by Lucia Ashta
But the bat had done its damage. Even from where Marcelo and Mordecai lay, they knew it, and Marcelo felt a pang cross his heart as if the bat had attacked the half of himself he inhabited.
When the four men looked up, the castle was once again still, but the threat of the castle was loud and real despite its apparent silence.
Slowly, warily, they stood from the floor, still encased in lingering shields. Marcelo turned to open the front door. It wasn’t safe for me outside, alone with a dragon, even if I’d been able to slip by it on the way in.
But the door was sealed shut. In one sinking moment, Marcelo realized that the bats had been more than an attack; they had also been a distraction.
Chapter 40
Marcelo tore at the door with a rage he hadn’t realized until then he’d been holding. But once he noticed it, he didn’t try to subdue it. All his life he’d forced his emotions inside—his grief for his sister and Albacus, his father’s betrayal, the loss of a brother who hated him and a mother who was too weak to make a difference, the loss of a nephew to darkness, and the hatred of a pale stranger that had destroyed his life for no greater reason than that he could.
He was tired of it. He was damn well tired of it all. The injustice of his life was too great to bear at times, like right then. He’d lost most everything he cared about to Count Washur’s hateful destruction, and he bitterly regretted that his family had ever crossed the pale-faced murderer’s path, just as every one of his victims did.
Now that he had another chance at happiness, at shared love, the Count was trying to take that away too. Washur wouldn’t stop trying to destroy Marcelo until Marcelo’s final annihilation, until Marcelo looked forward to the relief only death could provide. Washur was giving Marcelo only two choices: either Marcelo would defeat the Count, or the Count would finish his destruction of Marcelo. Assuming Marcelo possessed the skill to take the Count down, he knew what his choice had to be.
The frustration and anguish from all those years boiled up and rose through his throat until his body rejected them like vomit. Marcelo made sounds that were only vaguely human. He wailed while he tore at the massive door. His muscles bulged and stood out against his arms, hidden beneath his cloak. He pulled and rocked against the door with so much strength that, if magic hadn’t been involved, he might have split it in two.
Mordecai didn’t move to interfere. His heavy heart felt every one of Marcelo’s emotions. He let this man that he loved wrench his heart out against a door since he couldn’t against the man—no, the shell—that was the cause of so much heartbreak.
Marcelo pounded against the door with his fists, the strong wood rattling in its frame, saying, I feel you. I hear you. I share your pain. He hit the door again. Then he kicked it with a final perfunctory wail that might have been able even to tear at the heart of someone mostly without one, like the Count—perhaps.
Then Marcelo slid down the door until he hit bottom, where he flung his legs out in front of him, completely unaware that I would soon take the exact same position on the other side of the door. Only a few inches would separate our beating hearts.
Yet a few inches in these circumstances might as well have been miles.
Finally, Mordecai approached, and reached a hand out to Marcelo. “Get out of the way, son.” Marcelo, too spent to object, allowed Mordecai to help him up. Then Mordecai hurled spell after spell at the door, until it became apparent that the Count had forced the door closed with something of an unusual sort.
Mordecai next attempted to manipulate the door at its core elemental nature. He connected with the earth element and bid it to move, to distort, to give way—anything. But the door didn’t budge.
Mordecai turned to Marcelo, shaking his head in unaccustomed defeat. “This can’t be. What can Washur have done that we cannot undo? It makes no sense.”
Marcelo didn’t answer. He looked toward the door with unfocused eyes. How could something as simple as a door stand between him and me, when he was the one that was supposed to protect me?
Mordecai spoke softly, little more than an expression of internal thoughts, “Clara might be able to do something about it. Her magic is rooted in different principles than ours. She sees things differently. She connects to things differently. That might be sufficient to break through whatever ridiculous hold Washur has over the door.”
Then Mordecai kicked the door once for good measure, but his foot landed with a muted thud, and the old man unsuccessfully tried to hide that he’d hurt himself. He limped lightly away from the door.
But Marcelo wasn’t finished. He tore into the parlor and hurled violent spells at the windows. However, the glass didn’t shatter, and Marcelo was left with curses upon his lips. The glass always shattered. What could be easier to break than glass?
He spun out of the parlor and back into the entryway. His eyes darted everywhere, his head following like a ball attached to a string, carefully avoiding looking at his split on the floor. Finally, he headed into the dining room, but there was no help there, and he exited it, marching once more toward the door.
Before he even reached the door, he flung a spell at the wood. It bounced, without leaving a mark. Marcelo launched more spells at the door, one after another, as quickly as he could get the words out for the quick spells. But even though he used both beginners and advanced spells, not one of them worked.
In the end, he pounded three solid times on the door. Then he yelled, “Clara, you have to open the door. Use your magic. Use the fifth element. Do something that isn’t from the books of magic. No spells we know are working.”
He waited, but nothing happened, and he was left to imagine the worst. Something might have already happened to me. I might be in danger. The dragon might be ready to attack me.
What didn’t occur to him was what actually did happen. I didn’t hear him. I couldn’t, the Count had made sure of that too. I was under a spell of my own just then, also of the Count’s design. Although Marcelo and I appeared only to be separated by a door, we were actually separated by something much greater than that.
Marcelo gave up, and was tempted to give up on all of it. But his resignation passed quickly, and he began to think of what he could do to save me. He looked to Mordecai and saw the old man already doing the same. Wrinkled eyelids encased sharp eyes, alert as ever, rising to a challenge for which the ancient magician had spent a long lifetime preparing.
For the first time since the swarm attack, Marcelo walked over to his split and knelt next to his other half. The split looked nearly lifeless. An unpleasant pallor cast a shadow across his skin, lending a sense of morbidity to him and an equally unresponsive firedrake.
Glowing shields blurred for an instant as they intersected, after which Marcelo lifted a cloak from an arm that should have been identical to his. However, it was not. Marcelo could feel the pulsing of the bat’s impact even before he lifted the cotton of his split’s shirt.
Marcelo stared expressionless. Only a tightening of his jaw revealed the gravity of the injury.
When Marcelo looked up, Mordecai met his eyes. They both knew. They would need to do intense, advanced healing magic on his split’s arm if there was any chance of saving it. And to do that, they had to get somewhere safe, where they could focus on the healing instead of their defense.
And they had to do it fast. The black patch on the split’s skin looked ominous, and it would continue to spread until they found a way to stop it.
“Let’s move,” Marcelo said, while he began to lift his split and Sylvia into the air once more, hovering them with much greater care than he’d brought them down to the ground.
Silently, Winston and Salazar also stood and moved to follow Marcelo. Whether they wanted it or not, it seemed like they were all in this together.
Presumably, Winston and Salazar knew the layout of the castle better than Marcelo or Mordecai could guess at it, but Marcelo wasn’t in the asking mood, or in a following one either. He moved now with the empowermen
t of purpose of which Mordecai always knew him capable.
He had a fiancée, a future sister-in-law, and a nephew to save, along with a firedrake and a part of himself that he very much wanted to keep. He had wrongful deaths to avenge, many of them. And he had a count to wipe from the face of the earth.
Marcelo moved toward the stairs with purpose, because that’s where he felt he was supposed to go. Everyone else followed.
Chapter 41
Marcelo paused at the first landing to feel where he should go next. This wasn’t how he usually went about doing magic, but nothing had been as he expected it to be in the castle since he first walked into it. The Count’s magic was unique. Either he’d explored dark magic to an extent no one else had (or that someone did but didn’t leave evidence of his experiences), or the Count was able to access the elements in a way foreign to standard magic.
Marcelo needed not to think, but to feel magic, much like I did. Since I first learned of magic, I’d tried to learn it, from books and from teachers, yet that wasn’t the way for me. And now Marcelo tried to access magic as I did, contrary to everything he’d ever learned.
On the landing, he felt. He listened. He paid attention to how standing on that landing made him feel. Was he nervous or uneasy? Did he feel comfortable? No, he didn’t, but then, he wasn’t supposed to feel comfortable anywhere within this castle. He probably wouldn’t breathe easily again until he’d put at least a hundred miles between him and this forsaken place.
He listened to the pulse as it flushed through his head, reminding him that, at least, he was still alive. Marcelo looked at the men that followed him up the stairs, waiting for him to lead them, and he looked toward two unconscious figures in whose survival he had great interest.
He looked longingly toward a large door he could barely make out anymore. He could only see the very bottom of the door from the landing where he stood.
Then his head snapped up and his eyes grew wide. “Mordecai, where is Sir Lancelot?”
Mordecai’s mouth dropped open in shocked silence, but in complete response. He spoke with the hushed reverence usually reserved for discussion of the dearly departed dead. “I last saw him in the courtyard, when the dragon knocked Clara down and he flew from her shoulder.”
“Aye.” The set lines of Marcelo’s mouth moved farther downward, and he flicked another useless glance at the baseboard of the door.
Mordecai turned to look too. If they couldn’t get outside just yet, there was nothing they could do for their pygmy friend for now, other than hope for his safety. Mordecai moved up another riser on the stairs, and looked up to speak to his favorite pupil. “Perhaps Sir Lancelot has found Clara, and they are even now helping each other.”
“Aye,” Marcelo said, although he didn’t believe it. Without another word, Marcelo continued up the stairs. Wherever it was they needed to go, it was further up, even though I was on the other side of a door downstairs.
The only way for him to help me now was to listen to that which was largely unspoken. So up he went, grateful that he’d watched me so closely, observing my unique ways of interacting with magic, even if the real reason he’d watched me so closely was entirely more personal.
Chapter 42
When Marcelo reached the landing of the third floor, he knew he had to keep going, and he didn’t slow. He walked with purpose, looking fervently down the hallway for what he knew must be there, trailed by the other men and two limp, hovering bodies.
“Look for a way to the roof,” Marcelo called out over his shoulder, while he yanked open an anonymous door. The third floor on this side of the castle was likely composed of guest bedrooms and rooms. The servants also probably slept on the third floor, but on the other side of the castle above the kitchens, isolated from the family rooms.
All of them there had been raised in castles, and the floor plans of most castles in this region were similar. But Salazar had grown up in this castle. Hesitantly, Salazar approached Marcelo.
“I know how to get to the roof,” he said. Marcelo looked into his nephew’s eyes, remembering Mordecai’s warning. Salazar might still be working against them, conspiring with the Count to lead them into a trap, or just misleading them in general. Marcelo looked into those eyes that were so similar to his, searching for a clue to his nephew’s allegiance.
He found much of his sister in this man that looked much as he had at age sixteen. But he didn’t detect his sister’s gentleness or compassion, or the fierce love she’d held for him. He didn’t know what would serve as confirmation that his nephew had experienced a change of heart, but he assumed he’d know it when he saw it.
He treaded carefully. He needed his nephew to trust him, and true trust went both ways. Yet he also felt the responsibility for the safety of his friends.
“All right, Sala—”
“No.” Salazar’s interruption was harsh this time. “Don’t say my name. Never say it.”
“Why not?” Marcelo’s eyebrows raised in suspicion, despite his resolve to trust his nephew, or at least to appear to do so.
Salazar sighed in frustration, and he was shocked to discover himself near tears. He worked hard to preserve his composure, and the last person he wanted to reveal weakness to was his mother’s brother. After all, this man had killed his mother. As a child, Salazar had vowed to his father, the Count of Washur, that he would avenge his mother’s death by killing her murderer.
Salazar felt drawn to like his uncle, and he reminded himself of the Count’s many warnings over the years. Marcelo wielded lies as weapons, and he would try to convince Salazar that he wasn’t responsible for Clarissa’s death. He’d try to make Salazar turn on his own father by placing the blame on the Count of Washur instead.
Salazar steeled himself to move forward, as the Count had trained him to do all his life, but for some reason he hadn’t planned for, he couldn’t. He actually wanted Marcelo to like him, he admitted to himself furiously.
He knew he shouldn’t. He couldn’t! He should hate him, just as he had all the years before meeting him. From the start, the Count made sure Salazar knew who was responsible for all the misery in his life, and all the blame landed neatly on Marcelo.
Marcelo watched Clarissa’s son with cautious curiosity. The young man was trying to shield his emotions from view, but he wasn’t very good at it. Marcelo saw the doubt flicker across Salazar’s face, followed closely by a softening of past aggression and suspicions. He also saw the old hatred attempt to reconfigure itself with steely resolve.
Salazar was beginning to open to the possibility of Marcelo’s loyalty to Clarissa, but he hadn’t arrived at that conclusion yet. Marcelo saw many reasons to continue to treat his nephew with caution, and not one of those was the man’s fault. The Count had manipulated Salazar since even before his birth, and Washur had been mostly successful in molding the impressionable mind.
Yet when seeds were planted in hospitable soil, fertile despite rigid appearances, there were times when the seed couldn’t help but to grow. Seeds were meant to grow, and sometimes things developed as they were meant to, despite any intentions to the contrary.
Salazar was the Count’s son. But he was also Clarissa’s son. And Clarissa had possessed a strong, merciful heart, just as Marcelo did, that their father couldn’t beat out of them even though the Count of Bundry tried. Salazar’s heart, despite the dark’s poisoning, beat in a similar rhythm as Marcelo’s. Now, so close to a kindred heart, Salazar’s longed for the compassion and kindness it was always meant to have, even if Salazar didn’t know it yet.
With only an idea of what his nephew was going through, Marcelo began to reach out a hand toward the man. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t want to rush Salazar, but they were in a hurry. Death rode on their coattails.
Consumed by battling emotions, Salazar didn’t see the cautious hand reaching between them. When Marcelo touched it to his shoulder, Salazar startled. His body turned rigid, as if it would explode with all the hatred it contained. But those
were old patterns, patterns the body knew well, on an instinctual level. Salazar looked into his uncle’s eyes for the first time, with eyes that betrayed an openness his body did not.
“I can’t tell you why you shouldn’t say my name,” Salazar said in rote obedience to the many times the Count had told Salazar he couldn’t tell anyone about the spell that surrounded his name. Salazar had already disobeyed the Count by mentioning any reservation about his name to Marcelo at all. “Just don’t say it. Not in my presence.”
“All right,” Marcelo said slowly, the wheels of his brain spinning into gear. He gripped his nephew’s shoulder firmly, and then let go. The young man looked fragile despite his strong frame and demeanor. “Will you show us the way to the roof then?”
Salazar nodded and stepped in front of his uncle. Marcelo watched the young man carefully, seeing more in his nephew than he could have in another stranger. Marcelo knew Clarissa, and he knew himself at age sixteen. He also knew his father, the Count of Bundry, and that he’d influenced Salazar’s youth in his visits with the Count of Washur. And Marcelo was beginning to know the undead Count, Salazar’s father, the person most responsible for the way his nephew was. Even though Marcelo might not know the young man much—yet—he was familiar with the greatest of his composite pieces.
Marcelo followed every one of Salazar’s strides through the hallway, toward its end. He followed the gait that was like his own through the unremarkable door that opened onto the staircase he’d been looking for. And he followed every single one of the adolescent’s steps up the plain risers, knowing that Salazar was beginning to want to help his uncle, but that he wasn’t yet ready to defy the Count, or to allow himself to consider alternatives to his life history.