“Hello, Seline,” she said, “What may I assist you with?”
I glanced over at Abvat. His fingertips weren’t sending tendrils of dark light into Fate’s chest anymore, but they were still hanging over her chest, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. The other two Naga, I saw, were also preparing to attack—Sila, her face dripping with red blood, looked like she wanted to tear my eyes out. “False alarm,” I said to Siren, “You can go, now.”
Siren nodded, then disappeared, her ghostly form dissipating into the air around us. “Good,” Abvat said, “Now… the stone.”
Taking a deep breath to steel myself against what was about to happen, I walked over to Fate’s bed. She was laying there, looking pale, still, and very much dead. I’d seen her like this before, and even though she’d woken up every time, it chilled me to the core to see her like this. My heart was pounding, my skin was crawling, and my stomach had twisted all the way. What was worse, I could now hear Rey’s smug voice in my mind.
Don’t give Abvat what he wants.
How had that cat known something like this would happen? When the time comes, you’ll be glad we had this little chat. Well, no, actually, I’m not happy we had this little chat, you smug little son-of-a— “Well?” Abvat asked. “I don’t have all day.”
“Should’ve made an appointment, this could take a second.”
His fingertips crackled with dark magic again. “It better take only a second.”
I was out of options, here. Maybe if I drew this out for as long as I could, someone would come into the infirmary and break this little party up. I had a feeling Abvat’s limited patience would run out way before then, though, which meant I needed to at least look like I was doing something. Abvat knew the stone was inside Fate somehow, and I didn’t think he was beyond simply cutting her open and taking it.
I pressed my left hand against Fate’s chest, and reached for my pendant with my right. Already I could feel it beating with magic, like a second heart, cool beneath my fingers. Abvat’s eyes flashed, catching the light filtering in through the windows. His tongue flickered again. It amazed me how the Naga bore such a striking resemblance to the snakes of this world. I wondered if we had snakes in our world, if we’d find the same non-sentient animals on both sides of the rifts, and why in our world some of the snakes had become murderous douchebags.
Speaking as quietly as I could, I said the magic words I’d been told to say when the time came for me to retrieve the stone. It wasn’t a spell of my own devising, or even Fate’s. After I’d found the stone, and learned what it could do, I’d gone to the only person I knew who could help me hide it. A native witch.
She called herself Bastet, her prime source of companionship were cats, and I was sure she was clinically insane, but she was the only native I had ever met who didn’t want to kill me, and as a witch, she also knew magic beyond my wildest imagination. For a price she told me she could hide the stone inside of me, so no one could get their hands on it unless I wanted them to. Fate had insisted the stone be placed inside of her instead, and even though Bastet warned her that the magic would weaken her physical state further, Fate wasn’t swayed.
I had already taken a vow to protect her, had promised nothing bad would ever happen to her so long as we were together. She had saved my life. Neither of us knew how, or why, or what the circumstances leading to the moment where she saved me were, but we agreed if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here right now. Now it was my turn to save hers.
“Anunak sehe mak,” I whispered, “Ma ne soto, ra, sama-bek.”
I’d memorized those words, internalized them, because they were the only way to break the enchantment surrounding the stone to draw it out of Fate safely, and I was the only one who could speak them. Fate herself had no power over it, no dominion over the stone. A faint, golden-yellow glow shimmered into existence around my hand, and my shoulders didn’t cry out in pain because this wasn’t my magic, this was someone else’s. From the point where my palm touched her chest, streaks of golden light began to spread like veins, pulsing and dimming, pulsing and dimming.
She took a gasping breath, and bright white light erupted from her eyes and mouth. Abvat had to shield his eyes against the shine, the other Naga too, but the light didn’t hurt my eyes—I felt comforted by it, safe. By the time the light receded, the stone was in my hand and fate was awake, rubbing her eyes and breathing deep breaths.
“Schh,” I said to her, “It’s alright.”
“Seline?” she asked, angling her head. “What happened?”
“The stone!” Abvat hissed, stretching his hand toward me. “Give it to me now.”
Abvat wrapped his hand around Fate’s mouth, and black mold started spreading across her cheeks, over her chin, into her nose. Fate’s eyes rolled into her skull, her arms and legs flailed. She was convulsing, in shock—he was going to kill her. I handed the stone over, depositing it into his other waiting hand, which had started burning with dark light. The stone itself was a small, uneven crystal, barely larger than a golf-ball. From inside, gold light radiated outward, catching on the edges of its own surface to create a dazzling effect.
Touching it reminded me of something, maybe… I wasn’t sure.
“You have the stone,” I snarled, “Now let her go.”
Abvat stared at the stone, then turned his reflective, amber eyes at me, but he didn’t pull his hand away from Fate’s mouth, not until my own expression hardened. I could kill him before the other two Naga reached me. I knew I could. I’d leap across Fate’s body, smash his head into the wall, and keep smashing it until his tiny little brain coated its surface. He must’ve known it too, because he pulled his hand away from Fate’s mouth. Slowly, her skin returned to normal and she stopped convulsing.
“Let’s go,” Abvat said, and he and the other Naga snuck out of the infirmary, each of them watching me until they were through the door and out of my sight.
I exhaled deeply, swallowing. What have I done?
“Seline…” Fate croaked.
I turned my attention to her and took her hand. “You’re alive,” I said, smiling. “Are you hurt?”
“My mouth feels like I’ve tried eating a cactus covered.”
“That should go away… I think.”
She tried to sit up, but I wouldn’t let her. “No, rest. You shouldn’t move right now.”
“But the stone… we can’t just let him go.”
Fate was right. I shouldn’t just let him go. But if Abvat had managed to sneak into the infirmary and buy himself this much time alone with me and Fate, I didn’t think he’d have too much trouble sneaking out of the Black Fortress. This was all my fault. I should never have underestimated him. Now he was gone, and he’d taken the stone. I didn’t know what it was or what it did, I only knew I shouldn’t have given it to him. But it was either that, or watch him kill Fate in front of me. I didn’t have a choice.
“I’m sorry… I couldn’t let him kill you,” I said.
“Why would you be sorry about that?” she asked, “I don’t wanna die, but we can’t let him get away with the stone.”
“It’s too late. We’ll never catch him, and even if we did, he’d kill us both. We need a plan but you need to rest.” I let go of her hand and moved toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Just wait here, okay? Don’t move.”
I’d barely gotten out of the infirmary when I saw them. Aaryn and Lias, both of them lay on the ground, stiff as boards, their hands scrunched up like they were trying to desperately hold onto something. My heart lurched, and I ran towards them, sliding to my knees beside Aaryn. Her eyes were open and she was gritting her teeth, and while her eyes weren’t moving, I got the feeling she could see me.
“Shit!” I yelled, reaching for Aaryn’s neck with my fingertips. There was a pulse, but it was faint—and there was something else, too. Blood. My fingers came away sticky with it. She had a puncture wound in her neck, two of
them in fact—tiny dots out of which a little blood, and another deep green liquid, had started to trickle. “Fucking Naga,” I snarled. One of them had bitten her. Another inch or two to the left, and they’d gotten her jugular and killed her outright.
“Wake up,” I said, tapping her face, but it didn’t work. “Siren, I need you.”
There was a burst of green light, ephemeral streaks crisscrossing to create a human shape, and then Siren was there, her ghostly smile upon me. “Yes, Seline?” she asked, still oblivious to anything and anyone besides me.
“I need you to summon the healers, summon Draven; someone everyone!”
“Could you please state why?”
“What the fuck does it look like, lady? Someone’s tried to kill Aaryn and Lias!”
Understanding dawned on Siren’s face. “Oh… yes, I see that now.”
“Go and tell someone, and tell them three Naga are trying to escape the Fortress.”
“Yes, very well.” Siren turned her eyes up and disappeared, the mist and streaks of light that had made up ephemeral form shooting off into the black ceiling above me.
I checked Lias’ pulse. He was alive too, but his heartbeat was also faint and weak. I could only hope help would arrive on time, otherwise those Naga would have three confirmed kills under their belts.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I wasn’t allowed into the room where Draven had assembled the instructors, healers, and enforcers of the Order—the top brass—, but I could hear him from outside. His voice was like thunder, deep and booming, echoing down the hallway I was in and probably reaching the tips of the castle’s towers. He was giving them an earful, I mean really letting them have it. It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever heard. I could only imagine what he was saving for me.
Fate was swinging her feet off the bench on which we were sitting, while I picked at chip in the bench with my nail.
“So… what did I miss?” Fate asked.
I turned my chin up and thought about it. “Let me see… I got pushed off 432 Park Avenue and survived, I fought a demon thing on a garbage barge in the Hudson, I’m an Aevian but my wings don’t work, Abvat it turns out is capable of murder, and the boss is an asshole. My new roommate is pretty cool, though.”
Fate nodded slowly. “Wow… that’s a lot to happen in only a week. Pretty sure that’s how long I’ve been down for…” her voice trailed off.
I looked over at her. “I’m sorry they put you into a coma. I had no idea that was going to happen to you. How do you feel?”
“Better… y’know? It’s weird. I feel a lot better. Probably because I don’t have that thing inside of me anymore.”
“I should’ve been the one to carry it.”
“Don’t be stupid. I was already sick, and the crazy cat lady promised it wouldn’t kill me to carry it. One of us needed to be able to look after the other, right?”
I nodded. “So, tell me what happened after we last saw each other?”
She turned her eyes up and thought about it. “So, Lias had picked me up to bring me to a private room where I’d be spending my time until you were done with your trials. I got to know some of the Order’s staff—Lias is a nurse, then there’s Jovien the tech guy, and Maddie, one of the cooks… but I got sick pretty fast. I thought the coughing and the pain would never end.”
“Whose idea was it to put you under a spell?”
“Doctor Vincent. Do you know him?”
I shook my head. “No… I’ll be honest, I haven’t set foot in the infirmary until tonight.”
“Lucky you. Anyway, he didn’t know what to do, so he told me what he thought would help and he gave me a choice—go to sleep, or tough it out and ride the wave until it was over. I decided to go to sleep.”
“So, it was your choice?”
“It was. I know Crag and Draven used questionable means to bring us here, but the few people I’ve met around the Black Fortress are nice, and helpful… they just want to get through all of this. They hate the war.”
“You know about the war?”
“I heard some things, dreamt a few others.”
“You dreamt?”
Fate smiled. “It’s this place. I don’t know if it’s all the magic, or how close we are to other people like us, but I’m starting to remember things. They come in flashes, sometimes I can’t tell a real memory from the work of my usual, overactive imagination, but I have a strong gut feeling they’re real.”
“And? What have you learned?”
“Don’t get too excited, I feel like I’m only scratching the surface. But I think… I used to live on a mountain.”
“On a mountain? Like a goat?”
“No, not like a goat.”
“Oh my God, are you a goat person? That would make so much sense!”
She nudged my arm. “Shut up!”
The chamber door opened suddenly, and several people—many who I’d never met—filed out into the hallway, walking right past us without saying a word. Aaryn was among them. She nodded, touched her forehead with her two fingers, and gestured toward me. I had a feeling that was some kind of thanks, so I nodded in return as she went. Draven was the last of them to emerge from the room with Crag, the mountain, by his side.
Here it comes.
“Take this one back to her quarters,” Draven said to his henchman. He was talking about Fate.
“Yes, boss,” Crag said, extending his hand to Fate. She turned her big, worried eyes at me, I nodded, and she left with Crag. At least this time she wouldn’t be going back to the infirmary to be placed into a magical coma, and at least now there was no Abvat to worry about.
I stood up and looked at him head on, and while the relative darkness of the hallway clung to him like a mantle, I could still pick out his features; I could still see the man beneath the cowl.
“You saved their lives,” he said, “Another few minutes, and Aaryn and Lias would be dead.”
I hadn’t been expecting that. “Yeah, well, lucky for them I don’t do what I’m told, huh?”
“Don’t push it.”
“I’m just saying. I was told to stay in that bed, and if I had, three people would’ve died within the castle walls, on your watch.” I didn’t mean to lay into him, the tables had really turned, but now that I had a chance to point out just what a massive screw up this all was, I was going to take it. The fact was, I probably wasn’t going to get another shot at being right like this.
“And if you hadn’t given the stone away, we wouldn’t have a crisis on our hands.”
“Hmm. Death of a friend, or crisis to deal with?” I asked, turning my hands into scales. “I’ll take the crisis, thanks.”
He shook his head and frowned at me like I was the troublemaker in the class. “Do you have any idea what you’ve given away?”
I folded my arms in front of my chest. “I know it’s important, I’m not stupid… but no, I don’t know what it is.”
“How did you even come to possess the stone?”
“Abvat hired me to retrieve it.”
“I need you to explain to me exactly where it was when you found it, and exactly how you were able to even touch it.”
“How about you tell me what it is, first, and then I tell you how I got it?”
Draven took a deep breath and exhaled, like he was trying to calm himself. “We believe that was a singing stone. None of us could sense the stone while it was hidden inside your friend, but when you extracted it, we all heard the song.”
I arched an eyebrow. “A singing stone?”
“You could not hear it?”
I shook my head. “No. Not when I first took it, or when I pulled it out of Fate, but that doesn’t surprise me considering I barely have any magic to call my own.”
“That may be the case, but if the stone truly is what we think it is… there is a myth that speaks of stones that sing with the magical harmonies of the rifts. Over the years there have been stories, rumors that the stones hold within them a tiny sl
iver of power stolen from the rifts themselves, and that with them a strong enough sorcerer would be able to harness the magic of the rift the stone came from.”
“And do what with it?”
“At best, go home. At worst…”
“What?”
“Destruction on an unimaginable scale.”
I shook my head. Draven started walking down the hall, and I followed. “Abvat isn’t that sorcerer. He’s got magic, but I doubt if he’s powerful enough to do what you’re talking about. Then again, maybe I should stop underestimating him…”
“No, your suspicion is correct. The Naga is not strong enough. If he were, we would have sensed it and we would have killed him instead of bringing him to join the Order, but he was adamant we bring him with us.”
I stopped walking. “Wait, hold up. What?”
“When we found him. He pleaded with us to let him join the Order.”
“He told me he was unconscious when you found him.”
“He lied. He was conscious, and he told us where we could find you.”
“That son-of-a-bitch set this all up? I knew it.”
“Why would he do that?”
“We’ve had this game of cat and mouse going on for weeks, but he’s never been able to catch me. He must’ve known that you’d bring us both here, and then he and I would be locked together under the same roof. That little bastard!”
“None of that matters. He did not have to tell me where you were, Seline. I knew where you were.”
I remembered now, the trick of shadow on the rooftop opposite the apartment building I was in. I thought I’d seen a person standing there, and I had. “It was you… you were there.”
Draven nodded. “I followed you home.”
“Oh, well aren’t we the creepy stalker?”
“Believe what you will. Sooner or later, someone would have found you—possibly someone from another Order. You will be happy you are with us instead of with them.”
“You’re telling me other Orders aren’t as nice as yours is?”
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