by S. M. Beiko
He was after the Moonstone.
Demelza gripped Agathe’s wrist. Her cousin was controlled enough to stifle a yelp, the corner of her mouth pulling back.
“What is it?” Agathe asked, but when she took in Demelza’s ashen face after Rathgar’s message, she didn’t need telepathy. With a quick glance at the crowd, most of whom had their eyes closed to better focus on Rathgar’s broadcast, she steered Demelza towards the rock cleft just beyond the last person gathered. It was a place Demelza had often hid as a child, and when she staggered for it, Agathe said, “Go inside, calm down, put up the wall.”
Demelza may have been brash and foolish, but it was a clever cover-up for the panic she sometimes felt, lying awake at night, replaying the vivid dreams she’d had ever since she was old enough to remember them. That same panic gripped her now as she crawled inside the cleft, shaking all over, pulling her long legs up to her mouth. She counted her heartbeats, built the wall around her mind brick by precious brick.
Rathgar’s words echoed in her head:
The world is changing. Denizens are changing. With threats of Mundanes discovering us, with Zabor’s presence still being managed in this world, and even the very cracks between Ancient’s Families, we must secure the Moonstone. There are those who would wish to see it destroyed. The Stonebreakers — lawless, godless Denizens who worship the Darklings — would crack the protection that Phyr herself gave us. We must take back the control and authority that has been our duty. This Council’s chief task now, and the task before this whole Family, is to find our Calamity Stone before anyone else does. To re-institute a Paramount with the control and dedication willing to lead us into the new age. It is only with the Moonstone that we might endure. That this world might endure.
Demelza had been more than foolish this day. Her bricks were steel now. Not even a flirtation could penetrate them — especially one with a man who could undo everything. Her carefully built peace. Her outrunning of her nightmares. Because she knew where the Moonstone was, knew the cost of claiming it — on herself, and on the world. Such a blessing also provided Phyr’s foresight. That stone was better off hidden, because she knew, too, exactly who it would hurt if it was unearthed.
No one must know. This had been Demelza’s burden. She would bear it alone. She would endure any pain or torment, but she would never give up the stone’s whereabouts. She would die first.
How had Rathgar found out about her? Maybe he hadn’t — maybe he was going from enclave to enclave, personally putting out the word. Maybe she was still safe. Demelza hadn’t even told her parents, no matter how many times she had screamed in her sleep and they had tried to comfort her. She couldn’t risk them. Agathe was the only person she had revealed her secret to, because she was steadfast, more a sister than a cousin, and agreed that only sorrow came from becoming a stonebearer. A fate not even an enemy deserved.
He wants it for himself, Demelza thought. He seeks power. She didn’t know anything about Rathgar, but she couldn’t trust him. Or anyone. The stone had called for her and only her, this white rock that looked as though it were made of glass, with golden flecks that sparked from somewhere deep and sure.
A place only she knew. A place she would never dare go. That stone could call her all it wanted. She would not answer. And she would live as long as possible so that no one else had to.
“Hello?”
Demelza whipped her head up so fast it smashed into rock, and she groaned.
“Oh dear,” said the voice, and next Demelza saw a hand reach close to her in the space. She took it, unfolding to her feet, and Solomon Rathgar smiled at her, showing no hint of discomfort at the fact they were eye level. Her considerable height had been a gawky feature she’d only just grown into, and when she straightened her back, she had a few inches to spare on him.
It made her feel slightly better about the pounding in her chest.
“Sorry to have frightened you,” Rathgar said, bowing, still lightly holding her fingers. “Solomon.”
Demelza reined her heart in with the sudden violence of a startled rider. Her mind, and the secrets it held, was encased in granite.
“Demelza.” Her smile felt a bit wicked. Playing with this man who could be her enemy might improve her mood, at least. “And you didn’t frighten me. Luckily there isn’t much that does.” If she told the lie convincingly enough, maybe she’d believe it herself.
She reclaimed her hand, rested both on her hips. “Thank you for deigning to come all the way up from London to our humble place of worship. I trust the accommodations aren’t too rustic?”
His eyebrow quirked. Good; she wasn’t going to make this easy on him. “Not at all. I come where I’m needed, and the community in Uig has been most welcoming.”
Demelza’s mouth pinched. “Lovely.” She stepped away from him, walking back towards the crowd milling about the valley. The ice in her stomach was heavy. Agathe caught her eye, glancing frantically from Demelza to, she soon discovered, Solomon Rathgar, who was following inches at her elbow.
“I’m sorry —” he said again, and Demelza whirled when he touched her, which made him recoil. She should nip this now; flirting with him earlier had been a mistake. She couldn’t afford to let her guard down, to let anything slip.
But he looked so utterly, wonderfully pathetic, less a brimstone-and-gall high priest and more a floundering moonstruck boy.
“You do apologize a lot,” she remarked. “Perhaps I’m the one who’s frightened you.”
“Petrified, in fact,” he confirmed. “But you were the one who pinged me, if I recall.”
Damn it. “Perhaps I was aiming for the fellow behind you at the time.”
He let out a sudden laugh. “Not bloody likely.”
A man who knew exactly how good-looking he was, and likely accustomed to getting what he wanted. He would be difficult to shake, unless Demelza lied more sharply, said she wasn’t available or interested, and that wasn’t her game, either. Her face flushed, and she turned away.
“This quest of yours,” she said abruptly, looking out into the gathering, which was a merry thing with music, drink starting to flow. It felt all so faraway, this peaceful life, and Demelza felt like there was no longer a time when her heart would be light. Not after tonight. “When you find the Moonstone, what will you do with it?”
Silence. Then he exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for months. “Whatever happens, Phyr will guide us. And at the very least, we will endure. The Narrative will endure.”
His words were too certain. She smiled tightly as a grandmother approached, bearing whisky, and passed Demelza a tumbler and Solomon one as well before moving on.
Their eyes met. “Sláinte,” they said in unison, and shot the lot.
The night was young and so was Demelza. Laughter floated in the air with the music, and she realized she ought to snag whatever flirtation she might have, with the time left. The moon rose. A drink and a dance, she promised herself. That would be her limit, and then she would never see this man again.
But by morning her own resolve and Agathe’s warning were long faded as Demelza studied the sleeping planes of Solomon’s face in the daylight streaming through her cottage window.
She knew now what had frightened her so. It was that this man, or a man so very much like him, was also in her dreams. A man, a boy, she loved more than herself though he wasn’t born yet.
That boy would find the Moonstone. And it would destroy him.
* * *
Saskia was still falling. She’d had this dream before.
A great dark hole. Barton was at the bottom of it. The hole was like a well. Now the well’s walls were steel panels. Electricity arced between them. Saskia was plunging through the Apex. Someone was singing. She didn’t want to hear it. She turned end over end and felt the tendons in her legs ache for solid ground, tasted acid behind her tongue.
<
br /> The panels in the endless Apex’s reactor flashed. Red words cascaded, following Saskia down.
Help. Help. Help us.
The walls were red. The well was full of blood. Saskia kept falling.
Then her brain kicked in, and she woke up, jolting, but her shoulders were held firmly down, and for a second it was like fighting against internal electrocution.
“Just breathe,” the voice above her dictated. “You’re awake. It’s not real. It’s just a nightmare.”
But it is real, Saskia wanted to say. Knew it for a fact. But she’d have to quiet her heartbeat first before words could happen.
Saskia sat up, shoved the hands off her. She was on a bed, and she quickly got off it. “What . . . you brought me —” The single bed she’d vacated sat loose on a steel frame, pushed against a wall. Saskia backed into a curtain and yanked it down, the fight response she’d been unable to summon before surging in her blood.
“Saskia, wait,” Ella said, even as Saskia found more identical beds, more curtains, ripping them all down, until she burst out into the main space of what seemed more like a dormitory than a prison. A set of stairs led up from the dark into a floor of wood beams above. There was no door in or out that she could see.
“Help!” Saskia screamed at the ceiling, but Ella was on her, hand slammed over her mouth, trying to suffocate her. This time, Saskia fought back, grabbed the hand, and twisted it backward. Ella screamed.
Saskia let go, put a few feet between them, body buzzing as she pointed. “Where am I? Why did you bring me here?” The questions came out through her teeth as she tried to stop herself from crying. She didn’t want to feel weak, but she was feeling too many things. “Maybe you don’t remember I saved your stupid life, and this is how you . . .” She took a breath, swiped a hand over her eyes. “Just tell me the truth, Ella. Tell me why.”
Ella cradled her hand. She was wearing different clothes, but besides the injury Saskia just gave her, she looked fine. Healthy. Not at all in danger or a participant in every awful outcome Saskia had imagined.
“I wanted to get in touch with you. Tell you everything. You know I wouldn’t lie to you —”
“There’s a lot of things I never thought you’d do to me. Aiding in kidnapping was pretty much the top of that list. And yet.” Saskia stepped towards her, and Ella went backward. “Your aunt’s pretty much had a funeral for you, you know. But I forgot how good you were at hiding. As usual, you weren’t thinking of anyone but yourself.”
“You should talk!” Ella barked back, and sparks came off her eyelashes. It was a semi-nervous tic that Saskia had once catalogued as precious. Now she scoffed at it. “You did everything to try to stop me. And I’m grateful. Except you went into the rat’s nest and came out a rat.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about anything, and you never did. You’re a spoiled poseur, like Dannika and those Clusterfucks —”
“Good one!” Ella snapped. Then they both stopped, Saskia remembering the way they’d been before in their relationship. That hurt more than Ella’s fist in Saskia’s stomach.
Ella’s coiled hands at her sides loosened. “You’ve had all this intel about the Task Guard. Not only what they’re doing, but how to stop them. And you didn’t tell anyone. Scaredy Sask wants to be the hero now.” Her soft expression tightened again. “You’re a hypocrite.”
After all this, Saskia couldn’t help but laugh. “And who could I tell? Who can I trust? You’re the only one I could have. And you ran away.”
“I didn’t run! The Cluster was protecting me —”
“Oh, I get it.” Hands on her hips, Saskia glanced around. “We’re in some Cluster safe house, right? They finally convinced you they’re the rogue ‘good guys’ in all this.” She dipped her head, squeezed her eyes with thumb and forefinger, and looked back up with solid resolve. “I’m not joining them. Or you. Whatever kind of mind-raking trick Rathgar did, he doesn’t know a thing about me.”
Ella didn’t come any closer. “But I do,” she said. “You’re connected to the dark, whether you like it or not. And you can’t do this alone, Sask. I came here because of you.”
Saskia wanted to believe it. It hurt so much to look into Ella’s unwavering stare and want what was once between them to still exist. Saskia had shared every secret with her. Ella had done the same. Doomed lovers from opposite sides. But no matter how much it ached, it wasn’t going to go back to the way it was.
Saskia wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the ground. At least she could trust concrete. “You still haven’t told me why.”
This was as good a lifeline as Ella was going to get. She took it. “Open your eyes, Sask. Where do you think we are?”
A quick glance, a brief inhale. Damp, cold. “Underground. A basement. So?”
“Come on,” Ella sighed, impatient. “You were literally just here two weeks ago, snooping around. You got yourself on the Cluster’s radar in the first place when you confronted Dannika and the others.”
Two weeks ago? Even as Saskia squinted, trying to take a better look, the basement, illuminated by flickering light bulbs lining solid wood but worse-for-wear crossbeams, just looked like a rebel foxhole would —
Wait.
Saskia frowned as it dawned on her. “We can’t be,” she started. “If this is Cecelia Bettincourt’s house, it’d be swarming with —”
Above, bootfalls, muffled speech, from multiple parties. Dust floated down from the loosened floorboards. Saskia jerked and nearly backed into Ella.
“Shit! We have to —”
As the footsteps came closer overhead, the room . . . changed, as if something had been tripped, like a defense mechanism. The beds disappeared. Over them, flickering like a mirage, were shelves, lockers. The makeshift dormitory faltered under the overlaid image of a massive storage room, as if the room itself had flipped over like a Prohibition speakeasy. The bootfalls lingered, the muffled voices rising and falling. Then they moved away, and when they did, the storage room faded.
Saskia was getting tired of the intimate sensation of her chest pre-explosion. She dashed away from Ella, swiping a hand through one of the last flickering stand of lockers where the bed should be. Then, like footsteps above them, it disappeared.
“It’s an Owl feedback loop,” she breathed, turned back to Ella. “How long has this been down here?”
Ella lifted a shoulder. “Ever since Roan left. Someone figured it might be of use, someday, so the Owls cloaked it up. This part of it, at least.”
Someone. “Solomon Rathgar, then. King Backstabber himself.”
Ella was never one to wait around for Saskia to get to the point. She walked past her, to the back wall of the basement. “This isn’t about the good guys or the bad guys. Though the ETG is pretty bad. But there can’t be sides if there’s no world to fight for. The Cluster isn’t really the name of some Darkling-worshipping death cult.”
Saskia was about to ask the obvious, but Ella put her hand against the dirt wall, rubbing a half circle in it with a palm bordered in flame. The wall lit up. The dirt shivered and hissed away. Another hidden door.
It opened inward and down, to the dark.
“Come on,” Ella beckoned, her hand still alight. “This is the place where it all started. And now, thanks to you, it’s where we can all decide how it’s going to end.”
Ella started down, because she knew Saskia better than anyone.
And Saskia, silently cursing herself, followed.
All Our Precious Undoing
Eli sprang up with the last of his strength, nearly falling backward as the rush of this shade’s — his mother’s — memory left him gasping for air, drowned in her life.
She drew away, as if ashamed. “You look so much like your father,” she said. “You always did.”
“No.” Eli shook his head, as if trying to get water out of
his ears. “Stop. I can’t —” Now that he had his breath back, the questions crowded his mouth. “I was a ritual conception. That’s why it was just us. Solomon was never . . .” Around. In my life. Interested in me. Wanted me.
Or so he’d thought. But what he’d seen had been genuine attraction between his parents, organically sparked. Love. The word was a bitter pill.
The shade whirled and nearly broadsided Eli. “There’s so much you couldn’t know about me. About him. But now is my chance to fix it. I’ve waited here all this time. Please let me show you.” She reached for him again, and that time he stood his ground, as if mid-battle.
“Don’t touch me!” Confusion boiled in his chest. And terror. He hadn’t had a panic attack in years, but he recognized it like a loyal dog, straining against its chain. “And you,” Eli panted, the pain of the words bloody in his mouth. “You left, too.”
She had been close, but she faltered as if he’d struck her. Her shade flickered, a strange fading luminous glow at her centre. All the shades he’d seen had never taken the shape of who they were in life. Eli couldn’t trust that this was even really happening.
“I left to save you.” Her voice was small. “If I was gone, then my dream couldn’t infect you. Then the Moonstone would stay lost, as it deserved, and none of this would have happened.”
Eli stared long and hard at the shape that had been Demelza. Tall, regal, drained, and monochrome. It had been a very long time since he’d seen her as anything but a sad memory. And at the end of her life she was as fragile as glass, her mind splintered by the very stone she refused to claim. She’d barely recognized Eli before she died.
She was the last true Paramount of the Owls. The only one in centuries who had denied a god’s will. And she’d paid with her mind, her life.
“I’d have paid any price for you.” Her voice was suddenly inside of him again, reading his thoughts and responding. “But you’re wrong. Even at the end, especially then, I always knew you. I fought hard to keep the stone away and keep you close to me. Solomon begged me to tell him where the Moonstone was. It wanted to be found. It wanted it so much more when you were born, because it wanted me, it wanted you. I sent Solomon away. I couldn’t let the Moonstone win.”