“I thought you might connect with this one,” Sage remarks. “I consider this Delacroix’s conversion painting—the moment he turned away from the tedious restraints of neoclassicism and embraced the exotic, adventurous freedom of Romanticism. With so much movement and passion, it is a thrilling story, don’t you think? The uncertain anticipation of whether they will make their destination or fall victim to the raging sea.”
I do connect with the piece, but I won’t say so. Something in the portrait about the older man’s face reminds me of Foster. His raised hand should be holding a light, but it’s empty. The city burns in the distance where a lantern would be. The boy wrapped in a sienna-colored cloak shares the same black hair as Cole. Demons clamor underfoot, but they’re not succeeding. They won’t win because another figure, a muscular oarsmen, is surefooted and knows the waters. The three men. Three. There’s something about the number three.
“All those years you thought you were alone, I was there keeping you safe. Unlike your father, I have never abandoned you.” He moves on, running his finger along a glass case housing William Blake’s handwritten poem and illustration of A Poison Tree. In the drawing a blond boy lies dead at the foot of a gnarled tree. Maddox immediately leaps to mind, but I push the thought away.
“Then you ran off with that scarred boy.” Sage’s piercing glance flickers at Blake’s drawing before turning to me again.
I pretend to study the other prints in the case, a series from Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I clear my mind by focusing on whether they’re original or copies.
“It was my intention to have him eliminated, but you, oh, you knew better.” Sage moves to a set of prints near the back doors. “You directed things so beautifully—manipulating the boy by feigning fear of my dear Cormorants from the start, and then announcing your presence to my army so the Alliance would shelter you inside the Garden, which allowed you to discover secrets of their hidden world.” He claps. “Lonicera, it was simply brilliant! You followed every step as planned.”
He thinks that? I didn’t follow a plan or manipulate Maddox. At least not intentionally. My stomach churns.
“And I must thank you for bringing back my darling boy.” He tips his head. “He was a joy to have. I hated giving him back, even for a short while, but it was necessary to provide you with a sufficient escort. I asked myself concerning you: ‘Whom shall we send / . . . whom shall we find / Sufficient? Who shall tempt with wandering feet?’” I’m sickened every time he quotes Milton. “Hendrick is a young man I approve of. He would do anything for you. It was all there, written in the painting of The Storm.”
The double doors fling open. It’s Mark.
Sage turns. “He accepted, did he not?”
“He knew better than to refuse.”
“Good.” Sage’s slow smile disturbs me to no end.
“Where is he?” I demand. “And where is my mother?”
Sage glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “Marcus, prepare Lonicera my finest meal. An evening feast will be such a celebration, and I would hate for her to become unpleasantly petulant.”
Mark frowns. “That’s what the servant girl is for. I’m—”
“You will do what I ask!” Sage’s voice booms, shaking the room. The paintings shudder. He whips around, stretching his long fingers in Mark’s direction. Warping air hisses as it twists from his fingers.
Mark’s eyes widen. “Please don’t.” He backs away, shielding his face. “I’m sorry. I’ll go. I’ll do it.”
The red current seeps from Sage’s hands, snaking across the room like a narrow thread. The warped light finds Mark’s neck and wraps around his throat. Mark struggles to breathe. His eyes bulge.
Sage pulls his left hand back, extracting Mark’s powers with the thread. Thin wisps of golden light, similar to the flickering light in the Garden, tumble along the ribbon.
Shock holds me still.
Mark contorts in agony. Gurgling. Choking. Foamy black saliva oozes from the corner of his mouth. His glasses crash to the floor.
Something bursts within me and I rush toward him. “Stop! Stop it!”
Sage whips his hand back, breaking the current before I run into the scarlet thread. Mark staggers, gasping for air. His skin molts onto the floor in ashen gray flakes, leaving an inky mist in its place.
“Lonicera, ma belle,” Sage reprimands me as steam lingers on his fingertips.
I shield Mark, standing in a cloud that smells of burning hair. “He didn’t do anything wrong. Leave him alone.”
“He disrespected you,” Sage says. He motions to Mark. “Au plus vite. Now go. Quickly.” Mark stumbles into the dark hallway, swaying one elongated arm.
Sage inhales deep and tastes his lips. Not only has he grown an inch or two taller, but he glows with a hazy aura. My throat heaves. I might throw up.
“I’m leaving.”
“Ma belle, please. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Frighten?” That’s a gross understatement. “You’re sick. I’m getting my mother and Cole, and we’re leaving.”
“Without first viewing John Martin’s Bridge over Chaos?”
“After what I just saw, I couldn’t care less about any more artwork.”
Sage waves at the doors, slamming them shut.
Terror climbs through my veins. What was I thinking? “You said you never keep anyone against their will.” I try to sound strong. Angry. But my insides are a trembling mess.
“Not without partaking of my generosity first,” he corrects me. “The door isn’t locked. I’m simply asking you to view my collection. Lovely, isn’t it?” He straightens the small black-and-white print on the wall. “‘Thou wilt bring me soon / To that new world of light and bliss . . . / Where I shall reign . . . / Thy daughter and thy darling, without end.’”
I hate how Sage wields Milton like a taunting play toy. This time he uses the verse where the archfiend meets his daughter, Sin, at hell’s gate, and he convinces her to let him cross. A bridge over chaos.
I spin around. The art pieces Sage has collected . . .
Delacroix’s boat in raging waters.
Martin’s bridge to a world of light.
The capture of the woman seeking release . . .
He’s been reading messages that will ensure his passage to the Well. And here I am in the center of it all, the bridge that will give him exactly what he wants.
Only I won’t.
I fling the door open and forge into the hallway, desperate to find my mother. But as soon as I step into the hall, a warning pang kicks inside me.
Sage follows right behind. “Ma belle. You aren’t really searching for your mother, oui?” His smooth voice is too gentle and luring. “You desire an end to the visions, the destruction, and wish to save those around you, perhaps? But those answers cannot give you what you truly desire.”
I have to shut him out. Concentrate on nothing but getting out. The dark corridor is a velvet maze. Once I turn the first corner, Sage slams the gallery doors shut. I’m surrounded in complete darkness.
“Do you even know what it is that you desire?” Sage’s voice creeps closer. I widen my eyes, searching for any pinhole of light, but find none. Still, I don’t stop searching. I reach out, running my fingers over the plush wallpaper, feeling for the next corner.
“Mom?” I cry out, hoping she’s near.
“I know what you desire.” Sage’s voice is too gentle. His scent of liquor and ash grows stronger.
“Cole!” I shout. There has to be a door somewhere close. I don’t know if Sage can see in the dark, but I’m positive he has the path memorized. I keep my steps light the way Cole taught me, hoping to blend with the surroundings, but everything in the hall is a vacant quiet. The silky air is hard to breathe. My quickened breath gives me away.
“I’ve always known.” Sage is right behind me once again. His fingers graze my neck, brushing aside my hair. I swat his hand, or at least where his hand should be, but my fin
gers glide through a slick mist.
Like a Legion.
I hold my breath to listen. No footsteps. No breathing. He is a voice closer than my own skin, echoing in the dark, burrowing into my head. I push on, hands following the wall, searching for a way through.
“What you want more than anything in the world is not my destruction, nor the safety of your mother, or even the protection of the Well or the Alliance.” His scent engulfs me. I continue to take shallow breaths and press my back against the wall, inching deeper into the dark.
“No,” Sage croons. “Your deepest desire, the one thing you treasure over all the rest is to be . . . wanted.” His whisper is so close his breath brushes my cheek.
My throat tightens. I slide along the wall, fighting back tears as a nagging wound is punctured inside my heart. Don’t listen. Get out.
“You think by saving your mother, you may prove yourself worthy of being wanted. How could she want something as appalling as the monster you believe yourself to be? And the Alliance, they only want what you can give them. They don’t want you.”
My hand slips into the open air. I’ve found another corner. I force myself to fill my head with a melody, humming the song Maddox played that night at Hesperian, at the final farewell, when his eyes met mine through the crowd. He sang about belonging. About finding a home.
Another wall meets my fingers. Sage remains near. No longer mist, but flesh. His bare footsteps slap along the stone. His hand joins mine as if trying to lead me through the dark. I flatten my palm against the wall. There is a break in the continuous panel. A door. I fumble, searching for a handle that doesn’t seem to exist.
Sage sighs. “Lonicera, we should be celebrating rather than loitering in the dark. This is a glorious moment, having you here with me. All these years your mother has kept you hidden, but I have always been near. She knew it was only a matter of time before I found you. And now, I have. And now you can free her from the burden.”
I press a hand over one ear. These are lies. All lies. But it’s too late. The words have already coiled too deep inside my heart.
I tremble. “Stop!”
A slight wind brushes my wet cheeks. Midway down the hall, a burgundy sconce flickers, lighting the way.
“Your mother is right through there.” Sage, back in human form, motions to a frosted door at the end of the maze. “Ask her if these are lies. But before I open the door, tell me the name the Alliance has for children like you.”
The word immediately rises in my mind, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction.
“Come, Lonicera. What is it they call you?” He wipes a hair from my forehead. I cringe. His ebony eyes stare, deep and probing. Then he says slowly, enunciating every excruciating sound of that one syllable, “Blight. A disease. An unwanted plight to be eliminated.”
Tears well in my eyes. My lip quivers. Why do the words he speaks sound so much like my father? I’m back to being a trembling seven-year-old, standing barefoot in the kitchen. Beer bottle fragments shattered on the floor as the back door slams and he walks out in pouring rain.
“Lonicera.” Sage’s voice softens, and the ache, the longing inside me, leaps up again. “They don’t see you. They don’t want you. They don’t value the beautiful creature you are.” He wipes my tears. I turn away. “You are not a disease. You are glorious. A dualistic reine—a queen without boundaries. The Destroyer, with powers beyond measure. All I have longed to do is give you the one thing your heart desires more than anything in this world.” His words are a sweet poison, a balm soothing the ache in my heart. “Yet I can only do so if you show me the Well.”
I back into the wall and lock my knees to keep standing. I won’t tell him anything. I refuse.
“Has your innocent mind so easily believed their deception?” Sage asks. “They withhold truth. Forbid you to use your powers. Urgently warn you to suppress your true nature for fear that something catastrophic will happen. They lie.” Sage brushes the back of his hand against my cheek. I tense and close my eyes. I wait for a shiver to crawl through me, but instead I lean into his hand. A tremble rises. His touch feels like my father’s.
“Your powers are not evil. Your powers are the fullness of who you were always meant to be.” He lifts my chin. “The Alliance lies because they are afraid.”
My fingers clench.
Tremors coil through my arms.
Stabbing heat streaks down my legs.
The unwanted but familiar feeling of pain from an oncoming vision returns.
No. No. Please, no. Not with Sage. Hot tears race down my cheeks.
My knees buckle, and I crumple to the floor. The hallway spins upside down, and then everything turns black.
“That’s my girl.” Sage kneels beside me. “I believe you have what I’ve been waiting for, mon petit trésor.”
His voice drips into my soul, setting my blood on fire. Wrenching pain, worse than any before, sears my spine. Sage cradles me in his lap, hugging me against his chest that has no heartbeat. I kick, buck, and struggle to break free, but pain claws down my back. Sage clutches tighter than humanly possible, holding down my flailing arms. “Don’t fight.”
As the silver fog floods my mind, he runs an icy finger across my forehead, stopping at the temple. “There it is.” His touch is burning acid against my skin. “That’s right, ma belle. Show me. Show me what you see.”
My eyes throb. They feel bound. Tethered. Something tugs inside my skull as if trying to rip my eyes out through my temples. I writhe. Sage holds me tighter. I taste his scent of ash and liquor as I scream my throat raw.
Cole, please, wherever you are, come find me. Use the knife.
Kill me, now.
“You should eat something.” A familiar soprano voice glides through pale light.
Silky white sheets stroke my cheek. They’re scented like nectar, like the arbor, except for one sour note. My mind is hazy, drifting like the chiffon curtains that drape from the midnight-black ceiling, surrounding the plush bed I’m on. My body feels too heavy, every touch too sensitive. I feel as translucent and exposed as a message read and extracted from a painted canvas. Then my memory launches into warp speed: I’m with Sage. I had a vision. But I can’t recall a single detail.
“I did the best I could to clean you up,” a girl says.
I know that voice. Harper? No. Claire?
The corner of a black tray pushes the silky fabric aside. Then comes a familiar pixie-nosed face with curly hair corralled by a yellow headband. She’s the shy girl with the severe limp from Hesperian, the one I rescued.
Juniper? I blink to be sure. Her once-round cheeks are gaunt. She looks older than when I found her hiding from the Legions less than a week ago. Only a week? I rub my eyes clear.
She sets the tray of breakfast on the bed. “Sage has clean clothes for you.”
I glance at my puke-crusted tank top and then manage to sit up. “How did you survive the attack on Hesperian? And what are you doing here? You need to get out.”
She lowers herself on the bed near my feet. “Sage isn’t at all how they said. Look what he’s done for me.” She stretches with perfectly pointed toes.
“Juniper. Please tell me you didn’t.”
“The branding hurts a little, but it’s not horrible.” She tugs at her sweater. A red mark claws up her neck.
No. Oh please, no.
I rip back the sheets. “Why didn’t anyone stop you?”
“They tried, but when Sage said I could be the one to heal your mom, that he’d leave the others at Hesperian alone, I just had to. I wanted to pay you back for, you know”—she absentmindedly rearranges the plates on the tray—“saving me.”
“Juniper. No.” I drop my head in my hands. In the back of my mind, there is a faint awareness a headache should be forming any minute now. They always do after a vision, but it’s slow this time.
“But Sage said I’d be able to help your mother if I just . . .”
“Give him your power.”
She nods brightly. “He’d heal me in return. Cera, I can walk normal. For the first time ever, I can dance!” Why didn’t anyone stop her? Had I been there, I certainly would have. Her lip quivers as she looks at me. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“Not at you.” I take hold of her arm. There isn’t any black mist seeping around her, which means Sage hasn’t taken any of her powers. Yet. “Juniper, you need to leave this place. Get out of here before Sage siphons your powers.”
Juniper rocks back, laughing as she sits crisscross style on the bed. “Sage won’t to do that to me. He’ll restore me once you help him. He’s shared so much about the Alliance.” Her expression turns sour. “About how they were holding you captive and using you. Turning you against him. Can you believe they wanted to harm him with the power from some gate, or maybe it was a wall? I can’t remember. Anyway, he was expecting it.”
Juniper leans forward with just as much excitement as she did in the girls’ room at Hesperian. “He talks so much about you. Said he couldn’t stand the way the Alliance was treating you. That if you hadn’t found a way to escape, and if they tried their plan, that he would have . . . I know it sounds bad, but he would have killed everyone.” She throws her hands out wide. “Just to protect you. He really cares about you. He has it out for a cocky Blade that killed one of his Cormorants. He was worried that Blade would try and hurt you. But I told Sage you were smart and how you went against the rules and found me. I told him that you’d find a way to escape.”
I’m deflated with defiling shame. Not just with everything Juniper is saying, but because I don’t know what information I’ve leaked to Sage when he intercepted the vision. I’m so glad that I didn’t peer inside the third realm when I had the chance.
Realms of Light (The Colliding Line Book 2) Page 16