Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle #3)

Chapter 12

12

Mariah

I GASP AWAKE. It must be night now. The lamplit guest room replaces the forest trees. Beneath me is the well-worn quilt that always drapes this bed. Beside me, in the next bed over, is Alice Chen, her skin wan and thin. She inhales deeply, a shudder wracks her body, and then she lets the breath go. A wisp of silver-blue aether rises from her mouth, illuminating the darkened room.

“It didn’t work,” I rasp, my voice barely a whisper. But aside from Alice, the room is empty. No one is there to answer. Instead, I hear raised muffled voices from the other side of the closed door.

I move to sit up, stand, make my way over to the door—and the world blurs. Not sure whether that’s the aftereffect of finding Alice in the place between life and death… or the aftereffect of Hazel’s awful tea. My mouth tastes like I just licked the floor of the Crossroads Lounge. Not a clean section either—somewhere sticky and dusty that never sees daylight.

“Are you out of your mind?” My Aunt Lu’s screech straightens my spine, sets my ears to attention, and clears the lingering mist from my thoughts. She must have gotten home while I slept, but the only person she speaks to like that is Valec—

“Lucille…” I hear Valec’s low voice in response. He follows her name with a couple of sentences I can’t quite make out, but said in that drawl he uses on new customers at the Lounge—the human ones with deep pockets who want to be charmed by a cambion. Evidently Aunt Lu knows that voice too and doesn’t like it one bit.

“Don’t you dare try to butter me up about this, Valechaz!” Aunt Lu says sharply. “It won’t work on me. I am not a customer! Or one of your little friends.”

Valec snorts. “Lu, come on.”

“No.”

“It’s not even right away. I gotta set it up, so give me a few weeks to confirm. Then, it’s just one night, a few hours. Three, tops—”

“No!”

My Aunt Lu and Valec are more alike than not. They bicker all the time. Argue over how things are run at the Lounge. Argue over what services to offer. Nothing they don’t get over the next day. But Valec’s not giving up. “Come on, now. I’ll do all the talking! You know I will—”

“You’re gonna have to find another way.” I can just imagine my Aunt Lu shaking her head. “It’s bad enough you’re considering going there yourself. What if—”

Going where? I shift to sit upright, but the dizziness falls over me again like two heavy hands pushing my shoulders back into the mattress. What are they even talking about?

“I’ll be all right, Lu,” Valec says in a low voice. “You know I’m fine.”

“Now!” Lu corrects. “You’re fine now ! Right now.”

Valec’s voice is stilted. Hollow. “You sound like Emil.”

“Emil don’t like you because Emil don’t know any better,” Lu corrects. “Right at this moment? I don’t like you because I know you plenty.”

“Aw, Lu—”

“Don’t ‘aw, Lu’ me, Valechaz. That’s my final answer.”

“Lucille…,” Valec protests. I hear my Aunt Lu’s house shoes shuffle across the floor, pass the guest room door, and then on to the bedroom.

A beat of silence.

“Hazel.”

It’s not until Valec voices her name that I realize my Aunt Hazel was still outside in the kitchen. Had she, like me, just been listening? Or did this argument, whatever it’s about, involve her, too? “She’s set on this,” Hazel says with a sigh. “She’s not gonna budge.”

“Talk to her?”

“Not this time, Valechaz. This is between y’all, not me.”

Silence again. Hazel’s step is lighter than Lu’s, so her feet are a whisper. If I know her, she’s probably moved over to give Valec a hug before bidding him good night. The mumbled “Thanks, Hazel” from Valec confirms my guess.

“Check on Mariah before you go, please,” Hazel says. “She was still under about a half hour ago, but she should be coming up soon. Come get me if she doesn’t wake in an hour.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Valec mutters.

A few seconds later, I hear Hazel and Lu’s bedroom door open and close again. My mental clock is a bit off, but based on the quiet outside the window, I’d guess it’s close to ten p.m. and past their bedtime.

I swallow, waiting, then realize that I won’t hear a thing unless Valec decides to make some noise. Cambion feet and all. I can’t quite move yet, but I don’t need to move to get his attention; all I have to do is murmur, “I’m awake.”

A second later and he’s at the door, opening it without knocking. “Hey, there.” He flows into the room, shutting the door behind him with a whisper of a click. The usual evening cloud of golden aether has swirled inside, gathered around his ankles and knees—drawn to him without his needing to call it close. “How do you feel?”

“Wrecked,” I answer. Valec sits on the edge of my bed, between me and Alice.

He puts a warm hand against my forehead, and I brush it away. “You run so hot, how can you even tell if I’m feverish?”

He chuckles. “More worried you’d be cold than hot. That tea knocked you right out, sent you to sleep in a strange way. Your lips turned blue.”

I bring a hand up to my mouth and frown. “Oh.” I try to sit up a third time, and he blurs to my side before I can move.

“Easy.” He helps me lean against the headboard.

I blink, expecting fatigue to draw me back to horizontal, but I don’t feel tired. I feel restless. Disturbed. Worried.

“What’d you see in there?”

I try to put my experience with Alice into words but struggle to. After a moment, I ask him a question instead of trying to answer his. “Why’re you fighting with Lu?”

He raises a brow. “You first.”

I try again. “Alice is in there,” I whisper, “still alive.”

“Doing what?”

I remember the hounds, the forest, the woods. Bree-Arthur. “Running through the scenario where she was hurt over and over again.”

“Why?”

I look up at him. “I think… she’s trying to figure out if she could have changed something?”

Valec releases a sigh. “That type of thinking won’t get you far. A person could get lost in it. Never come out.”

I look back at Alice. Watch another swirl of smoky mage flame climb to the ceiling from her parted lips. “I don’t know how long she’ll last, but I think… I think she’s running out of time. Death is ready for her. It just doesn’t have her yet.”

Valec’s eyes narrow. “Suppose we should call William?”

“No,” I say, straightening. “She’s still fighting it. The clock is ticking, but Alice Chen has found a way to slow it down.”

Valec cracks a smile. “Powerhouse’s clever friend. Smart girl. Observant girl. I don’t doubt that she’s found a way to hold death at bay.”

Valec taps his fore and middle fingers against his thigh as if he’s thinking about something.

“You gonna tell me now?” I ask.

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough to know you want Lu to do something she doesn’t wanna do, and Hazel doesn’t think she’ll budge on it. And something about you going somewhere dangerous.”

Valec tilts his head back and forth in a gentle protest. “Not dangerous to me, personally. Probably.”

“Valec.” I thump his shoulder. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I’d never let anything happen to Lu,” he says cryptically. “But it’s not the best sort of… context.”

I don’t like the way he keeps tapping his fingers on his thigh. “What’s going on? Does this have to do with Bree?”

“Yep.” Valec tongues a fang. “I got an idea, but it’s not a good one. It’s a bad one, in fact.” He runs a hand down his face. “But if it works, it’ll get us some answers and quick.”

“Valec,” I repeat.

“No.” He groans. “This is too risky. Lu’s right to wanna skin me for asking her this.” He stands up. Walks away. “ I should skin me, to be honest—”

“Valec!” I whisper-shout. “Tell me.”

He paces back to me and swipes his tongue over his lower lip. “There’s a… place. A spot where demons gather. If I go on my own, I’ll look like a threat. If I go with the Grand Dame, it’s more… political. Like an ambassador paying another country a visit.”

I straighten. “What kinda place? Where is it?”

He holds a hand up as if to say, Slow down . “Like I said, it’s just a lead. Bringing her in is dangerous, but if I don’t, I won’t be able to step a foot in the door.”

“Whose door?” I ask, impatient.

Valec fixes me with a long stare, mouth twisting sourly. “You ever heard of Nightshades?”

I squint. “The fruits?”

He glares at me. “No, Riah, not the damn fruits. Goruchel. Powerful ones. Members of the Shadow Court.”

The hairs on the back of my neck rise. “You told us about that at the Lounge. You said they’re locked away on the other side.”

He winces. “I said it was a rumor , which it is—”

“They’re not locked away?” My eyes widen. “You said—”

“I said ‘allegedly’!” He raises his hands in defense. “That gets me off the hook, I think—”

“Valechaz!” I screech.

“You sound just like your auntie.” He turns away with a grimace. “I don’t need to get yelled at by two generations in one night. Come on, now—”

“The court of demons is real?”

“Of course it’s real!” He thrusts a hand out, sputtering. “I couldn’t confirm the truth with a damn Merlin sitting in the room, Mariah! It’s always better to let the Order think they know everything; you know that.”

“Not if it means we’re all gonna get eaten!” I hiss.

Valec scoffs. “The Nightshades of the Shadow Court found a way out hundreds of years ago, most of them, but without leadership they scattered. Legend has it that long ago they had a king who united them, but he perished at the hands of the original Merlin. After that, some went renegade. Rebelled against the Court. If any Shades wanted to eat ‘all’ of humanity, they’d have already figured out a way to do it. That’s not what they’re up to.”

“Well, what are they up to, then?”

His head tilts back and forth again. “Various… things.”

“Sounds like illegal things. Dangerous things,” I say, crossing my arms.

“I prefer to stay out of their way, let’s just say that. But they know things too. Things I can’t know. They each have little fiefdoms nowadays. Mini courts of their own. There’s one who…” He stills, then shuts his eyes. “I can’t ask for help at a distance. You have to go there. Pay tribute on a certain day of the month when they’re open to supplicants.”

Valec doesn’t get nervous. I’ve never seen him fidget or stutter. But something about Bree being gone has set him on edge… and now this Shadow Court business has him looking apprehensive and unmoored in a way that I’ve never witnessed.

“And if Lu goes there, it’ll make it safer?”

Valec opens his eyes. “If I want to walk back out alive, then, yeah, I need the Grand Dame. A party a Shade won’t cross, whose presence erases the chance that my move is a territorial one. Ensures I appear as benign as possible.”

Aunt Lu is hard-headed. If stubborn had levels, she’d be an eleven out of ten.

I glance at Alice and remember her repeated efforts to change her fate, even at death’s door. Alice, who wasn’t born into magic the way Bree and I were, and who, by sheer will, is keeping herself tethered to the world of the living. She’s an eleven out of ten too.

I gnaw on my lip for a moment, an idea and a decision both floating before my eyes. Swirling together, weaving in and out of each other’s tendrils like the golden aether mist still writhing around Valec’s legs.

“What’s that look on your face?” Valec asks. “I don’t know if I like it.”

I don’t answer him. Instead, I stare at the door and imagine the kitchen counter on the other side where Hazel has been working for eight weeks straight to heal a girl she barely knows, because it’s the right thing to do. Because she’s stubborn as hell too.

The women around me are all in the business of throwing themselves at the wall, again and again, until it breaks—or molds itself in their images. It’s a type of impatient living that I’ve never dared try.

Bree Matthews doesn’t wait until she’s ready to act, and her ancestors believe in her. They have faith in her. Maybe I shouldn’t wait either.

Maybe it’s not about having the answer, but making yourself the answer.

“Not having a plan but becoming the plan,” I murmur.

“Say what?” Valec asks.

“Has Aunt Lu ever been to this fief before?” I ask.

Valec tosses his head a little, jarred at my sharp turn. “No, she’s never been. And you heard her. She never will. It was a long shot to even ask.”

“So they don’t know what the Grand Dame of the Southeastern territory looks like,” I say, keeping my voice curious and light.

Valec blinks. “What? No, they don’t…” He follows my gaze to the door and the kitchen beyond—and to the onyx talisman quietly resting on the countertop in its bag. “No.”

“You said a few weeks to confirm a date, right?”

Valec turns back to me. “No.”

I wiggle my toes experimentally, stretch my arms overhead. “I’ll test it first. Make sure I’m good to bear it, of course, but I think I will be because Aunt Lu and I are blood related—”

“Mariah,” Valec interrupts. “No.”

I grin, abruptly thrilled at our switch in roles. “Valec. Yes.”

“But—”

“You said Bree would do it for us,” I counter, and his mouth snaps shut. “You’re right. Bree Matthews would walk into a den of vipers if she thought she could save her friends.”

“No offense, baby cousin,” Valec says through gritted teeth, “but Bree Matthews can handle a den of vipers. You can’t .”

“Yes, I can,” I argue, crossing my arms over my chest again, “if I’m the Grand Dame.”