Chapter Thirty-Six
To be fair, until right then, I hadn’t known that I’d done anything. Earlier today, after Remy dropped me off to run his grisly errands, I went to find Brendan. Malina let me see him, of course. She even gave us some privacy.
“Can I try something with you, Brendan?” I’d asked him.
He’d smiled. “Of course.”
I put my hands on his head and closed my eyes, channeling the power I’d recently used to kill into something very different. Heal, I’d thought, picturing Brendan’s mind as a shattered sculpture I could put back together. Heal.
Power raced through me as I imagined those broken pieces melding back together again. Brendan had trembled, but he didn’t speak or try to move. Heal, I thought again. Heal!
The pieces flew, becoming a blur. I couldn’t tell if they were still melding together or were now flying farther apart. I tried again, channeling more power into him—
Brendan pushed me away and rocked unsteadily on his feet.
“What’s wrong?” I’d asked.
He’d held out a hand in a stay there gesture while holding the other one to his head.
I’d held my breath. Please, let this work! Please let me have given his mind back to this sweet, brave man!
“Brendan? Do you remember who you are?”
Brendan had swayed. I’d almost grabbed him when he caught himself, smiled in a heartbreakingly confused way, and said, “Do you want a cheese sandwich? I love cheese sandwiches.”
“Sure,” I’d said, crushed that his gaze was as blank as ever. I’d left soon after sharing that sandwich with him, dejected that I hadn’t been able to help.
Or so I’d thought.
Now a green glow suffused Brendan’s hand as he touched it to Remy’s. Remy’s palm snatched away from Brendan’s mouth and he let out a surprised yelp. A red welt now seared his hand.
“Show some respect to your grandfather, or I’ll use a stronger spell next time,” Brendan snapped.
Emotion spasmed across Remy’s features while I sucked in a gasp. Brendan didn’t just remember that he was pissed at Daegal for reasons unknown. He also remembered, for the first time in decades, that Remy was his grandson.
Remy’s expression cleared back into his impassive Warden mask a second later. “I need you to come with me now, Brendan.”
“Oh, I think not.” The refusal didn’t come from Brendan.
It came from Daegal, and the dragon’s tone was downright merry.
“The Records Keeper’s mind is healed, as his remembering me, you, Juli, and doing a spell proves.
There’s only one thing powerful enough to do that.
Beithíoch blood. More specifically, the blood of an original beithíoch.
A newer one’s blood wouldn’t work. Juli had already tried that, and it failed. ”
“That’s not true,” I snapped.
I hadn’t drawn any of my blood when I tried to heal Brendan’s mind.
Except … I still had cuts on my hands from trying to free the pilot.
They hadn’t healed yet because I’d gone to see Brendan as soon as I got back to the hotel.
I hadn’t even stopped to shower first. So, technically, I did have my blood on my hands when I channeled power into Brendan.
Was that why Brendan’s mind was restored now, and it hadn’t been when I healed his injuries without blood the night we met?
“What would you know, human?” Daegal asked with contempt.
Dammit, I shouldn’t know any of this! I pressed my lips shut while shooting Brendan a don’t say anything! look.
“Except the beithíoch’s host you brought Juli wasn’t unconscious, as you swore when you delivered him to Juli. The cage he was in was also unlocked,” Brendan hissed to Daegal.
“Grandfather, stop,” Remy ground out.
Daegal only laughed. “That’s right, you were there, Brendan!
I’d forgotten, since you were drooling on yourself at the time.
Well, I thought the host was unconscious, so he must have tricked me, too.
And the cage was working when I left, but more importantly, you just confirmed that I delivered an original beithíoch to Juli and she accepted it.
Now, its power has healed you, Brendan. That means I fulfilled my part of the agreement with the Warden of the Northeast, and now, Remington,” Daegal’s smile was pure poison, “you are obligated to fulfill your part as the Northeast’s current Warden. ”
Daegal shook his arm like he was flinging excess water from it. A long scroll unrolled out of his forearm, its ink glittering like rubies against the ivory parchment.
“You just carry that around with you?” I wondered out loud.
Daegal laughed again. I’d never seen the dragon in such a good mood, which meant we had to be fucked.
“Just like spells can be embedded in skin, so can important contracts. I’ve waited over sixty years to collect on this one, too.”
Remy snatched at the contract. It detached from Daegal’s arm as cleanly as a page torn from a book. Remy scanned it, his brows drawing together like storm clouds as he read.
“I don’t care what that says, Juli was coerced,” Brendan insisted. “Dragons captured me when I was reinforcing a failed ward in the city. That’s why I was forced to wipe my mind. I wouldn’t let Daegal get my secrets since they were his dragons.”
Daegal affected a who, me? look. “You have proof of this?”
Brendan’s face darkened. “Their tails were as thin as a wyvern’s! Only your dragons have tails like those!”
Daegal kicked one of the satin boxes that still rested near his feet. “No proof, no validity in the accusation. Remington knows that. It’s why he delivered proof of my people’s utterly unsanctioned actions by filling these boxes with their remains.”
“Unsanctioned, my ass,” I muttered.
Daegal wagged a finger at me. “Careful, human. You’re now on my lands, and I don’t tolerate disrespect from my lessers.”
“Your lands?” My head swiveled to Remy in shock. “Is that what this contract says?”
Daegal laughed again. “It does! And Juli was very specific. I not only had to deliver an original beithíoch to her. It also had to heal Brendan’s mind.
I wasn’t sure anything could, but Juli was convinced that an original would, and the prize was so great I scoured the world looking for one.
I thought there were none left, but I finally found one and delivered it to Juli.
Then it killed her, and Brendan remained a simpleton …
until now, when you must have figured out how to use that same beithíoch to heal Brendan. At last, I can collect on my lands.”
My legs felt like they turned to rubber. “Tell me it doesn’t say that,” I whispered.
Remy’s features looked carved from stone as he glanced up from the long scroll. “I haven’t finished all the clauses yet.”
I felt like I was going to pass out or puke, whichever came first. By using the Beast to heal Brendan, had I inadvertently cost Remy the same territory he’d been entrusted to protect? I had to fix this! I had to.
Suddenly, I knew a way. “But the beithíoch that healed Brendan wasn’t the same one Daegal gave to Juli—”
My mouth stopped working. I tried to finish the sentence and couldn’t.
Not only were my lips frozen, my tongue now felt like a concrete slab that was too heavy to lift.
The faint buzzing sensation in and around my mouth only confirmed what I saw in Remy’s steely gaze. He’d just gagged me with a spell.
A furious grunt escaped me. It was the only noise I was capable of making.
Daegal snorted as he realized that, too. “I’ve never envied Wardens their magic before, but that spell looks useful. You’ll have to let me borrow it sometime, Remington. Maybe I’ll even trade you back one of your old city blocks for it.”
Fuck you! I tried to say, but only grunts came out.
“I do wonder what she was about to say, though,” Daegal went on, a gleam lighting his gaze. “Although I already know she was lying. You do have the same beithíoch I gave to Juli. As I said, it was the only original one left, and I searched everywhere.”
“That beithíoch escaped after killing Juli,” Remy said tonelessly. “Brendan can confirm that. As you said, he was there.”
Pain sliced into Brendan’s expression. From every account, Juli and Brendan had loved each other deeply. She’d bargained her lands and lost her life in her attempts to heal him. Seeing her death was one memory I wished Brendan hadn’t regained.
“And yet, you must have found that same beithíoch again, because you had it trapped just two weeks ago,” Daegal all but purred. “Don’t bother denying it. I saw a video of you with it.”
If my jaw still worked, it would have dropped. Daegal was behind the breach that hacked into Remy’s security! Thank God he’d only seen Remy and the Beast in the glimpse he’d gotten of that video. Not Remy and me before I transformed into it.
Remy’s smile slid like a razor across his face. “I knew you were behind Travis’s betrayal and the recent spate of my people’s kidnappings. Thank you for publicly confirming that.”
“If I were, it was only to gain the lands that should’ve been mine decades ago,” Daegal said venomously. “But,” his tone lightened, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Someone brought me a clip of a video. I merely watched it.”
Liar, I silently seethed.
“Liar,” Brendan said out loud, drawing back a hand that now glowed bright green. “And I’ll see you dead before you claim an inch of Juli’s lands—”
Remy said something unintelligible and loud.
Brendan dropped like he’d been Siphoned. Remy caught him with one arm while still holding the scroll with his other hand.
“Sorry, Grandfather,” Remy said through gritted teeth.
Daegal snorted. “Another useful spell, only this time, you waited too long to use it. If you’d done that before he first spoke, I would never have known that his mind had been healed.”
You taunting little BITCH! I thought furiously.
Setreg took Brendan from Remy, who was still reading the scroll-style contract. No wonder he wasn’t done with that yet. It was so long it almost touched the floor.
Jessica and Owen had been not-so-subtly reading it over Remy’s shoulder, too. “This is binding,” Jessica said in a grim tone. “Juli wrote it and signed it in her own blood. I can feel her magic permeating from it. He couldn’t have faked that.”
Owen shook his head. “I feel it, too, though I can’t grasp why Juli would give her entire lands away.”
“Because you’ve never loved someone,” Remy replied without looking up. “Still, I know my grandmother. She left a way out.”
Daegal let out a contemptuous sniff. “No, she didn’t—”
“Clause ninety-two,” Remy said, holding the very bottom of the long scroll up for Owen and Jessica to read.
They did, and then stared at Remy in disbelief.
Daegal laughed. “You’re barely over two hundred. Even if you were my age, you still wouldn’t have half my power. That clause is your way out of living, not your way out of this contract.”
Remy went over and stabbed the contract against Daegal’s chest with his finger. “Clause ninety-two,” he repeated, biting off each word. “You either honor it if I choose to enforce it, or you forfeit the entire contract. And I do choose to enforce it.”
The grunts I made were my way of saying, Someone tell me what the fuck clause ninety-two is!
Daegal’s mouth curved into a thin smile. “Then choose the location, as per the clause.”
“The First Realm,” Remy replied, to a surprised intake of breath from Jessica and Owen.
“You’re going off-world?” Jessica whispered. “To them?”
Daegal’s smile only grew wider. “I’ll see you in the First Realm in twenty-four hours, Remington. And then I’ll kill you.”