by Terah Edun
“You’ve never denied it either,” Mae said as her face turned white. “I saw all those mercenaries flood into the sickroom. I saw those same armed warriors being sent out of the room to take the rest of the greater holding. They weren’t the type to just ask nicely either.”
“They were sent to subdue, not kill,” Rivan quickly interjected.
“They didn’t subdue my stepmother and my father,” Mae replied, her voice shaking in denial. She both couldn’t believe it and desperately wanted to.
“That wasn’t them,” Rivan said gently. “That was Ava, Donna Marie, and their handpicked goons.”
Mae was still and silent for a moment.
It was almost too much. She wanted to believe but she also didn’t want to open up her heart to the ache that would surely break it if he was lying.
As if the indecision written on her face moved him, Rivan quickly said, “I’m speaking the truth.”
She bit her lip.
If he was, this could mean something else entirely new.
“All my family is alive,” Mae asked in a voice that trembled with emotion. “My aunts, my cousins, my nephews…my sister.”
“All of them that weren’t in the sickroom with us when the guards descended,” Rivan promised, his face was solemn and hinted at no games.
Whatever else he was planning, here and now, he clearly wanted her to believe him.
And despite everything else.
Her logic.
Her experience.
Her heart telling her to deny his words. She did believe him. Enough that she was willing to take a chance anyway.
“So we can get them out?” Mae asked in a voice inching towards hope.
“If we plan this right,” Rivan promised. “Besides we have no choice. Ava already has Ember—”
“She’s alive?” Mae excitedly asked. “You said those in the sickroom…”
“Ember wasn’t among the deaths as far as I saw,” Rivan quickly amended. “She was treated the same as you, put in a stasis while they toyed with your gifts.”
“Over and over and over again,” Mae muttered in an agitated voice as her focus drifted off a bit and she remembered the turmoil she’d felt being locked in a rotating whirl of colors and darkness and magic, unable to control anything, not even her own body at her command.
“Yes,” Rivan said in a gentle voice that brought her back to the present and what they’d been previously talking about.
“So she’s hung upside down somewhere delirious, frantic, and wounded as well?” Mae asked with wide eyes.
The very thought of her older, pesky sister suffering through the same things she had, had Mae pressing forward past Rivan so that she could get to the patio door.
She had to rescue her!
“Hold on,” Rivan said as he grabbed her passing arm and just as hastily dropped his grip when she turned to him with panic in her eyes and her arm with the rock half-upraised.
She wasn’t really thinking of hitting him with it. It was instinctive, but he didn’t know that.
“Hold on why?” Mae forced out of her mouth as she apologetically lowered her rock-wielding arm just a tad and pinned him with a fierce gaze.
Rivan coughed as he side-eyed her weapon a bit before he spoke, “She’s been put in a quiet room to rest. No torture. No chains.”
Mae stilled for a moment.
“Your word?” she asked, demanding he confirm what he’d just said.
“My word,” Rivan assured as he adjusted his cuffs. “Now we just need to get to her.”
“And get her and everyone else away from these dreadful people before they do anything else to them,” Mae added.
“Pretty much,” he admitted.
It didn’t escape Mae that this plan would have been much easier if it hadn’t just been her and him giving it a go against dozens of trained mercenary warriors.
Voicing that complaint as she gave him a harsh look, Mae said, “You know if you wanted to escape, it would have been better to enlist the aid of my family before they were all slaughtered.”
Rivan grimaced. “That was a complication that I couldn’t have foreseen.”
“A complication?” Mae asked as she took a short astonished breath. “Even one member of my family dying is not some molehill you can step over your way to freedom.”
“That isn’t what I meant!” Rivan hastily said. “I mean—”
“What?” Mae said shortly.
“That they weren’t sacrificed in vain and maybe I should have spoken up sooner,” Rivan said tensely. “But if I had done so in that sickroom, your parents wouldn’t have been the only ones who died. Ava would think nothing of carving out my heart with her magic then eating it.”
Mae blinked. “Well that was rather…florid.”
Rivan grimaced. “Trust me, whatever horrors you imagine taking place at the hands of the Cross Guard, that woman and anyone who allies with her are ten times worse.”
“Including your mistress up until this time,” Mae said in a voice that was unmistakably censorious.
“Yeah, well beggars can’t be choosers and at the time…I needed what she could provide,” Rivan said with a tired look.
“She made you an offer you couldn’t refuse,” Mae said with her eyes narrowed. She was suspicious. What could the foreign female mage possibly have on Rivan that he would risk coming into contact with this other woman, Ava, in the process?
“That was then, this is now,” Rivan said after an uncomfortable pause. “So are you in or what?”
Mae looked away for a moment to gather her thoughts and it hit her as clearly as it had when she’d first woken up out here, she was alone in the world. The sound of children’s laughter and adult chatter was gone. Not one of her family members stood by her side and if she wanted to change that, she would have to do more than fight and scream her way out of the problem.
She would have to strategize.
And the first potential idea that came to her was to make alliances.
Even if it was with someone, she had decided she despised.
Despite her misgivings, Mae turned around and nodded at him.
“I’m in,” she said simply.
Rivan gave a huge sigh and actually smiled at her.
“Good then,” he said pleased. “Because right now, all we have is each other.”
Mae frowned. She didn’t like how dire he sounded.
She knew that Donna Marie wanted her roasted on a spit with her ribcage cracked open so she could investigate the delights of a female with unlocked mage gifts from the Kingdom of Nardes, but what did she have on Rivan that he was looking like a hunted hare this close to darting off into the brush before a hound sunk its teeth into his neck fur?
Mae wasn’t sure she was brave enough to find out.
Nevertheless, for now at least, she didn’t have much of a plan elsewise.
Clearing her throat, Mae prodded, “Alright, what’s your plan, oh wise one?”
Rivan startled. “Wise one?”
Mae shrugged. “Out of the two of us here you are older and more experienced.”
“I’m not that old,” Rivan protested as he brushed floppy hair out of his eyes and gave her a distracted look.
“Nevertheless, I defer to you,” Mae pressed.
“Right well,” Rivan said as he glanced over her shoulder anxiously.
Mae had no idea what he was looking at. It was nothing but sun and sky behind her.
In fact, all of the towers of the greater holding lay behind him.
Suspicious as to what had caught his interest, Mae turned to look as well.
What she saw was nothing short of mesmerizing. As well as confusing.
The sky was…shimmering. Like a rainbow caught up in the mist of a waterfall, the very air moved in waves. Mae couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu as her mouth dropped open in surprise and she turned to fully get a look at this beauty.
As she did, the shimmer in the air grew stronger and she
watched it move before her eyes in a lazy river of colors and light.
“It’s so beautiful,” Mae said stunned.
“Yes,” Rivan said in a voice that was decidedly less impressed.
Hearing the displeasure in his tone, Mae turned to him with a half-frown.
“What?” she demanded.
“It’s nothing,” Rivan said as he tried to wave her off.
“Don’t lie to me,” Mae said in a stern tone. “You want to be partners? Let’s start with the truth.”
There was dead silence between them as the first true test of their bond came to bear.
Was he just leading her on as before?
Or would he let her in, so that they weren’t some tragic portrayal of the abuser and the betrayed.
To move on, to move past that and to save her family, it wasn’t just Mae who had to grow.
It was Rivan too.
9
Knowing this, Mae pushed him for an answer.
“Well?” she demanded when he just looked into the sky as if it held the truths, she had asked of him.
He turned and gave her a disapproving look but she held firm.
Relenting Rivan reluctantly said, “You remember when I first showed you the potential gift.”
Mae frowned as her brow furrowed.
“Was that before or after I nearly set you on fire?” she asked.
She wasn’t being cheeky. A lot had happened in the last few days, much of which she’d rather forget. The interactions between the two of them weren’t high on her list of priorities for review either.
Rolling his eyes Rivan dryly replied, “It was a little bit before. I showed you something called ‘the lights of the stars’.”
Mae folded her arms and nodded.
“You do remember?” Rivan asked skeptically.
“No,” Mae admitted shyly. “But you have to admit I have a darned good excuse as to why I don’t.”
He raised an eyebrow—silently asking her to proceed.
“Well, I was tortured,” Mae said a bit wryly. “I’ve had some blank spots in my memory ever since. It feels like entire days are gone. Conversations with people even.”
Rivan shifted uncomfortably as he nodded.
“That is to be expected,” he admitted with reluctance. “Donna Marie was not gentle with her actions after she unlocked your gift. She proceeded with unbecoming haste, in fact.”
Mae wrinkled her nose.
She didn’t know exactly what he meant by that but it sounded like a newfangled way of saying she’d been screwed over.
Sighing heavily Mae thought, so what else is new?
Trying not to get off track on another tangential fight she couldn’t win, instead Mae pushed on, “I’m also missing key recollections about why we are where we are today.”
Her words were pointed. She knew and he knew that he had the answers she was seeking if he’d only tell her the truth concerning everything.
Starting with these rainbow lights in the sky, Mae thought darkly.
A few moments more of strained silence passed between them before Rivan finally gave in and spoke.
Clearing his throat, Rivan pointed to the sky and said, “As I mentioned before the shimmering kaleidoscope effect you see…it’s a response to mages calling upon their magic.”
“Mages?” Mae murmured.
“Usually individuals coming together and sharing the touch of their auras with no expectations for casting,” he said. “My magic would flow overtop of yours and when combined with no restrictions they can do wonderous things.”
“Like make rainbows in the sky,” Mae muttered as her eyes trailed a particular arc that started in the middle of the sky and reached down in bowing waves that heaved and reformed in a long strip. Long enough that this same rainbow arc was able to touch the edge of the tower behind them all.
As Mae’s eyes skipped over the boring stone structure, her gaze caught on something different.
An aberration.
It wasn’t perfectly visible which is why she hadn’t noticed it before, but where the rainbow touched the stone wall the stone itself warped.
Face unbelieving Mae walked a few steps forward to see it better but the warped area was more than five stories above her. Impossible to reach and almost as hard to track with her eyes the closer she got to the tower’s base.
So she stopped where she was and asked over her shoulder, “More of your ‘lights of the stars’?”
She asked with a suspicious note in her tone but Rivan didn’t seem to notice.
Instead he said dismissively, “They’re not my lights and that is just…a dissonance in the framework.”
“Meaning what?” Mae asked in a discontented voice.
He was answering her every question yet somehow it felt like she had more queries when he was done than when she started. She wasn’t sure if that was a deliberate move on his part to just confuse her more…or more likely he didn’t realize just how basic her instruction in the art of magic previously was.
Either way, his answers weren’t satisfactory at the moment.
“Meaning, that occasional shifts in the magic appear,” Rivan said in a mysterious voice.
“That’s all you’re going to say?” Mae asked him in a suspicious tone.
“That’s all I can say without making this even more unclear for you,” Rivan shot back.
“Ughh, you’re giving me a headache,” Mae complained.
“Precisely my point,” Rivan said snippily.
She almost took him to task for his tone but as she’d rubbed her head, Mae had realized something.
This kaleidoscope of lights had needed more than one mage to be formed, Mae thought hard as she tried to put the pieces together.
Just thinking about it made the memories of Rivan’s hand reaching out to hers clearer. His fingers reaching forward with confidence and hers responding more tentatively, the owner of that body not being precisely sure what it was this foreigner intended to show her.
Not sure she should trust him then, and not much had changed now, Mae thought ruefully.
Still it seemed like that was a lifetime ago but it had only been days. It was only after both of their presences had been opened that the aura had first formed and what a delightful moment it had been. But more than the joy of slowly but surely realizing then-and-now that she was a mage, was the realization that as a mage she had a connection with others.
She wasn’t some odd person who wanted something that as a female of her clan she wasn’t entitled to.
If the female foreign mages hadn’t turned out so evil in fact, Mae would have rejoiced at finding experienced practitioners who supported her efforts to learn magic and would perhaps teach her. As it was, she was relying on Rivan to give her the knowledge she desperately needed in dribs and drabs.
It was neither the perfect solution for him nor for her.
But it was what they had for the moment.
Shaking off her discontent, Mae focused on the matter at hand as she continued her original line of thought. It was a simple measure of reasoning to conclude that just as her first experience with the kaleidoscope of lights had been formed by more than one party, then so was his.
So where was Rivan’s other half? Mae wondered as she dropped her fingers from her forehead and stared around with renewed suspicions.
Was she surrounded even now?
But that was impossible. The patio was empty and so was the sky. If there were figures hiding behind the few-and-far between glass panes of the tower, she didn’t see them either. Which made the kaleidoscope effect either a mirage or something more nefarious was going on.
Frowning Mae turned to him and straight out asked, “If you need more than one mage to conjure these lights from aura combinations…who else are you working with?”
“No one,” Rivan hurriedly said.
Mae frowned at him and prepared to press on but it was then that she’d notice that the ‘lights’ had come closer. They wer
e drifting on the wind and she could see to her surprise that the lights were more than shifting glimmers of sun and color bouncing through the air. They were physical figments in the sky. Long, small fibers so thin they might as well have been spider silk. A silk fiber would have been an apt name had Mae not watched with wide eyes as those same fibers were twisted to the side and revealed that it wasn’t just color emitting from it, but streaming through it.
She reached up a hand as the silk fibers drifted lower-and-lower on the air currents until they were feet below where she had seen them last and she could practically touch them in anticipation but didn’t. Instead Mae stared in wonder as they came into line with her gaze and she realized that the fibers were translucent. Allowing her to see their hollow core and the fantastic colors flowing through the fiber like a slipstream of tiny proportions.
She followed the silk fibers eagerly as they drifted on the air, their forms so small that she wasn’t able to keep track of just one but had to settle for the pack of hundreds that drifted together like a flock of closely-guided starlings directed by some invisible force that kept them all together in one flowing movement.
Slowly the silk fibers of rainbow light rose in the air, and Mae wondered if they would connect with the aberration, she had noted along the stone wall. But no, they stayed hovering in the air. Not touching any other physical structure except for the occasional leaf in the window.
Mesmerized Mae reached up a tentative hand and wondered if she could wrap her fingers in gorgeous rainbows, now that she had seen the leaves rustling through the flock had not been harm and in turn, hadn’t seemed to disturb the fibers either. They had just flown up-and-around the touch of the leaves before coming back together in formation once the brittle brown vegetation had safely blown past.
Gulping slightly, Mae kept her hand up as fibers drifted down on the wind once more and then she too was covered in the bright colors she had so admired. The effect of the entire result was to see vivid blues and gorgeous reds splashed all up-and-down the skin of her arm alongside yellows, greens, and oranges. It was like her flesh had been encased in one of those prisms she’d seen down in the room of the looms. The knitters used them to enhance the intricate details of their thread craft, but the prisms also had the tendency to throw up the most gorgeous rainbows when hit with just enough sunlight. It had been a favorite place for her and other children to go and stare when they didn’t feel like being bothered with chores. As long as they stayed out of the way and didn’t interfere, most of the loom tenders hadn’t minded.