talk. How many more surprises could I take?
“Eldon?” I whispered. I was a little afraid of the answer now.
“I did it for us. So that we can be together.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Trust is a powerful ancient, and he’s been trying to help me for a long time now. Please, let me explain everything from the very beginning. It’s the only way any of this is going to make sense.”
I let out a shaky breath. “All right.”
“Do you know what Dualsing is really built on?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean its econom
y. I know that fae hate talking about earthly matters such as wealth and finances, but do you ever wonder how the plane supports itself?”
“I know there’s some sort of trade going on. The palace always has traders visiting from other planes.” I licked my suddenly dry lips. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“It has to do with everything.” Eldon laughed bitterly. “In every generation, Dualsingians choose a selection of their younglings, put glamours on them, and switch them with children in other races with the help of the planeswalker demons. They chose host families of highborn status, with old magic who would raise the Dualsingians as their own and divulge their ancient secrets to them. The glamour will make sure they see the children as their own, though somewhat defective because obviously the glamour could not actually fake magical powers. Then at the age of eighteen, these children are welcomed home as heroes and spend the rest of their days selling what they’ve learned through a long-established network of black-markets. Spells. Military strategies. Secret codes. Even closely guarded wine recipes. You name it, we sell it.”
“That’s…that’s despicable.” The bile from my stomach rose. “So all those royal visitors…”
“…are really black marketeers. Each more shady than the next. Information is the most powerful commodity and it fetches a high price.”
“But why support yourself this way? There are more honest ways to make a living.”
“Why do cuckoos and cowbirds lay their eggs in others’ nests to be raised as their own? It is the way of my people. The other planes called us the Changelings, and we’d been hated through all the ages for what we do as a race. In our generation, there’s a good number who have been sent out there.”
“All those patterns I saw on the dome—”
“Eglantina-Six, Marigold-Twelve, Oda-whatever. Of course these are not their real names, but they’re all planes whose inhabitants are unknowingly caring for Changelings children right at this moment. It is Mr. Lichen’s job to oversee the progress of these children.”
“Like Alpha, Beta, and—”
“Gamma, the only Changeling of royal blood. My twin sister.
“Twin sister.” I rolled the two words around on my tongue. I’d never heard of Eldon having a sister, let alone a twin. And did Eldon just mention the return happening at the age of eighteen? Suddenly I knew where this conversation was heading. I tried to back away, but Eldon took my hands in his.
“Finny, my sister was sent to the vengeance plane, and the baby she was switched with was—”
“—me,” I mouthed soundlessly. “So I am a vengeance demon.”
“It was considered a great accomplishment getting her into such a predominant family. As you can imagine, it’s not easy pulling the wool over a vengeance demon’s eyes.” The corner of Eldon’s lips twisted. “Her return will be widely celebrated, and a real shakeup of the political landscape.”
I was right. I really was connected with Anastasia—because she’d taken my place with my real parents. A part of me was in utter shock, yet the other part wasn’t surprised at all. I always knew Dualsing wasn’t my real home.
“Trust told me you were in that merged reality with her. You figured out who you are when you were in there, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But that means I’m really a demon.” I could almost be all right with the vengeance part, but being a demon sounded rather evil and terrifying. I pulled my hands back and rubbed them. They were ice cold.
Eldon quickly added, “Demons are not as bad as they’re depicted in our world. And vengeance demons are the most respected of them all. It is Dualsingians who are seen as scum by the rest of the Cosmic Balance. That’s why our location is hidden and untraceable through all magical means.”
“No wonder Lord and Lady Sebille never accepted me.” I bit down on my lips until I tasted blood. Tears threatened to fill my eyes. “My entire life. Everything. I’m nothing but a means of making a profit for them.”
“Not their profit. The queen’s. That only made the Sebilles more resentful of you. The queen should’ve been the one who took you in, according to tradition. But she couldn’t bear the sight of you, because you reminded her of what she’d lost.”
“And you knew about this?” All the time we spent on the battlement. All the times I had shared with him my longing for my parents’ love and my puzzlement over their aloofness. I was nothing more than the main attraction for the Crossover, and he hadn’t said a single word. He’d let me waste countless hours wondering why I was so different and so unloved.
“Everyone knows. Once they turn sixteen,” Eldon said softly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner. Your pendant creates the portal for the Crossover, and it could be triggered pre-maturely if you have knowledge of what’s to come. I didn’t want to lose you.”
I didn’t want to hear that. Not now when all my emotions were in upheaval. So I concentrated on the next piece of the puzzle I could think of. “The Eye of Sebille, that’s not really a jewel of the Sebille house, is it?”
“No. It’s the eye of whatever house happened to be hosting someone like you through the ages.”
“People like me. Through the ages. I can’t imagine their real families, my real family, being too happy about the kidnapping.”
“That’s why they sent you to work with Mr. Lichen. Getting you trained with him is their one and only gift to you. The Reveal is essentially a Dualsingian tracking and anti-concealment ability. In their warped minds, their debt to you is paid in full with that imparted knowledge. That, and the fact that they allowed you to keep your true name all this time.”
“So my name is really Serafina.” At least there was one constant in my life. I liked my name. And I’d been Serafina my entire life—I couldn’t imagine being called anything else.
“Yes, Serafina Anastasia Advocatus. There’s power in having a real name that’s regularly used.”
“Anastasia.” So my replacement in the vengeance world had taken on my middle name. I wondered if she’d done it because deep down she knew Serafina wasn’t her true name.
I was no fae. Everything I’d been taught was false. It was too much to take in. Then something occurred to me.
“Wait, then your twin sister is—”
“—the true heir to the throne.” Eldon’s lips curled. “Crown Princess Deirdre of Dualsing. Guess they should’ve reserved the code name Alpha for her, huh? Officially, the reason for me not being chosen for the switch was because of my leg. The truth is, my mother loved Deirdre at first sight. There is no logic to it. It simply is. She wanted her daughter to have the crown, and all the vengeance secrets Deirdre is bringing back will cement that position. I can’t compete with that. Even if I was whole.”
Something about his words chilled me to the bone. He saw Deirdre as competition, not kin.
I narrowed my eyes and took another look at our surroundings. I knew him well enough to know when he wasn’t telling me something important. If I hadn’t been so shocked over everything, I would’ve question it a lot sooner. “Eldon, what have you done? What did you ask Trust to do?”
“A forgetting spell that covers all of Dualsing. It’s going to make every man and woman forget that you’re not one of us.”
That way, I could go on living here, with everyone around me not remembering that they were supposed to shun me, that I was a temporary annoyance to be put up with for merely eighteen years. I would be accepted, maybe even loved in time…
One look at a nearby pixie, eerily still in her mid-somersault, shook me like a bucket of cold water. Her eyes, staring into nothing, reminded me that what Eldon proposed wasn’t natural.
“Why is everyone frozen?”
“That’s the part that I messed up. The spell is supposed to be instantaneous. I never knew that your connection with my sister would become so strong. To sever it and make everyone forget her, the spell needed more time to run its course. They should unfreeze very shortly. After that, the only ones who wil
l know your true origin will be you, me, and Trust.”
I got what Eldon wasn’t telling me. For the spell to be taking this long to take effect, it meant it wasn’t all that stable, and he was risking the well-being of all those who got caught in it. “You sure the spell is meant to hold?”
“It’ll hold. It has to,” Eldon insisted.
“And the pendant?” I touched it again. It remained cool to the touch.
“A second spell. It’s going to take away the pendant’s ability to trigger the Crossover.”
“Closing the connection to Deirdre, making sure she can never return?” The girl might’ve tried to kill me, but it was still a rotten thing to do, denying her the chance to know her real legacy and condemning her to a lifetime of feeling like she doesn’t belong. I knew how that felt.
“She’ll never know. She’ll simply never be claimed by Dualsing. She’ll live and die thinking she’s a vengeance demon.”
“Yes, but one without any vengeance magic.” I couldn’t believe the Eldon I knew could be so heartless regarding his own sibling.
“Think about us, Finny,” Eldon urged. “This way you and I can stay together. Listen, you don’t understand. Remember I told you Dualsing’s location is a well-guarded secret? That means if you leave, you’ll never be able to find your way back here. I’ll lose you forever.”
Never finding my way back to the only home I’d ever known. Never seeing the boy I’d cared for my whole life ever again. Yet, no matter how I looked at it, it was the only way.
“I know. But you have to stop this. I can’t, in good conscience, allow you to do this.” Damn my vengeance demon instincts—showing me the just thing to do even if it was killing me.
“What about us?” Eldon gritted his teeth.
I was prepared to say goodbye to him at the battlement because of the lies between us. Now I had to do the same for the sake of the truth staring me in the face.
“Answer me honestly. How much of this is you wanting me, and how much of this is you wanting the crown?” I would give anything to hear him say he did it all just to be with me, but I knew him too well to fool myself.