Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Ilurched and staggered toward the wounded woman. “Mom!”
I grabbed for her, but she collapsed before I could break her fall. I stared in horror at the slices in her skin. Someone had taken great care to cut her in a way that wouldn’t heal, not right away, even given her powers.
Poppy joined me and together we helped Livvy off the ground, carefully.
“Damn, girl, you do know how to get yourself into some scrapes, don’t you.”
Bruises spotted Livvy’s wrists from manacles pressed too tightly to bone and tendons. Bitterness gilded my tongue, the taste of blood coating everything.
She breathed raggedly, chest rising and falling on uneven beats, but she blinked bleary eyes up at me. At Poppy.
Her mouth relaxed into a soft grin dampened by the agony in her eyes. “Poppy. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Wait. You know each other?”
Poppy grunted. “We’ve met.”
“This way.” Melia gestured ahead. “Let’s get her into the healer’s tent. It’s closer.”
“How did she get past the wards?” I asked, wincing when Livvy cried out at being jostled.
“We made sure to spell the warding to let her inside. We keyed it to her energy signature. I have her journal.” Melia always marched ten steps ahead of the rest of us, for which I was grateful.
Livvy stumbled along, leaving a trail of blood behind us. No matter how easy we went, she swallowed her cries, the cuts splitting open at the slightest movement.
If the wounds weren’t attended to soon, she would die of blood loss.
“Poppy…helped me…conceive you safely. She’s the witch who made you possible,” Livvy managed to get out.
My head spun. Life, the conspiring of the universe, fate—it brought everything full circle. All of the changes I’d made to Poppy’s history might have kept me from being born.
A single wrong move and Livvy and Poppy may have never met each other.
“Some people have trouble conceiving. Then again, some souls are meant to come into being, even if they need a little help. And speaking of help, girl, how about you actually do something instead of letting your mind wander? She’s going down on your side.”
Poppy’s voice held a sharp warning and I straightened, dragging my mother with me. The abrupt movement had her screaming, the agonized sound torn straight out of her.
“I’m sorry!”
“Sorry won’t help get her to the medic tent. Julie! Where is that damn halfling when you need her?” Poppy grumbled under her breath. “A few more steps, Liv, and we’ll get you the help you need.”
“You know…my new name?” Livvy groaned, letting us drag her. Sweat dotted her forehead and mingled with blood.
“When are you and the kid gonna learn? I know everything.”
Poppy said it with such confidence, I believed her.
Melia stopped and held open the flaps of the medical tent, fabric rustling. “It’s here.”
Inside, the blue-skinned nurse’s wings fluttered too rapidly for me to track.
Julie tracked our movements. “Get her to the cot.”
She was another species of Fae, her limbs overly long and gangly, ears pointed, and two shiny wings protruding from her shoulder blades in a violet-blue a shade lighter than her skin.
We hauled Livvy over to the first cot in a row of them spreading out to both corners of the makeshift infirmary. Small lights danced in the air, the same armoire from her Fae Academy office perched near the entrance with shelves full of glass jars waiting for use.
Livvy’s face screwed up in pain and she swallowed another screech as we angled her to the center of the cot. In the light, her wounds looked worse than at first glance.
Julie whooshed her hand through the air and magic cut open the rest of Livvy’s torn pants. The leg wound gaped open like a macabre grin. I couldn’t stifle my horrified gasp.
“I got away,” Livvy said through her teeth with a searing laugh.
“Shh. Don’t.” Julie kept her focus on the largest wound, assessing the savagery of the torn edges of skin. “Save your strength.”
Livvy shook her head. “I got free of Dorian Jade and his people.”
“Mom—”
I reached for her but Poppy slapped my hand, grabbing my shoulders and pulling me out of the way while Julie worked.
“Keep your distance and let the healer do her job,” she hissed.
“It was fine.” Her cheeks pale, Livvy’s smile was a slice of moonlight on a dark night. “They’re not too bright. They thought the cuffs would hold me, but I’ve been learning. I’ve come into more power as a witch myself.”
“And you terribly injured yourself in the process,” Poppy chided, her arms like chains around me.
Was it my imagination, or was she proud?
We weren’t working with the best equipment, but Julie somehow managed to find whatever herbs and linens she needed to do her job effectively. Livvy gripped the sides of the cot to keep still while Julie cleaned the wound and muttered words of power.
“I used a spell to obscure their vision. Turned the whole camp black. Couldn’t see for shit.” A cry strangled in her throat.
Poppy nodded. “Infinite Dark.”
“That’s the one. You were teaching me…before I got pregnant.”
“I remember.”
“Thing is, I couldn’t see the spikes he’d set at the periphery of camp. Stupid. It wasn’t magic. Just—”
Livvy couldn’t stop her screech when Julie pressed a compound of herbs on the injured area. A few more spells, and the smallest cuts and punctures closed and left fresh pink skin as reminders.
“You were injured during escape and I can only do so much,” Julie said as she moved on to Livvy’s other minor cuts and scrapes.
“You need to restore your magic. You used up most of it to get here, and honestly, it’s a wonder you made it at all in your current condition.
You’re going to be down for a while. Okay?
Rest now. You will have time with your daughter through your recovery. ”
“We’ve been given our cue, girl.” Poppy squeezed my shoulders. “Let’s let the woman rest and recover.”
“She’s safe in my capable hands,” Julie said at my hesitation. “And I have helpers. I’ll bring them in if I need them. Trust me.”
I did. I trusted Julie with my life. She’d really come through for me in the past and proven herself to be not only an ally but blood kin.
Yet…
It wasn’t Julie who kept me rooted in place. It wasn’t even Livvy.
Something about the moment clanged through me with an unmatched poignancy. Something made me sit up and pay attention to the bitterness coating my mouth and the rush of my pulse in my ears.
Worry? No. Instincts.
What did they want me to pay attention to?
“I’ll come back and check on you in a little bit. You’re safe now.” I flashed Livvy a smile I didn’t feel and let Poppy drag me out of the tent.
She didn’t stop at the exit. She kept pushing, maneuvering me into another smaller tent adjacent to this one. And when I stumbled through the opening, she pulled the flaps tight.
“We have to talk.”
“I figured that by the way you manhandled me. What’s so important I couldn’t sit with my mom?”
Her expression hardened. “We have to hide the Imperium somewhere safe, somewhere with magic only you can access.”
“Why?”
“It’s a dangerous tool. You already know this. It has to stay out of anyone’s reach.”
“But why is it so important now?” I pressed. “It’s been a powerful and dangerous tool for centuries. People thought it was lost, but really Elfhame had it. Is this about Dorian Jade?”
Poppy scoffed at the name and crossed to an empty corner of the tent. With a snap of her fingers, a chest swam into view, rectangular and wooden with brass locks along the front seam.
I blinked. Blinked harder. “Where did you get—”
“There’s no place on earth safe enough to hide the Imperium for long. Fae are resilient bastards with long memories, and your father’s kind are relentless and ruthless.” She pointed to the chest as evidence.
“You’re saying it’s impossible to actually hide it?” I asked.
“Did I say that?” Poppy turned with her arms ladened with bottles. “Sit and watch. I’m gonna teach you something you’ll be able to use for the rest of your life, so pay attention.”
My lips automatically opened on a rebuttal, to tell her I wasn’t witchy enough to learn this kind of magic. I snapped them shut.
The witch who’d unlocked me, the witch who’d helped Livvy conceive me…
If Poppy was the greatest spellcaster I knew, then her magic powered me as well.
“Okay.” I dropped to the cot, sitting cross-legged on it. “So what are we going to do?”
She set the bottles in front of me and bent to retrieve more from a trunk. “We’re going to store it in an in-between place. You will be the only one who can reach it, through your own magic. Get me?”
“You’re going to key my magic to the lock, like Melia keyed the wards to allow Livvy inside the camp.” I nodded. “Got it.”
“Then cast the circle and we’ll get started. You won’t always need a circle, but for the first attempt, better safe than sorry.”
Cast the circle? “I don’t know—”
Poppy tossed one of the bottles at me and I caught it just before the glass could smack me dead center in the chest.
“Salt. Now let’s go.”
Poppy walked me through the steps of using the salt ring as our protection. The herbs she burned were waystones, guides, but not necessary to what we attempted. Trappings, she called them. She wasn’t big on ritual, considering it more flimflam than necessary.
Night fell outside the tent. The sun disappeared behind the trees, and outside the boundaries of the tent, nothing mattered. Nothing except the rich scent of salt and herbs, the smoke curling up from the violet flames of the fire she conjured.
Melia delivered the Imperium to us. It nestled on my outstretched palms, calm and silent. Waiting.
None of the king’s magic lingered in the intricate mosaic design. What would this thing do if it stole power from me?
By the time Poppy and I reached the end of the spell, the Augundae Imperium was hidden in a rift of space torn open and tied to my blood.
We lifted our hands in tandem to close the tear and I sank forward with a yawn, the magic costing more than I thought it would.
We’d split reality, made a gash in the universe. Nothing surprising. I’d seen worse today. I’d done worse.
But this was necessary. As long as I stood, Dorian Jade would not get his hands on this tool.
“It’s not easy work the first time, is it?” Poppy’s brisk tone brushed like sandpaper on my nerves. “You’ll get used to it. And the more you do it, the easier it will get. Easier, not easy.”
I huffed halfheartedly, weary. “Thanks for the warning.”
She jumped to her feet with a spryness I never would have thought for a witch her age, and held out a hand for me.
“Come on. Let’s get you into bed.”
She wrapped her fingers around mine, squeezed, and tugged.
“I want to check on Mom one more time and then I’ll pass out.”
Poppy released my hand and clapped me on the back. “You did good. But don’t let this compliment go to your head. You still have plenty of work to do and plenty more to learn.”
More to learn, more to do, more to kill. My responsibilities circled like hungry sharks inside my head, biting and tearing through any lingering softness.
Julie sat at Livvy’s bedside when I ducked inside the healer’s tent. She lifted a finger to her lips and angled her head toward the sleeping form wrapped in pillowy cotton blankets.
I spent a few moments with her, trading information in whispered tones, before finally heading in the direction of my assigned tent.
The rebel camp settled in for sleep and the moon crested high in a clear sky. Beautiful, mocking stars twinkled. They were watchers, unbothered by the obstacles we struggled through.
Elfwaite had set aside a tent for me near the bonfire at the center of the camp. But instead of finding relief, anxiety spiked through me. Camp was as comfortable as we could make it, but for how long? It was guaranteed not to last.
Thick heavy canvas was hung as the tent door flap. I pushed it aside and went through the opening.
A shadow moved.
I froze, gripped by sudden fear, until Mike jumped up from the cot, a fae light clutched in his open palm.