by Kallysten
Sliding a random book from the shelf, she let it fall open in her hands. She read a full paragraph about conflicts between vampires and channelers, and every word made sense. But when she tried to read aloud, she couldn’t even get past the first word.
Was it more magic at play? Were these books charmed somehow, so that anyone opening one could read it? After all, there was a ‘magic fridge’ in the kitchen, so why not a magic library? She couldn’t come up with any other explanation.
She supposed it would have been easy to ask Aedan about it. All she had to do was open the door; she wouldn’t even need to ask him to come inside. She didn’t want to talk to him, however. She didn’t need another one of those pitying looks like when he’d complained she didn’t remember, or even for him to be angry that she didn’t show enough respect for the Quickening—and she’d keep calling it magic if she felt like it, and he could bite her, for all she cared!
After putting the book back on the shelf, she started to look at the titles again, searching for something interesting to read to help pass the time. She didn’t find any fiction—unless all the books about vampires were fiction, and as disquieting as the thought was, she suspected they were just as factual as the rest.
Maybe the people in this place called ‘vampires’ something entirely different from the vampires she knew from television and movies. It was another question she could have asked Aedan, but she’d wait for Brad’s return instead.
In the end, she picked a book titled ‘A History of Lahien the Great’ in equal parts because she was bored and because the name tickled her memory. After she’d sat in the armchair and read the first couple of pages, she suddenly remembered where she had heard the name before: Aedan had mentioned it when he had told her about her family’s lineage. So this person was—supposedly—her ancestor. As she continued to read, she became less than thrilled with the connection. As with the Earth history she was more familiar with, ‘the Great’ seemed to signify that the man had been on the winning side of quite a few wars.
She read a few chapters before getting tired of the writer’s ornate style; apparently, historians in this world shared a few stylistic choices with historians on Earth. She chose another tome, and while the names were different, the events were similar: political maneuvering, duels to the death, feats of magic she had a hard time believing even after what she had seen Brad accomplish. The style was more tolerable and she started losing herself in the book, fascinated to note the similarities between events in this world and what she had been studying in college. Some patterns matched exactly. She’d have loved to pick one of her professor’s brains about all this.
Absorbed in what she was reading, she forgot where she was until two knocks on the door startled her.
“What?” she called out, her annoyance thick in her voice.
The door swung open and Aedan appeared—except it wasn’t Aedan, she quickly realized.
“Vivien? May I come in?”
She closed the book and rested it on her knees. “Sure.” She waited until Brad had entered the room before she asked, “Did you hear anything about Anabel?”
He made as though to look back, but seemed to think better of it and kept his eyes on her as he approached. “I did. She’s at the palace, like we thought. I couldn’t find out more unfortunately.”
Vivien looked down at the book on her lap; it had hinted at unpleasant things happening to whoever had the misfortune of being considered an enemy of the king. She swallowed hard before looking up at Brad again.
“Do you think they’re hurting her?”
His expression answered clearly enough, even when all he said was, “I don’t know.”
“How are we going to help her?” Vivien insisted.
“I don’t know,” Brad repeated, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“Then why did you bring me here?” She stood abruptly, and the book tumbled to the floor. “You said if I came here, we’d be able to get her back.”
“And we will.” He crouched down to pick up the book, smoothing out a page that had been creased. “We’ll figure something out.”
She didn’t at all like the way he avoided her gaze on those last words, like he didn’t want her to see his doubts. And of course he doubted. There were three of them. Anabel was held by a king, with all his forces at his back. After reading those books, Vivien was beginning to have a better idea of why Brad and Aedan thought she was in such danger—and that meant Anabel was, too. Unless Brad wasn’t telling her everything...
She watched him set the book back on a shelf, approaching slowly so that when he turned, she was right in front of him.
“Is she dead?” she asked, holding his gaze.
Brad sighed softly. “I wish I could tell you for sure that she isn’t. But the truth is, I don’t know.”
Tears prickled Vivien’s eyes. She turned away. She didn’t want him to see her cry. She left the room, ignoring Aedan when she passed by him. If she had thought it would make a difference, she would have told him not to follow her, but by now she knew it was useless. She hurried up the staircase to her room and closed the door behind her. This one, at least, she could lock. Too bad she couldn’t lock her fears out the same way.
CHAPTER TEN
Beyond The Shields
Bradan knew what his brother must be thinking even before he reached Aedan. This was the woman they had sworn their lives to? The future ruler for which they’d sacrificed so much already? Bradan knew what Aedan was thinking, because the same thoughts were running through his mind, as much as he tried to quiet them. For years, he had dreamed of the moment when they would bring Vivien back to Foh’Ran and restore her to the throne that was hers by right. This was not how he had imagined things would go—far from it.
He couldn’t give up on her, though. She was upset, and he could understand that. Everything she had ever believed about herself had been turned on its head, she had been thrust into an unfamiliar place, and the one person who had been there for her as she was growing up had been taken by her enemies. All things considered, she wasn’t doing so badly, given how grim things looked for her at the moment. If he could only show her that it wasn’t all war, fear, and pain...
“Did she come out at all?” he asked, leaning back against the wall next to Aedan.
Aedan shrugged. He never looked away from the corridor. Vivien’s door was just twenty feet away. “She opened the door long enough to take her dinner. Would you call that coming out?”
“At least she’s eating.”
Considering that Vivien had skipped lunch, calling out through the door that she wasn’t hungry, this had to be progress. How was Bradan going to get her out, though? How could he get through to her?
“Remember when she was...what?” Aedan’s brow furrowed as though the memory were escaping him. “Four? And she refused to eat anything but roseberries for a week?”
Bradan did remember, but he wasn’t sure why Aedan was bringing it up. Aedan explained himself soon enough, though.
“She is just a child. She does not understand what is going on, how important she is. How can we trust her with the future of Foh’Ran when she hides in her room like a little girl because she’s afraid?”
Pushing away from the wall, Bradan squeezed Aedan’s shoulder. “She’s almost twenty. She’s not a child. She just needs time. I’ll try talking to her again. Why don’t you get some rest? You barely got any sleep last night.”
“I’m not tired,” Aedan said. “But you can keep an eye on the child if it amuses you.”
A slight smile softened the bite in his last words. Aedan moved without a sound. In seconds, he had disappeared down the staircase. Bradan remained there a moment longer, trying to figure out how to approach Vivien. They’d never talked all that much—Bradan had always been afraid to let something slip that he shouldn’t have—but he had watched her closely over the years. She’d never been as relaxed, as happy as when she ran in the woods. And he’d never believed that it was
the running that soothed her. Their kind wasn’t made to live in cities of steel and concrete.
His mind made up, he went over to Vivien’s room and knocked twice.
“I already told you,” she called before he could even say a word. “I don’t want to go to that lake or anywhere else. I’m tired.”
“I want to show you something,” he said, his hand pressed flat to the door. “Something that belongs to you. I promise it’s not far. Will you come with me? Please, Vivien.”
Long seconds passed. He could hear her inside, slow steps coming toward him as though she were hesitating. When she finally opened the door, her eyes were red, but her cheeks were dry. Something twisted painfully inside him. If only he could have protected her from everything...
“What is it you want me to show me?” she asked, her voice dulled by weariness.
“You’ll see.” He took a step back to give her space. “Come with me?”
He’d been afraid she’d close the door in his face. She didn’t and accompanied him instead.
He led the way down to the first floor and out through the back door. The sky was already darkening with the promise of the night to come. He started toward the shields, glancing back when he realized she wasn’t following him.
“You said it wasn’t far,” she said.
She looked down at her feet. When he followed her gaze, Bradan understood. Her toes were bare in the grass. A foot in front of her, however, the grass gave way to rocks, gravel and weeds. She’d bruise her feet if she tried walking on the old path. Coming back to her, Bradan didn’t let himself hesitate. If he went back in to find shoes for her, the moment would pass. He scooped her up into his arms, smiling when she replied with a quick, surprised laugh. She looped her arms around his neck and gave him a small smile, almost shy.
“Is this all right?” he asked, wishing he had thought of asking first.
She nodded. Holding her close to his chest, one arm under her knees and the other at her back, Bradan carried her beyond the shields and to the cliff. He looked at her as she took in the scene, wondering if this would jog her memory.
* * * *
Vivien’s mouth fell open, and she gasped softly. Only a dozen yards in front of them, the backyard ended abruptly over a cliff. Her arms instinctively tightened around Brad’s neck. He walked right to the edge of the cliff, and when she looked down, she could see a valley.
Fields of gold, woods of the deepest green, prairies of wild grass and wilder flowers of every color imaginable stretched down below. Far in the distance, the sun was slowly slinking down toward the horizon amid a symphony of reds and oranges. Here and there, volutes of smoke rising toward the darkening sky marked the presence of people.
“It’s...beautiful,” Vivien whispered.
“And it’s yours,” Bradan replied. “Your world. It always was. I know how strange it must be for you to find yourself in this new place, how upsetting. But you’ll find more than pain and death and the cold stones of this house. We have beauty here, too. Life. You only have to look to find it.”
Vivien looked at him. His face was so close to hers, she could have counted his eyelashes, even in the fading evening light. So close, she would only need to shift a little for their mouths to brush together. His lips looked soft and firm. He caught her gaze and blinked, as though surprised that she was watching him rather than the spectacle he was offering her. Vivien’s face suddenly felt too warm, and she looked away again, down into the valley, trying to find something to talk about. She was acutely aware of how warm he was everywhere they touched.
“Did you miss it?” she murmured. “You had to leave this place to come to...to Earth. To a whole other world. Wasn’t it hard?”
A few clouds drifted in front of the sun as it started to disappear beyond the curve of the horizon.
“I came back when I was too homesick,” Brad said softly. “A couple of hours during the night there meant a day here. Enough to see my brother, to practice using the Quickening, to just be Bradan instead of Brad. No one ever knew.”
Despite the small smile on his lips, he sounded a little wistful. It hadn’t been as easy as he made it to be, had it? So why would he go through this?
He had mentioned something before...
“You said... You said you took a vow?”
“Aedan and I did, yes.” He tilted his head as though he knew she had another question and was inviting her to continue.
“How long ago was that?”
“We were eleven.”
She struggled to wrap her mind around that. Eleven... They’d been children!
“How could you even know what that oath meant when you were so young? How could you decide to leave your family? How could they let you do it? Didn’t your parents have something to say about it?”
She realized suddenly that she was clutching his shoulders tightly, but she couldn’t let go, not when Brad was looking at her with such a grave expression.
“We knew what the QuickSilver Oath meant,” he said slowly, holding her gaze. “Our father explained it to us when we were small children, and we watched him live and breathe that oath every day of his life until he died trying to protect Dame Eleoren.”
Vivien’s heart felt as though it skipped a beat or ten.
“Our mother...” Brad’s voice cracked for a second before hardening again. “She understood how much this meant to us. She came to the Otherworld with me. Anabel helped us learn how to live there.”
Try as she might, Vivien could not fathom any of it. All of this, going to an entirely new world, starting over, for her?
“What about Aedan?” she asked. “He didn’t come with you?”
“Aedan stayed here with Dame Eleoren’s cook. She was the last of the staff. She refused to go anywhere. He kept her company, and she took care of him. My mother visited him while I was at school, or we went together in the evening or on weekends. Aedan came to visit sometimes, too.”
Darkness was thickening around them, an echo of Vivien’s muddled thoughts. The more Brad explained, the more difficult it was to grasp it all.
“But you said time here passes faster,” she protested. “Wouldn’t he have grown older a lot faster than you?”
“He did.” The ghost of a smile brushed against his lips. “I was born first. A couple minutes only, but I used to take that very seriously. I was Aedan’s big brother, and I was proud of it. And then I turned twelve. And he was sixteen. When I turned thirteen, he was an adult. It was the strangest thing.”
Vivien’s confusion was thicker than ever. Aedan didn’t look a day older than Brad. “So how come—”
She never got to finish. A yell rose from somewhere on their left, and they both turned to watch a group of people running toward them, the moonlight glinting like lightning on their swords.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Blades by Moonlight
From the moment Aedan watched Bradan and Dame Vivien disappear past the shimmering wall of the shields, his entire body locked, tension tightening each and every one of his muscles until he was aching everywhere.
On the one hand, he understood what Bradan was trying to do; Vivien had once played in this yard, and looking over the edge of the cliff had been a favorite game, with a barrier channeled by Dame Eleoren keeping her safe. Would looking down to the valley remind Vivien of her younger years?
On the other hand, Aedan and Bradan had agreed that she needed to remain within the shields at all times. What was Bradan thinking, taking her outside their protection? No one knew she was here, but it was still a risk, however small.
It didn’t help that, for the first few minutes, Aedan was unable to join them. When the sun finally went down, he warred with himself. Every instinct he had screamed at him to join them outside and make sure Dame Vivien was safe, but should he?
She had made it clear how little she appreciated his presence, and Bradan was with her anyway. She seemed to have no issue with him. Aedan began to ease the knives out of their sheat
hs before letting them slide down again; he remained by the door, watching, waiting.
At long last, they reappeared inside the shields, but before Aedan could even begin to relax, the alarm blazing through his bond with Bradan told him something was wrong. Bradan set Dame Vivien down and immediately turned back, holding both hands out toward the shields, the same way he had when he had set them up. He was channeling, but to do what?
There could only be one reason. Anger flashed through Aedan and flowed through him like blood once had, pushing a growl to his throat as he rushed out, his knives at the ready. He should have joined them. He should have made them come back in sooner.
“Inside!” he yelled at Dame Vivien as she lingered at Bradan’s back.
She threw a startled look at him. He glared that much harder. Couldn’t she see the danger she was in?
“Get inside!” he said again as he rushed toward Bradan to fight at his brother’s side.
In truth, his anger was directed at Bradan just as much as Dame Vivien. He’d been foolish to take her outside the shields, and she was foolish to remain so close to the danger now. There would be time for reproaches later, however. For now, Aedan needed to make sure the threat was eliminated and that Dame Vivien was safe.
Safe, however, would have required that she go inside, like he had told her twice already. Why couldn’t she understand something so basic?
Sheathing one of his knives again, he used his free arm to grab Dame Vivien around the legs and hoist her over his shoulder. She shrieked, legs and arms flailing to kick his leg and strike his back. Bradan threw them a quick look but soon returned his full attention to his channeling.