Chapter 15
Daisy
Slightly too-big servants’ attire draped down her frame, hiding the weapons stashed or strapped on her body. The cloth was old, her slippers worn, and ash from the fireplace marred her face. No one seemed to notice her passing through the halls behind Niall and Lennox.
They stopped beside a set of nondescript double doors.
Niall pushed his way inside and Lennox paused so Daisy could go in the middle.
The room opened up into a lovely domed affair with stained glass, couches, maps, and scrolls everywhere.
Literally everywhere. On chairs, the floor, stuffed in bookcases, overflowing from two different desks, from all the tables… It was madness. Mayhem.
“Nah.” She stopped in her tracks. “This looks like a conspiracy theorist’s lair.”
“A what?” Lennox grabbed her shoulders to keep her walking.
“A person who has lost the thread of reality and—”
“Oh.” Eldric stepped out from an alcove. He had a feather quill in one hand, ink on his face, and a sleeveless shirt showing pasty-white, heavily wrinkled arms that would fry immediately if they ever saw the sun. Which they probably wouldn’t. “I thought I heard someone. What is—”
He sighted Daisy and lowered his quill. His pale gaze took in Lennox and Niall, and his lips pressed together.
“I choose Tarian,” Daisy said without preamble.
“I told him everything. I will help him help Faerie, and in turn, he will help my family. I’m okay with that.
I’m okay with what will happen to me should I fulfill this plan.
Also…we made a deal about it. I’m pretty sure I have to at this point, anyway. ”
“Yes, I see.” He hadn’t moved. “My gentle fae, would you excuse us, please? You may wait outside, or in the room just…there.”
He indicated another alcove blocked with something that looked like a metal door with a thick bolt locking it from the outside.
“Holy hell,” Daisy muttered.
Neither of the guys moved.
“Tarian is not here to make this call, and we don’t know you,” Lennox said with a vicious note in his voice that Daisy had never heard. She shivered.
“Ah.” Eldric brought his hands closer to his chest. The quill seeped blue ink into his shirt. “Protective of her…or of what she is?”
They didn’t answer, so Daisy said, “Does it matter? They’re protective. They want assurance you aren’t going to kill me. Or, like, magically bug me in some way.”
“Magically…what?” Eldric said.
“Track me or mess with whatever I am or hinder what I can do,” she elaborated.
“He wouldn’t do that,” Niall said. “It’s against his order’s rules.”
“Neither would I—or could I—kill the crystal chalice.” Eldric frowned at them. “But if it pleases you…”
It took them ten minutes to make a deal. If Eldric tried to do anything but help her, they would be summoned.
“Now, then.” Eldric studied her after the others had stepped outside. They’d wisely chosen not to be locked in what was apparently an iron chamber. A smile ghosted his lips. “I am eternal, yet…I never thought I would see one of you. Come in, come in.”
He motioned her farther into the chaos. She wasn’t usually a stickler for cleanliness, and didn’t need to be terribly organized to get things done, but the mess made her skin crawl. Mostly because she worried something might creep out from under some of the dusty piles and literally crawl on her.
“It is nearly impossible to find one of you, you understand?” He zigzagged through the space, somehow not stepping on a single scroll.
Paper crinkled under her foot.
“Oops. Sorry—” Stepping away led to more crinkling.
“Your lifespans are so short. A blink, really. And that is if you aren’t killed off earlier than normal, which many are for one reason or another.
When Tarianthiel—I will call him Tarian, since you and he, and he and I, are so familiar with one another—set out to find you, I thought he was wasting his time.
Without a sanctioned pass from the Celestials, who would never grant one for this in the current turmoil, he only had moments at a time.
He had a whole world to search, over several billion humans, with nothing but stolen moments.
Never, I thought. Yet in only four thrushes—three?
” He paused. “Six?” He put a finger to his chin while shaking his head.
“I’ve lost track of time. Anyway, he was able to manage it.
I knew he was special. Not just because of his power, mind you. He is a favorite of the gods.”
“They have a funny way of showing it.”
He stopped at the largest desk of all, way in the back of the chaotic room. This one, miraculously, was spotless. Only a single scroll lay on the polished surface. The two chairs in front of it, however, were covered.
He affixed half-moon spectacles atop his nose as he looked at her. “We must never be quick to judge the gods, young elara. Oftentimes, their plans are dense and complicated, but they always serve a purpose. The hardest trials reap the greatest enlightenment.”
She couldn’t contain her look of skepticism. “Cool.”
He studied her. “A nonbeliever. I do so love those. I hope I shall be there for your revelation. Assuming, of course, you have the mind power to grasp it.”
Was he calling her stupid?
“How did you know what I was?” she asked.
“Human? Because the chalice has to be human—”
“No, the chalice. You saw me before Tarian found me in that hallway.”
“Oh.” He gave her a pronounced frown. “Once the crystal chalice is formed, the magic shines.”
“But no one else here can see it.”
“Oh,” he said again, waving her away. “My order can see magic the wielder is trying to hide.”
“But I’m…not trying to hide it. I mean, I don’t know how.”
“You clearly do, since you clearly are.”
“You don’t seem to have the mind power to grasp what I am telling you,” she said, and his frown became a scowl. She barely stopped herself from smiling. “I don’t know that I am hiding it. I must be doing it unconsciously. How can I learn to do it consciously?”
He busied himself with the scrolls at the side of his desk. “Let us see. Now, how much do you know about the crystal chalice magic?”
She paused beside one of the piles on a chair.
“Oops, let me clear that away for you.” He scooped up the scrolls and dumped them on the floor behind the chair.
“Great,” she drawled before explaining all she knew. It didn’t take long, given she knew very little.
“And you made a binding deal?” he asked.
“Is there another kind?”
He narrowed his eyes in thought. “No.” He tapped the feather portion of the quill to his lips. “You have a very succinct explanation of what you are. Expected, with a human’s limited range of thought. Let me elaborate and hope it sinks in.”
It was her turn to scowl. He didn’t think much of humans in general.
It soon became apparent that it wouldn’t be the court games that tucked her into her final resting place.
It wouldn’t be facing the Obsidian kingdom’s royals or the gods or godlike power.
It would be sheer boredom. When he was done, she wondered if he’d magically kept her awake. There could be no other explanation.
“So, you see, you are so much more than a conduit for magic. You are an actual vessel, my dear. You can store magic for up to…oh…five turns, I should think. Even magic as robust as Tarian used to possess. But—and here is the danger—you do not, yourself, create magic. You steal it.”
She blinked, coming out of her drooling stupor. “What?”
His eyes startled to sparkle. “Ah, yes, now we are doing more than just absorbing. We are listening! Yes, you can steal magic. You steal from the magic wielder and house it in your vessel to be used at a later time. When you take it, you deplete their magic. Say you steal just a fraction—they will only become a fraction weaker. Steal it all, and they will die of magiclessness. Do you see?”
She turned that over in her head. “Not about the last part. If a fae loses all their magic, they die?”
“Magic here exists within the fae—”
“I thought it came from Faerie?”
He beamed. “Yes! My goodness, you are a credit to your kind. It comes from Faerie, and Faerie is in us all. We are the very fabric of Faerie, living and breathing. Eating and pooping. We draw on Faerie for our magic, and it draws on us for survival. We are connected. All of us. Everything. If you were to siphon away all the magic of a fae or creature, it would take the fabric of the being with it. It would take their life’s breath, and the empty shell would fall. ”
Her heart leapt at the possibility. At the thought that maybe she’d have more of an arsenal than a fae. “So…I can kill fae with this magic.”
He paused. “Is that any different from what you can do with your knives?”
She frowned at him. “Easier, I imagine, right?”
He held up a finger. “Maybe.”
“Oh good. I was worried I wouldn’t get straight answers when I came here.”
He walked to the bookcase on his left. The fourth shelf held nothing but scrolls, some rolled, many not. He reached into them.
“It is not as easy as simply taking magic. You have to be sly, like an actual thief. If they sense you depleting them, they will react like all creatures you are trying to kill—they will defend themselves urgently and ardently. They will usually react violently. You can then wither their magic, but they will still possess it, and—”
“Wither means nullify, right?”
“—therefore still have—yes, keep up, please—still have their magic. Then they can overpower you. In a regular fight, like with fists or knives, they might be content to wound you and walk away. If you are caught depleting their magic, however, their instinct will be to kill or be killed. Getting caught will almost always become a fight to the death. Yours…or theirs.”
She barked out a laugh. “So just a normal day in the life of a Chester, huh?”
He paused in rummaging through the scrolls. “A…chezzure?”
“Never mind. What happens when my vessel’s capacity is full?”
A section of the scrolls toppled over on top of him, cascading to the ground. He froze, then looked down at his feet. “What a mess.”
Her eyes widened as she looked around at everything else. That was a mess, but the rest wasn’t?
He continued his search, knowing what he sought wasn’t in the dropped items.
“You hold it for as long as you can,” he answered. “And then…”
Her nerves started to dance. This was the part where the terrible news made the magic more of a curse than a boon. The part where this entire meeting became a waste because she was no better off.
“And then?” she asked.