by Hanna Peach
For a split second, Alyx didn’t understand why Jordan would be calling her Esmery.
Through the eyeholes of Symon’s mask she could see his eyebrows dip over his eyes. “Esmery?”
“Esmery, my entwined,” Jordan spoke with the haughty disdain that only the Castus carried. He almost didn’t sound like Jordan.
“Yes,” Alyx said, heightening the tone of her speech to try to mask her voice. She thrust her chin higher so she could peer at Symon over her nose, imitating the authority that Jordan displayed. “Esmery Levatine of Urielos, direct descendant of Elder Emil.”
“Take your hands off her or I shall have them cut off,” Jordan growled.
Alyx noticed a few other Castus pause around them. They were drawing too much attention to themselves.
She felt Symon’s hand slip from her elbow, but the look of suspicion hadn’t left his eyes. “I’m sorry. I meant no offense. I thought that you may have been someone else. My sincerest apologies.”
Jordan grunted as if begrudgingly acknowledging Symon’s apology. Jordan seemed to slip into Castus mode very easily. Of course, he had been one.
Symon’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You were veering off the path to the Entwinement Ceremony. I thought it best to stop you before you went too far off course.”
Alyx felt a wave of panic flowing through her which she took pains to hide. How would Jordan answer the evident question in Symon’s words: why had they been veering and where had they been going?
But Jordan didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted his chin to Symon as if daring him to challenge him for an answer. Of course. Why would a Castus ever need to answer to a mere warrior?
This terse standoff continued for what seemed like minutes until Alyx felt that the tension would crush her windpipe. Finally, Symon dipped his head in a show of deference. “Please, let me escort you to the Entwinement arena.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Jordan said coldly. “Now, make yourself scarce before I change my mind and report you.”
Symon bowed his head.
Alyx forced a look of contempt to her eyes. She turned her head away from Symon’s face and heard Symon apologize again to Jordan. Then he faded into the flow of Castus.
Jordan tucked Alyx under his arm and bent to kiss her forehead. “He’s still watching us,” he whispered. “We need to proceed towards the city heart for now and wait for a chance to slip away.”
Alyx nodded and they moved with the Castus again to the Entwinement Ceremony.
The Michaelea square had been turned into a large ceremonial space with tiers of hanging seating around a center section. A section below was reserved for the Elders. The Castus and the warriors took their places higher up in the stands. Rose petals carpeted the ground and nets of fireflies were trapped in a cushion of Air magic which created a ceiling of light over the stands.
As it was customary before the ceremony started, Castus couples were dancing in the empty space above the center section to soft string instruments and the hum of the Michaelea choir. Dresses swirled and flashed in the air like spinning flowers.
Alyx felt Jordan’s hand come to rest on the small of her back. When she looked up at him his green eyes were twinkling from within his dark mask.
“May I have this dance, beauty?” His voice was warm and liquid like nectar.
All of a sudden Alyx felt nervous and her throat became thick. “I don’t know how to dance.”
“It’s easy. I’ll show you.”
Before she could protest he led her into the dancing space and pulled her close to him, one arm wrapped securely around her back. Her hands flew instinctively to push against his chest. But his body was unyielding against her and he didn’t let her go. His other hand lightly pried the fingers of her right hand from his chest and held it out to their sides.
He started to move them around in the air. Alyx automatically reacted by tensing. Their bodies knocked several times as she tried to pre-empt where they were going.
“Alyx,” Jordan said, sounding partly amused, “are you the man?”
“What?”
“You keep leading as if you’re the man. Are you the man?”
Alyx spluttered. “No.”
“I will let you lead us everywhere else, but here…” Jordan spun them around in the air several times. Alyx’s left hand, still on his chest, curled against his shirt. She felt dizzy from the spin, or…
“…here is where I get to lead.”
“What…what do you want me to do?”
He leaned his head down to her ear, his lips brushing against her lobe as he spoke, “Just let go.”
Just let go. These words felt so familiar and so comforting…somehow she felt that if she just let go it would bring her closer to her heart. Alyx closed her eyes and let herself relax into him. He pulled her even closer to him. She had to hold back a gasp as their bodies met completely.
They moved, this time with fluidity through the air. Alyx opened her eyes in surprise when she realized that she was dancing. Jordan was watching her, a hint of a smile on the corner of his lip. With a light nudge, he gracefully spun her out, before folding her back into his arms. Alyx couldn’t help the small laugh that betrayed the thrill he had given her.
“I didn’t know you could dance,” she said.
“I am glad that I can surprise you…as you do me.”
“I surprise you?”
“All the time. You never act the way I expect you to.” He laughed. “It surprises me when I actually manage to impress you. And…” his mouth pursed for a moment, “how I react to you surprises me.” He stared down at her as he admitted this.
Alyx wanted to speak, wanted to ask what he meant by that, but…a part of her was afraid to know. An unexplainable part of her cried out that she shouldn’t let him open up to her. She shouldn’t be letting herself get this close to another man. Another man? What a strange thought. Just who did she think she was betraying by being here with Jordan?
Look away, this part of her insisted.
But for some reason she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his. They held her. Like his arms held her. Even as Jordan twirled them away from a couple that was about to collide with them in the air she didn’t take her eyes off him. She felt her trust in him solidifying. She had submitted control to him. But unlike the sense of being torn from the sky by a flock of possessed birds, this felt…safe and free…
Above the Earth Alyx slowed their ascent and held them both there…her head rested on his chest…his arms crushed her tighter to him…
Alyx shook her head to clear her mind from the disjointed flash of something she couldn’t quite grasp. When she tried to recall the exact image that fell across her mind, it eluded her.
“Are you okay?” Jordan asked, his eyes narrowing in concern.
“I swear I just—”
At that moment, a loud call of trumpets commanded the attention of the crowd. The music ended and the couples stopped swirling in the air. The ceremony was about to begin.
Jordan pulled away from her and Alyx couldn’t help the disappointment inside her and how empty her arms felt. She realized that for those brief moments dancing with Jordan, she had forgotten where they were and why they were here. She had forgotten what was at stake. And she had forgotten that they were currently surrounded, on all sides and above and below, by their enemies. How strange that dancing with him was able to do that to her.
Now, as she scanned the crowd around her, her nerves began to rattle awake again. The crowd began to move from the airborne dance floor towards the stands. Jordan led Alyx along with them.
They kept slipping farther back towards the edge of the stands. Thankfully, the crowd was only too happy to let them as they pushed forward in the stands like one giant beast just to get a better glimpse of the front altar. Alyx glanced around her, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Only meters away was the very top of the seating, where she knew there was a steep drop down the back of the stands to the ground.
She eyed the guards who stood at various points around the stands, all in their warrior blacks. Some wore raven-feathered masks, the combined effect making them look like demented hell-crows. Who was underneath those masks? Were any of her old flock nearby? Xavier? Lutando? She looked for Symon, wondering where he had gone, but she couldn’t see him.
Alyx snapped her face away from the closest guard, a tall, broad-shouldered seraph, when he caught her gaze. For a moment she feared that he, like Symon, would recognize her under her mask. She tensed as she waited for him to grab her roughly. But he didn’t.
The crowd around her hushed. The figure of Elder Michael, standing at the altar in front of his son, Daniel, had raised his hands to signal the start of the entwinement. Alyx chanced a glance at the seraph guard again. But he seemed preoccupied with the goings on at the front, and he hadn’t appeared to have recognized her. Stop being so jumpy, she scolded herself.
They were now at the very top of the stands. So far no one seemed to have noticed them. Alyx’s heart was thudding so loudly in her ears she could barely hear the reverb of Michael’s voice through the speakers. She peeked over her shoulder. The drop loomed below her and the distance to the cover of the trees seemed to stretch out. Would they be seen leaving the stands? Would they be stopped?
The crowd erupted in a roar of cheers as Constantine appeared in a flowing white dress that shimmered like a gem and made her long red hair seem even redder. Jordan squeezed Alyx’s hand, and they both dropped over the edge towards the ground. She had to hold down her skirt from billowing up as she fell. She landed silently on the ground in the shadows of the base of the stands next to Jordan.
With a glance around to check that no one was watching, Jordan activated the Miragecharm set into his belt. They darted across the open grass towards the trees and made their way through the deserted pathways of Michaelea, towards the top of the mountain.
* * *
Vix moved uneasily through the unfamiliar forest around Michaelea. She had spent her life as a warrior in Urielos and had only come to Michaelea a few times when duty called. Even so, that would have been over a hundred years ago. How time flies.
Unlike Alyx, Vix wasn’t dressed in a gown, but in black pants and a black fitted shirt. She had borrowed Alyx’s warrior jacket, thinking if anyone saw her they would just assume her a lightwarrior skipping out on the ceremony. Alyx’s jacket was a little snug in the shoulders but Vix’s old warrior’s jacket had long been destroyed at her own hands.
Wearing this jacket caused all those old feelings, those old thoughts, that old hatred to trickle in. Vix shook her head. Pull it together, Vix. You know you’re no longer that person.
She could hear a cheer roaring in the distance from the announcement ceremony. In her mind flashed a face, olive skin with almond-shaped hazel eyes. Danielle.
Was she there at the revelries with her entwined? God damn it. Why was she even thinking about her? Since Vix had seen her lone figure in the distance in the Urielos Dreamscape, these old memories had resurfaced. Vix brushed these thoughts away. She had to focus.
Vix spotted Mayrekk’s hut up ahead and she slowed her movements, carefully holding aside branches and leaves so that they wouldn’t snap and give away her presence. She paused several meters away from the entrance, still hidden by the dense forest. The hut looked silent. No guards stood at the front as none had when Piki had done his reconnaissance. With Mayrekk’s prisoner’s bracelet and the state that he was in, there was no threat of escape.
Vix visually searched the area once more before she slipped through the bushes towards the door. With her back to the wall and one eye on her surroundings, she tested the doorknob. It turned and the door pushed from the frame. She checked again that no one was watching before she slipped in.
With the door closed behind her, Vix took a quick moment to survey the dim hut, feeling the jarring familiarity of viewing this scene from Piki’s memory. Except now, from what she could see, the place had since been torn apart. There were gaps in the shelving where vials and bottles and jars had once stood. Glass was now shattered and twinkling across the floor like a fresh layer of snow. Amid the drifts of fragments, some parts stained a pale pink or pastel green from spilled liquids, were dried, crushed plants and odd-shaped metal parts. Vix felt her apprehension turn to fear when she realized that she could smell the copper tang of blood.
“Mayrekk,” she hissed as she floated farther into the hut and over the broken items. She moved towards the back of the room. She saw him as she moved around a piece of shelving. Mayrekk lay haphazardly across his single bed. As if someone had thrown him across the covers like a discarded jacket.
The big Seraphim began to stir as she moved to his side. “Don’t be afraid, Mayrekk. I’m here to help you.”
“You’re not Alyx,” a male voice said from behind her.
Vix spun just as a pulse of DreamWalker entered her body. Too late to pull up her defenses. Before she could get a good look at the seraph, her world faded to black.
* * *
Alyx felt the unease in her stomach growing as they made their way to the part of the forest which had been the center of Mayrekk’s invisible prison in the DreamScape. Turn away, turn away.
It was a subtle mirage with no defined skin, the edges drifting out like mist so that you weren’t alerted to the fact there was a mirage here; there was no bubble pop feeling when they entered. Just a growing need to veer away from where the edges must have been. Even though they were invisible under their Miragecharm, Alyx couldn’t help but check their surroundings again. The sounds of the Entwinement Ceremony were rumbling in the background. Other than that, all seemed quiet and still.
Alyx squeezed Jordan’s hand when she saw the boulder that she recognized from Piki’s memory, standing stoic and stern like a gray lighthouse in a green sea. After exchanging a look, Jordan and she approached.
She slipped her hand into her pocket to touch the single metal piece that Tobias had made in an attempt to recreate Elijah’s pick. It was the best that he could do with the time he had. But would it be enough? Did he get the mixture right? Was the magic strong enough to break the shield? Would it work? What if it didn’t?
She pushed these thoughts from her mind. Her flesh protested against the cut of the metal as she closed her fist around it. It had to work. If it didn’t, she would throw herself at the shield until it shattered against its will. Or she would tear down this whole mountain rock by bloody rock to get inside. Alyx took a deep breath, trying to settle her insides.
This close, Alyx could just make out the faint buzzing of the shield. There was definitely something hidden here. Alyx placed her fingers on the cool rock. At once the carved image of a tree within a decorative circle, twisted roots and leaves, delicate and detailed, rose from the stone.
Jordan had also placed his hand on the boulder. “Strange marking. What do you think it means?”
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe.”
With Tobias’s pick gripped to her palm with her thumb, Alyx placed her hand on the boulder. As she did, the familiar hum of electricity caused the hairs of Alyx’s arm to stand up. She pulled the pick from her pocket and placed it on the boulder. With a familiar crackle, the small area around the pick began to fall away. Keep going, she urged it. But the widening space slowed until the unshielded circle remained steady. It didn’t even get big enough to go past the edges of this damned carving. It wasn’t even big enough to fit her shoulders in. Alyx swore and dropped her hand.
“What now?” she said. Jordan didn’t answer. He moved his fingers around the door, tracing the design. “Jordan, we don’t have time to stand around admiring the carving.”
“Didn’t we see Michael fiddling with something here in Piki’s memory? An entry point?” His fingers traced the rock. “It looks like a puzzle, don’t you think?”
Alyx frowned and placed her own fingers back on the rock so that the carving reappeared.
�
��See within the design…it’s actually six concentric circles that make a small circle with five rings around it.” He traced the circles as he spoke.
The design was so well crafted and the pieces lay so flush against each other that the separate circles were difficult to see. Alyx had missed them at first, but now that Jordan had pointed them out she could see them. She noticed that the small circle in the middle was set back into the rock.
“Yes, I see the circles.”
“Did you notice this piece down here? See how the rings don’t go all the way around?” Jordan traced a slim long vertical shape that cut across the rings from the edge of the middle circle out past the fifth ring. Each ring connected with this oddly shaped piece and the other end of the rings fell short of completing a circle. “What does this odd piece look like to you?”
She traced her finger around this odd-shaped piece, long and thin with teeth. “It looks like…a key.”
“Exactly. I think it’s exactly that. I think we have to get this odd-shaped piece – this key – to slide into the center.”
“So how do we do that? The rings are butting into the key keeping it from sliding back and forth.”
Jordan placed his fingers on the outer ring and slid the ring-piece around so that the end was no longer restricting the key-piece.
“They move!” Alyx exclaimed.
“It can’t be this easy,” muttered Jordan, and he placed his fingers on the second ring and pushed. “This one’s not moving.”
Alyx rolled her eyes. “Of course it wouldn’t be this easy.”
Jordan pushed at the third ring. As it slid away from the key, the outer ring slid back in. “What the…wait…” He slid the third ring back in and sure enough, the outer ring slid back out. Jordan pushed the second piece. This time it moved, causing the outer piece to slide back in.
“Yes,” he hissed in triumph. An energy seemed to vibrate from him. “I think I know what this is. Some of the pieces coordinate their movements with other pieces. Like here, the second piece can only be moved out if the outer piece can move back in. But the pieces aren’t entirely dependent. You can see that I can move the outer piece without affecting the second piece.”