Chapter 9
The rainforest looks exactly how I remember it, verdant and wet.
The muddy earth sticks to my Chucks as we step off the ley line, Nero in tow.
My familiar raises his head and sniffs the air, his ears and tail twitching as he takes in the various animal calls.
I assumed he’d bound off, now that he’s back in his home, but instead he sticks close.
I shiver as I take in our surroundings. I have many memories of this place, and only a few of them are pleasant.
I shift my gaze from the plants around me and focus instead on the space in between them, looking for any wards or enchantments we might run into.
Last time I was here, the spells that cloaked the palace were old, almost petrified by how long they’d sat in place. And when I touched them, they disintegrated entirely. But if Eislyn has come back since then, perhaps—
I exhale sharply when I spot the barest shimmer of a ward. A new one by the looks of it. It’s nearly translucent, save for a few iridescent lines that hang in the hair like a spider’s silk.
Now there isn’t a doubt in my mind. “She’s been here.” I don’t remember much of Eislyn’s magic, but most fae have iridescent or multicolored magical signatures.
Memnon scowls when he catches sight of the spell hanging in the air, but there’s an edge of excitement I sense to his anger. He lifts a hand and releases his power.
The indigo plumes of it fan out: “Reveal what has been hidden, break what has been formed.”
A few of the threads that make up the ward warp a little, but nothing more happens.
Memnon and I exchange a look. I lift my own hand and give it a shot. “Reveal what has been hidden, break what has been formed.”
The fibers of the ward warp a little more, but that’s it.
It ends up taking three more tries between the two of us before the spell finally dissolves away, each bit of it shimmering in the air for a moment before it vanishes.
As the ward disappears, our surroundings alter, the foliage seeming to part.
I suck in a breath at the sight before me.
Last time I was here, the palace was nothing but ruins.
Now, however, it’s been partially remade.
The gleaming white walls are stacked high, the stones seamlessly fitted together. The bones of an arched roof sit atop the main portion of the structure, and closer to us, the columns have been restacked. There are even a few windows fitted with panes of glass.
There are still whole sections of the palace that haven’t been touched, and the Otherworldly detailing of the structure is still absent, but it’s far more rebuilt than the half-buried rubble I remember from the last time I came here.
Even as I think it, I hear the distant sounds of tools striking rock. There must be workers here even now, reconstructing this palace stone by stone.
If Eislyn is only now putting this effort into rebuilding it, then…
“She forgot this place,” I breathe.
“You made her forget,” Memnon emphasizes.
He must be right. Two thousand years ago, I cast a spell to erase Memnon’s memory from all minds. Apparently it must’ve been enough to erase her memory of this place. And that erasure lingered until Memnon lifted the curse the night of the Samhain Ball.
I imagine the Khuno River palace was not just important to Eislyn but also likely beloved. It’s a small comfort to know Eislyn lost something herself when she ruined our lives all those years ago. Her palace, no less, the one thing given to the exiled fae princess.
My eyes move over the partially rebuilt structure once more.
Now that we’re here, I feel unsure what to do next.
Memnon, however, doesn’t share my same uncertainty.
He presses a hand against me, and the other he splays across his chest. “Hide us from all eyes but one another’s,” he incants in Sarmatian.
I glance over at him as his magic billows out, the smoky, indigo plumes of it wrapping around the two of us.
“We cannot properly sneak around if we can be seen,” he explains as he crouches down in front of Nero.
Laying a hand against my panther’s neck, he repeats the spell, and his power washes over my familiar. It flattens and thins as it settles until I can only see the barest edge of it along Nero’s fur.
“Now,” Memnon says, straightening up, “let’s see what our enemy has been up to while we’ve been away.”
Memnon, Nero, and I walk up to the palace slowly, taking in all the renovations. The mud covering the ground has been washed away, revealing gleaming marble floors beneath. Stacked to the sides are broken slabs of marble, waiting to either be spelled or shaped into something useful.
The place isn’t just littered with broken bits of marble. It’s also covered in spells.
“Careful where you step,” Memnon warns, nodding to an archway that gleams with a somewhat obvious spell. Low to the ground, there appears to be another layer of spells, this one containing what looks like a wisp of smoke within in its matrix. It’s dark enough to at the very least be a hex.
A chill runs through me at the sight. That was how the Fortunas captured us not even a week ago. They’d placed a spell in the elevator shaft, and we descended into it.
“It’s probably worth going in there,” I say.
We do step into the room once we remove the spells. Though it’s one of the more completed spaces in the palace, it contains nothing but some discarded tools and a desk covered in a drop cloth.
Nothing of obvious importance.
Back out again we go.
I run my fingers over a marble wall with text that I think might be Old Fae etched into its surface.
“Translate,” I incant in Sarmatian.
A plume of my magic leaves my hand and rolls over the stone. The letters shiver, then shift, morphing into text I can read.
Judgment lies beneath the earth.
A shiver rolls through me when I think of exactly what dwells beneath my feet. I wouldn’t call it judgment. No, the deities that lurk there are far too unethical for that.
I drop my hand from the words and turn to my soul mate. “I know fairies can live a long time, but two thousand years?” I say. It seems impossibly long.
Memnon rubs his lower lip with his thumb, musing. “I don’t know how typical that is, though the fact that in all that time Eislyn hasn’t received a dagger through the back is a miracle in its own right.”
An unfortunate miracle.
Memnon, Nero, and I pass several partially renovated but mostly empty rooms.
“What are we looking for?” I finally ask.
“Anything that might tell us what Eislyn has up to these days and where to find her.”
We move toward the back of the palace, where more of the work is being done at the moment. Silently, we slip past workers, whose eyes move through us and past us but not on us.
When we come to the main bedroom, a full-body shiver runs through me. It lacks the jewel-toned details that were once present here, but there’s a bed in this room that looks eerily similar to the one that used to be here, right down to the bedposts carved to look like trees.
I remember sleeping here, mourning here. The memory is visceral. It’s awful to think that that whole time, the space was never really mine. Instead, my presence here was used to frame me for Eislyn’s betrayal.
Memnon places a hand on the back of my neck, massaging it softly. Are you alright? he asks down our bond.
I tear my gaze from the bed to look at him.
I’m fine, I say down our bond, still speaking silently to him so that we’re not overheard by nearby workers.
Memnon frowns, obviously unconvinced.
I move over to the bed, my familiar shadowing me. “May this bed always attract bed bugs,” I whisper.
The sorcerer’s eyebrows rise.
“What?” I say innocently. “She obviously deserves it.”
He folds his arms as he watches me. “I’m offended that you only inflicted Eislyn with bed bugs when you burned our house down.”
I bite my lower lip to stop myself from smiling. It doesn’t work.
“You underestimate my pettiness if you think I’m going to stop at bed bugs,” I say. “I’m just getting started.”
Is magically booby-trapping an enemy’s house a misuse of magic? Probably. Will the Law of Three bite me in the ass with this one?
Maybe.
Regardless, the perverse joy I get just by casting the spells is worth it.
I set up hexes everywhere. The furniture, the walls, the very air itself.
However, the floor, I’ve found, is the best place for them. You can see spells glittering in the air. Even the walls will hold the sheen of them. But the ground is more innocuous.
Some of spells I place are as benign as being plagued with dandruff and ingrown hairs or forgetting one’s train of thought, but some are more malignant, like making the walls structurally unstable. I even place an intense laxative spell on the threshold to the kitchen.
Let’s see how well Eislyn fares with that one.
I do, however, hold myself back from actual curses. As much as I made light of the Law of Three, I’ve dealt with the consequences of it once. I don’t want to again.
“There,” I say when I place the last hex.
“Very conniving, very evil,” Memnon teases.
I push him softly, and he catches my wrist, drawing me to him. I feel small in his arms, and I’m surprised by how much I enjoy that feeling of being totally enveloped by him. I stay there for a long moment, savoring this. Him.
You’re a really good hugger, I say down our bond.
That’s because when you’re in my arms, I’m not sure I’m going to let you go, he responds.
Eventually, Memnon tilts my head up, searching my gaze as a raindrop hits my nose.
“There’s one place we haven’t checked yet,” he says softly.
His eyes flicker—with dread, I realize.
His tomb.
“We don’t have to.” I doubt we’ll find anything of use in the tomb, considering its purpose.
But Memnon is already nodding. “We should,” he insists. His gaze moves up, beyond me to the distance, “I would like to see it again.”
“There might be a trap waiting for us there,” I say softly. I’m grasping at excuses, but this one is valid. If I were Eislyn, that would be the one space I’d think to place one.
“Maybe,” he agrees, his expression somber.