Chapter 25 #2
Viri grinned and shook her head. “Nice try. But you’ve had all the kisses you’re getting from me.”
He smirked. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“Not a challenge—a promise.”
A low laugh. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Little Shadow.”
Before she could respond—not that she knew how—Reeve stood up and rotated his shoulder, wonder touching his features as he said, “For someone with no proper training, Wynter sure knows her stuff.”
“She’s amazing,” Viri agreed, grateful to move on from any and all talk of kissing. “There’s a lot of trial and error, though. With heavy emphasis on the error.”
“The best way to learn is by failing,” Reeve said sagely.
“Say that after you’ve been the test dummy on some of her illegal magical experiments,” Viri muttered.
“Speaking of experiments…” Reeve offered his hand to Viri and pulled her up beside him, the pebbles shifting under their weight. “I haven’t tried this before, so bear with me.”
Viri didn’t have a chance to ask what he was talking about before she felt the tingle of ellixen, followed by an odd but not unpleasant sensation, like warm liquid dripping from the top of her head downward.
When it passed, she was completely dry again, from her hair all the way to her toes. Moments later, Reeve was the same.
“That’s better,” he said, rebuttoning his shirt over his now barely bruised torso.
“You mentioned before that there’s a cost to using magic,” Viri prompted, marveling at her newly dry state. There wasn’t a hint of dampness left, not even in her cloak pockets.
“Think of it like a muscle,” Reeve said. “The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. But by the same rules, use too much and it gets tired—or worse.”
“Burnout,” Viri said, her stomach pitching.
Reeve nodded. “It happens when too much is used at once, whether that’s from a concentrated burst of powerful magic or a slower release over a long period without resting.”
“So in the case of kids who don’t Impart…?”
“It’s the concentrated burst, but it’s not by choice—it happens accidentally from an unstable buildup of ellixen.” Before she could ask, he shared, “To avoid that, I had to learn how to control my magic—to train the muscle, so to speak. The same would have been true for Wynter.”
“I still can’t believe that,” Viri murmured, though she knew deep down that it was true. Even so, she planned on having a very stern talk with her best friend after she returned to the city.
“Do you know what I can’t believe?” Reeve asked, looking around the blue cavern, a frown creasing his brow.
“What?”
“The husband,” he said.
Viri blinked. “Sorry?”
“The husband, the wife, and the friend from the story,” he clarified. “I told you earlier that I doubted they hiked all the way to the tower, but there’s no way they made it down here. Something isn’t adding up.”
Realizing he was right, Viri pulled the map from her cloak, relieved to see it had survived the lake and was now dry again thanks to Reeve’s magic. But then she opened it, and any relief she’d felt vanished.
“No,” she whispered, certain it had to be wrong.
Reeve peered over her shoulder, then tensed with disbelief. “That’s not possible.”
With a shaking finger, Viri traced the magical line—the one they’d been so close to reaching the end of…but now led to another place entirely, almost all the way back to the necropolis.
A stream of curses left Reeve’s mouth, but Viri was staring at the map, thinking hard, words he’d said flitting across her memory:
“The map belongs to your family line, so the magic only works for someone with Solace blood.”
And later:
“I never understood how the husband could have hiked through the Mistwood if he was as weak as the legend claimed.”
Then finally:
“I asked your mom about it…and she just smiled and said, ‘Anything is possible with magic.’ ”
A theory came to Viri, something that was surely a fool’s hope, but she listened to her instincts as they guided her to unsheathe a dagger and prick the tip of her finger.
“The magic only works for someone with Solace blood.”
Reeve was right that the husband never would have been able to make the journey…
but what if he hadn’t needed to? What if the wayportal wasn’t located in any one place but moved around the Mistwood, just like how the trees shifted and the rivers turned and the ground formed and re-formed.
That was why the map had changed—because the portal had moved.
And if it had moved once, then it could move again.
Especially if it was summoned.
“Anything is possible with magic.”
If Viri’s mother had spoken true, then maybe a Solace could do more than read the map—maybe a Solace could also control it.
Praying her instincts were right, Viri touched her bleeding finger to the line on the parchment, tracing it all the way back to where she and Reeve were standing, willing the map to recognize her, to obey her.
One second passed. Two seconds. Three—
And then a bright flash lit the cavern, and the shimmering wayportal appeared on the pebbled shore before them.
An incredulous laugh left Viri. “I can’t believe that worked.”
She turned to Reeve, finding him just as stunned as she was, but then he gave an amused shake of his head and drawled, “You couldn’t have tried that before we were chased by a wraith, attacked by a lake monster, and had to hike for hours through a diabolical forest?”
Despite his sarcasm, she could see the pride clear in his eyes. But there was something else there, too. Something that made her stomach flip and her knees weaken.
Reaper, monster, killer—she said the words in her mind, desperate for anything to stifle what she could no longer deny was growing between them.
The moment she’d seen his unconscious form go under the water, the terror she’d felt had exposed what she’d been refusing to acknowledge: that she cared for him, much more than she should.
For all his teasing, for all her indignation and embarrassment, she wasn’t fooling either of them.
She wanted him, they both knew it. And yet—
Reaper.
Monster.
Killer.
That was what Reeve was, and regardless of anything else, she couldn’t afford to forget it.
He might not siphon anymore, but he also held no remorse for his past actions.
He’d killed a girl, and by his own admission, he didn’t regret her death.
Viri couldn’t ignore that—even if her heart was beginning to wish she could.
Summoning every scrap of self-respect she had, Viri stomped down her emotions and cleared her throat to answer, “Only one of us knows anything about magic, so excuse me if I didn’t think to experiment with an ancient map and a wayportal that moves.”
Reeve’s lips twitched at her attitude, with him blissfully unaware of everything that had just passed through her mind—including her resolve to smother anything she felt toward him.
“At least we won’t have to retrace our steps through the Mistwood after we’re done with the Guardian,” he said, looking thoughtfully at the wayportal.
“No wonder the husband was able to get his magewish—not to mention his wife was able to return for hers, and then both of them a third time with their dying babe. It makes so much more sense now.” He spoke the last part under his breath, his eyes oddly unfocused, but Viri was stuck on his mention of the Guardian, her insides swooping as she realized they were only steps away from discovering whether or not the legend she’d grown up hearing was true.
If the Guardian of Elverdine Isle really did exist, if he was just on the other side of the portal…
Uncertainty barreled into her. “What’s our plan here?”
Reeve shook off whatever musings had gripped him. “The same as it’s always been: to beat Braedan to the Guardian and stop him from being granted a magewish.”
“Right.” Viri nodded mechanically. “We stop him from destroying the obelisks.”
An unreadable look crossed Reeve’s face before he wiped it clear. “We stop him from dooming the city, yes.”
“What if we’re too late?” Viri worried aloud.
“We’d know if we were.”
“How? We’ve been out here for hours. What if he made it to the tower while we—”
“Viri,” Reeve said firmly, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Take a breath. Everything is going to be all right.”
Holding his eyes, she asked, her voice wobbling slightly, “How do you know that?”
He gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Because we’re going to make sure of it.”
His steely determination silenced Viri’s fears.
It was still daunting, the idea of traveling blindly through the portal and trusting it would deliver them to the Guardian, let alone having to convince him to refuse her brother should Braedan reach the tower on his own.
But Reeve’s confidence was the balm Viri needed to face what was ahead, along with his reminder that they would do whatever it took to succeed in their task—mostly because, if they didn’t, everyone they knew would die.
“Come on, Little Shadow,” Reeve said, watching with approval as she straightened her spine and indicated she was ready. “Let’s go finish what we started.”
With a fortifying inhale, Viri strode toward the wayportal with him, her heart fluttering nervously as she wondered what they would find on the other side.
If she’d spared a moment to think about it, she might have assumed they would appear near a freestanding tower or fortress-like keep, or perhaps they’d arrive at the edge of the Mistwood overlooking an ancient castle.
She might also have assumed they would need to go searching for the Guardian inside his expansive dwelling, and Elders knew how long that would take.
What she wouldn’t have assumed was that the wayportal might open right inside Nevarnost Tower, directly in the center of a large, warmly lit circular chamber reminiscent of Wynter’s laboratory, the walls covered in shelves full of books and potions and magical artifacts, the domed ceiling made of glass and revealing a moonlit sky full of stars.
Viri also wouldn’t have assumed that a middle-aged man who could only be the Guardian would be standing mere feet away from the portal, his eyes a luminous blue, his dark hair flecked with gray, his tall frame clad in unusual purple robes, and his handsome face wearing a serene smile, almost as if he’d been expecting them.
But the one thing Viri definitely wouldn’t have assumed—but really should have—was that the Guardian wouldn’t be alone, her palm suddenly searing as her hunter’s mark flared to life.
Because standing next to him—
Was the Reaper Priest.