by Rye Brewer
It was worth it for Elazar. To keep him safe and sane while he waited out his sentence.
Over time, Stark had made it worthwhile, as well. If anything, he’d made life interesting again. He’d given me added reason to make that lonely walk up the cobblestone road every morning and back to the cottage at night, when the sky would be just as dark as it had been on my trip out. I had lived in perpetual night for so long, I hardly remembered what it was like to feel sunshine.
That would all end soon.
My hands tingled at the images of what was to come, to the point where I had to close my eyes and concentrate until the feeling passed. I hadn’t felt so on-edge and volatile since my girlhood, when my powers had first revealed themselves, and I’d created chaos in my little town.
Enough so that I was banished and my twin came with me, unwilling to leave me alone. I’d only been repaying that kindness ever since. I might have died back then, living alone and penniless, had he not made it possible for me to survive.
“It’s all about to change, brother,” I whispered, staring into the flames which mirrored the fevered pattern of my thinking. “You’ll have everything you’ve been dreaming of for so long. As will I.”
A knock at the door startled me out of my near-trance, and it was with a frown that I opened it to greet my guest.
I could’ve predicted who I’d find standing on the doorstep. She came around far too frequently for my liking.
“What do you think it all means?” she murmured, brushing past me to barge into the cottage just as she’d been doing for far too long. As always, I controlled my temper. He loved her. I would never understand it, but he did.
“I’m not sure,” I lied, pulling a second chair up to the fire so Samara could settle in.
“They haven’t held a midnight meeting such as this in… I can’t remember how long,” she admitted, shaking rainwater out of her dark waves. Droplets sizzled as they hit the stones at the edge of the hearth.
“Nor can I,” I agreed. As always, I watched her movements closely. The practiced grace of the waving of her hands. The way her eyebrows rose when she was excited. The way she tilted her head and jutted her chin whenever she was frustrated or confused.
I couldn’t wait to watch her die.
“Will you be there? When they pass sentence, I mean?”
I shrugged as though I hadn’t given it any thought. “I don’t know if the Senate would allow such a thing. They take these matters very seriously, of course.”
“Of course,” she parroted, staring into the flames.
“It would be a shame, though, to see Fane’s family punished…” I glanced at her, weighing her reaction.
She knew damn well why he was on the island, even if she hadn’t admitted it or even acknowledged his presence. She was one half of the pair who had placed Nivia in his former wife’s body—my brother being the other half. If Fane were looking for anyone on Shadowsbane, it would be the two of them.
“It would,” she agreed.
I wondered how much of her past life had washed clean over the course of the vigil she’d kept with me. Did she feel any guilt for the crimes she’d committed? Or over the fact that it was my brother, not she, who sat in a cell? Even though she was just as guilty as he?
I cleared my throat, careful to keep my excitement at bay. It had to sound as though I were only just coming up with this idea.
“I wonder if there isn’t a way to use this to our advantage, now that we have potential allies here on the island.”
She turned to me with wide, surprised eyes. “How could we possibly?”
I bit the inside of my cheek to calm myself.
She couldn’t see how anxious I was to proceed. “Here is what I’ve been considering…”
5
Felicity
“She made it sound as though she’d be back right away. Didn’t she?” Gregor’s frantic eyes searched my face for a hint of understanding.
I wished I had some to give him.
“She did,” I said for the hundredth time, working hard to disguise the frustration and exhaustion of putting up with his interrogations and pacing for two straight days.
Two days without Tabitha.
At first, I’d assured him that she’d likely been held up somehow, slowed down, something. After two days, I couldn’t be so sure. Something must have gone wrong.
My heart ached for him, waiting for her with increasing concern and impatience. Every passing hour made the situation worse.
If he wasn’t so clearly in love, I might have been annoyed with him—the man wasn’t easy to placate under ordinary circumstances, and this was anything but ordinary. He was even more impossible than ever. But it would be like kicking a small, wounded child to lash out at him or even speak sharply.
“I should have demanded to go with her.” His voice had lost its zeal. He sounded tired, dejected, bruised as he waited, looking out into the distance.
“Come home,” I urged. “You need to rest. You’ve barely had a moment’s sleep since you started waiting for her.”
“I promised her I would be here.” His gaze never faltered. As though he could will her into existence.
“I know you did, but I’m sure she won’t expect to find you here after all this time. And I can promise she’ll be frustrated with you when she finds you’ve waited without taking care of yourself.”
I’d been bringing him food and drink, but he’d hardly partaken of it. The plate and mug I’d most recently delivered looked untouched.
“If she arrives at all.” He was clearly dejected.
“I’m sure she will.” I was less sure than ever.
What could’ve happened?
Her face had shone, just as his had, when they’d discussed her visit to Avellane. Was she ill? Hurt? Detained by one of the shades? Did they stop her? Why would they stop her?
I rubbed my knuckles over my tired eyes, my heart heavy with its own concerns. I hadn’t seen Allonic since he’d hurried away. Everything had seemed so perfect, sitting there on that roof, like the two of us were on top of the world. Nothing down below could touch us. And then, it had ended. As though someone had snapped their fingers and jolted us back to reality.
Try as I might, I couldn’t pinpoint just why things had changed the way they had.
I’d told Allonic about his mother visiting Avellane. He hadn’t seemed averse to the idea—at first. I’d worried that he might have held her back, refused to allow her to leave ShadesRealm, but nothing about his demeanor when I’d broken the news led me to believe that he was anything other than interested and even mildly amused at his mother’s romance.
Even so, something had jolted him hard. And that was the last I’d seen of him. The torment in his face, in his eyes, just before he’d coursed away from me.
What if something terrible had happened to the both of them? I couldn’t help but entertain the image of Gregor and I, still waiting a hundred years hence. Both of us dead from exposure and starvation and heartache. If we were lucky, heartache would take us first.
It was as if he could read my thoughts. “And Allonic didn’t give you any indication of why he left in a hurry?”
I closed my eyes for the briefest moment before answering the question—again. I’d lost track of the number of times he’d asked. “He didn’t. He shut down and coursed me back here, then left in a hurry.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
But it had made sense to Allonic, hadn’t it? I warned myself not to take it personally, that if he had issues to handle and didn’t feel they were any of my business, there was nothing I could do about that. I wished my heart didn’t hurt so much when I reminded myself of this. I wanted there to be more between us, more intimacy and trust—but it couldn’t be forced.
“I can’t stand this.” He stood abruptly. “I need to find a way to get to ShadesRealm.”
My mouth hung open as I followed him into Avellane. He had
a habit of turning on a dime, but this was jarringly abrupt even for him. “What can you do? You can’t go there, unchaperoned, and without permission from someone there.”
“I know that,” he snapped, walking in great, long strides. With a goal to focus on again, he’d gone from a defeated, heartsick man to the Gregor I was accustomed to. As usual, I nearly ran to keep up.
“What do you plan to do, then?”
“I plan to send word to Garan, to see if I can negotiate entrance.”
“What about Ressenden? I thought he was the one to speak to on such matters?”
He waved a hand. “I didn’t tell you? Word came through just before we went to Hallowthorn Landing. Ressenden is dead.”
The news took my breath away. The ancient shade had in essence, ruled ShadesRealm for as long as I could remember, whether he was named ruler or not.
I had never been there and had never met him, but stories had circulated for years pertaining to his wisdom, hard-headedness, and the strict rules everyone in ShadesRealm lived under.
“Garan is his son?”
Gregor nodded. “The second son. The first-born died years ago, so that would mean Garan is now in power. I’ll send word to him immediately and let him know it’s an emergency.”
I followed him to his chambers, where he fired off a quick missive and rang for a messenger to rush out.
The messenger looked understandably confused, but knew better than to ask questions.
“You ought to get some rest while you’re waiting,” I advised, waiting in one corner of the room. I knew my words fell on deaf ears but felt compelled to bring it up, anyway.
He scowled. “There’s no time to waste with sleep.”
“I understand, but if you’re allowed into ShadesRealm, do you think you’ll have any time to rest there? You’ll want to look for Tabitha. You owe it to her to take care of yourself while you can.” In reality, I was desperate for a moment alone, but didn’t want to leave him on his own while he was awake.
I didn’t trust his judgment when his emotions ran at full tilt, as they were at this time. One wrong move—going to ShadesRealm before receiving permission, insulting someone in power—and he could bring disaster down on all our heads.
He sighed, rubbing his face before running his hands through his hair. A man with far too many thoughts and worries. “Perhaps you’re right. I only wonder if I’ll be able to calm myself long enough to sleep.”
“I can prepare a draught for you,” I suggested. “Nothing too strong, but enough to help you sleep for a few hours.” I didn’t want to waste time any more than he did, but it wouldn’t do for him to collapse, either.
I hurried to prepare the potion, using herbs I kept in a series of pouches concealed within my robes for just such circumstances, then made sure he went to bed before going to my own chambers to catch my breath and perhaps get some rest of my own. Considering what I’d given Gregor, I had roughly four hours—and there was no telling when Garan would reply to his message, since what constituted an emergency for Avellane or its citizens didn’t necessarily translate in ShadesRealm.
After a quick, much-needed bath to wash away the dust I’d picked up while waiting on the other side of the entrance, I curled up in bed and closed my eyes. The only thing I saw when I closed them was Allonic, and tears threatened to spring up. What happened to him?
When I was with Gregor, no matter how exhausting he was, at least I didn’t have time to dwell on my own aching heart. In the silence of my otherwise empty bed, there was nothing else to do.
I fell into an uneasy sleep, filled with dreams of coursing and sitting with my head on Allonic’s shoulder and the chest-bursting joy of being with him. Under all of it was a sense of dread. The certainty that something was very wrong.
It felt like no time passed between when I’d closed my eyes and when a sharp, insistent knocking on my door pulled them open again. “Yes?” I called out, sitting up so fast my head spun.
“Gregor’s looking for you.”
That was all I needed to hear. I was out of bed like a shot, dressing in clean robes and making sure I had a fresh supply of herbs and salves in my pouches, just in case. Something told me I might need them, if we were going to do any traveling.
“What took you so long?” he bellowed when I reached his chambers.
Sleep had granted him renewed energy, and I wasn’t sure whether or not to be glad for that when the volume of his voice made me cringe and shrink back a little. He’d bathed and dressed, just as I had, and was bent over his desk when I approached. There was an open scroll there, spread out between his palms.
I chose to ignore his question, since it was more rhetorical than anything else. “What did Garan say?”
“We can’t meet him in ShadesRealm,” he grumbled. “We can meet in Moorvale, however.” He glanced my way. “Have you ever been there?”
“I’ve never had reason to,” I replied, thinking of the neutral realm between Avellane and ShadesRealm. “As far as I know, it’s uninhabited. A sort of world between worlds.”
“Yes. I’ve heard the same.” He examined the scroll again, his brow deeply furrowed. “I see no reason why I shouldn’t comply. There can’t be any danger in meeting in a neutral zone.”
“I’ll go with you,” I immediately announced.
“You’ll do no such thing.”
“You act as though there’s danger involved in this—or something you’re trying to keep me from,” I added.
“There’s nothing of the sort.”
“Why would you refuse me, then?”
“I don’t need a nursemaid with me.”
“Is that what I am to you now?” I followed him around his chambers.
He slid into a second robe, the sort of shimmering, spangled thing he liked to wear while meeting other powerful men.
Its rich green reminded me of the grass and trees in our kingdom, and the beaded trim brought to mind the dome of the Hermitage. “I waited with you for two days out there, and you call me a nursemaid?”
“Do not challenge me right now, Felicity. I’m in no mood.” He nearly shoved me out of the way as he left the room, making me more determined than ever to go with him.
“You need someone with you,” I argued. “How do you think it will look, meeting the leader of another kingdom without so much as an advisor alongside you?”
When in doubt, it was always best to appeal to his ego. The worst thing Gregor could ever do, in Gregor’s opinion, was to look unprepared. It reflected poorly on him and his leadership.
He paused for the briefest moment, and I knew I’d gotten through to him.
“As long as you promise not to interfere. It wouldn’t do for a king’s advisor to speak before being spoken to.”
“I understand.”
We went outside, following the little-used path which led to a series of portals to the other realms.
All I could think about was Allonic, and the chance that we might be able to find him when we found Tabitha.
If we found Tabitha.
6
Felicity
Moorvale was just as it had always been described to me—cold, rocky, vacant.
Fog swirled around our ankles as we made our way from the portal, walking into I had no idea what. It was impossible to see what was under that fog, which made the rocky terrain that much more dangerous.
Even Gregor was forced to slow his gait as we walked along.
“Where are we going? Did he say anything in his scroll?” There was nothing but the fog-covered ground in all directions, as far as the eye could see. No mountains or even hills, no trees.
I wasn’t used to being in a place where there were no trees. They even had trees in the human world.
“No. Only that he would meet us here. I’m sure we’ll know him when we see him. It doesn’t look as though there’s another living soul here besides us.” Even the sky was flat and gray. As though whoever was building this realm had given up partway throug
h—and not even after getting much work done.
We walked through the fog, watching every step and feeling sillier with every passing moment until a tall, dark figure appeared on the horizon.
For a moment, when he came into focus, I thought I was looking at Allonic. The same build, the same dark skin and bald head. And those remarkable, golden eyes. My heart leaped into my throat and lodged itself there, I was so sure of what I thought I saw.
But it wasn’t him.
The man striding toward us had the bearing of a ruler, a leader, someone whose time would not be wasted. Much like Gregor, in fact. Allonic had the same noble bearing, but he didn’t inspire the image of a raging bull.
I missed him so.
“Gregor.” Garan held out his large hand to shake Gregor’s, which disappeared inside his grip.
Gregor wouldn’t like that.
Garan’s smile was tight. “Forgive me for choosing this barren place for our meeting, but it was the first one to come to mind where I knew we would both be safe. I must admit, my head hasn’t been clear today.”
He looked at me, nodded sharply. “You see, my father was laid to rest today.”
I winced. What timing. “I’m very sorry to hear that. We’d gotten word of his passing, but weren’t aware…”
“Completely understandable.” There were worry lines at his eyes and the corners of his mouth, and his brow creased deeply as he frowned.
Was it just my imagination, or was he staring at my hair? I resisted the urge to touch it self-consciously.
He seemed to shake himself before asking, “What is it I can do for you?”
Gregor stood up tall, puffing out his chest. “As I stated in my message, I’m looking for Tabitha. I know she was living in ShadesRealm. She was supposed to pay a visit to Avellane, but it’s been two days since I’ve heard anything from her. She told me she was only going back to her tower to gather a few things and would be back as soon as possible.”