A Ride of Peril

by Bella Forrest

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know. But I can try.” She shrugged.

  I sighed and nodded. It was the best she could do. Not knowing her limits was a setback, but I had faith in her ability to surprise me and herself. So, I waited patiently as she passed her fingers over the keyhole, over and over again.

  Minutes passed, and she repeated the motion, but nothing happened. At one point, we heard a small click, but when she pulled the lock, it didn’t open.

  “I think it’s reacting to me, somehow, but I don’t know how to convince it to open,” she said.

  “Convince it to open?”

  “Well, yes. I’m basically stroking it and asking it nicely to open.”

  I stifled a laugh and pressed my lips together, keeping a straight face as I watched her repeat the caress for a few more minutes.

  “Oh, come on! Open already!” She slapped the lock hard.

  Sparks flew from the hit, and an invisible pulse threw us backward, followed by a loud click. We sat up and saw the lock drop open, the keyhole glowing an incandescent red.

  “Wow,” I said. “All it needed was a good spanking, then.”

  The Daughter laughed and shuffled back to the chest, pulling the lock away and lifting the lid. The interior was draped in soft red velvet. We found the third book dressed in several layers of black fabric with fine golden embroidery.

  I pulled the cover away and revealed the swamp witches’ third book, identical to her sister volumes, bound in leather with off-white pages and incomplete scribbles and pentagrams.

  Warmth enveloped me as I looked at the Daughter and found her smiling, lit up with joy and excitement. She’d helped us. I knew it made her happy that she was able to help me, to help us. I felt her glee in my heart, and I swore I’d do everything I could to always help her feel like that.

  Serena

  Later that night we all gathered in the banquet hall for dinner. The table was rich in delicious smelling food, from grilled dishes and vegetable stew to baked breads and sumptuous fruit platters. Crystal pitchers of water infused with different berries and leaves glistened under the candelabra, and I was surprised to see a fine set of silverware and porcelain with gold filigree designs.

  The candles from both chandeliers above were lit, along with every other wall sconce in the hall, bathing everything in pleasant amber light. It looked like a celebration.

  Vita, Aida, and Phoenix sat next to each other, while the Daughter, Field, and Bijarki faced them on the other side of the table. Jovi and Anjani had taken their seats closer to the grilled platters, and Draven sat at the head of the table with Hansa to his right.

  I sat to his left.

  I couldn’t help marveling at how beautiful it all was.

  “This looks like quite the feast. What happened?” I asked, smiling and eager to enjoy a bit of everything on display.

  “I asked the wards to prepare for a celebration,” the Daughter said, helping herself to a spoonful of vegetable stew.

  “I cannot express how grateful I am to have you here with us,” Jovi quipped, already stuffing his face.

  I nodded my appreciation to the Daughter, and she responded with a smile. I looked at Draven and found him already watching me, candlelight reflections flickering in his gray eyes. I filled my plate and ate quietly.

  The rest of the group talked about the books, the swamp witches, and what we could do next.

  Draven stood and took the lead in the conversation. “First, let’s see how the books come together.” He fetched the books from a cabinet nearby and placed them on the dinner table next to each other.

  We were all silent, watching as he flipped them open, one by one, and frowned.

  “Something’s not right,” he mumbled.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, gazing at the first pages.

  They didn’t seem connected at all. The symbols from one book didn’t match any of the other two. He shuffled them around, changing their position, trying a horizontal and vertical order, but still, they didn’t say anything.

  “They’re not making sense,” Draven groaned. His jaw muscle tightened.

  Hansa stood up and came to his side, looking at the pages with identical befuddlement. She turned several pages and moved the books around again.

  “He’s right. They’re not linked in any way. The half-symbols and sketches in one book don’t match any of the other two. It’s not supposed to be like this,” she muttered.

  One by one, we all stood up and inched closer to get a better look.

  “This can’t be happening,” Draven hissed and sat down with a defeated expression.

  “Why don’t we just finish dinner, go to sleep, and look at them again tomorrow with fresh eyes?” I said.

  I took my seat and ate a bite.

  Draven nodded, then put the books one on top of the other and poured himself another glass of water. Once again, his plate was empty.

  “Out of curiosity, when is it that you actually eat?” I grinned, hoping to steer the conversation away from the books for a while.

  “Once a day, but I don’t like to be seen when I feed,” he replied, staring absently at his plate.

  “Why not?”

  “Druids are, in many ways, like snakes,” Hansa interjected as she sat back down. “They don’t eat cooked food. They only tolerate raw meat.”

  Draven cut her off. “She really doesn’t need the full graphic description.”

  “She’s a big girl. She can take it, especially after everything she’s seen so far!” Hansa shot back with a smirk, then looked at me. “They eat like snakes, basically. Swallowing large pieces of flesh, which they gradually digest over the course of the day. In the old days, they used to gobble up entire animals, spitting the bones out after a couple of hours, but they’ve come a long way since then.”

  A moment of silence passed as I looked at him and noticed he was avoiding eye contact. I couldn’t help but wonder whether he was embarrassed. Judging by the flush in his cheeks, I guessed he was.

  Hansa seemed to notice as well. “He’s ashamed,” she chuckled.

  “What’s there to be ashamed of? He eats raw meat. I literally suck the life out of people. We’re all weirdos here,” I quipped.

  I didn’t want him to feel like a misfit, not in my presence, not with my family or friends—particularly when we were all hybrids of sorts, crosses between sentries, vampires, witches, Hawks, werewolves, and fae. He looked at me, and his gaze softened, a faint smile animating his features.

  “I find your Druid abilities to be quite fascinating,” I added and gave him a sideways glance. My spine tingled as I felt desire emanating from him like a heatwave. His gaze locked on my lips.

  A strange shuffling sound drew my attention to the books next to my elbow. I dropped my fork on the plate with a clang, my mouth gaping and eyes nearly popping out of my head. Draven looked down and immediately shot up from his chair.

  The books, placed neatly one on top of the other, trembled. The layers of leather rubbed against each other. The covers began to ripple, and over the course of a minute, their texture changed as they merged into one large and very thick book. The leather turned black, and we stared as we realized that the three books had become one.

  “What the heck,” I managed to croak as I stood.

  The others joined us on our side of the table, each gawking at the book.

  “What happened?” Aida asked.

  “What’s that?” Phoenix asked.

  “I have no idea,” Draven replied, equally baffled. “They seem to have morphed into one. I think it was part of the spell.”

  With slightly trembling fingers, I reached out and turned the first pages. The writing was clear and linear, the sketches and pentagrams complete. The swamp witches had used a spell to protect their knowledge by splitting it into three separate books. They were useless on their own, and, even when they were put next to each other, they still made no sense. One had to put them together, literal
ly stacking them, for the knowledge to emerge in the form of one large compendium.

  “This is still wrong,” Draven added, once again frustrated. “I don’t recognize the language.”

  “Oh, come on!” Hansa groaned and flipped through the book. “Figures! They used their cryptic code to write it all down.”

  “If they were the only ones who knew this language, and they were obviously going extinct, why write it all down in a code that would die with them?” I asked.

  “Don’t expect much sense out of the swamp witches,” Draven sighed. “They were brilliant but never easy to work with. It seems like even beyond the grave they’re still experts at making everything unnecessarily difficult.”

  “What do we do now?” Phoenix asked, his brow furrowed.

  The Daughter seemed pensive as she slowly moved closer to the book, one step at a time.

  “Unfortunately, we have no swamp witch translators lying around,” Draven replied, his tone laced with sarcasm. “We’re stuck with a book that we cannot decipher and the spell that we need somewhere in it.”

  “Are you sure there’s no other way to get to Mount Zur, then?” I started going over options.

  “Not unless you want to get captured, tortured, and killed along the way,” Hansa said. “It’s a very long way from here, and the closer you get to the castle the more spies and traitors roam the dark woods. It’s nearly impossible to get there in one piece, given how paranoid Azazel’s gotten over the past few decades.”

  “Why can’t the Dearghs from Mount Zur help with getting Sverik out?” I asked, aware that it sounded like a long shot.

  “A massive stone giant can’t infiltrate Azazel’s dungeons without getting noticed,” Draven answered. “I’m not even sure they would fit through those corridors. You’ve seen them yourself. They’re gigantic.”

  It made sense. Based on Aida’s descriptions, the dungeons were relatively small, with narrow corridors and not enough room for a Deargh the size of a plane to move around and pluck Sverik out of captivity.

  The Daughter stood next to Draven, her fingers running over the first line of writing on the first page. She read aloud: “To the one reading this, you are most fortunate. The swamp witches bestow this gift upon you.”

  “You can read this?” Draven asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  She nodded and looked at the text.

  “For this is the knowledge of the Aelias, the all-powerful mistresses of dark waters, the coven of witches blessed by the Daughters of Eritopia.”

  A wave of relief washed over the room.

  The Daughter looked up at us, slightly confused.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I could read this. I don’t know how I can, to be honest,” she said.

  “There is no need to apologize,” Draven replied with a brilliant smile. “You couldn’t have known. The important thing is that you can!”

  “Can you read it all?” I asked.

  She looked through the book, pursing her lips and squinting, then nodded.

  “Yes. It will take a little while. There’s a lot of text here. But they look like instructions with clear measures and diagrams.”

  “Like a manual,” I added.

  “Indeed. These are all spells, for sure, and they all seem to have spoken formulas, invoking the power of the word,” the Daughter explained, glancing over snippets of texts.

  Hansa cocked her head, as if analyzing the Daughter. “I wonder,” she mumbled, then spoke in a different language.

  I didn’t understand it.

  The Daughter looked up.

  “The answer is violet,” she replied.

  Hansa nodded, then looked at Draven and me.

  “I spoke in my tribe’s code. Only my sisters and I know it. Yet the Daughter understands it perfectly. I asked her a simple question about the color of her eyes, and she answered.”

  “So, she understands an ancient succubi tongue as well,” I concluded.

  All eyes were on the Daughter, who seemed a bit overwhelmed by the attention. Phoenix swiftly joined her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, keeping her close. I watched her relax under his touch.

  “She’s a Daughter of Eritopia,” Draven reasoned. “She most likely understands every word of every language, every code ever invented in this world.”

  “It makes sense, if you think about it,” Hansa replied.

  “Indeed, it does.” He nodded, then looked at the Daughter. “Would you be so kind as to help us translate this book? The sooner we find the spell we need, the quicker we can rescue Sverik and make progress against Azazel.”

  The Daughter took the large compendium in her arms, smiled at Draven, then headed for the door.

  “Phoenix, she can use one of the study rooms upstairs,” I said to my brother as he joined the Daughter on her way out.

  He waved in response, without turning his head.

  We all sat down. A collective sigh of relief fell over us as we finished our meals.

  “We’re one step closer to getting Sverik out of there.” Draven looked at me and smiled.

  His hand covered mine on the table, his grip tightening gently, enough to send sparks up my arm and fill me with his familiar warmth.

  Phoenix

  We’d been at it for hours. Midnight had come and gone as the Daughter and I worked on translating the swamp witches’ book. She read passages out loud, and I took notes, using old pencils and several journals I’d found in one of the drawers.

  A few candles gave enough light for our eyes to handle the reading and writing process without struggling. Owls hooted outside. A giant moon spared a few milky white rays for the study room.

  “This one’s a concealing spell,” the Daughter said as she read a couple of passages from another chapter. “It’s supposed to be like a paste of sorts, a mixture of ingredients that one spreads over any surface they wish to conceal. The incantation is short. We should write this down. Draven and Serena might need it.”

  I couldn’t help but gaze at her, unable to wipe the smile off my face. She was so innocent, yet capable of the strangest things. And here she was in the middle of the night thinking of ways to help my sister and the Druid. Despite her ingenuity, the Daughter had developed this sense of urgency that we’d all been facing for days. She looked at me questioningly.

  “What is it, Phoenix?”

  “Nothing. I’m just amazed at how selfless you can be. Others would be moaning about how tired they are, yet you’re fishing for more spells to help Draven and Serena,” I replied, my fingers playing with a lock of her hair.

  “Well, I haven’t found the protection spell that they need against fire yet, so we might as well write the useful ones down in the meantime.”

  I nodded and proceeded to jot down the ingredients for the concealment paste. Most of the herbs and powders she mentioned sounded familiar, giving me the impression that I’d seen some of them downstairs in the greenhouse and in the basement. Vita had put labels on everything.

  However, as the minutes went by, I started to acknowledge the heaviness in my limbs and head. I hadn’t syphoned in a while, and I was hungry for energy. I tried to concentrate as I wrote down the quantities in the order in which she dictated them, but eventually I started to lose track and blanked out for a few moments, unable to get my brain back in motion.

  “Phoenix, are you okay?” the Daughter asked, furrowing her brow.

  “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just a little hungry.”

  “But we had dinner.”

  “I’m a sentry. I need energy,” I reminded her, and she nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll ask Field or Jovi tomorrow. I can syphon from them.”

  I’d told her about my abilities before but without much detail. She shook her head and took my hand.

  “Why not me?”

  I blinked, then blushed, remembering the times I’d secretly tried to mind-meld and syphon off her during our first couple of days together. I scratched the back of my head and decided to tell her the t
ruth.

  “Well, to be honest, I tried before, but I couldn’t. I mean, you’re blocked off from me somehow. I can’t touch your mind. I can’t draw energy from you.”

  She thought about it for a while, then smirked.

  “What about earlier?” she asked.

  “What…what about earlier?”

  My mind raced to our moment in the banquet hall, before we found the third book. She’d opened up to me, and I’d been able to feel her emotions in ways I’d never thought possible. The memory of her scent inundated my consciousness, and I felt that invisible string between us tugging my heart. Then it hit me.

  “Earlier in the banquet hall, when we talked about death,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “You opened up to me. I felt what you felt.”

  “Yes.”

  A heartbeat later, I conceded. “I’m confused. I’m sorry. I don’t think straight when the sentry side of me is hungry.”

  “I don’t know myself well enough, but I think that it has to do with me whether you can or cannot syphon off me. Why don’t we try? I give you my permission. I will open up the way I did earlier, and you can try.”

  My gaze found hers, and a delicious heat spread through my chest, making my arms tingle. I shifted in the chair to face her. I cupped her face with my hands and took a deep breath.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded and let a sigh roll out of her chest. I felt her then, like earlier in the banquet hall, as she relaxed and let her walls down. A flurry of emotions flowed through me, and I closed my eyes, looking for the source of energy inside of her.

  First, there was darkness. Then, there were thousands of thin ribbons of pink, white, and orange—her emotions, all aimed at me, different but delightful shades of yearning and affection. I let it all in as I swam through the darkness searching for the center of her being.

  A thick pillar of electric violet energy towered in front of me with no apparent beginning or end. It pulsated and buzzed and beckoned me to come closer. I reached out for it.

  A tremendous life force crashed into me. Wave after wave filled me up and rushed through my veins like a river during a storm.