Chapter Fourteen Kian
I run away. I want to dive into Adela’s bed immediately, explore this connection that Cecelia insists is the way forward, but I can’t let myself get distracted again. As soon as it’s dark, I’m heading to the forest. To my future.
In my stark guest room, I remove the phoenix skull and flop onto the bed to stare at the whitewashed ceiling.
My mind spirals with everything that I just learned.
I’m going to be attached to the matcher for the foreseeable future through these paired skulls—which is both fortunate for my lasciviousness and devastating for pulling off my plans.
I pop up from the bed and start pacing, looping through questions.
Is sex really going to help us unlock the phoenix magic?
Do we both have the capacity for both destruction and rebirth?
Do we have to do magic literally at the same time?
But no. That would be far too complicated. The gytrash are always matched as a triad, and they don’t have to do their magic simultaneously.
And it’s just as unlikely that we would each contain both magics.
I have to be the destruction side of things.
I have to. Like calls to like, after all.
And Adela isn’t destructive. She is consumed with serving her community and being seen as good.
I am consumed with good, too—people’s lives will improve in the absence of the Huntress order having quite so much power—but my means are destructive.
Sure, I somehow healed my own back, but maybe that was Markus. Maybe he did it unintentionally, like how Ulric torched the cath palugs almost accidentally.
I bounce back and forth from pacing between my bed and the hard chair, back to pacing, then to my bed, ad nauseam until finally darkness descends and I’m able to head to the forest. I hate to go without a clear plan of what’s next, but I can’t put it off a moment longer.
I barely step within the tree line when Aunt Ujvala and Ivo find me.
Ivo gives me a quick hug, then glances at Aunt Ujvala like he might’ve done something wrong. Her face is very intentionally expressionless, which terrifies me. A quiet Ujvala is a dangerous Ujvala.
They both look disheveled, but of course, they’ve been camping in the woods for two nights. They’re not going to look fresh-faced and well rested. Hoping a bit of humor might break the tension, I throw out my hands as if in greeting. “Welcome to the valley. Hope you’ve enjoyed your stay.”
It’s the wrong tactic.
“Where in the fuck have you been?” Aunt Ujvala swings her cane wildly. I step back to avoid a thwack. “You had another hour and I was going to leave you here on your own.”
I put my hands up as if she’s a riled horse. “Woah.”
Again, wrong tactic. Her eyes grow wider in the moonlight, and I swear I can hear her thoughts, and they’re all about my impending death and dismemberment at her hands.
“I’ve been trying to—” I was going to say, “Get to you,” but she rips the phoenix skull off my face. I flinch, thinking she’s going to clobber me with it, but she just throws it in the dirt. Before I can respond, she starts in.
“Oh, we know you’ve been trying. Trying to get into the pants of that matcher. Trying to practice magic with your little novitiate friends. While we steal food scraps for nourishment and sleep on rocks, exposed to rain and bugs and cold, under the same trees as a man-eating dragon.”
“I believe the dragon’s lair is actually in the cliffs, if that’s comforting at all.”
“It is not.” Her teeth grind.
“Why didn’t you start with your plans while you waited? You know—trade stuff.”
“Under the nose of the most vindictive high priestess in Insborough? And what? Risk everyone?” My aunt levels me a look like I am the stupidest man in the world. “Kian.”
I sigh. She’s right and I know it. I’ve taken her support for granted. Getting them home or making them comfortable should have been my first thought. I’m not used to prioritizing anyone besides myself. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need you to be sorry. I need to leave this valley until the order is gone and I can come back and establish contacts.
I have endeavors to oversee, runs to organize, people who are counting on me.
And instead, I’m stuck in a magical valley, sleeping with owl pellets next to my face because I don’t want to abandon my favorite nephew—”
“Ouch,” Ivo says, then hunches into himself when she almost whaps him with her cane. He pouts.
“We’re leaving.” Aunt Ujvala places the end of her cane onto the hard earth, finally using it as an assistive device instead of just as a makeshift weapon. “Tonight.”
I want to argue. I don’t have fire, and I don’t know how to get it. I had been planning on stealing Thad’s fire when he was showing off for some keeper, or seducing him and then stealing it, but Ulric is too humble for the former and the latter would kill him.
My mind whirls, thinking through the possibilities. There are no good options, especially without my magic manifesting yet.
I need time. More time.
And then I realize the answer’s been camping in the woods the whole time. My aunt is an expert smuggler.
“We’ll steal the skulls.”
Aunt Ujvala starts shaking her head. “I am not taking a hundred magical creature skulls to Insborough and stashing them in my cellar.”
“Of course not! Just help me get them out of the matching hut and into the forest to buy me some time. Then go home. Take a bath. Sleep in your beds. Once they’re hidden somewhere, I’ll figure out the rest.”
Somehow.
Aunt Ujvala is quiet for a long moment, then shakes her head sadly. She steps forward and puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. I shrug to dislodge it, but she doesn’t move. Unless I’m going to physically push her away, I am going to have to accept her comfort.
But I don’t want it, because I know it’s going to come with her abandoning me.
“You are asking too much, Kian.” Her voice is still soft, and the gentleness she is handling me with enrages me. I hate that it’s comforting. I hate that I want to be soothed.
And I hate that she’s right. I’ve been so selfish. They are tired, hungry, cold. If they had been discovered in the valley, the entire family would be at risk of exposure and retribution. Unless we are strong like my parents, who kept their secrets until the end.
No one else is that strong.
“Aunt, please. Don’t do this.” I hate how pleading my voice is.
She takes my face in her hands, rubbing the pads of her thumbs across my cheeks like my mom used to.
“Kian, I love you. If you want to come back to us, to be a part of our efforts, you are always welcome. But I’m not risking everything we’ve built for an already-dead sister and your twisted-up quest for equality and vengeance. ”
I open my mouth to argue, but she speaks first.
“I loved her, too. And I know Lesa would want me to help you.” I flinch at the mention of Mom. “This is my offer. We’ll go with you to collect intelligence on the matching hut, and I’ll help create a plan for moving forward.”
I can’t help but push. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. After, we’re going home, love.”
I still think to argue, but I can see by the set of her shoulders that I’d get nowhere. “Thank you.”
We immediately set out across the meadow for the matching hut, moving quickly and quietly. Not that it matters much. There’s little chance of running into anyone this late at night in this little agrarian community where everyone seems to go to bed with the sun.
I wish the moon were a little less full, the stars slightly less bright, but at least it’s not raining or snowing. We cross the field, ascending a small rolling hill and crest the top.
Beside me, Ivo is practically bouncing on his toes; he’s so excited to be participating in our little quest. Honestly, I’m probably just as excited. I haven’t participated in a run since I was a child and brought on some of the smallest, most straightforward operations with my parents.
We pause to catch our breath. We’re about halfway there, but now that we’re over the largest hill, the matching hut is within sight.
Full of skulls and drying herbs and jars of ointments and tonics and all the magic that the order would be able to control over the next decade or so.
A cloud passes in front of the moon, making the night darker at just the right time.
If I believed in the Huntress, I’d thank her.
We’ve just begun to move again when Ivo suddenly drops to the ground beside me.
“Spinner’s tits!” The exclamation is soft, but pain laces his voice.
I lean over and help him to stand up. “What happened?”
“Something stabbed me in the ankle.”
“A stick?” Aunt Ujvala suggests from his other side. She sweeps the ground with her cane, but doesn’t connect with anything. He stands and takes a step, grimacing.
I bend and pat down his leg. There is a dark wetness on his pants, and I hold my hand up to my nose. Blood. If he hit a stick, it was a fairly large one, possibly with a vendetta.
“Going to make it?”
The boy grunts out something in the affirmative and begins to limp forward, down the hill. Aunt Ujvala and I follow half a step behind. We’re moving slower, worried about running into bushes or branches that we can’t see.
We also have to be careful of just tripping on the ground, which is significantly more uneven than I remember it being the last two times I was here. But we came at it from other angles then. Tiny mounds keep slightly tripping us, but we manage.
The hut is growing closer, and we’re all eager to get to it. Aunt Ujvala begins to move a little quicker. Not least, Ivo, whose limp has become more pronounced.
Suddenly, Ivo swears again and sort of half hops, half falls sideways. This time he doesn’t fall to the ground, but his breathing is ragged and his voice shakes when he says, “Can I please light my lantern?”
I am about to say no, when Aunt Ujvala also cries out. “Ow! What the…?”
Ivo doesn’t wait. He pulls out the lantern and tries to get the flint to catch. It doesn’t work.
He cries out again.