Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
It was twenty after eight when Sawyer showed up in Lumosia’s training arena, fashionably late. Unlike when he had trained me in Caelestis, he seemed to have no sense of time in Lumosia.
I tapped an invisible watch on my wrist.
“I know, I know.” He brushed me off with a wave of his hand, then tossed his belongings at the edge of the mat.
“You would be late to your own funeral,” I teased, dropping to the ground to do some stretching. My arm was already feeling better, but I wouldn’t risk using it tonight. This session was about pure mind compulsion.
“Probably my own wedding, too.” He chuckled, and I smiled at the idea of that. There was nothing I wished for more than my loved one’s happiness.
“What were you doing?”
He ignored the question. “What are you thinking for tonight?”
“I haven’t done much training since Caelestis, so I kind of want to try some more challenging commands. You okay with that?” I asked, testing my mended limb by using it to push back up to a stand.
“Sure.” He angled his dagger at my arms. “Now that you have the markings, have you found yourself getting weak at all when you harness?”
“Not yet.” I glanced at the swirling tattoos of starlight coating my arms. “I’m still pretty baffled by these. Beaumont seems so amazed that I have them, but so far they aren’t turning out to be anything special.”
“Um, you can control the damn stars because of those markings. That doesn’t scream special to you?”
I shrugged. “Control is a stretch.”
“Yeah…” he cautiously agreed. “We’ll have to work on that when your arm is fully healed.”
“We can work on that after we get Sebastian out of freakin’ Draemor,” I corrected. As soon as my arm was back to total use, I was out of here. With or without a partner in crime.
Sawyer stepped towards me, stopping about a foot from where I stood. His eyes widened with an undeniable declaration of concern. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“When have I ever done anything stupid?” I inquired, knowing damn well that I had a bad track record.
He held a finger up. “Not telling Seb that your power was making you sick.” Another finger shot up.
“Not telling me that your power was making you sick, but having me train you every night anyway.” Another one.
“Compelling Seb to leave you during the battle.” Finger number four went up. “Arm wrestling Kohen—”
“Okay, okay, point proven. I won’t do anything stupid.” My hands splayed out in surrender.
“Promise?” He arched a dirty-blond brow.
“No. I’ll try, but I won’t promise.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Sawyer grumbled. “Seb will kill me if anything bad happens to you.”
“Nothing bad is going to happen. I’ve been thinking long and hard about a way to help him.”
“And? What have you come up with?”
Nothing without turning myself over, which I was more than prepared to do, though I knew it wouldn't fly.
“Well, nothing yet. But I’m close. I can feel it.” My head fell, cocking to the side. “Can you be honest with me about something?”
“Aren’t I always honest with you?”
He was.
“Do you think they’re hurting him?”
Sawyer’s eyes darkened in sync with his hesitation. He then subtly bobbed his head, softening his voice. “There's not a doubt in my mind, Willawood.”
My teeth clamped down on the inside of my cheek. We were wasting time. Precious time.
“We are going to get him out of there. I promise.”
Refocusing my mind on anything other than Sebastian, I prepared my soul to wield. “Are your shields up?”
When Sawyer shook his head, I readied myself and voiced my command. “Tell me something about you that I don’t know.”
“How long are we going to wait to go back?” I pressed the group around the table for what felt like the millionth time. It had been almost a week since Beaumont took Sebastian, and we still hadn't done a damn thing.
Archer glared at me, fisting his hands on top of the table. “Your mother never taught you patience, did she?”
“It’s hard to have patience when—” I paused, trying to find the right words, “—one of our friends is being held hostage.”
Friend. That stung a little, but that was what Sebastian was now. My friend. A friend who I used to kiss, confide in, and have crazy good sex with, but also a friend who lied and hid things from me.
I’d been trying not to think about it all and instead had been putting all my energy in a plausible way to help him. But every now and then, my skin recalled what it felt like being wrapped in his arms, and the memory would make my eyes sting.
“We're going to return as soon as possible,” Kade spoke up. “But without a solid plan, we risk another one of our own ending up in the same situation as Hawthorne.”
Our heads turned towards Pia’s piping annoyance. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s come up with a damn plan!”
“Don’t you think we’ve been trying?” Kade growled, slamming a fist to the wood. “Going back unprepared would just be plain stupid. They will be waiting for us to return, and we don’t even know where they are keeping him. Besides, he isn’t going to release Hawthorne unless we turn Maeve over.”
“Perfect. Let's do that,” I supplied. “If that is the only option, then it seems like a no-brainer.” I could handle my own in Draemor.
“Nice try,” Sawyer responded, glaring over at me.
I refused to meet his gaze.
“Let me make something very clear,” I snarled to everyone in the room, more specifically to my father and Kade. “If no one has a better idea by the end of this meeting, I will be going to Draemor myself, tomorrow. So, everyone best put their fucking thinking caps on and give me a reason not to.”
“What about the other journal?” Kohen suggested, breaking his usual silence. “Maeve mentioned that there was another one?”
“There is, but we have no idea where.” My eyes shifted towards Pia. “I asked a bookkeeper from the archives here, and they found a news article from a few years ago referring to the donations you mentioned. Some of the texts went as far as Craterra.”
“Huh.” Her head cocked. “Guess I have a better memory than I thought.”
“The problem now is figuring out which city or village the journal went to, if any. I made a list of the largest archives in Caelestis, but even then, odds are Draemornians have completely obliterated them. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of parchment.
“It’s also possible that the journal was disposed of, especially considering anyone outside of the Hawthorne bloodline wouldn’t have been able to read it.
Sure it can’t be destroyed, but if it were thrown in the garbage, finding it would be damn near impossible. ”
A lull of silence expanded throughout the room as Pia perused the list.
I turned to Venay. “You enchanted the book. Do you have some sort of connection to it? Is there a way to locate it?”
“A connection?” She shook her head. “No.”
I frowned, staring down at the tabletop. Frustrated didn’t even begin to describe how I felt.
Venay stood up, her white gown effortlessly flowing down her slim figure.
She walked alongside the table, trailing a finger over the shining surface as she approached me.
“I didn’t want to have to use this kind of magic, but seeing as we have exceeded all other options, I will for my friend's son. She would have wanted me to do everything in my power to help him.”
My eyebrows drew together as I gazed up at the enchanter. “So, there is a way to locate it? What kind of magic?” Why didn't she mention that before?
Archer soared out of his chair, white-knuckling the edge of the table. “Venay,” he growled her name as a threat. “No. We agreed—”
“I know what we said. But your daughter may just be foolish enough to go to try and save him herself if we don’t help. And her death is not a chance the gods would want us to take,” she shot back, her voice stern but still ethereal. “Her death is not a chance the world can afford to take.”
“You could die…” Archer disputed under his breath, as if no one else was in the room beside the two of them.
“She could die and he could die.”
The concern in her voice when she said he strummed up some confusion inside of me, though I chalked it up to the pain of wanting to save her friend's offspring.
She closed the discussion by repositioning her silver eyes upon me. “I will help. Meet me in the courtyard two evenings from now.”
My jaw wilted along with my hope. “Two evenings from now? Why not tonight?”
“The Jewel-Light Meteor Shower is two nights from now,” she reminded me. “And the kind of power I must use to perform the ritual to help you, will come directly from the gods themselves.”