The Rise of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Deadlines

  I stared at the cord attached to my chest as it pulled me forward, through time and space and dreamscape, and—like a rapid zoom in a horror movie—sharply yanked me into a crystal room.

  Glittering crystal prisms reflected the light of a thousand dreams. I could see the blurred images of them—dancing about under the surfaces. Whether it was an assortment of my own nightmares, or a larger collection outside of me, I didn't know.

  I looked around the room, details brightening as I pulled my surroundings into view.

  Marsgrove was bound on the floor. Wide-eyed and staring at me, he yelled something at me behind his gag. I moved toward him, hand outstretched, but the cord at my chest was finite and yanked me back before I reached my goal. I followed the cord, seeking its origin. Shock stopped me mid-motion.

  A crystal coffin stood in the corner of the room supported on heavy crystal legs. My cord stretched to the heart of it.

  Olivia was laid out within. Like the fairytale Constantine and I had been joking about, but arrayed in the same bloodstained clothes she had worn on the battlefield. Her hands were clasped around a copper butterfly resting on her stomach.

  Only the slight rise and fall of her chest kept my full panic contained as I tapped frantically on the glass.

  She didn't wake.

  I backed away from the crystal coffin. This was just a dream. Just a terrible, nightmare. My subconscious was picking up random items and forcing them together. I just needed to wake up.

  A shadow slithered along the outside edge of the room, behind Olivia's crystal plinth. Long, sharp nails curled around the edges of the outside glass, trying to find a way inside the room.

  Just a dream. Kaine belonged in nightmares and shadow realms. Perfectly normal to find him in one.

  This was just a dream.

  “It's not a dream, Butterfly.”

  I jerked to see Raphael sauntering toward me. I stopped my sudden, backpedaling momentum and took a steadying breath, holding my ground and yanking rational thought into my grasp. He could have ambushed me from behind. That he hadn't, meant we were here for a conversation.

  “I thought I ended your ability to visit me in dreams,” I said, positioning myself for the best physical defense.

  He smiled. “You did. Your connection with your friend—” He motioned to Olivia. “—brought you here the last time, so I simply...used it again.” He twisted his fingers in the air, and I could see an outline of the cord on his palm.

  Outside the dreamglass, the dark shadow issued a cacophony of grinding screams recorded from the pits of hell.

  Neph's scarab burned on my chest. I moved a hand down to clutch it.

  “Poor little shade, locked out from the event it wants to attend most.” Raphael sent it a mocking wave. Long scratches of shadowed nails screeched against the glass of the dream as the shadow increased its siege.

  “Such a shame he hasn't figured out a way to break the dreamglass. He truly learned nothing in all those years. A wraith without power.”

  In profile, I could see sharp, shadowed wounds on Raphael's skin, belying his taunting. He hadn't escaped the fight with Kaine unscathed. Whether the wounds were mental or physical, I couldn't discern in the dream state.

  Raphael turned to me. “You've been a naughty mage, Butterfly.”

  I darted a glance at Olivia, who was as still as I'd ever seen her. I looked at my hands and the air in front of me. I was inside of the dreamglass, but the air was heavy, as if Raphael could lock me into my own crystal chamber at any time.

  “I would never have willingly sent him,” I said bitterly, looking at the shade.

  “You let him attach to you,” Raphael said. “Like letting that boy leech you.”

  I smiled at him without an ounce of warmth. “I'm not going to dignify that with an actual response. You called me here. What do you want?”

  Mercurial as always, his expression changed to one of mischief. “Perhaps it is better to ask, what does your roommate want?”

  I looked at the cord, which had solidified in his hand, and started pulsing in his palm. I looked at Marsgrove, trussed and trying to communicate something through the power of his eyes. My last hope of Olivia being rescued with outside help slipped through my fingers like dream smoke.

  I looked back at Raphael. “I'm certain we can come to an agreement.”

  He smiled. “You want your roommate back quite madly.”

  “I'm inclined to have her return in mint condition, yes.”

  “I've heard you had quite the nasty downgrade in the roommate area.”

  I licked parched lips. “Yes.”

  “I could do much with a Siren.”

  “Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure she's not rooting for your team.”

  “How about a trade?”

  I looked at him carefully. “You want to trade Olivia for Bellacia?”

  If I was home with Delia and Neph, I'd issue a sarcastic “win-win” comment. However, this was not a game.

  Or at least, not a game I wanted to be playing.

  “Would you take such an offer?” he asked, watching me through knowing eyes.

  “No.”

  “You would protect your new roommate? Your vile, vindictive roommate?” He asked idly, making a loop and knotting the cord stretching between Olivia and me in his palm. He gave the strings on either side a little pull to tighten the knot. The end attached to me, stuttered.

  I felt old, all of a sudden. “Pick a different game, Raphael. One, which I will play.”

  He smiled and loosened the knot.

  “Oh, but I like this game. Who will you protect? It is an old game. The best kind. One that we have played before. You continually surprise me in your choices.”

  “You are unsurprised by this.”

  “Yes,” he said suddenly, moving closer. “I am unsurprised by you, but baffled by why you continue to make said choices.”

  “You were a Protection Prodigy.”

  Something dark shifted through his eyes and his gaze went to the shade of Kaine, trying to break inside the dreamglass.

  “Old identities, Butterfly. We forge new ones in the fires.” He touched my forehead, pinning me like a fluttering insect on a pin board. “What will your new one be, when Stavros gets a hold of you?” The way he said Stavros' name was a mixture of hatred and something else.

  “I don't need a new one.”

  “We all get new ones,” he said with a vicious smile.

  “What is yours then?”

  “Death.”

  A thousand rapid images flashed through the point at which he was touching me. Too fast to decipher, too many to remember. I shuddered under the onslaught of so much remembered pain.

  “How do you handle it?” I whispered.

  “Some would say I do not.” He smiled, and it was a broken, jagged thing.

  His finger dropped from my forehead, and it was as if it broke multiple spells. Olivia seemed to wake, suddenly. Her hands flew to the edges of the coffin surrounding her, her gaze shot to me.

  She yelled something at me, but the sound was completely encased in her tomb. Or sound was encased in me. I touched the scarab.

  “Set her free,” I said, voice unintentionally breaking. “Save her, Raphael, even if you can't save yourself.”

  “Oh, but the saving is up to you.” He held the cord aloft. “It is simple. You want your roommate, you need to come and get her. No more sending others to do the deed.” He tsked, madness once more forgotten, and patronizing mentor back in place. “Bad form, Butterfly. I expected more.”

  “Did you expect me to be magically crippled?”

  “We all must deal with setbacks.” He looked at Kaine's shade, and his eyes narrowed. “You should have come with me, Butterfly, when you had the chance.”

  “I started to.” It hadn't been a good move, but I had started the motion.

  “I know, and it's the reason you will get your friend back. I will deliver he
r, but only into your hands. They are the only ones I trust,” he said, mouth pulled into a viciously mischievous smile.

  I looked from Olivia to Raphael. “So, I show up, and you set her free?”

  “I prefer to appeal to baser incentives. You show up, or she dies.”

  My gaze flashed to Olivia, pain ripping through me. “No. Don't.”

  “Death dealing pulls at me, Butterfly. It's a one-time offer. And it expires at midnight in three days’ time. Come get your roommate. She is languishing without you.”

  Olivia was screaming something inside her crystal coffin.

  “You'll just kill her when I get there,” I said, desperately, yanking my gaze away and trying not to look in her direction. It was too painful. “Or the moment after I arrive.”

  “No.” He spread his hands, voice ringing with sincerity. “My offer stands as stated. Come and get her, and you both go free. Don't, and she dies.”

  He reached up and turned a dial on the dream. Glowing red magic gathered in his other palm.

  “Wait.” I scrambled to keep it together. “I don't know where you are. I don't know how to—”

  “I'm not a monster. You have three days, Butterfly. You will figure it out, I'm certain.” He smiled and tapped a single finger on the pane of the dream. It cracked in five directions.

  “No! No, you can't, you have to at least—”

  “Sweet dreams, Butterfly.” He turned toward where the shade was coiled, ready, smoked eyes on its target, tracking Raphael's movements as the cracks in the dreamglass grew larger. The red glow in Raphael's palm increased in brightness, as did the edge of the savage smile that lifted the left side of his face.

  The crystal coffin shattered and Olivia dropped and threw herself over Marsgrove.

  Crack. Crack, crack, crack.

  The dream shattered. Kaine leapt at Raphael, and I was thrust backward into space.

  I shot upright, gripping my hair in both hands, and taking deep, gasping breaths.

  “Another nightmare, dear?” Bellacia questioned sweetly. She was on top of her bedspread, painting her nails magically, one long strip of magicked black at a time.

  I threw off the borrowed bedspread, ignoring her, and scrambled to ascertain my magic level.

  50% blinked back at me. I held my hand to my mouth, forcing myself not to cry. It was hard.

  “Poor dear. Are you upset?”

  She smiled at me from beneath her lashes and blew magicked air across her nails. But I saw her discreetly checking her feeds. Wanting to see if this was a repeat from the night before.

  When I didn't respond, she said, “Magic shared, is a burden aired.” She smiled and started on her other hand.

  She was far too close to me. These rooms were too small for living quarters with Bellacia Bailey.

  I focused on her actions, instead of viciously telling her that I should have swapped her. Raphael might even have been delighted enough with my response to do it.

  Still smiling, she made a long swipe with the brush. I took a deep inhale with each swipe she made and forced my focus. The magic of the polish allowed her to change her nails at will—lengthening them, coloring them, decorating them, edging the tips to barbs designed to cause pain, filling the ridges with magical ink...endless options for the fashionable and deadly mage.

  The free mage. My focus broke.

  Shaking, I checked the time. It was two in the morning. “Do you never sleep?” I asked, furious.

  “With you in here, I sleep with one eye open.”

  “Why did you even set up this stupid rooming scenario?” I demanded.

  She leaned toward me, brush aloft in the air, green eyes glinting. It was like she had suddenly taken off a mask long worn. “Because this will gain me everything I need. The last pieces of the puzzle. Assembling right before my eyes.”

  She visibly struggled for a moment, then she was once more the Bellacia Bailey that I knew. She shrugged lightly and laid down another perfect stripe. “Rooting out the unworthy. Making our layer safer. If all it takes is a little lost shuteye, I will make do.”

  I stared at her for a moment, contemplating a hidden depth and agenda that I hadn't previously considered, and didn't yet understand. Unnerving. “I'm surprised you haven't just killed me off. Done the world a service.”

  “The Justice Magic would never allow it. Besides, pet, you get a dispensation. For saving campus. Even Cami agrees, and she's not very happy with you right now. She's stupidly protective of her little clan of warriors, even though I've warned her a thousand times that being that way is not the way to move up. No.” She smiled slowly, blowing across her nails. “I won't harm you. Physically, at least. That doesn't mean you don't owe some answers to all of us. And it doesn't mean you shouldn't be...monitored.”

  Controlled. There weren't really any lines to read between on that one.

  I took a deep breath. Then another.

  I'd been controlled since I'd Awakened. In one way or another, I hadn't been out from under a chain of some sort—Raphael, Marsgrove, Excelsine, my magic itself, my own choices.

  But a leash placed on me by the Department would truly remove any semblance of my own agency. And leaving campus would put me directly on that path.

  I pulled the covers back over me, and curled onto my side away from her, clutching everything against my chest—the orb, the balloon, the dragon, the scarab, the jewel, the rose—hoarding them like a winged serpent over a pile of gems.

  Three days? I narrowed my eyes at the wall.

  I'd show them all what I could do in three days.

  Chapter Thirty: Rally to Assign

  My magic was at sixty percent upon waking. I had three days. And I knew exactly what to do.

  I tucked away two hours of research in a library streaming room—furious, focused research on the Third Layer, Outlaw Territory, the protections needed to travel within it, and how to get there—with an acceptable five percent loss to my magic recovery.

  Learning how to use the streaming rooms had been one of my best moves my first term here—the sheer load of material and connections that could be made between different texts was unparalleled. I also needed to get to Draeger once they opened the Eighth and Ninth Circles, or figure out a way to get through the restriction.

  I started a list of threat assessments, protections, and queries that I would solve in the free moments I had the rest of the day.

  Constantine wasn't in his room, but I had the key—which was still a little weird. I exchanged items between my day bag and increasingly burgeoning duffel, and locked up after myself.

  I strode down the hall, Justice Tablet under my arm.

  It wasn't that I suddenly had different priorities. I had the same priorities, and the same clear goal. I was just now possessed of a timeline and deadly motivation.

  I fielded a call from Neph, one from Will, and one from Saf, saying I'd meet them after service duties. And I sent a quick, coded message to Dagfinn asking about comms in the Third Layer.

  I was going after Olivia on my own—I couldn't afford to have anyone drown on my sinking ship—but I wasn't going to ignore the lesson learned from Bloody Tuesday and this past term, in general.

  Mages working together could create incredible things.

  And I wouldn't discount Marsgrove and his words about protecting everyone here. I had to make sure that everyone I left behind was taken care of.

  It presented complications both for my plans to leave campus and for what needed to be implemented to hide that disappearance.

  I would have to deal with friends who would surely object to the plan, as well as keep information flowing uninhibited. It presented a challenge that I thought would be best approached from task setting first, permission asking later.

  With all of those things in mind, I headed out on my first set of morning Justice calls with alternate goals.

  Lifen opened the door, a bright orange pen in her hand, in contrast to her all black wardrobe. Her dark hair was even
pulled back with a black band.

  “Crown.”

  “Chen.” I nodded, addressing her the same way.

  “What alarmed me?” Her eyes narrowed on my tablet.

  “Nothing. Sorry about that. I'm on my way from another call in your dorm and decided to stop by before the next one rings. Got a moment?”

  She nodded and motioned me inside.

  Her roommate, a blonde who had her frequency on so high that I could see the magic pulses around her head of the music she was listening to, was sitting cross-legged on a bed on the other side of the room. Upon seeing me, she stared for a moment longer than was comfortable and her frequency pulses increased in a cacophonous burst.

  She touched something on her bed—was that one of my roses?—then touched the wall nearest her. Dragging her fingers across the space, a barrier erected itself and mounted into the wall on the other side, cordoning her off completely from us. The seeping waves from her frequency abruptly ceased.

  I pointed to the barrier. “Sound proof in both directions?”

  “By design,” Lifen said.

  I accepted the security of it without question. Chen Lifen was not an average rule breaker. But discretion was always a good idea.

  “What do you need?” she asked.

  “Metalworking commission. Jewelry.”

  Lifen was far more of a blade girl. Sharp, pointy things. But she was a maker, and a crafter. And she had smithed the memorial plaques in the team's armbands herself.

  I opened my notebook to the drawing of the ouroboros ring that the Dorm head had been wearing in his lip. After reading about what was needed in Outlaw Territory, and thinking about leaving everyone behind, a number of things had combined to make me think of this option. The swallowing vine, the lip ring, the firesnakes, the need for transmogrification...

  Lifen cocked her head at me. “Protection charms?”

  “Um, no, metal snakes that can slither, climb, swallow magic, and swallow themselves if discovered. A sort of...personal recycling system.”

  A slow smile worked over Lifen's lips. “You have enchantments in mind?”

  I nodded to her, holding up a sheet of notes. “And I thought...Loudon?”